Due to a lack of time, motivation and the fact that I’m pretty sure no one ever actually plays the games I develop, I am abandoning TG3 and releasing the BETA to the world. The 2 player mode functions, with multiple characters, stats and special attacks, there’s a few animated backgrounds, and some ripped Street Fighter 2 music. That’s about it. The game is compiled as an EXE, so you won't need QB64 to run it - this also means it's Windows PC only..
Showing posts with label homebrew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homebrew. Show all posts
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Trampoline Gunmen III – Lucky Strike (PC)
Due to a lack of time, motivation and the fact that I’m pretty sure no one ever actually plays the games I develop, I am abandoning TG3 and releasing the BETA to the world. The 2 player mode functions, with multiple characters, stats and special attacks, there’s a few animated backgrounds, and some ripped Street Fighter 2 music. That’s about it. The game is compiled as an EXE, so you won't need QB64 to run it - this also means it's Windows PC only..
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Lady Priest Lawnmower – Windows PC
I’ve programmed a new game, with vocal song! You'll love it..
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Feeling in a bit of a retro mood on Saturday I spent a couple of hours coding a spiritual successor, pseudo sequel and pretend remake to Advanced Lawnmower Simulator, a phenomenal ZX Spectrum game by famed taxidermist and Jazz dancer Duncan MacDonald, of Your Sinclair fame.
I call it (click to download):
LADY PRIEST LAWNMOWER
The story came to me in a vision while using Twitter, which I later refined over several days. The gameplay mechanics were inspired by many different circles, such as Vaudevillian theatre, The BlueMan Group, my time as a Saucier to Prince Guthry Trombert, Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes, but mainly hero to us all, Jazz Dancer Duncan MacDonald and his game Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. Or Duncs as we used to call him, the man made a fine cup of tea round the office and could play polo more than you’ve had hot dinners, son. I remember we once put a bunch of horses in the local public swimming pools to do our bit for charity.
I know a lot of retro purists complain when remakes change things too much, so I’ve kept the classic gameplay mostly as is from Advanced Lawnmower Simulator, but updating the visuals and sound for the modern age – even arranging the recording of a hard-rocking punk theme song. I also added a high-score for competitive play. Mostly though I’m proudest of the story that’s been implemented, a fine piece of gaming literature I’m sure time will judge it to be.I like to think of it as The Brothers Karamazov for the modern age, examining religious faith while at the same time weaving a complex tale of love and redemption in a time of confusion. It follows the struggles and tribulations of woman priest at a time when she questions her purpose in life, there’s an obvious love tension with Sergei, who is also her kidnapper – but! By the end of the narrative becomes her psychological saviour, helping her to come to terms with her beliefs and desires in a conclusion that I’m sure no one will see coming.
Of course if you’re less interested in story and just want the most realistic lawnmower simulator of our time, then you too are catered for. Please read the included History images detailing the origins of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. Otherwise try my updated version, Lady Priest Lawnmower.More Tea, Vicar?
FEATURES:
* Authentic 8-bit graphics
* Over 11 colours used ON SCREEN
* HYPER-Mega 340 by 200 pixel graphics!!!
* Post-rendered Blast porcsession
* Super Audio Phonic Sounds
* Vocalised theme song by new indie band The Punk Yaks
* 180 minutes of voiced dialogue speech (may be condensed)
* Dynamically tuned pick-up-and-play control scheme
* Easy to learn, even easier to master
* Unique story script, edited down from an original draft of 2000 pages
* Tragic tale of love, redemption, faith and a woman turning into a lawnmower
* Runs on OFFICIAL Microsoft Windows Operating System
* Is NOT a virus
* Beards!
This game is freeware and can distributed and copied as much as desired.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Akira homebrew game on PC
Some may recall my entry on the games I’ve made, which included an Akira game which was subsequently deleted. Well, I’ve started to remake it. Download the demo today!
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DOWNLOAD THE DEMO HERE.
I take no responsibility for any damage this may cause. As far as I can tell it's totally safe.
Push ALT and ENTER for fullscreen. Arrows to move, space to shoot. To cancel sideways inertia push DOWN. Or wait for it to cancel itself.
Make sure to enter the number 1 (ONE) at the start for engine sounds. All sounds are on by default, except engine revving, which is off, but if you push 1 you should get some engine sounds when increasing/decreasing your throttle.
It’s taken me about a week in a my spare time, with a 6 month gap in the middle due to loss of interest. But I started it again last week and added one of the Clown gang. It’s little more than a tech demo, and I stole the music track from the Amiga game, but it kinda shows what I’d want it to be if I ever finished it. I want to add another Clown biker or two, and give each distinctive AI. The current one is stupid, and while he will try to evade your line of fire he doesn’t see the barricades and doesn’t actively attack you. If I can I’d also intend to add one of those flying vehicles from the film, since they wouldn’t be affected by the road speed.The basic premise is: survive the XX kilometres to the stadium, in a Spyhunter style game, and then switch to a Space Invaders type game for the boss fight against Tetsuo. The second half hasn’t even been started yet, but I’m already growing bored of this project (plus I’ve got a 4 page magazine article due in soon and I’m contributing to the Adventure Book). So I guess this will have to suffice until I find more time/motivation.
If your fuel runs out it just resets. Eventually I’d intend for it to be Game Over, with the chance to pick up extra fuel as the game goes along (perhaps tied to the death of a biker). The idea would be you need to avoid obstacles and keep your fuel up. Your lazer gun is recharged via the bike engine (like in the film), so it burns up more fuel. Hitting anything bad drains fuel too (though if you hit a barricade at full speed you should be fine). The clown bikers swing green hockey sticks to attack you. The “km” bar on the right charts your progress to the (non-existent) stadium. Each time you shoot a Clown biker it marks your kill count on the right. Clowns can die on barricades.
Oh, an the reason the Kaneda sprite looks so ugly is I drew it first, about 6 months ago, and did the Clown biker today - obviously I was more artistically motivated. If I work on it some more I'll also try to use more sound files, since they're easy to add in QBasic. I found this site with sound files. For example I'd like to later have Kaneda saying his "just when my coil was reaching the green line" quote, to be used when the player presses ESC to finish the game, or after a Game Over.
FUN FACT: the game was made without any arrays. I have never been able to work out how to do them properly, so I don’t use them. Which is why there’s only one biker and two barricades and I will never be able to elevate myself above 1980s era game design. I suppose if someone really wanted it they could have the source code.
Have fun, and don’t complain about the music theft. This is a non-profit thing so I don’t really care. If you spot any bugs or anything which needs addressing, post in the comments and I might fix it.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Net Yaroze on PS1 – we need YOU
The Net Yaroze project started in March 1997 and was Sony’s attempt to allow bedroom coding for the PS1, making it something of a predecessor to Microsoft’s Xbox Live Indie Games. And it worked, because on many months in the UK there was a free full Yaroze game given away with the demo of Official PlayStation Magazine, and some were astoundingly good – almost commercial quality (almost). Sadly it only came to my attention after the fact that Sony closed the official servers and members forum in July 2009, destroying all the archives of what had been created. Worse still, I’ve discovered that dozens of quality games, which never found release on OPM’s demos, have potentially been lost forever. Our only hope to archive this slice of history in its entirety, is if former members happen to have downloaded and still have some of these files... And so I present to you an incomplete list of every Yaroze game ever. Much like Derboo's entry on Korean doujin, we need to expand awareness of this before it vanishes..
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The Official PlayStation Magazine with demo was too expensive for me to buy when at high-school, but luckily a friend had a subscription. Every month it became our ritual that he would get his mag, play the demo extensively for a few days while regaling classmates about its content, and then he would lend it to each of us in turn – the main draw of this was never the actual game demos, but the Yaroze games, since if you were lucky you’d have a full game sometimes on par with a NES or even SNES title. Many were also multiplayer! Sometimes the Yaroze wasn't very good, but it was still fun to discuss. I’m told the US never had Yaroze games on its OPM demos, which is a shame since you were really missing out on something awesome.
It’s important to understand the atmosphere of the era, a time a when games were changing rapidly. Previously this kind of bedroom coded content was limited to home computers such as the C64 or Amiga, or perhaps even further back the Famicom with its version of BASIC.
To see homebrew on the leading console was quite exciting. Universities were ordering Yaroze kits to teach game design courses, while teenagers with coding experience could order one for home use. The quoted price was a fairly high barrier to entry (about $750), especially since you also needed a decent PC and internet connection, but I heard reports from more than one person that after sending the cheque and receiving their Yaroze, Sony never bothered to deposit the money, meaning they essentially got to make games for free.
From what I can tell Yaroze members had access to a private server and forum to trade creations as they were being worked on, and when a game was completed, and if it impressed Sony, it was selected for European demo distribution. Not every game made it, and so there were plenty which were exclusive to this private forum. Speaking with former coders it appears to have been a fun little club, with members trying to outdo each other and sometimes sharing assets. For a full list of the OPM demos and their Yaroze contents (plus scans of the demo covers), this website appears comprehensive.
The above is only a fraction of the games which were actually developed though. Several years ago when I first dabbled in Torrents I found a download for a 53-in-1 Yaroze compilation, obviously hacked from what was available. The title proudly proclaims: Fixed by Freefall of Paradox. Considering how several of the games within weren’t on the demos, Freefall must have had access to games which had only been privately distributed. At the time I’d wrongly assumed it contained all Yaroze games.
A few years later I stumbled across another download, this time for 83 games. It contained many missing from the previous collection, but it also lacked three which were previously available: a Legend of Zelda clone, a program titled Goomba Bros which wouldn’t load, and a vertical 2D shmup called Rayfire.
In recent months I contacted some former Yaroze members, and it became evident that even the 83 compilation was missing a lot of games, some of which ended up on the final send-off demo on issue 108 of OPM. After several months of searching and begging, someone finally donated me a copy of this demo, allowing me to compile a reasonable list of all Yaroze games.
Numbers in brackets after the name indicate which issue of OPM they were featured in, though this isn’t 100% comprehensive. The selection of games which repeatedly ended up on demos is strange, since Incredible Coneman isn't that great (it's an extremely slow polygon Pacman clone). Whereas games like Hover Racing (not to be mixed up with Hover Car Racing) don’t appear to have ended up on a demo at all, despite being an extremely competent F-Zero / Wipeout clone. Many games are also not so great, so I’ve put (!!!) next to my favourites in case you’re keen to try some. Not that I want to criticise the users, since managing to complete a game is an tremendous achievment - and for many, this would have been their first major project.
On hacked 83 compilation:
3D Breakout Game
3D Demo
Alien Looter
A Bob
(!!!) Adventure Game (44, 77, 108)
Appointed Station
Bendy Demo
Between The Eyes (42, 87, 92)
Blitter Boy Operation: Monster Hall (40, 42, 92, 108)
Blockz (77)
Bom!
Bouncer 2 (supposedly 29 but actually 30, 42, 92, 108)
Breach
Car Demo
Car Racing
Cart
Cat Game
(!!!) Clone (27, 42, 87, 92)
Columns
Combat3d
(!!!) Decaying Orbit (49, 108)
Defender
(!!!) Dog Tale (28)
Emotion
Fatal Fantasy VII
Feedback Demo
Flag Demo
F-Racer
Fujiyama
Funky Beans
GasGar
Gas Girl
Gikadiver
(!!!) Gravitation (34, 42, 86, 92, 108)
(!!!) Haunted Maze (38, 42, 83, 92)
(!!!) Hover Racing (aka: Hover120, different to Hover Car Racing, more like F-Zero)
(!!!) Hover Car Racing (not to be confused with the above; 35, 42, 92)
Incredible Coneman (32, 42, 92)
Inertia
Insects
Invaders From Mars!
Jagot
(!!!) Katapila (107)
Laydion Limit Breaker
(!!!) Magic Forest
Mah Jongg (39, 42, 79, 88, 92)
Manic Miner
ManicX
Nana Tan
Net Yaroze Intro
Opera Of Destruction (48, 77)
One on One
Pandora's Box (45, 77)
Ping
Ping Ping (107)
(!!!) Psychon (37, 42, 92)
Pune Yaroze
Pushy 11b (37, 42, 87, 92, 108)
RC Race
Revolution
(!!!) Robot Ron (82, 86, 108)
(!!!) Rocks 'n' Gems (33, 42, 77, 82, 86, 91, 92)
Roller (108)
Sam The Boulder Man
Second Offence Demo
Snave
Snowball Fight (77, 108)
Sound 2 Light
Sphere (83)
Squeak (106)
Stonegate
Super Bub (43, 77, 81, 91, 108)
Super Ramp Skater
Tan Tank
TankX (49, 108)
(!!!) Terra Incognita (31, 42, 88, 92)
(!!!) Time Slip (48, 106, 108)
Total Soccer (41, 42, 83, 86, 92, 108)
Tunnel Demo (26)
(!!!) Ver.T (awesome 2D shmup)
Video Poker Simulator (46)
Yaroze Rally (77)
Z2
Exclusive to older 53 compilation:
Rayfire (2D shmup)
Super Goomba Bros (doesn’t work)
Zelda (a simple Zelda port/clone)
Games on OPM Demo 108Arena
(!!!) Down
GIT
(!!!) INVS (also OPM 88)
(!!!) Samsaric Asymptote
Shroud
Yarozians (also OPM 82)
Samsaric AsymptoteENTIRELY MISSING:
Banjo Invaders
Break 3D
Breakdown
Car G1
Connect 4
Dash
DX1 (hori shmup by Marc Lambert)
Hipower Battles
HSFK
Kamix+ (previously Tetixx)
Olly
Pssst (OPM 77)
Sandstorm (Omar Metwally)
Space1
Stars Wars (beat-em-up by Marc Lambert)
Starship
STG01
Surf Game (OPM 77, 91)
Tokui Waza (Omar Metwally)
Tokui Waza 2
Track N No Field (Steven Lewis)
Up
Yakata (aka: Super Mansion, released 18/4/97, by ~hecpsx / Sato)
And these are just the games which I know exist but aren't available, the number which I don't know about is theoretically infinite. Do you know of a Yaroze game which exists but isn't on this list? Post in the comments!
As you can see there are at least 20 games which cannot be played. These definitely existed, since there are clips of them on Youtube, and I’ve managed to find archived TXT files pertaining to their distribution on the private Yaroze forum. The most annoying omission for me is Yakata, aka Super Mansion, since it appears to be a polygonal Resident Evil clone, without the combat. It looks great anyway, and it was distributed among members, since I managed to find an internet archive of the accompanying text file for the game, complete with instructions for loading it on Yaroze hardware. But not the game itself!
So here is my plea. The world of Net Yaroze is on the brink of being forgotten and lost forever. Sony closed all archives of it. Universities in recent years have been selling off their Yaroze equipment complete with all discs. Few websites talk about it and those that did are now dead – a lot of stuff I had to get via the Wayback machine! And despite the valiant efforts of hackers, there are still titles not included in the compilations. Beyond the tragedy of losing unique data, is the sad fact that we’re not praising or discussing what it represented. People criticise Sony for so much, and yet here they were, allowing anyone to create games for their leading hardware. Sure it was limited compared to the official dev kit, but it was something.
If you’re a Yaroze coder and you’ve got the games in the missing list, talk about them. Take screen grabs. Archive them online. Talk about the games not on the list! Let the world know about them. Even if you’re a curious bystander to all this, play some of the games. Write about them. Make blog entries. Preserve the knowledge online. I’ve started by compiling a list, so make use of it, expand it, add to it, help it to grow (at the very least somebody add it to Wikipedia, because their page as per usual Wikipedia standards, is woefully inadequate).Save the Yaroze.
I had considered writing a major HG101 article on every Yaroze game, with three screens for each and a mini-review, since there exists nothing like that currently, but seeing this huge list, and the many titles I’m missing, I don’t think I’ll be able to do this. It’s just way too much for one man.
I did find a series of forum topics attempting this, but it seems to have pattered out before completion (only 5 of 8 parts were completed) and for the most part lacked images. Sadly, the author is also extremely and unnecessarily negative – he appears to hate Yaroze with extreme prejudice, and so I’m not going to link to his AVGN-style ramblings. Yes, a lot of games are bad, but a lot are awesome and have some great ideas.
For those who’ve never experienced the Yaroze, I recommend it. The hacked compilations are online, hosted by Megaupload, and work fine on a chipped PS1 and reasonably well via emulator after some plugin tweaking. It’s now perhaps not as easy to appreciate their low-budget charms as it was back in 1999, but some of them are still worthwhile. Terra Incognita plays like a 3D Landstalker clone and is all kinds of awesome – it’s also now available for iPad for like a dollar. Haunted Maze is something I’d pay $6 for on PSN today it is so good (make sure to use an analogue controller!). Timeslip I’d also pay for - it’s the best time travel game ever made, and I’m not BSing (it’s now been ported to XBLIG and I highly recommend everyone check out at least the trial version - they even updated the visuals!). Samsaric Asymptote has a weird name but is a super cool retro shooter. Decaying Orbit takes planet landing to an all new level, while Down is more addictive than it should be (all you do is drop down a tunnel avoiding the descending spiked ceiling, but damn, it works!).
For more info check out Yaroze Scene:
http://www.yarozescene.co.uk/
It’s a dead website, but the owner kindly links to the Wayback archived version of it, with many of the images still available.
EDIT:
I should add... If any hackers feel capable, I'm willing to provide the files for the games missing from the 83 compilation (that is from the 53 compilation and 108 demo) in order to create a new and definitive compilation. They seem to be stored in a mixture of EXE and FPC file formats. In an ideal world we would be able to find the games from the rather large MISSING list, and create the ultimate compilation containing absolutely everything.
Friday, December 10, 2010
The greatest RPG that no longer exists
They say dead memory cards tell no tales. In my case, a dead memory card means one of the greatest (maybe) RPGs ever made with RPG Maker on the PS1, Morishinden Chojin, will never be played by anyone. By the end of this blog post both myself and you, the reader, will have made a cat smoke an entire packet of cigarettes.(images stolen from Mobygames and are NOT of Morishinden Chojin)
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Yesterday I bought one of those PS1 to PS3 USB converter things, to back up memory cards. After 10 years of procrastinating I was finally going to give my RPG Maker games to the world. The adapter was overpriced at $20, but I had store credit I wanted rid of. It actually works like a piece of crap, though I did manage to back most stuff up.
Three memory cards didn’t register, one unofficial, and two official. I tried them on a PS1 unit and the official ones were fine (one contained my brother’s FF7 and 8 save files, the other my Japanese MGS and CV save data). The unofficial one, the red PSW card, held nothing. IT HAD DIED. Actually, I had suspected it had died about 2 years ago when I had trouble loading my Suikoden save file. Along with it went all my PS1 Goemon data, and my first PS1 RPG Maker creation: Morishinden Chojin.
This really upset me. Now that I’m in adulthood and concerned with everyday crap like taxes and federal gun smuggling charges, old save data from PS1 games are irrelevant. Except in this case it wasn’t just save progress, it was a beautiful thing which I’d created. A bright, shining kusoge which I should have protected more, and its loss was like coming home to find my collection of stolen Dali paintings up in flames. The memory card in question was given away free on the cover of a magazine which cost something like £3. Considering cards back in the day cost £20 or more, I thought this a bargain. Lesson learned: it’s cheap for a reason.
I must have made MC sometime around 1999/2000 – the ridiculous name was a result of me studying Japanese as part of my high school curriculum, and wanting something cool sounding. I can’t remember its exact meaning, something about forests of the dead. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the game. The games contains the following things: obfuscated design, a giant NAKED GUY with 1970s hair, a packet of cigarettes hidden in a chicken egg, Samurais on a Plane, Monkey Island-inspired INSULT KUNG FU, stealth sections with GRENADES, a rather clever spotlight section on a bridge, suicidal lightning samurai, long cut-scenes of ABSOLUTE GIBBERISH, a FIRST PERSON DUNGEON SECTION inspired by Dungeon Master (seen in the FIRST PERSON), plus a final boss battle where you need to FORCE A CAT TO SMOKE CIGARETTES after which he reveals that HE’S YOUR FATHER.
With the memory card dead and my data gone, this blog entry is the first, last and only surviving record of the game which never was: Morishinden Chojin.It was a game where I set out to break all the rules.
I’M NAKED!You start on an aeroplane constructed from the medieval machine tiles available in RPG Maker. Some guy says he’s your commander and your mission is to infiltrate the enemy base, procure weapons on site, and then make a cat smoke cigarettes. There’s no explanation, you don’t need to know why. There’s also 3 treasure chests which contain a change of uniform and which allow you to play as either a Pirate Man, a Thief Woman, or a Big Orange Naked Guy with hideous 1970s style wig. Thinking about it now without the mind-altering haze of too-much-Pepsi in my system, logically the chests must have also either contained gender changing magic, or I had inadvertently given players the option to play in drag (honestly, I sincerely thought I could encourage women to play the game by offering a female character). The naked guy was a custom sprite I’d made. I actually just took the default silver robot sprite from RM who looked like a naked silver humanoid, and did a palette swap from silver to orange, then drew a big mop of hair on his head. The robot wasn’t anatomically correct, so you’re in effect controlling a genderless steroid fiend. In high school, the option to BE GORO (be naked) seemed like a funny idea.
BAD DESIGN ON PURPOSEOn the aeroplane was a giant egg, inside of which was an essential item to finish the game: a pack of Lucky Strikes cigarettes, for that smoooooth tobacco flavour. If you failed to look inside the egg, and then parachuted out of the plane, you couldn’t finish the game. I really liked the idea of including an item which made progress impossible without it – kind of like those old adventure games. I also wanted a game which tackled the taboo subject of smoking in a wholly irresponsible and inappropriate manner, especially since companies at the time were against tobacco usage in games and MGS was something of a strange anomaly.
KUNG FUI couldn’t do parachuting with the basic tools, so your guy falls to earth via the game’s built-in lightning animation. He starts in a forest which is easily navigated to an enemy base on a cliff side. Outside is an old man. I wanted to do a Custom Battle System, or CBS as the RM community calls it, since the default battle system sucks. I based it on Monkey Island’s insult sword fighting and Suikoden’s one-on-one duels. So the guy would say stuff like “Come and get me!” and that would be your cue to pick an option which implied defending, because he was powering up a special move. If you lost you had a good idea of what you should have chosen. RM has a fairly robust system of triggers and flag switches to play around with, plus multiple choice dialogue boxes, so with a little effort you could create lengthy dialogue trees with specific outcomes. Lose and you warped back to the forest. Three wins and he gave you a keycard to enter the base.
STEALTHNext were two simple stealth sections. I created some basic mazes and put guards in it, but they were designed so that you could only enter their field of vision in a specific block, which was an invisible trigger switch which resulted in them walking down and capturing you, whereupon you reset to outside the base. There were also some fairly obvious places you could stand to then select and use an item (in this case grenades from a box). Doing so in the correct place results in the guard walking there to investigate, switching off the invisible trigger tile, and allowing you to move past. There were only two such puzzle rooms, but I was really pleased at how well they worked – it was clunkier than MG on the NES, but it was convincing in the game’s context.
SPOTLIGHTSFollowing the MGS theme, once beyond the guards was a long bridge where I’d used RM’s custom colour overlay to give the screen a dark blue hue, like nighttime. Next I filled the bridge with NPCs, except the sprite I used was a plain looking disc, coloured yellow, so it looked like a spotlight on the bridge. They moved randomly, and if you touched them the screen effect turned bright white, like you were spotted, an alarm sounded, and you were taken back to the start of the bridge. This was actually an ingenious idea which worked tremendously well. A couple of friends played it and they got caught a few times, totally freaking out when a spotlight came close. In truth, the spotlights couldn’t move into you – getting caught required you to push INTO THEM. So if you stood entirely still you’d never get caught, and it was possible to slowly move to the bridge’s end quite easily. Still, it was a perfect illusion of roving spotlights. At the end of the bridge there’s a giant explosion somewhere and the screen shakes.
SAMURAI LIGHTNINGI forget what came next, but you eventually came to another cliff’s edge, where the plane you were on had crashed (hence the explosion). There’s wreckage and flames everywhere, and plenty of dead bodies and blood splats (I think I made a custom blood splat tile for this). In the middle of the carnage I put RM’s pre-made sprite of a Samurai Sword in Puddle of Blood. Investigating it results in the samurai from the plane flashing down on lightning, and revealing that it was HE who betrayed the organisation, and there’s a cut-scene. All I remember of the dialogue is it was pure insanity, the likes of which only a sugar-high high-school student could invent. He mentions something about the secret of the cat and then shoots you to the edge of the screen, he explodes in a shower of blood and then you fall off the cliff’s edge.
(although I made reference to Snakes on a Plane at this entry’s start, I was obviously unaware of the film when making this game – I just thought samurais would be cool to include)
FIRST PERSONI seem to recall that you then wake up in what appears to be a Dungeon Master inspired first person dungeon / sewer tunnel, which is the best bit of the game. I’d created a bunch of custom graphics titles, plain coloured squares and a series of half-square triangles, which I then used to create the impression of standing in a water filled tunnel and looking down it. The custom tiles drew the tunnel shrinking into the distance, ending up as a black square, while I used RM’s built-in sprite invisible options, to make the main guy invisible. I made about 5 such rooms (normal corridor, dead end, right turn in the distance, right turn close up), with water for the tunnel’s base. It ended up looking “windowed”, since I kept a black border of nothing around it to conserve my limited tile memory.
Next, I placed 4 invisible tiles around the main invisible guy (who technically existed in the black border), and set each room’s 4 tiles up with a series of complex number triggers, to represent every possible position he could be standing in. It was so complex it took up all my remaining memory, because I distinctly remember thinking, ahh crap, I can’t make any more turns. In truth, there was about 6 possible spaces to stand in a linear tunnel which only had one turning point which led out the tunnel. But I reckoned with more time and effort, I could create some simple 3D mazes (like those from Mystical Ninja on the SNES), simply by drawing a maze on graph paper, assigning each standing spot a number, and then setting up the tile triggers to change each specific number to another, when one of the 4 tiles was touched, based on only around 8 possible rooms (dead ahead, left turn, right turn, etc etc etc). In the end I added the splashing sound effect each time you moved, to give the impression of walking through sewers (the floor tiles were the animated water ones – which proved tricky because the game didn’t want sprites walking on it).
SMOKE THESE, CAT FATHER!Once out the tunnel you end up in a cavern. A quick walk through the maze leads you to an innocent looking cat. To finish the game you need to stand next to it and use the cigarette item. This results in RM style turn based battle against the wackiest looking boss I could find. He has 1 hp so goes down quickly. Afterwards you force the cat to smoke the whole pack, resulting in RM’s mist effect filling the screen, the cat coughs for a bit, then there’s a cut-scene where he reveals HE’S ACTUALLY YOUR FATHER.
Yeah, I have no idea what went on there. There’s more deranged dialogue, implying a sequel, whereupon the credits roll.
It had some great ideas wrapped up in an illogical story which, when I replayed it about 3 years ago, seemed somehow even funnier. I’m only sorry I couldn’t share it with you, because the convoluted workaround I’d created for 3D mazes was actually quite cool, and sort of really worked.
Sadly the memory card is dead, and the game lost. And even if I tried to remake it today, it would have none of the teenage energy I’d infused it with. If any reader wants to remake my creation, you have my blessing.
My second RPG creation was a game called Chef Island, based on the cooking minigame in Suikoden 2, which thankfully survived on another memory card. I never finished this game, but I will be making the save data available for anyone who wants it, in a future blog entry in the next few days.
You know what I'd really like to see? ASCII or Monkey Paw Games re-releasing RPG Maker on PSN, so we can all then create awesome games, use a USB key to grab the save data off our PS3's, then upload them online. The PS1 save-data is tiny (like 128kb or something).
FOR THE RECORD:
HG101 does not endorse animal cruelty. My family have owned several dogs and cats over the years, and we have always treated them (and all animals) with care and affection (to the point where neighbour’s pets would actually visit our house and refuse to return to their owners). Making a real cat smoke real cigarettes, is always a bad idea.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Let's play Street Fighter 2
I love it when I can give a post a title that doesn't sound like it belongs on this blog. But we're going to play the game in DOS - not the Ocean conversion, but an interesting homebrew port.
Before you complain to me for saving the screenshots in low quality jpeg, let me explain: A young Korean programmer named Jung Young Dug decided shortly after the release of Street Fighter II, that it would be awesome to play the game on PC. (Apparently the game by Ocean wasn't available in Korea.) But all he had to work with was his SNES version and a TV capture card. That's how he got the graphics for his game.
The game is based on the very first release of SF2, The World Warrior. It has a few shortcomings, though. The bosses are not in the game (a few normal character backgrounds are replaced with boss stages), and when selecting Dhalsim for some reason it just loads Ken. Dhalsim's stage and portrait are in, so maybe it's just a bug. Some special moves can also be done in mid-air, like in those cheap bootleg hacks. The version I have is labeled "Beta Version", don't know if there is a more complete one out there. The game files also seem to have been meddled with by third parties...
It runs a bit choppy, too, but the controls are simply the best I've ever seen in a DOS-based fighting game. Would have been cool to see Jung work with a professional team on an original fighter, that could have been awesome. Some of the issues might be caused by DOSBox, as the game doesn't work too great with it. Sometimes when I made a screenshot, the game just crashed.
It also allows mirror matches, but the colors for the second player are really weird. The game also allows for some really odd options. You can set a fight to 99 rounds that all run for 999 seconds each - when you set both character's attack level to zero and defence level to maximum, some rounds can even take that long.
The music is all rearranged in midi, the tunes range from barely recognizable to surprisingly awesome. The fighters have additional voice samples when they win a round. Some are ripped from action movies, but others clearly recorded by Jung himself and sound very goofy.
Have a listen:
Music
Voice Sample
I would also upload a video, but the game runs really slow when DOSBox is recording. But I've got something better for you. Here are the game files for download:
Street Fighter 2 Homebrew DOS Port
When releasing the game, the programmer had the decency to reference to Capcom and Nintendo in, but in August 1994, a book was published boldy titled "Game Programming with the Creator of SF-2" - The author was Jung Young Dug.
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