• Commodore Free Magazine, Issue 86 - Part 11

    From Stephen Walsh@39:901/280 to All on Sun Apr 12 11:48:00 2015
    to blast left and right

    Heck! The author even submitted games
    for the TND SEUCK competition The
    game can be downloaded here: tnd64.un
    ikat.sk/seuck/SEUCKCompo2014/Shaken.z
    ip and while it may not have been the
    best entry in the competition it is a
    worthy entry nevertheless.

    The author follows this with a
    walk-through of its creation in the
    book of the SEUCK games concept and
    final released version. It's a pure
    SEUCK so you can follow the tutorial
    if you have ever wanted to use this
    tool, but stumbled. This may be the
    tutorial to get you through to a
    finished product.

    We have some brief overviews of the
    machines architecture as he says:

    For example, a simple SFX for a
    gunshot could be programmed by
    selecting The noise channel (bit 7
    in 54276), setting the highest
    possible volume, defining Very fast
    Attack and Decay times and then set
    a Release time possibly in
    accordance With the reverberation
    suggested by the particular virtual
    environment:

    10 POKE 54273,21: POKE 54272,31 : REM
    set a low frequency for the gunshot
    20 POKE 54296,15 : REM volume maxed
    30 POKE 54277,16 : REM attack/decay s
    et to 8 and 6 ms respectively
    40 POKE 54278,250 : REM setting susta
    in volume to 15 and Release time to
    1.5 s
    50 POKE 54276,129 : REM select noise
    channel. Start note (Attack, Decay,
    Sustain)
    60 POKE 54276,128 : REM stop the Sust
    ain to start the Release phase and
    end the SFX

    And I love the photos inlay text that
    reads:

    Great Giana Sisters (© Rainbow Arts
    1987). "Look, she has a sister, not
    a brother and they are great, not
    super!" unfortunately these
    arguments were not enough to
    convince Nintendo's lawyers about
    Giana's legitimacy as a videogame
    heroine.

    The book charts the machine's
    software history from early games to,
    as stated earlier, the latest
    developments on the machine, with a
    look at how software was taken from
    the bedroom coder to a multi-million
    Pound big-business empire with the
    later software being created with
    "game engines" (and you thought that
    the engine was a new idea didn't
    you?)

    The book is light-hearted and does
    list some mistakes Commodore made and
    maintains that nothing is perfect,
    but what it does offer is a realistic
    history of the machine and what it
    means to be on of the people who
    still love its quirkiness. There are
    nods there to other Commodore systems
    like the Pet and the VIC; however, as
    you would expect, this is mainly
    hardcore 64 territory.

    I spoke with Robert and he insisted
    he didn't want the book to be just
    another "academic literature".
    However, it would seem Springer Press
    had other ideas and the book seems to
    be listed for a rather unrealistic
    price. Maybe pressure on Springer to
    re-price the book more realistically
    from us "users" would show that there
    is still demand and ultimately (as
    they are a publishing company) money
    to be made from a reduction.

    The book covers the following items
    (as taken from the index):

    1 Computers for the Masses, not the
    Classes
    2 The Commodore 64 and Its
    Architecture
    2.1 The VIC-II
    2.2 The SID
    3 Ready
    4 Games, Games and More Games!
    4.1 Action Adventures
    4.2 Adventures
    4.3 Arcade Conversions
    4.4 Driving Games
    4.5 Edutainment
    4.6 Movie Tie-ins
    4.7 Platformers
    4.8 Puzzles
    4.9 Role Playing Games
    4.10 Shoot 'em Ups
    4.11 Sports
    4.12 Strategy
    4.13 Virtual Life
    4.14 3D: Vectors and Polygons
    5 Rise of the Game Engines
    5.1 The Quill-Adventure Writer
    (Gilsoft 1983)
    5.2 The Graphic Adventure Creator
    (Incentive Software 1986)
    5.3 Adventure Construction Set
    (Electronic Arts 1984)
    5.4 Garry Kitchen's Game Maker
    (Activision 1985)
    5.5 The Shoot 'em Up Construction
    Kit (Sensible Software 1987)
    5.6 A SEUCK Primer
    6 Windows and Icons
    7 BBS: The Internet Can Wait
    8 Verba Volant, Scripta Manent
    9 Today and Tomorrow
    Appendix A: Collecting for the
    Commodore 64
    Appendix B: Online Resources
    Appendix C: VIC-II Registers.
    Appendix D: SID Registers
    Bibliography
    Index.

    =====================================

    *************************************
    REVIEW: SUPER STARSHIP SPACE ATTACK
    *************************************

    Programmer: Misfit
    Requirements: 16k VIC-20 + Joystick.
    Tested: VICE 2.4 (NTSC and PAL)
    and real VIC (PAL)

    9 Levels + 2 Bonus levels

    3 Game modes:

    * Child Mode (easy) (no bonus levels)
    * Gamer Mode (normal) (all levels)
    * I am Legend (hard) (all levels)

    Find 3 power units and leave the evil
    spaceship. At the Bottom of each
    level there is an escape area. Every
    power unit raises your firepower.

    * Up / down = acceleration and brake
    * Left / right = move your spaceship
    * Fire = shoot

    Personally I was quite excited to see
    another Misfit program released
    towards the end of last year. He
    seems to have a very unique style of
    programming on the VIC. It's a style
    I think not only fits the VIC's
    format but is "easy on the eye" and
    superbly slick. So you can imagine I
    quickly plugged in my memory upgrade
    and loaded the game into memory.

    From the title screen you know this
    is going to be something special; the
    Crazy VIC music playing was enough to
    get me dancing around. I quickly
    hooked up the sound to my Hi-Fi and
    turned the volume up. As the music
    belted out, the screen actually jumps
    up and down in time to the music
    playing, a lovely touch and just
    shows the level of detail the
    programmer puts into his work. It
    would be a great tune with just the
    base and drums belting out, but as
    the zany tune kicks in, it really
    becomes a work of VIC art (assuming
    art is music or music is art). The
    tune itself is quite short but loops
    well.

    OK, finally pressing a key and
    getting to the main screen:

    Very odd colour washes in this game,
    interesting but still odd sort of
    psychedelic!

    The screen is shrunk slightly -
    presumably to keep the VIC nippy as
    the game is running.

    You have to collect 3 items on the
    screen. As you collect the last the
    screen goes green colour so you know
    to head for the exit and onto the
    next level. You need to ride over the
    flashing power units and not just
    shoot them! If you do it doesn't
    count. Could the game be improved?
    Yes, I think it could. Does it stand
    out well? As it is, yes. More VIC
    music please... it's excellent!

    SCORES

    Graphics: 8/10
    super slick scrolling and effects
    Music: 9/10
    superb!
    Gameplay: 7/10
    really good to get into and
    difficult to stop
    Overall: 8/10

    A very unique-looking game, with some
    mind bending music, but that's
    something you expect from the
    programmer. The term "classy" may be
    overused but it's justified!

    =====================================

    *************************************
    REVIEW: TANK BATTALION
    *************************************

    Name: Tank Battalion
    Author: Beamrider
    Requirements: (PAL) 16k VIC-20
    + Joystick.
    Description: Port of the Namco
    classic tank arcade
    game
    Tested: VICE 2.4
    real VIC (PAL)
    Commodore 1701 monitor

    !! PAL only!!

    Download

    drive.google.com/uc?export=download&i
    d=0BypVxYomFCZfeklKclJQNGRhaUE

    Discuss

    sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin
    /bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7199

    After his conversion of Pooyan I was
    excited that Beamrider had converted
    another of my favourite games to the
    VIC. This version sadly suffers from
    annoying problems, the game feels
    very slow paced and a little jerky,
    its faster than basic, but is by no
    means a machine code zoomer. The game
    was written in C and really needs a
    re-write in Machine code to add that
    extra boost of speed, I believe its
    still a work in progress so who
    knows? By the time you read this….
    maybe it can be speeded up somehow
    with code optimisation. Anyway, it's
    a small negative and now that's out
    of the way lets look at the review.

    I found a Namco version on YouTube
    here

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxizVvzMko4

    You can see it's very close to this
    conversion on the VIC.


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