Showing posts with label Cosine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cosine. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 March 2020

Chiller 2 - Two Level Demo

It's been a difficult couple of weeks for everyone (and by that I mean the entire World) with the onset of Covid-19 across the globe.

Therefore, to spread a little bit of love and cheer, I've decided to release a 2 level demo version of Chiller 2!

First a word of warning!  The game has not undergone extensive play testing yet by anyone else other than me, so some may find it a little hard!  After the play testing is complete, there are lots of tweaks that can be made to make things easier if required.  It has already been discussed that perhaps energy will be reset between levels and/or energy being 'topped-up' during play somehow.

This demo aims to give a little taster of the type of game it will be!


On the title screen, select either to play as the boy or the girl by pulling left or right on the joystick.  The boy is ' stronger' than the girl so can take collisions and lose energy a little slower than the girl.  However, the girl is a little lighter than the boy, so when jumping will stay in the air just a fraction longer making it easier to cross larger gaps or reach higher platforms.  Choose carefully, then press fire to play!

The aim of the game is to collect 20 crosses on each level to progress to the next level.  Each cross collected adds '1' to the cross counter in the middle of the status panel at the bottom of the screen and '100' to your score on the left of the status panel, as in the screen below.



Move your character around the level using the joystick, left and right to move.  A single fire button press activates 'jump'.  Holding down fire enables a double-jump; some 'platforms' may initially appear too high to reach with one fire button press so holding down the button and double-jumping means the character will jump up to the platform and then jump again.

Gravity is always active in the game, so walking off the edge of a platform will result in your character falling down the screen.  There is no limit as to how high you can fall from and no energy is lost.

If your character touches an enemy or certain parts of the scenery such as mushrooms, then energy is lost from your energy bar at the very bottom of the status panel.  Collision with enemies is quite 'loose' so they can often be passed without energy loss even if a few pixels are overlapping.  Mushrooms will only drain energy if they are walked over or fallen on.  You can jump up through or past them without energy loss.

A few tips!

Although the player character can move relatively quickly, rushing about is a guaranteed way of losing energy very quickly, ending the game.

Each level has been purposefully designed to be a type of 'puzzle' with some routes through being more optimal than others.  Take your time and plan your path; there is no time limit so you can stop and think.  Use strategy!  There are safe places on the levels where you can stand without fear of enemies crashing into you!

While stopping, watch and learn the enemy patrol routes.  Timing your jumps between and over them will result in more success!

The game ends when you run out of energy.

Please have fun, but more importantly, ensure you and your loved ones stay safe during these troubled times.

To play the 2 level demo, you can download it here...

EDIT:
TRIAD have just released a cracked version which you can download from CSDb here...

Saturday, 4 January 2020

Tiny PETSCII Compo 2020

Late last night I noticed a new compo on CSDb called the 'Tiny PETSCII Compo 2020' with the quite simple rules of producing a PETSCII no bigger than 8x8 chars (or smaller than 2x2 chars) and 2 colours (1 main colour and a background colour).  Rules and various entries can be found on the compo page here.

After noticing the compo, I decided to enter with a couple of images that were started last night and finished this morning.  The first 2 below are mine and the final is from my grandson, who I roped into doing one too!




The first above is called "That's No Moon" for, hopefully, obvious reasons?  The second, hopefully just as obvious, is called "Yodascii".  The final is called "PETendo", a portamento of PETSCII and Nintendo - it's a GameBoy if you can't tell!

The images were pixelled in my (still unreleased) screen editor, 'ChillED' and I wrote some quick and dirty code to display them.

If you want to download them as a bundle, click here.

Alternatively, you can download them individually on their respective CSDb pages using the following linkies:

That's No Moon

Yodascii

PETendo

Thursday, 26 December 2019

Chiller 2 Demo Xmas 2019

I've been working on a game for the last few months and have produced a demo level for the Freeze64 fanzine.  The demo was emailed to Freeze64 subscribers on Christmas Eve, so I guess it's fine to post this here now, doubly so since it has appeared in 'cracked' form on CSDb!

The game is called 'Chiller 2' and is an unofficial sequel to the Mastertronic original by David and Richard Darling.



The demo was produced especially for Freeze64 for Christmas, thus it features some vaguely Xmas music and snow and holly on the title and game screens.  So as to not give too much of the game away, the demo features only the ghost enemy following simple horizontal paths and various other features of the full game disabled!

To find out more about this game-in-progress and more of it's features, you can visit my Chiller 2 development blog here...

In the meantime, if you would like to play the demo, you can download it here...

If you want to play a 'cracked' version by TRIAD, with some built-in cheats, you can grab that from CSDb here...

Monday, 2 December 2019

Eagles Dare

Cosine has released "Eagles Dare" which features a new SID tune by me!  T.M.R coded this intro as an entry for the 'Intro Creation Competition' over at CSDb.



According to T.M.R on the Cosine website:

"The eagle picture was found on the internet in 2018 when the idea of creating a cover of the Eagle Soft intro was first being considered, but the final modifications to add a floppy disk were added when some already existing scrolling message code was merged into the project... the scrolling message uses Extended Background Colour Mode which is usually limited to the first 64 characters of a font, but in this particular case the text writer can select any character from the 512 available in the C64's character ROM."

T.M.R also has a personal blog entry sharing further thoughts about the intro.  Read that here.

The title of the music is 'Smaciwch fy Ffolennau' which I'll leave you to go and Google translate from Welsh into your chosen language... :D

And now the downloads:  grab the intro from CSDb here or from the Cosine website here.  If you fancy grabbing the intro as well as the music in SID format, along with the original Goattracker music work file for you to poke and prod, download from this blog here.

T.M.R has recorded a video of the intro in action.  It should appear below, but if not can be viewed on YouTube here.



Saturday, 12 October 2019

Gamerz Xtreme Theme Recording

A few days ago, Cosine released 'Gamerz Xtreme Intro 2', a C64 intro featuring music by me.  Information about the intro can be found here...

I wrote the music using a PC based tool called Goattracker.  The SID music from the intro has been recorded using a 8580 SID equipped C64c, run through my Dolby amp.

I've uploaded a recording to my SoundCloud account.  Listen to the music below; if the player does not appear, hear it on it's SoundCloud page here...


Thursday, 10 October 2019

Gamerz Xtreme Intro 2

Cosine has released "Gamerz Xtreme Intro 2" which features a new SID tune by me!  T.M.R coded this intro after a request by Psycho Stick and will be used on the "Gamerz Xtreme" streaming channel, which I believe is moving from Twitch over to Mixer.


According to T.M.R on the Cosine website:

"..the final version of this [intro] was delivered in source code form with a configuration file and build script so, along with being able to add new text for the scrolling message, Psycho Stick could also tweak various visual elements including the raster effects. As the scrolling message notes, it's like an intro maker but without a user friendly interface... This intro would be valid as an Intro Creation Competition (ICC) entry since it only occupies the first 16K of RAM, but it's possible for the scrolling message to extend outside those boundaries if the need should arise."

T.M.R also has a personal blog entry sharing further thoughts about the intro.  Read that here.

As for the music, I was asked by T.M.R a few months back to compose an original tune and was given "S-Express" by C64 legend Jeroen Tel as a reference.  From this tune I surmised that a late 1980's sound was required, thus the "Gamerz Xtreme Theme" (as it became known to me) features quite simple sounding instruments with no filter use or effects. As was customary in the late 80's, the bass line and drums share a channel, while arpeggios chirp away on their own channel and a simple synth lead claims the third channel.  Hopefully I achieved the "sound" I was aiming for!

As mentioned above, T.M.R seemed insistent that the final intro build fit the requirements of an ICC entry, so while composing it occurred to me to set a similar challenge for myself.  There is a compo on CSDb called the "Crack Intro Music Competition" which, like the ICC compo, has a set of "rules" for music.  I followed these rules so in the end the music in this valid ICC entry is also valid for entry in the stand alone music compo!

And now the downloads; multiple sources as usual!  Grab the intro from CSDb here or from the Cosine website here.  If you fancy grabbing the intro as well as the music in SID format, along with the original Goattracker music work file for you to poke and prod, download from this blog here.

T.M.R has recorded a video of the intro in action.  It should appear below, but if not can be viewed on YouTube here.




Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Unused Shmup Tunes Recording

Yesterday, Cosine released 'Unused Shmup Tunes',  a C64 one file demo music selector featuring code, graphics and music by me.  Information about the collection can be found here...

I wrote the music using a PC based tool called Goattracker.  The SID music from the demo has been recorded using a 8580 SID equipped C64c, run through my Dolby amp.

I've uploaded a recording to my SoundCloud account.  Listen to the music below; if the player does not appear, hear it on it's SoundCloud page here...




Tuesday, 9 July 2019

Unused Shmup Tunes

Inspired by the music selectors that used to appear on C64 magazine cover tapes back in the day and because I had some unused tunes taking up space on my hard drive, I've (funnily enough) coded up a music selector, released today by Cosine!  It's rather awkwardly called 'The Unused Shmup Tune Selector' or 'Unused Shmup Tunes' for short.


The Cosine PETSCII logo was pixelled with and data exported from 'ChillED', a soon to be released C64 cross-dev screen editor.  Although I handled all the code, I must confess I was helped over the code finish line by T.M.R with regards that damned MSB thing.

These tunes, as usual, were composed in Goattracker and were originally planned for use in a shoot 'em up game that T.M.R was "planning" as part of a re-write to his existing assembly language tutorials... but, as is often the case with T.M.R, those tutorials ended up being pushed onto the back burner buy other projects and are currently being rather euphemistically referred to as a "work in progress".  Those are T.M.R's words from the Cosine website, not mine! :D

There's nothing amazing going on here code-wise, but as a relative newcomer to 6502, I'm pleasantly surprised how easy it is to recycle sprites, with up to 24 sprites being displayed on occasion in the logo 'pulse' and star field.

The music selector can be download from this blog here.  The download contains the .prg file to run on a C64 or emulator as well as the ACME formatted source and all binaries and work files, including the music files in their original Goattracker .sng format.

It can also be downloaded from the Cosine website here or from the CSDb here.  If you are so inclined, all the files are also available from GitHub here.

T.M.R has written a short piece about the release on his blog here and recorded a video of the music selector in action and uploaded it to YouTube.  The video should appear below, but if not can be viewed here.





Saturday, 5 January 2019

Level One

Cosine has released 'Level One' today featuring a small SID that I wrote a couple of years ago.  'Level One' is an entry into the CSDb 'Intro Creation Competition 2018' organised by Didi.


From the Cosine website:

"T.M.R's final entry into the 2018 Intro Creation Competition is Level One, a game-flavoured release with full screen scrolling and twenty six characters of text in the two black bands above and below it. The graphics in the centre of the screen were drawn to use Extended Background Colour Mode which reduces the font to 64 characters but gives four possible background colours for each character; this means there's five colours in play but the code doesn't have to scroll the colour RAM."

"Despite being the last ICC 2018 entry produced by T.M.R this was actually the first one started a few days after the competition was announced. The intro was built around prototype versions of the border area code."

As with the music for 'Oldest Style', the music was originally written for the CSDb 'Crack Intro Music Competition 2017', but ended up not being used because it was too long and didn't work well on a 6581 SID; it was written with 8580 in mind.  It has been finished and used here instead

The name of the music is 'Y Sgrechian o Jarre', which is Welsh for 'The Scream of Jarre'.  Named because of the BBC style radiophonic type 'scream' at the start and as I was writing it, some sounds/patterns in it reminded me of Jarre's 'Calypso 1' from 'Waiting for Cousteau'.

The intro can be downloaded from the Cosine website here or it's compo entry page on CSDb here...

You can also download the intro direct from this blog, with the .zip file including not only the demo on a .d64 image, but the music as a .sid file to run through SIDPlay or similar and the music in .sng format which can be loaded into Goattracker, the utility in which it was composed.  Just click here...

T.M.R has also recorded a video of the intro in action and uploaded it to YouTube.  The player should appear below, but if not watch it here...


Sunday, 25 November 2018

Bas Braster Recording

Yesterday, Cosine released 'Oldest Style', an entry into the 'Crack Intro Creation Competition 2018' on CSDb.  The intro features a new C64 8580 SID tune called 'Bas Braster' written by yours truly.  Information about the intro and compo can be found here...

I wrote the music for the intro using a PC based tool called Goattracker.  The SID has been recorded using a 8580 SID C64c run through my Dolby amp.

I've just uploaded a recording to my SoundCloud account; listen to the SID tune below. If the player does not appear, hear it on it's SoundCloud page here...




Saturday, 24 November 2018

Oldest Style

Another Cosine release today featuring a short tune by me!  'Oldest Style' is an entry into the CSDb 'Intro Creation Competition 2018' organised by Didi.


T.M.R has (kind of) billed this intro as a 'sequel of sorts' to a Cosine entry to the same competition from 2014 and he explains that while it may look simple, the code...

"jumps through quite a few hoops in order to make an otherwise silly technique work, using unrolled code and waiting for the C64's raster register to change before updating over 184 scanlines. There's further unrolled code updating those routines as well to animate them so this intro decrunches from $0400 to just shy of $3fff."

The music was originally written (along with a couple of other unfinished efforts) for the CSDb 'Crack Intro Music Competition 2017', but ended up not being used because it was too long and didn't work well on a 6581 SID; it was written with 8580 in mind.  It has been finished and used here instead, having been given the name 'Bas Braster' which is Welsh for... well, just look it up...

The intro can be downloaded from the Cosine website here or it's compo entry page on CSDb here...

You can also download the intro direct from this blog, with the .zip file including not only the demo on a .d64 image, but the music as a .sid file to run through SIDPlay or similar and the music in .sng format which can be loaded into Goattracker, the utility in which it was composed.  Just click here...

T.M.R has also recorded a video of the intro in action and uploaded it to YouTube.  The player should appear below, but if not watch it here...


Thursday, 1 November 2018

Tubularween Recording

Yesterday, Cosine released my 'Old School Demo III', a simple Halloween demo coded in response to a challenge on the DBF Interactive forum.  Information about the demo can be found here...

I composed the music for the demo and it's called 'Tubularween' for the riff from Tubular Bells that features before the track goes off on it's own merry way.  It's an original 4 channel module using samples from disk images of the old Amiga ST-XX sample disk packs, along with some 8bit quality samples I ripped from famous horror film scenes.  I attempted to make the track sound like it could have been from an Amiga demo circa 1988.

I've just uploaded the music to my SoundCloud account; if you want to hear it in a music tracker you can follow the link to the demo above and in the .zip file you'll find the 'mod' in ProTracker format.

If the player doesn't appear below, you can hear the music on my SoundCloud page here...



Wednesday, 31 October 2018

Old School Demo III

Following on from 'Old School Demo 1' and 'Beast Tribute - Old School Demo 2', comes the cunningly named 'Old School Demo III', released today by Cosine.   The demo was written in response to a challenge issued by the owners of the DBF Interactive website and forum to create something for Halloween 2018.


My main inspiration for the demo was the silhouette image in the hidden part of 'Sabbat', a 2013 Halloween demo released by Arkanix Labs, for which I pixelled and composed most of the assets.

The demo has been released by Cosine and is available to download from the Cosine website here...

You can also download the demo directly here...

The whole caboodle is on GitHub here...

There are a few key presses to find to activate some of the sprites as well as a key combo press to find the hidden part...

I'll follow up shortly with another blog post with a little more detail of how the demo works, how the graphics hang together, how the music was written and so on.

Monday, 1 October 2018

Bat-Tro Recording

Back in 2017, Cosine released a small demo called MD201703 - The Bat-Tro.  Information about and a download for the release can be found here...

I wrote the music for the demo using a PC based tool called Goattracker.  It is a cover of the level 1 music 'Gotham City Street' from the 1990 SEGA Megadrive game 'Batman'.  The SID has been recorded using a 8580 SID C64c run through my Dolby amp.

Listen to the SID tune below; if the player does not appear, hear it on my SoundCloud page here...



Wednesday, 12 September 2018

My Lucky Number (SID in Progress)

Here is a 'work in progress' C64 double speed SID cover of a 2018 Amiga mod called 'My Lucky Number' by Virgill.  The track is being covered using 'Goattracker'.

This is only a test recording of part of the track, taken from my real 8580 SID equipped C64c and passed through my Dolby amp.  There is still much work to be done on the remaining part of the tune and lot's of tinkering with the sounds / instruments. The SID will hopefully be used in a future C64 production of some sorts, either from Arkanix Labs or Cosine.

This cover has the 'blessing' of Virgill.  Please listen to the original Amiga version (from a 2018 Amiga intro) here...

If the player doesn't appear below, hear the SID on my SoundCloud page here...
 

Saturday, 8 September 2018

Pellucid Effluvium Recording

Back in 2016, Cosine released a part for 'Crackers' Demo 5', the Crackers' Demo series of multi-part demos containing parts by various groups in the Commodore Plus/4 scene.  Information about and a download for the release can be found here...

I wrote the music for the demo using a PC based tool called Knaecketraecker, which is currently incomplete and thus possesses many 'unique quirks and challenges' to complement the challenges of the TED chip itself. I don't have a Plus/4, so this was played from within the tracker tool itself and recorded after passing through a Dolby amp.

At time of writing, this is my first (and so far only) TED tune, until I'm brave enough to venture into Knaecketraecker territory again.  As for the track title 'Pellucid Effluvium'... look it up... ;)

Listen to the TED tune below; if the player does not appear, hear it on my SoundCloud page here...



Sunday, 26 August 2018

Sporting Chance Recording

Here is a recording of my Atari 8bit POKEY cover of "Sporting Chance" by Odie/Cosine, the music which has been used for all of the C64 versions of the puzzle game 'Blok Copy' apart from the PETSCII version.

The Atari 8bit version of 'Blok Copy' was released by Cosine in 2018 as a contribution to the 'New Years Disk' collection arranged on the AtariAge forum.  Information about and a download for the game and music can be found here.  The music was written in RASTER Music Tracker.

If the player doesn't appear below, hear the music on my SoundCloud page here...



Friday, 24 August 2018

Uridium 2 Music Covers (SID vs. POKEY)

Here are my C64 SID and Atari 8bit POKEY covers of Jason Page's loading music from the amazing Amiga game 'Uridium 2' by Andrew Braybrook.

The SID version was written and released in 2015 as part of a C64 music collection called 'SID Doing Paula', a collection of Amiga mod covers written in Goattracker.  It was a 'hidden' bonus tune. The SID has been recorded using a 8580 SID C64c run through my Dolby amp.  Information about the original C64 collection is here...

The POKEY triple speed cover was released in 2018 as part of the 'New Years Disk' collection arranged on the AtariAge forum.  It was written in RASTER Music Tracker so I could get my head around the POKEY chip. The original Atari 8bit demo in which the tune is featured is here...

The original Amiga version can be found on SoundCloud and YouTube.

If the players don't appear below, hear the music on my SoundCloud page. The SID page is here and the POKEY page is here.




Thursday, 23 August 2018

Matkamies Recording

Back at the beginning of 2015, Arkanix Labs released a music collection called 'Sid Doing Paula', that contained my covers of some of my favourite Amiga modules.

Part of that collection was a SID called Matkamies by Heatbeat/Carillon and having recently hooked up my 8580 SID equipped C64c to my Dolby amp, I've recorded the SID tune and uploaded it to my SoundCloud account.

As a bonus, I've also uploaded an Atari 8bit POKEY version of the same tune.  At time of writing, it has not yet been used in any productions.  It was written at the back end of 2017 after T.M.R requested some POKEY music for an Atari 8bit Cosine game, namely 'Blok Copy'.  I had to learn a new application for writing for POKEY, as well as the nuances of the chip itself and out of that learning came the requested music, as well as this 'conversion' of my original Matkamies SID.

The SID version was written in Goattracker and the POKEY written in RASTER Music Tracker.  The original Amiga version can be found on YouTube - just search for 'Amiga Matkamies'.

If the players don't appear below, hear the music on my SoundCloud page.  The C64 8580 SID track is here and the Atari POKEY cover is here.





Wednesday, 22 August 2018

Beast Tribute Music

A few months ago, Cosine released my Psygnosis tribute demo called Beast Tribute - 'Old School Demo 2'.  You can download the demo here...

I composed the music for the demo.  It's an original 4 channel mod using samples I ripped from the original music in the Amiga game 'Shadow of the Beast', so credit for the samples should go to David Whittaker.  I attempted to make my track sound like it could have been in the original game.

I've finally gotten round to uploading the music to my SoundCloud account, although if you want to hear it in a music tracker you can follow the link to the demo above and in the .zip file you'll find the 'mod' in ProTracker format.

If the player doesn't appear below, you can hear the music on my SoundCloud page here...