'Final Chapter' game in the zone

[SabreGolly]

I have uploaded a game that I have been working on, for anyone to try out.

It is pure 'bedroom coding' at its worst (Blitz Basic 2)- and I started this nearly ten years ago! It's a 'laser squad' type game for 1-6 players - and I've been fiddling with it recently, and think its ready to be tried out.

It *should* work on any 1MB PAL amiga - but I of course can't test this! If anyone can bug test it for me - I would appreciate it.

Its a hobby thing - so I hope to add new scenarios, weapons and baddies when I get time, but if anyone has any comments or suggestions about it, please let me know. At my workrate I should have it done by, oh, 2007!

Full instructions are included in the lha archive, ready to extract onto an amiga hard drive (I hope!).

If it seems OK, let me know if I should upload it to aminet, if its worth it.

[andreas]

Originally posted by SabreGolly
I have uploaded a game that I have been working on, for anyone to try out.

It is pure 'bedroom coding' at its worst (Blitz Basic 2)- and I started this nearly ten years ago! It's a 'laser squad' type game for 1-6 players - and I've been fiddling with it recently, and think its ready to be tried out.

It *should* work on any 1MB PAL amiga - but I of course can't test this!

Neither can I, I have 512K A1000
Damn 1 MB requirement all the time

[SabreGolly]

I still remember having to save up GBQuid100 for my 1 meg expansion - the only game of note that needed it at the time was Dungeon Master - and when I finally got to play the game - I didn't really like it. Oh well.

As for my game - OK people, I get the hint!

Thanks to amigaboy for PMing me some feedback.

I suppose you can't do a retro game in 2003..

[Bloodwych]

I totally missed this thread first time around but will definitely try your game out! Downloading it now.

This is what the old computer scene was about - bedroom projects by individuals.

I'll also have to start playing Elite Advanced as well.

[Bloodwych]

Hey, this is an extremely good effort.

Comprehensive help file and decent interface, it's obvious loads of time and care has gone into this title - well done! Plus I LOVE these style (2 and above) multiplayer games on the miggy! Many of the non-commercial ones turn out to be the most playable and this will find a permanent home on my hard drive along with the others.

Definitely upload to Aminet - it'll find its way onto loads of peoples hard drives if they like collecting this kind of unique Amiga material such as myself.

It's not everyday we get someone with a new Amiga project looking for input so I hope others will give this a chance once things around here pick up a bit.

What you'll find is that Christmas is busy for most of us and this board has been quiet recently as a result.

I'll offer more input once I've had chance to play it (and elite advanced) for a while.

[SabreGolly]

Thanks loads and loads for your reply, Bloodwych - it brought a tear to my eye!

I do call myself a retro gamer (except on my CV) so I love old style games. After uploading this, I wondered if a game had to have been released years ago to be considered retro - and if I was being a bit cheeky pretending!

I've always loved the games by Julian Gollop - Rebelstar, Laser Squad, Chaos and UFO etc - and the multiplayer ones were always good for a post-pub laugh.

The only problems were that they were too complicated for non gaming types. Things like action points, opportunity fire and panics did people's heads in - and what was the difference between a Marsec auto-gun and an L50 las-gun? - try explaining that to someone on their first go.

So that's where this came from.

Its been lying on my hard drive for years, and I've periodically messed about with it. As I say, if you've anything about it you'd like me to change, or anything you'd like adding - give me a shout.

Currently being worked on -

* team editor, so you can change team names and colours.

* 'worms' style player awards at the end, e.g. most violent, shortest lived etc.

* Three additional scenarios, some with destroy-able scenery.

* new weapons, including 'UFO' style guided missiles.

* get rid of the sound when new screens come up, courtesy of amigaboy!

* clean up some of the graphics, but I think AGA would take too much time.

but as I said, anything else you think would be a good idea.

Thanks again for giving it a go, and long live the miggy - what other machine lets you do this?

[Bloodwych]

Those additions sound great!

I'll be sure to make some suggestions after a good play test. As I've already said, I'm sure others will join in as soon as the forum picks up back to normal.

[Marlon]

Love to try it but can you put in in an adf format?

[SabreGolly]

Ah now, well, you see, the problem with that is that, err, I, um don't know how to do that!

I'm using a real amiga - so I've only ever needed to write adf to disk - I'll have a look through aminet for a suitable util.

Give me a few days - family duties call me away from my machine

Have a good holiday one and all.

- Boot Workbench
- Insert OFS formatted disk (or in the case of WinUAE, Create Standard Floppy and insert that)
- Unpack the archive somewhere on your Amiga.
- Copy the unpacked files to the disk.
- Create a directory on the disk called S
- Inside S, create a file called startup-sequence
- Edit the file startup-sequence. Put the name of the executable as the only line. In this case "FinalChapter". So, if the file is on the disk in the directory "BlahBlah", you would put "BlahBlah/FinalChapter"
- Create a bootblock for the disk. This is done by going to the CLI and typing:
install df0: (or whatever drive you put the disk into)

Done.
I hope I explained it well enough for ya's.

[Bloodwych]

Good skills Amigaboy, but you could have adfed it yourself considering the time taken to write out that! Only joking.

Had some free time on this fine xmas eve, so decided to adf the game before I set off to the pub.

It’s OFS/1.3 Amiga friendly, loads the helpfile first using ppmm then goes onto the game.

You know what took me the longest doing this? Finding a flippin WB 1.3 friendly help file viewer! "More" was sh*te, "muchmore" hated 1.3 Amigas but after a third rumble through my c "bag of tricks" directory I finally settled for "ppmm".

Enjoy!

And happy holidays peeps!

[Marlon]

Many thanks. I shall play it and post my opinions later. Happy xmas Amiga dudes...

[woody57]

I,ll run on my benched A600 if poss , so then you could add my test comments will get back to this after xmas as I,m mainly playing Amigers Elite advanced at the moment but hey I love those old games too !

Its Supercool dude I like the Gameplay too just finished a one hour session , yes akira this is NO ONE Level wonder but a game of Scope !Great effort No problems on 2MB A600 so far ! :welcome

[Amiga1992]

I'll try this out, it looks so much better than your standard pd (or commercial!) amiga software piece of shite game. Good work!

[Shatterhand]

I haven't played the game (I don't own an Amiga, and I got an emulatophobia lately), but from the screenshot it looks good. Laser Squad was great, and I always wanted to play it with a friend, but I always had this problem too: No one would give the time to learn the game. (I also had this problem with Hired Guns).

And it's bullshit you can't do a retro game in 2003. I've just finished coding a PC game (Space Disorder, a few people here may remember it), and it's as retro as it gets (It looks much, MUCH worse than your game ), and I know many people like it. I am now coding another PC game which is even more retro, and I guess some people will like it too.

For me, it will never the graphics, the sound or the concept that will make a game good - it's always about the fun of playing it.

I hope you keep the work on your game!

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by Shatterhand
(I don't own an Amiga, and I got an emulatophobia lately)

At last you gave up all the emushit! You are now MORE welcome to come around my home and play with the REAL Amiga thing

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, when I get a job again the 2nd thing I'll buy it's an Amiga (The 1st one will be a Dreamcast )

[SabreGolly]

Thanks for the replies, and to Bloodwych for .adf-ing the game for me. I completely forgot Multiview doesnt work on kickstart 1.x

I'm Ok with writing a bootable disk - the problem I would have had would be converting the disc to an adf file on an amiga - I'm sure there's something on the aminet to do that - then getting it across to a PC which would mean LHArchiving it, then unarchiving it on the PC to upload ('Power archiver' always been good to me).

My poor miggy isn't networked (A1200 020 28MHz 6Mb ram) as you cant find the required hardware for love nor money nowadays.

[blackcornflake]

Just been playing it now. Very cool!

Originally posted by SabreGolly
I've always loved the games by Julian Gollop - Rebelstar, Laser Squad, Chaos and UFO etc - and the multiplayer ones were always good for a post-pub laugh.

The only problems were that they were too complicated for non gaming types. Things like action points, opportunity fire and panics did people's heads in - and what was the difference between a Marsec auto-gun and an L50 las-gun? - try explaining that to someone on their first go.

Always had a soft spot for this type of game myself, despite being a confirmed arcade gamer.

Good feel to the game - nice mix of elements from Rebelstar et al and the Space Crusade games. I like the interface and control: very intuitive, not fussy at all. Great that you're free to perform multiple actions in a turn, and generally skip about as you please. Do kinda miss opportunity fire, but I think you're right to omit it, as it wouldn't be right for this game. Same as morale, say.

Gameplay suggestion: I think blasting doors should result in them being destroyed, as opposed to being opened. Might add a bit more spice to proceedings. Not sure whether they should have a hitpoint total as such, or just either be 'ok' or 'not ok' after being hit. Might be good to have an invisible hitpoint total for them, so as to make combining firepower on them worthwhile.

Works fine on my 040 A1200, btw. It will always have a place on my hard drive.

Hey, want a review in APoV then?

[SabreGolly]

Originally posted by blackcornflake
Just been playing it now. Very cool!



Always had a soft spot for this type of game myself, despite being a confirmed arcade gamer.

Good feel to the game - nice mix of elements from Rebelstar et al and the Space Crusade games. I like the interface and control: very intuitive, not fussy at all. Great that you're free to perform multiple actions in a turn, and generally skip about as you please. Do kinda miss opportunity fire, but I think you're right to omit it, as it wouldn't be right for this game. Same as morale, say.

Space Crusade? My characters look nothing like the ones in space crusade...!

Yeah - opportunity fire was a nightmare playing laser squad multiplayer. Your opponent knew exactly where all your units were anyway, and which ones had enough AP left so you ended up in a stalemate. We tried not watching each other turns, but then when opportunity fire came up, you could just shoot all your opponents units with their man, and watch their face when they returned. Marvelous.

So we eventually decided we needed some sort of independent referee to supervise all sessions - exactly how this would be done we never got to as last orders had just been called.

Morale just did my head in on LS - the only really got multiplayer level was the one where you are against Omni Corp (hence their inclusion in FC) - level 2 I think - as the squads were evenly matched. The Laser squad could only gain points, and hence gain morale, by destroying the databanks. You could have all your men, they only had one, and your units would still panic. F**k!!!

Originally posted by blackcornflake

Gameplay suggestion: I think blasting doors should result in them being destroyed, as opposed to being opened. Might add a bit more spice to proceedings. Not sure whether they should have a hitpoint total as such, or just either be 'ok' or 'not ok' after being hit. Might be good to have an invisible hitpoint total for them, so as to make combining firepower on them worthwhile.

Yes, I agree about the doors. I just hadn't created eight 'destroyed door' tiles when I designed the first few maps - and I couldn't be arsed going back and changing them later. I'm currently doing a few more scenarios - and writing in the ability to destroy walls, doors etc with explosions.

As for the hitpoints - I'm not sure what you mean. I suppose I could get rid of HP altogether and just have a 'percentage death rate' for each gun/combatant rank - but that might complicate matters. As for hiding the HP - they used to be hidden, and I didn't have the floaty numbers for hits - but I think there's something nice about seeing what damage has been done.

I like being able to look to see which enemy is weakest, and which will need a good few attackers to bring down. The computer controlled team has certain units which will deliberatley attack the weakest of your team - so it would be unfair if we couldn't do the same!

There is one bloody 'genetic mutant' on the 'ship of doom' scenario, with a shield, and 22 HP, and he can be a bugger to take out (unless you weigh in with a sword - works for me.) I think if you didn't know how close you were to finally decking this guy, you might loose the will to live. Thats not counting the three 'prisoners' in the middle - who are worse!

So I think I might make this an option, like a difficulty level - maybe an 'easy' option - where you can call up the 'tactical information' display for opponents, and a 'hard' option where you can't.

Originally posted by blackcornflake


Works fine on my 040 A1200, btw. It will always have a place on my hard drive.

Hey, want a review in APoV then?

That would be great if I ever finish it! As I said above, at my workrate, this could take until 2007!!!

Thanks loads for your comments - Hopefully sorted for the next version!