Sunday 25 September 2011

Enter the Trojahn

17th - 25th September 2011

Well, well well. I have been busy yet again this week. Not only at work but also Woolly Jumper and the Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set 2. This blog's mainly going to be about SEUDS 2. Well, it's game number 4, Trojahn. Alf has been updating this game a lot, and what I have seen seems to be a huge improvement compared to the old version which he wrote back in 1993. This game featured some more great tricks formed using S.E.U.C.K. Anyway, to make this a SEUDS 2 release. I decided to work on some major enhancements.

Before I actually started programming a new front end for this game production, I decided to work mainly on the in game enhancements. Simply by POKEing the SEUCK to run additional subroutines. One which will play in game music or sound effects, and one which will check for power ups, etc. Also one for the animated background as well. The power up routines only occur if the player breaks the magic urns. These power ups may vary and help enhance the player's skills. Those Urns could reward Trojahn more stamina (faster speed), faster powerful spear throwing, further distance for throwing the spears and also temporary invulnerability for 20 seconds or so. Trojahn loses all his power ups if he gets hit by an enemy of deadly obstacle.



As soon as I was (and Alf was) happy with the power ups, I kept on receiving updated versions of Alf's game. So I referred to using the latest one. I also worked on the in game, ending and title music using DMC V5.0+ and Goat Tracker. The music turned out pretty well, although I was sort of unsure about the title music. :)

Kenz sent me some 2x1 charsets in a bitmap form, but I had trouble converting the C64 bitmap picture into charset form, so I decided to try and convert Alf's original charset into a 2x1 font and then updated it to how Kenz originally drew the chars. The result turned out pretty good.

Now was the time for me to program the front end. I added some text, music, additional routines into the front end source code. I noticed a couple of flickering rasters inside each raster split, but managed to fix this without a problem. The title screen also consists of a music / sfx option, in which is activated by using left / right on the joystick. I also made it where after fire has been pressed, the get ready screen comes on, which reads: ELENA HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY THE SPARTAN KING. GO AND SEARCH FOR HER!. Then I linked the game code to this routine (after the fire button has been pressed) I also added a game over screen, which says TROJAHN'S QUEST HAS FAILED, ELINA HAS BEEN SACRIFICED TO THE MINOTAUR - GAME OVER. Both GET READY and GAME OVER screens have an eerie jingle, to fit the dark atmosphere in the game. Finally I programmed and linked the last part of the game. The ending. Tested the game, seems to be working okay, and I managed to reach the end of the game as well - in cheat mode :)




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