Meltdown

[GratedTopping]

You've got to save the nuclear reactor from a meltdown. A very cool game from an issue of

"Home Computer Magazine".

 

Years ago when I typed it in, I altered it by including instructions/story from the mag. I've tightened the code and tried to make sprite coincidences better. Later, I added some assembly language routines to speed things up using a utility called "ALSAVE" (which allows a normal Extended BASIC progam to save 'hidden' assembly along with the program). So, don't edit/resequence or it will get messed up.

MELTDOWN.zip

Edited March 26, 2011 by GratedTopping

[unhuman]

Will definitely try that one later as it was my favorite game out of 99er!!!

[sometimes99er]

Nice graphics. Gameplay like Turmoil. Not very responsive, but playable.

[unhuman]

Nice graphics. Gameplay like Turmoil. Not very responsive, but playable.

 

Never put that together - but it does explain my affection. That's exactly what I was writing for ColecoVision (before I gave up). Go the game pretty much working, but it just wasn't fun.

 

-H

[GratedTopping]

I liked this game but it is true that it isn't as responsive as it could be. I know I cut out one of the sounds made when the oxygen is being depleted (two was unnecessary). I imagine that making the main character not have a walking animation would help with sprite COINCidences. Maybe making the 'squiggly line' that you fire move slower could help in that area, too. Changes can be made to the program further down in the line numbers without problems, I believe.

 

I know that I read somewhere, probably in a MICROpendium, about how you could still 'unhide' and retrieve assembly code that was hidden in an ExB program with ALSAVE. I think it had a companion program for that purpose. It seems that I used some code that was supposed to help improve responses from joystick or keyboard and I have no idea where I got that from and would like to see that again. I'm not sure it helped much, though. Perhaps in CPU overdrive under "Classic99" it would be better?

 

I think this performed much better on the real hardware.

Edited March 20, 2011 by GratedTopping

[sometimes99er]

It's probably a matter of taste. I had the C64 version back in the day. Quite hectic, but I didn't play it too much. Someone compared it with Tempest. Would be nice to see you develop it further.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgEWnYsACFk

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkTPjypnqyI

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO1fid9sD8U

[unhuman]

Finally played this. Brings back memories, thanks!

[GratedTopping]

Updated it a bit:

 

- CALL CLEARs are now DISPLAY ERASE ALL (it's how I like it)

- main-character's walking sounds are gone (slowed things down)

- other sounds' lengths made shorter (I never even realized, though obvious, that a command following a CALL SOUND won't execute until the sound is completed)

 

The CALL COINC detection still isn't the best, but it's all fun.

 

Does anybody think that the CALL LINK which apparently allows monitoring of keyboard and joystick in one statement, could actually slow things down somehow?

[sometimes99er]

- other sounds' lengths made shorter (I never even realized, though obvious, that a command following a CALL SOUND won't execute until the sound is completed)

Have you tried with negative duration ?

 

CALL SOUND(duration, frequency, volume ...

 

Duration is from .001 to 4.250 seconds, although it may only vary up to 1/60th of a second. The computer continues performing program statements while a sound is being played. When you call the SOUND subprogram, the computer waits until the previous sound has been completed before performing the new CALL SOUND. However, if a negative duration is specified, any previous sound is stopped and the new one is begun immediately.

 

Edited March 26, 2011 by sometimes99er