Update: Der Schränker (1) - Gameplay Changes

Kveldulfur · October 15, 2023

Hello!

Der Schränker (1) is my first self-written game for the ATARI XL/XE and also the first time I programmed completely in assembler. The game is therefore very close to my heart.

Of course, I watched the videos and comments on the game and found that there are two major criticisms of the game:

1) The ghosts move very randomly and sometimes get in the way for a long time, so you can't reach your destination.
2) The loot is absolutely random, so sometimes it is very easy and sometimes very difficult to complete a level.

I have now tried to improve this!

on point 1)
I already programmed in the original version that you can kite the ghosts. You stand next to a ghost and leave exactly 1 space.
There is a high probability that the ghost will take a step towards you. Then you stand one step further away again.
In this way, you can drag the ghosts all over the playing field. Unfortunately, this mechanic was not neatly integrated in the original version. I have improved that now.
The ghost checks whether it can reach the player in two steps. If it can, it takes one step towards the player with a probability of 80%.

This now works very cleanly, as you can see here:
https://www.kveldulfur.de/derschraenker/Schraenker-Demo.mp4

on point 2)
There are now 4 Loot tables per room. Table 1 and 2 are used for the "Easy" difficulty level, 2 and 3 for "Normal" and 3 and 4 for "Hard".
This means that the loot is now distributed in a controlled and predictable way. I have also distributed the loot in such a way that you can progress relatively well.
On the easy difficulty, there are more time orbs and ammo to loot. On the higher difficulty, there is more gold to score with.

General changes:

- The game is now in German and English. German is selected for PAL and English for NTSC. You can switch manually in the menu with the HELP button.
- The code has been optimised and compressed. This means that the game can be used as a 16k cartridge that runs on any computer with 16k RAM.
- The version number 1.1 is shown in the title menu.

The game can be downloaded for free from my website.
https://www.kveldulfur.de/derschraenker

Maybe one or the other is interested and gives the game a second chance.

Greetings
Kveldulfur