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...

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...

Super Galaxi-I-Birds

In an attempt to further my knowledge and understanding of 6502, I've reworked and added new code to T.M.R's C64 gallery blaster 'Super Hyperzap' and have managed to produced something kind of playable in 'Super Galax-I-Birds', released today by C64 Crap Debunk.

On this occasion, as well as producing the graphics and music, I've taken T.M.R's original 'Super Hyperzap' code and added additional features such as a 'busier' title screen in the style of the early '80's space invader style games, 'get ready' type messages for each player, a 2 player option selectable on the title screen, highest score of the day for each player and a status bar that changes it's information depending on whether the title or game screen is being displayed.

In addition, T.M.R's original 'Super Hyperzap' game used 2 sprites for the player ship with only 6 sprites then available for the 3 types of enemy.  This has been recoded in 'Super Galax-I-Birds' so that the player ship is only 1 sprite, freeing an extra sprite for the now 4 types of enemy.  This has had the effect of making 'Super Galax-I-Birds' slightly more hectic than the game on which it was based.

If the game title sounds familiar, this game is indeed an unofficial sequel of sorts to the (in)famous Sensible Software game 'Galaxibirds', released by Firebird in the mid 1980's.

Again, thanks must go to T.M.R and Moloch for their ongoing help and support during my 6502 journey.

There are a few features that didn't make it in, mainly because this game went about as far as I wanted to take it; towards the end, there was no real learning going on, just 'tinkering' and/or adding things for the sake of adding things.  Better handling of waves, with perhaps only 1 type of Galax-i-bird per wave, a high-score table and more types of bird may appear in a 'deluxe' version in the future!

The game can be downloaded from the CSDb here or direct from this blog here.  Both downloads contain the game itself, along with the source code and all binaries and work files for both the graphics and music.  The game is also on GitHub here.

Prior to release, the completed game was supplied to Moloch to be passed on to Triad for 'cracking'.  Their crack release can be downloaded here.

EDIT: A YouTuber called 'NiftyRetroGamer' has done a recording of 'Super Galax-I-Birds' using both emulation and real hardware, while reviewing the game (quite favourably!).  The video should appear below, but if not it can be viewed here...

Blok Copy in Progress

Blok Copy PC Title Screen

Announcing my first PC based game!

Continuing my PureBasic adventures and as a challenge to myself, I'm converting a Cosine game called 'Blok Copy', previously released on the C64, C64DTV, Atari 8bit and Commodore PET, to Windows PC.

Blok Copy PC Game Screen

The title screen is all working including the obligatory credits and scrolling message, along with options for sound settings, game modes and some instructions.  This is all accompanied by Odie's  full blown, all singing-and-dancing version of 'Sporting Chance', the music which has featured in the majority of Blok Copy versions across different formats.

The main game engine is functioning.  All the controls are in, along with the scoring, timer and level counter.  Even the pause mode works.

I'm currently working out the best way to animate the number tiles during the main game, which involves building sprites on the fly and then moving them on screen.

To be honest, this has been a stumbling block.  I've already coded one animation system that worked fine on my own system and on Moloch's laptop.  However, for some reason, it crawls on TMR's system.  I could just say, "tough!", but I want to find the issue and make sure it will work on a range of systems.

Bloody computers.

Big Brother Simulator

Another anniversary post!  10 years ago, T.M.R was running the 'Crap Game Compo 2006' and as the name of the competition suggests, the idea was to create a crap game.  Duh!

I decided to make an entry and came up with 'Big Brother Simulator'.

As the title suggests, the game was a supposed to be a 'simulator' and, yes, that part of the name was indeed inspired by a certain publisher called 'Codemasters' and their simulator (and seemingly endless) series of 8/16bit games.  The rest of the title was from the, in my opinion, trashy television series 'Big Brother'.

The idea of the game was quite simple - make a series of choices that increase your popularity and therefore increase your chances of staying in the 'house'.  Making a string of outrageous choices actually decreases your popularity, as does choosing boring options constantly, leading to eviction.  The best course of action was to make a balanced choice to slowly increase your popularity and stay in the house until the end of the game.

At least that's how it was coded initially but of course this being the 'Crap Game Compo', I broke, on purpose, all the carefully coded calculations that would average out your choices over the course of the game.  Therefore the game ends up being almost impossible to win; if you do happen to win it will be through sheer luck.

To pile on the 'crapness', the game is obviously coded in BASIC and contains some pretty dreadful PETSCII graphics.  Counter-intuitively, a lot of thought actually went into the graphics and code to make it as bad as it was!

There was also going to be a small (and also awful) intro with a badly wired bitmap 'Big Brother' logo and some tuneless music roughly sounding like the TV theme tune.  Unfortunately, this never got completed and all that's left is the logo which is badly corrupted for some reason; the music was written in an older version of Goattracker, but is lost.

The game was sent to T.M.R for inclusion in the compo.  The compo was never concluded; I vaguely recall their being a rather pathetic dispute about something or other which annoyed T.M.R, who quite rightly cancelled it all.

Somehow, the game ended up on Gamebase64 and can be viewed here.  I've no idea how it ended up there or who had access to the file other than T.M.R.  This is interesting because it never appeared on the 'official' CSDb page here.

Regardless, I offer a download direct from this blog, which not only contains the game itself (protected by disabling 'Run Stop'), but the corrupted logo bitmap mentioned earlier and an 'unprotected' version which can be loaded into a C64 and the code viewed after hitting 'Run Stop' and listing.  Grab the files here...

Crimson Twilight Sprites

Not a 'release' as such, but the other day and on a few forums, Moloch posted some sprite sheets containing various monsters and non-playable characters from 'Crimson Twilight', an RPG for the C64 that is currently being produced by Arkanix Labs.  Since I pixelled the majority of the sprites (save 3 or 4), it would seem to be appropriate to post them here too.

Please note, these images intentionally have scanlines, CRT blurring and JPG 'artifacts' in them.  As Moloch explained in his forum post...

"In the past we posted clean images - no artifacting, scanlines, etc. Well that all changed last summer when I discovered someone in one of those gamemaker forums posting the sprite images as his own creations and offering them to others in their games."

Here are the monsters that you encounter during the game.  They are single C64 multicolour sprites with a hires overlay for extra definition.  Click image below to enlarge...

And here are some the non-playable characters that you encounter during the game.  Again, single C64 multicolour sprites with a hires overlay for extra definition.  Click image below to enlarge...

A V1 preview for 'Crimson Twilight', which also contains some of my background graphics, player sprites and character portraits can be downloaded from CSDB here...

Zombie Brain Eaters

Time for something a little different.

Between January and April this year, Richard Bayliss of 'The New Dimension' has been running the 'SEUCK Compo 2013'.  For those who don't know, SEUCK (Shoot 'Em-Up Construction Kit) is a game creation tool that was released by Sensible Software back in  1987.  To save my fingers typing about SEUCK, more information can be found in a Wikipedia entry here...

I bought this kit on cassette back in 1987 along with thousands of other people and quickly realised that, although it was one of the best creation tools available at the time with some pretty powerful built in utilities (I STILL love the simplicity of the sprite editor), it was never going to help you make commercial quality software.

I've found it astonishing that some people persist in making games using SEUCK even to this day and to be honest I think I've been less than complimentary about anything that anyone has made, particularly recently given the number of tools now available on the internet to learn machine code and produce graphics and music.

To that end, I've decided to put my pixels where my mouth is and try to produce a halfway decent SEUCK game and something a little different to the 'million' space/helicopter/car (*delete as applicable) shoot 'em up's out there.  Introducing 'Zombie Brain Eaters'.

I decided not to use the original vertically scrolling SEUCK, but the 'newer' horizontally scrolling 'Sideways SEUCK' hacked together from the original code by Jon Wells.  Information about this sideways version can be found here...

The reason for using the sideways version?  I wanted to create an 'Operation Wolf' type shooting game, but with zombies!  There are 4 looping levels and the point of the game is simple: survive without being bitten, shoot zombies and amass a high score.  All the graphics in the game were pixelled by me using all the built-in SEUCK tools.  Some trivia:  one of the smaller sideways walking zombie sprites will soon make another appearance in an Arkanix Labs demo called Sabbat!

To accompany the game, I've pixelled a 'loading screen' and written a note file with details of the game 'story', controls, hints and tips and some credits.  Richard Bayliss has kindly written some new music for the title screen and has even 'installed' the music into the final game for me.  A special thanks must go to Andrew 'Merman' Fisher of 'The SEUCK Vault' for play-testing and offering support and advice.

Information about the SEUCK Compo 2013 can be found on TND's website here...

The competition has it's own compo page on CSDb here...

Zombie Brain Eaters has it's own entry on CSDb here.  On that page are various versions of the game for download.

However, by directly downloading from this blog, you'll get a zip file that contains the versions mentioned above on CSDb in the 'enhanced' folder, in addition to a folder called 'original' that contains my original disk image submission with the game with no music along with some assets that include the loading screen in koala format, the music from the title screen in SID format and the original 'all data' save file that can be loaded into Sideways SEUCK to play around with.  The zip file can be downloaded here...

UPDATE:

The competition results are in and 'Zombie Brain Eaters' came a semi-respectable 4th place out of 11 entries.

Frixxion

An Onslaught crack has appeared on CSDb of a C64 game I have been involved in.  The game is called 'Frixxion' and I pixelled the title screen logo, the background graphics and the sprites, with code handled by Trooper.

After working with Trooper on my 'Hex Files Advert', I became involved in this game that was already a work-in-progress, with temporary graphics by T.M.R.  The work Trooper did on the game prior to my involvement is detailed in a diary on his website here...  (please note, Trooper seems to have a habit of moving and/or breaking his site, so if the link doesn't work, blame him!)

The idea for the game is for it to be a shoot 'em up, with a small twist being that the player's ship is just barely off the surface of the background, thus can be affected by it - the game name 'Frixxion' is a play on the word 'friction'.  Trooper asked for some new backgrounds and sprites which I duly provided, along with a logo for the title screen which wasn't originally requested but seems to have gone down well since it has been used!

Back to the crack, I think a demo build of Frixxion is available from Trooper's website so I'm guessing that's where Onslaught obtained it from.  If not, it wasn't me that spread it honest!  The crack version, which fixes a few issues with the original test build, can be downloaded from CSDb here...

However, by downloading direct from this blog, not only do you get the crack version mentioned above, you'll get the original test build from September 2008 (which is what the crack is based on I guess), the title screen logo in Koala format and the background and sprites in their original Charpad and Spritepad formats (links to get the required Charpad/Spritepad versions needed to open the files are in text files in the respective folders).  Get that little bundle here...