Avaris

[+Retrospect]

Avaris game.zip <<< Zip folder contains EA5 files, XB file, Cartridge ROM, and PDF Manual

 

Merry Christmas everyone, come and get your present!

 

Avaris is a shoot 'em' up with 3 stages per level, and increasing difficulty.  Control with joystick 1.  
 

Stage 1 - Asteroid Belt ... shoot asteroids for score, if you don't let any pass you, you get a bonus & extra ship

Stage 2 - Combat Zone ... Aim to kill the Flagship at top of screen, break through his protective blocks, and watch out for the bombers.  Your missile will deflect from the blocks back toward you.  If you can bounce your missile down on top of any Bomber you get a "Trick Shot" and the score is double.

The flagship takes 2 shots to kill in level 1, and this increases per level.

 

Stage 3 - Hostile Enemy ... this is one angry enemy.  It'll fire specifically at you rather than randomly. Four shots to kill in Level 1.  Then the game wraps back round to stage 1 but with faster asteroids.

Score is multiplied by the level (up to level 8 and then it stays the same).

The fantastic music was done by OLD CS1 and it really adds to the game, it wouldn't have been the same without it.  3 types of BGM are used.  There's soundtracks to download, which we used for the music, with permission from SawSquareNoise. (Royalty free as well). The BGM in stage 1 is from Asteroids.  

 

sawsquarenoise - OST 13 More Aliens!.mp3

sawsquarenoise - OST 06 Go Go Faster Faster.mp3

Labels made by OLD CS1!

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Retrospect

[+jedimatt42]

Really splendid, thank you! 

 

Quite a bit of attention to detail went into this. 

[+Ksarul]

Seriously fun game. . .another Retrospect Classic. I need to get cracking and make myself a complete physical set of all of your cartridges. . .

[+Retrospect]

Here's another label from OLD CS1, it's a modern arcade style label. 

 

[+OLD CS1]

This game is quite deceptive in its appearance.  You can brush through the first level, maybe even the second, then face a real challenge going forward from there.  I would say two out of five games I make it to the fourth level.  It really is challenging and fun.

[xahmol]

Nice! Thanks, great game!

15 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

This game is quite deceptive in its appearance.  You can brush through the first level, maybe even the second, then face a real challenge going forward from there.  I would say two out of five games I make it to the fourth level.  It really is challenging and fun.

 

True. Started with the feeling, this game is easy, but that quickly changes in level 4.

[Ed in SoDak]

After converting the XB version to V9T9 format from TIFILES, it runs on MacV9T9 and Mac ClassicOS. I couldn't make it past first level using the number pad (the only "joystick" option in Mac V9T9). But... slowing emulation down to 50% I handily tromped the slothy asteroids.

 

Then I gave away most my ships setting up this screen grab...

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Ed in SoDak

[+Retrospect]

Here's a thing to try .... people with either emulators or real hardware with F18a .... turn off the sprite limiter and see what happens with the asteroid stage.

 

I say this, because I used an old trick in the asteroid stage.  The trick was, how to get the Asteroids to appear from the top of the screen , smoothly rather than just APPEARING ..... I used four blank sprites at the top of the screen.  So the asteroids just emerge pixel by pixel onto the screen.  

[+Retrospect]

here's a couple of label that OLD CS1 fixed .... 

 

[+OLD CS1]

11 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

I used four blank sprites at the top of the screen.  So the asteroids just emerge pixel by pixel onto the screen.

Slick!

11 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

here's a couple of label that OLD CS1 fixed .... 

Yeah, I accidentally left the print area guides in place from my template on the old style, and on the arcade style I wanted to make the title stand forward a little better by adding a transparent fill in the letters.

[senior_falcon]

2 hours ago, Retrospect said:

Here's a thing to try .... people with either emulators or real hardware with F18a .... turn off the sprite limiter and see what happens with the asteroid stage.

 

I say this, because I used an old trick in the asteroid stage.  The trick was, how to get the Asteroids to appear from the top of the screen , smoothly rather than just APPEARING ..... I used four blank sprites at the top of the screen.  So the asteroids just emerge pixel by pixel onto the screen.  

XB will throw an error message if you use a sprite row of less than 1. But remember that the compiler does no error checking. So the following program can be compiled to do what you want without resorting to blank sprites. Unfortunately you cannot test this in XB. Perhaps it would be useful to modify XB 2.8 G.E.M. to allow this. See edit below.

5 ROW=-16 
9 CALL MAGNIFY(2)
10 CALL SPRITE(#1,65,16,ROW,10,2,0,#2,66,15,ROW,30,2,0)
20 GOTO 20 

(EDIT) You can use ROW=240 which does the same thing and works the same in XB and compiled.

Edited December 25, 2021 by senior_falcon

[+Retrospect]

1 hour ago, senior_falcon said:

the compiler does no error checking

Thanks Harry

Yeah I noticed lately about that, the no error checking.  It's had me searching for "what went wrong this time" quite often, ha. Then it struck me the other day I might be able to use that to my advantage.  

 

I wish I'd realized you could do that with sprites though, that is very handy indeed

 

Edit:  Having said that, the sprites needed to appear below the text for the score and lives  .... so in that particular case, having them at -1 would not have been desirable .... but in future games that do something similar I'll move the score and lives elsewhere and use that code example

Edited December 25, 2021 by Retrospect

[sometimes99er]

Very nice. ?
 

[+Retrospect]

23 minutes ago, sometimes99er said:

Very nice. ?
 

cheers.  hope you've had a good christmas 

[sometimes99er]

10 hours ago, Retrospect said:

cheers.  hope you've had a good christmas 

Thanks. Better than I could have hoped for. Hope you had a good one too. ?
 

[+Retrospect]

4 hours ago, sometimes99er said:

Thanks. Better than I could have hoped for. Hope you had a good one too. ?
 

Good , yeah mine was great.  Bit too much food though!

[+OLD CS1]

2 hours ago, Retrospect said:

Bit too much food though!

This is a thing??

[Nightengale]

Reallly great, nice manual too

[+Retrospect]

5 hours ago, Nightengale said:

Reallly great, nice manual too

Thanks.  It was enjoyable making it.  I don't like manuals though.  I always have to think of a "backstory"

 

I'm already thinking of a possible "Avaris II" but it might not be called that.  

[+Retrospect]

Avaris II will be played the other way around from Avaris.  You'll have parallax scrolling for the ground.  I've already got the player sprite and one enemy sprite.

 

Enemies will be introduced in stages, with the warning system. There will be end of stage baddies that take multiple shots to kill. All very early in development.

 

Here's a screenshot.  It's just a teaser.  It won't be out for a while!  Working title: Anubis.

 

[tmop69]

47 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

I'm already thinking of a possible "Avaris II" but it might not be called that.  

 

What about the Gridrunner clone? 

[+Retrospect]

5 hours ago, tmop69 said:

 

What about the Gridrunner clone? 

that might not be going ahead.  

[+Retrospect]

The humble beginnings of a videogame ..... it's all flying along quite fast .... won't be, once the enemy routines are in and there's more on screen ?

 

[GDMike]

I've seen this movie.. and it doesn't end well for me.

Edited December 30, 2021 by GDMike

[+Retrospect]

Player sprite moving around now, and fire missile with missile sound effect.  

Pew-Pew!