Total Carnage CD32: Special Edition

[earok]

Ok, it's finished. This was only ever intended to be a short term project, but I ended up doing a lot more tweaks than I had originally intended.

GAMEPLAY:

• Player moves much faster, similar to arcade game
• Flame thrower is more powerful with a longer radius (except in two player mode, the second player to pick up a flame thrower gets a weaker version)
• Removed unfair mine right at the player's starting position on level 5
• Fixed bug where bombs drop repeatedly when using Mega Drive pad

BOMBS:
As per arcade game -

• Bombs have a much shorter fuse, activating almost instantly
• Bombs have a wider radius
• You start with three at the start of the game
• You only collect one at a time

CONTINUES:

• Game always starts from the last level you reached before game over, except..
• If you complete the game without getting 60 flags, you can play the last level again until you do
• If you complete the game with 60 flags and enter the pleasure dome, the game will start anew

GRAPHICAL FIXES:

• Strangely offset death animation for regular enemy soldiers fixed
• Added "Blow This Up" visual instruction to satellite dishes, as per arcade
• Instruction also added to enemy fighter planes

AUDIO:

• Features a new song by JMD on the intro, loading and cutscenes

DOWNLOAD:

CD32 - https://mega.nz/#!IupDgCzD!seFxpxfZW...vX7IOfmQvKTNVE
LHA - https://mega.nz/#!JnglTKTQ!BbXFL2onV...45aqDsBCnNN80Q

[malko]

Thanks for that earok !

[Gzegzolka]

I salute You for picking that game. I made a mistake in my life and it was buying that game. I play it till I finish it, sadly never got chance to enter dome and never back to it. Till this day, maybe I will try it again after all that years. I must ask You - why creating SE version for this game?

[NeoHippie2016]

@earok: Thank you for "remastering" this game. Yea, the difficult of it makes it before very unfair.

[Viceroy]

Many thanks ;-)

[saimon69]

Am doing something for a third party that requires me to do 20k mods, let me see if i can use those methods to churn up something good for ya

[earok]

Thanks guys

@JMD Sadly the crash seems to happen regardless of the size of the MOD file I'm not exactly sure why, but the game fails to allocate memory under certain conditions only if there's something running in the background. This seems to happen regardless of how much RAM is actually available.


If someone ASM savvy wanted to take over and properly add tracker music into the menu and/or game itself, I've got disassembled source code I could bundle up and share (since it's disassembled, unfortunately 99% of the labels are set to automatically generated placeholders, so you'd need to figure those out)

[earok]

Ok! Time for an update.

@JMD I resolved the music issue. Currently the game has the music that came with the "Total Carnage Plus" version (in menu, cutscenes and loading scenes only). If you'd like to provide a different mod file, I'll happily receive it for the final final release just replace music.mod in the folder with a different one if you wanted to try it out.

This version has been minimally tested - I'd love to receive any breaking bug reports before treating it as final.

(Downloads removed, latest version on top post)

HDD version is the same as the CD32 version. It "should" work on Workbench (it does on my configuration with some glitches) but that isn't guaranteed.

[fryguy]

I watched some video about this game a few days ago, I played it on the Amiga when it was released and remember it was quite crappy, didn't realise back then that it was actually an arcade game though. The AGA version looks terrible, maybe in the future the gfx could be replaced/improved too?

I'm gonna try your enhanced version.

[earok]

Originally Posted by fryguy

The AGA version looks terrible, maybe in the future the gfx could be replaced/improved too?

Honestly, yeah. The annoying thing is there's a fair bit of the game that does look arcade accurate (intro screens, final boss, the "pleasure dome" ending, some vehicles and level parts) but the rest has a distinctly MS Paint look.

Hope you can enjoy it anyway. My changes aren't major but (IMO) they do make the game a hell of a lot more tolerable.

[thairacerjp]

thanks EaRok, i will give a try tonight or tomorrow with the HDD version with the TF330, i will see if i'll burn a CD (if you send me blank CD ) , my memorries about this game is that he had potential ruined by a asthmatic gameplay from hell , but for you, i will test again.

edit : tested and approuved, working like a charm on CD32 TF330, no glitchs, music working great on intro and in menus gameplay sucks

[earok]

Originally Posted by thairacerjp

edit : tested and approuved, working like a charm on CD32 TF330, no glitchs, music working great on intro and in menus

Thanks for the test mate, I appreciate it

Originally Posted by thairacerjp

gameplay sucks

Haha.. I don't know, I still find it kind of fun (at least now that I can beat the damn game). But I'm somewhat biased towards that genre.

If there's any minor tweaks you can think of that could improve the gameplay, I might be able to slip them in.

[thairacerjp]

anyway, i like this sort of game, not much more on Amiga (ikari warriors, warzone) but it's the control who, i think came from the arcade "smash tv" game, The left stick moved your character and the right stick fired, so if you could do something for more easy control and the ennemies goes little bit to fast !

[earok]

Dual stick probably is a little beyond what I could hack into it, but I'm up for tweaks to make it easier (not too much easier, but oddly there's certain elements about the arcade game that are actually easier than the Amiga version - enemy bullets are slower and mines are much more useful since they detonate almost immediately. So any minor changes that bring it more inline with the arcade machine, I could look at)

I might do maybe just one more update - if JMD has any music for me, I'll chuck that in, do a readme, put it on earok.net and that'll be final release

[malko]

A gave a quick go here on the HD version.
Everything is working fine (played up to the pink slime on the tank).
Controls are responding really smoothly.
I quite dislike that enemies can walk on mine and not die.
Also dislike that enemies can kill you even when they are dying (on the blood explosion phase) ?? Strange.
Otherwise I think this game is worth a play in the EAB competition due to his hardness
Will propose it if not already played.

[earok]

Originally Posted by malko

A gave a quick go here on the HD version.
Everything is working fine (played up to the pink slime on the tank).
Controls are responding really smoothly.
I quite dislike that enemies can walk on mine and not die.
Also dislike that enemies can kill you even when they are dying (on the blood explosion phase) ?? Strange.
Otherwise I think this game is worth a play in the EAB competition due to his hardness
Will propose it if not already played.

For the next version I've fixed the mine so that (like the arcade version) it explodes almost instantly with a wider radius, so it's more useful as a last ditch defense. Also I've fixed the graphical glitch where regular soldiers drop down about 10 pixels when they die.

I've noticed that the exploding enemies are still deadly (and even more frustrating, they still block shots). I'm not really sure if I can fix that without upsetting the balance of the game.

Edit: I played it online via Amiga Live tonight. That was actually a lot of fun.

[earok]

I thought I better give a quick update, the "final final" version is still coming and there's been a fair few changes since what I last posted. Here's the list of everything, including what was in the previous version:

• When starting after game over, you start from the level that you died on
• Key counter is never reset (so you don't have to play from the start to get all 60 keys)
• If you finish the game without getting 60 keys, you can play the final level repeatedly until you do
• If you finish the game with 60 keys, the next game you start will be from the beginning again.
• Player moves considerably faster
• Three bombs are granted at the start (as per arcade machine)
• Bombs explode almost instantly (as per arcade machine)
• Bombs have wider radius (not quite sure how arcade accurate this is, but it's a lot more effective)
• A bomb pickup gives you only one bomb instead of two (as per arcade machine. I felt this was also important for balance given that bombs are far, far deadlier and more useful now)
• Fix for death animation for standard soldier enemies (they don't "jump" down 10~ pixels immediately now)
• Fix for flamer - the flame distance is much further. The game implemented an odd system where the second player to pick up a flamer gets a more powerful one (hence, in a single player game, you NEVER get this more powerful flamer). I've simply swapped it so the first player to pick up a flamer receives the more powerful version, so it can be used in single player (in two player, the second player to pick one up still only gets the crappy version - this is something I can't easily fix).
• The first cutscene in the game takes place before the big fight with the axemen, not after. In the arcade machine, the cutscene happens in the middle of this fight, but I figured putting it before the fight on the Amiga version was a better decision as it serves as a stark warning about what's about to unfold.

On top of all of that, I've been talking with JMD about a new soundtrack for the menus/cutscenes.

As an aside, I uncovered some easter eggs. It's possible to blow up the radio towers and MiGs with airstrikes, as per the arcade game. This isn't documented in game (maybe in the manual), and is frankly a little useless but a really cool effect. I wouldn't have known about it at all if I didn't play the arcade game through to try and get a better feel for it. Though the arcade game has even more things you can call airstrikes on, that you can't in the Amiga version (radioactive tower, large vehicles)



Another aside, I found that the graphics for warp portals are in the tilesets. Warp portals are used in other versions (SNES/Arcade) to jump to secret levels or skip through the game, but don't seem to be present in the Amiga version at all. I'm pretty sure that they were simply never coded, but it was kind of interesting to know that the warp portals were at least planned.

[malko]

For someone who wanted kind of "SE coding break" , these modifications are quite cooool earok !

[NeoHippie2016]

The only thing i miss, is an whdl installer for AGA and CD32 Version... But thank you again earok for your work! It's... great!

[earok]

Just a quick note to say that I'm done! Details and downloads in the first post

And, cheers guys