My CV....

I've been busy making an about me page which I've been meaning to do for years. The idea being that it'll eventually turn into some kind of life history I guess. Anyway, you can find the first version of it HERE, and although its just a list of things I've done, its a good start.

TG16 Shadow of the Beast - ROM!!

I've managed to convert the old devkit Beast.BX file into a real BEAST.PCE file! The only reason I was able to do this easily was because years ago when I was doing SotB(Shadow of the Beast) I hated the offical debugger so much, I wrote my own! If you want to see what I was dealing with, drop down into a command prompt and type DEBUG. This is what the offical devkit was like - terrible! So I spent a couple of months after work hacking the debugger and working out how it talked to the ICE unit, then I wrote my own. The first thing I did of course was to upload the assembled .BX files, and to do that I had to reverse engineer the format of that as well as the symbol file.

Of course back then I was having so much fun doing this I stayed at the office and worked late into the night. It took a couple of weeks to get to a usable point, and around 3 months to actually get to a finished state, but it was a vast improvement. I remember being pissed off at Dave though as he refused to try and sell it back to NEC, even though they would have been sure to take it. It was party because I wanted something out of it, and becasue it was going to be more compilcated than just sell and forget, he couldn't be bothered.

However, it was good fun and taught me a lot, particually the expression evaluation stuff that Brian Watson wrote for me. I had a really simple one it, and it wasn't recursive. So he knocked a proper one up for me, and I've been using that method ever since.Its also funny to see the cheat mode is still in there, but unlike the final game, this one displays the Lemming's logo! No idea why that was removed, I was probably told to - but its pretty funny seeing it pop up. For those that don't know, on the title page of SotB, you can press Fire1,Fire2,Fire2,Fire1 and the number of lives go to 99. And your into cheat mode. Easy as that!

This demo is only the top level, and the first multi-directional level, theres no castle yet and all the graphics are Amiga ones with the exception of the trees (which do look a little pants). After seeing this Psygnosis weren't happy with the look of it at all and so drafted in Martyn Chudley (who went on to own Bizzar Creations) who drew all the cool backgrounds and sprites. He was actually busy on his own game at Psygnosis at the time Wiz 'n Liz on the Megadrive, which I almost ported to the SNES funnily enough.

I have to say this is interesting...but dull really. It's an interesting snapshot of development, but the game still sucks and its only a partial game with just 2 levels. But its funny seeing it never the less.

TG16 stuff...

Not been doing a lot past few days, but I'm now off on holiday for a week so Im going to push on with my TG16 assembler first. I did get a little shock though as one of the manuals I have must have been a pretty early one since it doesn't document CSH or CSL which are used to switch the PC Engine into high and low speed modes. Now, I knew about these commands since I have some old source, but the manual I was using didn't document them at all, and its not like there were pages missing as the page numbers count up fine! They just weren't there! However, my other (slightly grubbier) manual does have them, so I can find out the opcode and add them in.

It's probably going to take me a few days to get all this stuff in which is a pain, but then I should be good to go!

I also found a VERY old bit of shadow of the beast. I think this is pre-CDROM! In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that its the version that was in the Games-X mag back in 1991 where I just had the beast man running around on the 1st level - before all the pretty graphics went in! I'll need to try and work out the format of the ROM dump as its a special outpu for the offical kit, but if memory serves its pretty simple. I'd love to see this again and get a bit of video of it for my DMA page.

I also found my SuperSystem2 card, and on the back It's been labeled No. 2. I wonder if we did get the second one ever made... or if it was the 2nd one given to developers or something - who knows. I do know we were one od the 1st to develop on using the new SuperCDROM, so it might well be the second card ever made - which is cool.

Damn those NEC people!!

I've been updating my assembler to do the extra TG16 opcodes I need only to discover that NEC in their infinite wisdom have changed every opcode! Every single one! Damn them!! So I now need to create another opcode table for the PC Engine.... Bugger. It also means it's going to take me a little while before I can get to actually work on the blood thing.

I found another old PC Engine manual though, and its the good one! It has all the hardware and CPU stuff which means I can at least start to read about things - even if i can't plunge on and program anything!

While I do want to play with a dual-playfield thing, I suspect I'll end up porting XeO3 to it coz...well... why not. The TG16 was a shooters dream machine and had some amazing shooters on it, so it will be good to actually write one on it. Shadow of the Beast let me code this little machine and I do love it... but I hated almost every moment as the game was totally crap. Oh well....

PCEngine!

I've been going through a whole load of old backup CD's I have, trying to have a little clear out, and I've finally found the old source to Ballistix! It looks pretty complete including editor and game code. However I'm not excited about that so much as the music player source I'd lost!

This was based on the HiredGuns octamed player (I think) and allows the full 6 channels to be used. It was attached to the timer IRQ which means I can probably plug it into virtually anything I do - particually since I also have the PC Engine music itself!

The music player was built ontop of my sound effects player which simulates the C64 ADSR stuff (since each channel had its own volume). There also appears to be a sample player (including a function called PlayAmigaSample) although I can't remember Ballistix playing samples at all... I'll need to hook it up again and have a listen...

It will also remind me how to arrange the ROM so that it'll actually load in an emultor - exciting stuff this!

XeO3: Update

With the final playtest demo done I can now look forward to other things, like a C64 version for a start! I would quite like to get the playtest demo running on that, although the lack of front end does make it a bit of a pain.

I've hooked up my C64 again and have the demo playing away on it, and it's looking pretty good I guess. We've gone for a gray level this time which makes the player ship stand out much better (as its still blue). It looks much smoother as the sprites and scrolling suddenly have an extra pixel to move with as it is no longer limited to MultiColoured pixels. This is where my pain of keeping hires coordinates comes ino its own, everything just works AND smooths out all on its own!

The panel raster split isn't quite right so I'll need to look at that, and I really want a better multiplexor sort. The one I have is okay, but I think a 1D-linked-list and an insertion sort would speed it up and make things a bit smoother.

I've also resurrected my character sprites on the Plus/4 which allows me to throw around huge blocks if I want, but I dont know if I have the memory to keep them in. I would like to keep the source active though so that even if I can't use them, when I release the source others can.

If I dont use character sprites then the redrawing of the whole screen becomes questionable, particually on the C64. I could spend a lot less time simply scrolling the screen over 8 frames then flipping to it. But this would require me to save+replace over a VBlank. Possibly, but tricky. (Or use more screens...).

With character sprite code back in I can also start thinking about putting it things like doors that open and closethat you have to go through adding another layer of complexity to the game which blood money had (although they were too quick I think).

I'm also going to be playing with some PCEngine stuff I just got so there's probably not going to be any immediate progression on the game; besides I want to let the demo get a good playing and get all the feedback in before we start on real levels so I have a little bit of time to play.

Action Games – Addictive, Interactive, Thrilling And Fabulous Way Of Enjoyment.

An action game is a game that challenges a player’s speed, dexterity and reaction time. Action games often include tactical conflict, exploration challenges and puzzle solving. Action games usually feature violent physical force, especially shooting or melee combat as their main interactive features. Most common action games are:

* Action-adventure game
* Fighting game
* Driving
* Fast puzzle
* First person shooter
* Platform game
* Shooter game
* Action role-playing game
* Beat ‘em up

Often this kind of games comes with a story line and is rich in graphic and animation. It seen that adventure games are more popular than other video games. Action games of the modern day are more interactive, it can be of single-players or multi-players. Action games give great thrill and despite called for teenagers they are for the family to enjoy them together. Action games test the response of the player and sharpen the judgment. Such games are not pure fun. They can help as training tools if used properly.

There are wide varieties of adventure and action game available in the market. Even many of the gaming sites offer various types can be easily downloaded to the PC or computer. Games have completely changed the entertainment scenario and no only entertain you but also enhance your mind.

You can also download game from internet. Online games store are flooded with revolutionary easy to play, down loadable and free games online. Loaded with sophisticated features, these advance technology games ensures interactive and thrilling gaming experience to the players. Most of the online games are free. Look for a good website and play the games. They are a fabulous way of enjoyment. As I said in the heading these games can become addictive. Take small doses and life will be a joy.

HOVR is one of the leading website for action games. You can download free action games to your PC as well as mobile from HOVR.