Batty Junior - Demo 1

Now that Christmas is over and the new year is nearly upon us, 'tis time to release a non-seasonal demo of Batty Junior.

"What is different from the last version?" I hear you ask. Quite a bit. Most of the power-ups are now in place, in fact only two things are missing from the single-player game - the gun power-up and the gravity distort.



I should be uploading this later on today (once I get home in fact). The Windows (DirectX and OpenGL) and MacOSX versions are ready to go, so I'll just have to get the Linux one ready.

Last shopping day before. . . .

Well, today is the last shopping day before the most important event of the year:

MY BIRTHDAY!

Yes, I'm hitting the big 34 tomorrow, and am going to have to adjust my "that's still young" counter up another notch. This is something that most of us seem to do. Young is what you are, old is your parents, children is everyone more than five years younger than you.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the subject in hand (buy stuff, buy stuff, buy stuff, buy EXPENSIVE stuff). Sorry, don't know where that came from (PayPay accepted). Aaaargh!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to one and all.

With a "ho, ho, ho" and a "jingle all the way" into the bargain!

Star Trek: Of Gods and Men released

After spending time in development hell, episode 1 of Star Trek: Of Gods and Men has been released. Worth your time? Read on to find out.



For a dead series (or at least one on life-support) there has been a lot of new Trek out lately, much of it featuring actors from the original series. I've blogged on Star Trek: New Voyages before now which is the pro-am series that sets the standard, and since the guys at New Voyages have been involved with this new mini-series hopes have been high that it would be just as good, if not better.

A lot of professional actors are involved this time round as well as some guests from New Voyages and all of them give good performances, especially Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig reprising their roles of Uhura and Chekov. James Cawley as Commander Peter Kirk is excellent in his cameo appearance.

The special effect are good, the plot is intriguing, the sound effects (provided by the incomparable Ralph Miller) are excellent and the acting is passable at worst, and excellent at best.

The camera work owes more to modern series such as Battlestar Galactica and Firefly than to Trek, but certainly doesn't detract from the story.

This first episode certainly sets things up nicely for the remainder of the series, which are due "soon". I know I'll be looking forward to it.

Apples and Lyons

So apparently Fake Steve Jobs aka Dan Lyons has been targetted by Apple's lawyers, presumably in a vain attempt to get him to shut the heck up.

I know that this is the season of good will to all men, so presumably that should include our Mr Lyons but I've got to say that I'm really not surprised that Apple have had enough of him, only that it took this long. I was sick of the joke after the first couple of weeks.

One thing that has amused me is his surprise that the EFF refused to represent him, allegedly because of some of the critical things he's said about them. Would they be Freetards or Linuxtards Dan?

I've got to admit that I'm still not sure if this is just a publicity stunt by our Dan or if Apple genuinely wants to close his blog. According to Dan they've offered him half a million dollars for it (which he has so far turned down).

Well, it's time to come clean. After my negative posts on the iPhone, Apple have been in touch with me too, and have made an offer based on the amount that I've annoyed them, coupled with my net worth. What I'm going to do with £2.75 and a packet of crisps remains to be seen.

Update: Well, it looks like I was right - Dan L. was living up to the "Fake" part of "Fake Steve" and the whole buyout / legal action thing was a hoax. Can you say Lyons without Lie? I don't think so.

What would be amusing now would be if Apple actually did sue him for slander ;-)

The Return of BBC iPlayer

I blogged earlier on about the problems with BBC's iPlayer software. Apart from trying to sound cool by sticking an i at the start of the softwares name, the main problem with the player was that it was only available for Windows users thanks to their use of Microsofts own DRM solution.

After a farcical display by the BBC in which they claimed that there were hardly any Linux users using their site, then that there were lots of Linux users, Auntie Beeb announced that there would be a flash based player coming out that Linux and Mac users would be able to use to view their programs. Hooray!

Get used to this error - you'll be seeing a lot of it

So now we can all view the BBC's catch up service right? Well, not quite. Yes, you can watch it, but whether you'll actually get to the end of the program in a single viewing is anyones guess.

I've tried this from a couple of locations, using Konqueror, Firefox, and finally IE on Windows from a different location and still get the same errors. This is a shame because if the damn thing was reliable it would be a really good service. As it stands at the moment it's a poor apology for their earlier lack of support.

The Pre-Christmas Lull

Well, here we are less than a week before Christmas, and over a week since the release of the Batty Junior Christmas Demo.

I hadn't been to sure if releasing the demo was a good idea, especially as the game is at a pretty early stage, but thankfully it seems to have been rather well received by the people who have played it.

As I expected the missing power-ups has drawn some comments, but they are being added and will all be there for the next release.

The next couple of powers have been added in (Thrusters and Multi-ball) and just need a little bit of a polish before I'll be happy with them. That only leaves the Extending bat and all the original power-ups will be there.

Updating the code to allow for multiple balls on screen was something that I wasn't looking forward to. Really I should have done that much earlier on in the process (if not from the start) and so having to retrofit the code to allow for this was, shall we say, a fun experience - if your idea of fun is breaking the game entirely, fixing it, followed by an hour or so of bug-fixing.

It has been well worth it though, as even with fifteen or twenty balls on screen the CPU usage is still very low and the collision detection works a treat. Even the ball-grab power-up was a doddle to upgrade to handle multi-ball.

I'm still going to have to go through and do a code-cleanup at some point in the near future, as things are pretty unoptimised thanks to the major changes I'd put in place.

So once that is done then what remains? Well, the gravity warp thingy is something that I've been saving till last, and also I'm going to have to see about adding some variety to the baddies as I've only implemented the UFO so far (the Bird needs to be added).

If you haven't played the demo yet then head over to http://dans-remakes.sytes.net and give it a shot. As it supports Windows (XP and Vista), Linux and MacOS X most people should be able to run it.

Free Game: Batty Junior - Christmas Special Edition

As it's going to be a while before Batty Junior is finished (another couple of months at the current rate of progress I'd guess) but the game is at a reasonable stage I've decided to have a bit of fun with the code so far and release a special Christmas themed mini-game - Batty Christmas!



Downloads for Linux and Windows (OpenGL and DirectX binaries) are available from the front page at http://dans-remakes.sytes.net.

The game will be removed after Christmas, so if you fancy a bit of seasonal fun you'd better get your skates on!

Video of Chaos Caverns and RetroVaders

Thanks to the magic of the freeware CamStudio I've put together some demo footage of my other games, RetroVaders and Chaos Caverns.

First up - Chaos Caverns.



Followed by RetroVaders.



More later.

Batty Junior - Video Preview

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I wonder what a video is worth?



This is a short clip from the first level. The game itself is far from finished, but this gives a general idea of the current state of play.

(Remember kids - games seen on YouTube may appear crapper than they actually are)

A Very Monty Christmas!

Christmas has come early for us UK retro fans with the release of Trevor (Smila) Storey and Scottige's homage to Monty Mole - Monty Christmas!



For those of you unfamiliar with Monty Mole, he was the star of a handful of games in the late 80s (Wanted: Monty Mole, Monty On The Run, Aufwiedersehn Monty and Impossamole).

He also featured in a mini-game on Your Sinclair magazine called Moley Christmas. History has repeated itself with this Retro Gamer magazine instigated game. The plot (if you need one) is that Sam Stoat has stolen the pages of the Christmas issue of Retro Gamer, and you have to get them back.

The game itself is a typical 80s platform game - fast, unforgiving, difficult and fun, with graphics and music that would have been at home on a C64. There are plenty of tricky jumps to be made, items to collect and surreal baddies to avoid.



To make the game easier there are save points every 20 pages (press L on the menu screen to reload the last save point). So far I can only get 30 pages (out of the 100 needed to finish), but I'm working on it and thoroughly enjoying the challenge.

All in all this is a really nice game for us fans of the original Monty games, and will certainly keep me busy over the festive season.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Moley Christmas everybody!

Futurama Returns!

Yes folks, Futurama is back, and it's about time!

I've got to admit that I've always preferred Futurama to The Simpsons, and so I have been eagerly looking forward to the straight-to-dvd release of "Bender's Big Score". Was it worth it?




In a word YES! If this first one is anything to judge by then Futurama is coming back stronger than ever. All the old gang are here, the animation is better than ever, the music is spot on, the script is as good, if not better, than the earlier episodes.

I don't want to give too much of the story away - but I will say that this is a time travel story done as only Futurama can do it.

There is a quite a bit of "fan service" this time round (the trip to the nudist planet springs to mind), and the humour is certainly more adult than before, as well as a few digs at other cartoon series - so far I've spotted references to South Park (Cartman's head in the head museum) and Family Guy (the Family Guy calendar - Twelve laughs a year).

Hopefully the next couple of DVD releases will keep up this high standard.

Blogrush update

Well, a while has passed since my last post on BlogRush. So what has changed? Quite a lot actually. The new BlogRush dashboard is active, some traffic has come my way (although it is still more of a BlogTrickle than a BlogRush), so really I think I'll keep it running as part of my site.

The new dashboard is actually rather nice, and gives plenty of graphs and charts for any statistics freaks that may be reading.

So overall as a free service any additional traffic is a Good Thing, just don't expect to gain hundreds (or even dozens) of additional readers.

The Name Game

Jeff Minter, The Man, The Myth, The Yak. A true legend in the annals of games programming. As far as the games industry in the UK goes, Jeff was there before there was an industry. He is unique in that he has remained untouched by the big business atitude to modern software and still writes games tailored to what he feels a game should be, rather than aiming for market share.

So the following livejournal post about the sales of his latest game on XBox Live Arcade came as a bit of a surprise.

"not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week.

OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga.

We'll shut up trying to do anything new then.

Sorry for even trying." - Jeff Minter, LiveJournal entry, November 2007

I can't say that I'm surprised that Frogger (a straight port of the original game) outsold Space Giraffe. Now before anyone gets on my case about this I'd like to make a couple of things clear.

1 - I like Jeff Minter's games. Always have. Probably always will.

2 - I haven't played Space Giraffe as I don't have an XBox 360, but would really like to, especially if it is anything like as good as Tempest 2000 was. Personally I would much rather play that than Frogger any day of the week.

So why do I think that Frogger would outsell Space Giraffe then?

Easy.

Hands up everyone who has heard of Frogger? Quite a few hands there. In fact, pretty much everyone. OK, now raise your hands if you have heard of Space Giraffe. Not quite as many hands there, much less in fact.

This is the crux of the problem. Frogger is a recognised name. It is available cheaply on XBox Live Arcade and could easily be an impulse purchase. Space Giraffe on the other hand. . . . .

The name doesn't really say a lot about what the game is. It doesn't immediately make you think "gosh, I'd better buy that as it is obviously a Tempest 2000 style game by the legendary Jeff 'Yak' Minter" does it ? Tempest 4000 would sell like hot cakes, I've no doubt about that. Even Jeff Minter presents Space Giraffe would probably do quite well.



Hopefully as time goes on and people discover how great the game is, Space Giraffe's sales will pick up and it will end up as the success that it deserves to be.

Batty Junior - Status Update

Has it really been a week since the last post? My word doesn't time fly when you're having fun?

So how is Batty Junior coming along I pretend to hear you ask?

Not bad is the answer. Slow progress, but not bad.



As you can see, the game is starting to come together. There is still a lot of work to do, but some important milestones have been reached.

• Lives work (so you can loose).
• Level transitions work.
• Scoring (and the high score) works.
• The first few bonus items are working including "bonus lives", "slow mode" and "smash ball".

So what's next? In order of priority:

• Finishing off the bonus items.
• Adding the extra game features (such as indestructable walls, regenerating walls, gravity changer).
• Adding new features (not telling what though)
  
• Adding the enemies.
• Completing the levels.

So as you can see there is plenty to do. I'll be releasing a "beta" release at some point when things are further along.

gOS (Green OS, not Google OS)

A couple of weeks ago Everex released a low cost (sub $200) PC running on Linux. The PCs were on sale at Walmart. Note the past tense here. They sold out within days.

The PCs themselves aren't that highly powered (1.5GHz processor, 80GB hard drive, 512 meg memory) but are certainly more than up to daily word processing and web browsing tasks. The big news was the choice of Linux distro - gOS.

Despite rumours this isn't Google OS - it's Green OS, but unofficially it contains so much integrated Google stuff that it is hard to see it as anything other than Google OS.



Although the PCs are sold out at the moment, developer boards are available which all come with a DVD version of gOS. This includes licensed versions of all codecs needed for MP3 playback, DVD playback and some other stuff too.

gOS is available for download from http://www.thinkgos.com/ as a single live / install CD.

So what is gOS like? First impressions are very nice. The desktop runs on Enlightenment. It looks remarkably MacOS X like, right down to the dock at the bottom of the screen.

gOS detects most wireless cards without problems (seeing as this is based on Ubuntu 7.10 this shouldn't be a surprise) and the hardware support is quite good.

The installer looks very slick - but I did have some problems getting it to install on my laptop. After a few hours (aaargh!) of trying I finally managed to repartition the drive using gOS, reboot, manually install an ext3 file system, go back into the installer, choose a manual install, selected the already existing partitions, and then it worked.

This was certainly not as smooth as it might be.

On the plus side, the installer works fine on an 800x600 screen (unlike some other installers I could mention).

Once it has been installed it boots quickly, launches apps quickly and generally feels snappy even on old hardware. Yes folks, the trusty old HP OmniBook has been rolled out and reinstalled again. This may well be the cause of the HD install problems as the OmniBook hardware is, well, finicky.

The OS itself feels like the best of both worlds in that it is small and fast enough to run on old hardware, but looks and feels very modern indeed. As it is based on Ubuntu there is plenty of software available for it via Synaptic, the system is well documented, in fact, it is difficult to find much to complain about.

I'll have to play some more with it and see if the initial positive impressions hold up.

Arcadia Test 3 released for MacOS X

Pretty much every programmer has a guilty little secret, a game that was abandoned before its time, never to be completed.

This is the story of mine.



Many moons ago (back in 2002 in fact) I started work on my first games remake - which was of Imagine Software's Arcadia, a shoot-em-up from 1982. The game code (and pre-rendered 3d graphics) went quite well - up to the point where Windows 98 ate my hard disk and I learned an important lesson about the need to take regular backups.

In many ways this incident was a turning point for me, as this was what finally persuaded me to try going cold-turkey on Windows and run Linux full time. Initially I wanted to run Linux exclusively for a couple of months to see how it fared compared to Windows.

I never went back.

The only casualty of this switch was Arcadia. The source code that I found was out-dated, the pre-rendered graphics of the later levels was gone, and worst of all Blitz (which I was using to write the game in) didn't run on Linux. But there were rumours of a follow on to Blitz which would run on Windows, MacOS and Linux - Blitz Max.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

When the pre-release version of Blitz Max became available to buy I pre-ordered it, downloaded the Linux beta and started playing.

Arcadia was the obvious choice to try my hand with, but unfortunately porting the game over was not as simple as expected. So I wrote an (unreleased) Arcadia style game, and used the knowledge from this to update the test 3 code to Linux.



I've always planned to complete Arcadia at some point, but to be honest, I don't think this will ever happen. I've finally updated my site to put Arcadia "on hold" and then realised that all my other games run on MacOS X apart from Arcadia. So tonight I've snuck onto a Mac and knocked out a quick port of the game. I'll be uploading this later on tonight.

The funny thing is that now that I've put it on hold I've got some ideas about what I can do with Arcadia to try and finish it off. I'll have to investigate some freeware raytracing software and see if I can get to grips with it.

This will have to wait until after the first release of Batty Junior.

Dan at Work (the Sunday shift)

Sunday is not my favourite of days to be at work, but here I am.

The problem (for me) with Sundays is that is a fairly quiet day, but technical support can still be required. I've had a few support calls tonight (nothing too taxing though) and have managed to move on with my testing of some .MSI packages ready for rolling out to around 300 users.

I've been playing with the idea of product updates via Active Directory GPOs and have found that they work fairly well. Getting some of the products as MSI packages isn't as easy as it might be, but there are some products available to help convert / create packages.

This should make our security and product updates much easier. I didn't have the opportunity to look at this the last time we had an emergency update which when we upgraded to IE7. This came about when our proxy servers were updated and didn't work with IE6 and lower. That experience proved to me once and for all that trying to update all our users manually is too much work for a small IT department, so when the next batch of security updates came in (with a mid-December deadline for completion) I started looking at alternatives.

Using group policies isn't perfect, but it is certainly a damn site better than visiting each machine individually. I'm off to get some more packages sorted out, ttfn.

RetroVaders 1.30 and Chaos Caverns 1.20 for MacOS X

I've finally managed to get my hands on a Mac to get the MacOS port of RetroVaders updated. This brings the MacOS version up to date with the Linux / Windows releases.

I've also created an up-to-date version of Chaos Caverns for MacOS as well.

Both of these will be appearing on Dan's Remakes sometime in the next 24 hours.

I'd also spotted a small bug in the RetroVaders screenshot code, which I've fixed. I'll be recompiling the Linux and Windows versions of RetroVaders to incorporate the fix (the version number will stay the same though). All being even I'll get that done tomorrow as well.

BBC iPlayer

Here's a slice of personal opinion for you - DRM is what you use when you want to treat your customers like thieves.

The BBC has managed to do this with their launch of the iPlayer. Now for those of us in the UK the iPlayer is a pretty nice app to allow you to download BBC content to watch on your PC (content that your TV license fee has paid for by the way) - sort of a catch-up service.

The problem is that thanks to the BBC using Microsoft's DRM for the video they have effectively ruled out Linux users from using the service. Yes, there will be a web based service (using Adobe Flash presumably) "before Christmas" but as far as high resolution video goes - forget it. For now at least.

The BBC's head of technology has this to say: "We're totally committed to universality, to getting the service out to everyone, and to platform neutrality." And how, exactly does this fit with using a restricted codec? Answer: it doesn't.

Part of the BBC's justification for this has been the number of Linux users: "We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users." As one of the 600 I'm not too sure that their figures are correct.

As it turns out, is the BBC isn't too sure about those figures either: "Alternative analysis that we have run off which performs the measurement in different ways suggests that the potential number of Linux users could range from 0.3% to 0.8% (which, from a total UK bbc.co.uk user base of 12.2m weekly users [source: TNS] could imply a user base between 36,600 and 97,600."

Just think Mr Highfield - that's up to 97,600 viewers you are turning away.

Isn't it a shame that you didn't use an open video codec. You could have supported every platform without any real difficulties. This is what happens when you treat your viewers (who have already paid for the content) like thieves.

Thank you Auntie Beeb.

Wizball Remake released!

Those wonderful people at RetroSpec have just released their remake of the legendary Wizball. 20 months in the making, this is the best remake that I've seen in a long while, and a damn fine game in its own right.



For those of you who haven't played or were too young to have played Wizball when it was released in the late 1980s what's it all about eh?

The plot is some waffle about an evil wizard stealing all the colours from the world, and you as Wizball need to collect the colours and shoot the baddies to bring the colour back. OK, daft plot aside this is a tough horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up. Move around, shoot the baddies and gain power ups, such as the Catelite, which you also use to collect the colours.

The graphics have been scaled up to 640x480 and are smooth with a capital smoo. Mere words cannot describe just how damn good the game looks (the above video comes closer to doing it justice).

Your ears haven't been left out either, the excellent C64 soundtrack has been updated, rerecorded and has become a thing of beauty.

Of course, all this would mean nothing if the game play was wrong. The good news here is that the game plays like a dream. An especially surreal dream maybe, but a dream none the less.

(sorry, left to have another quick go)

Currently only the Windows version has been released, but Mac and Linux ports are due (hopefully) soon, the game does however play using Cedega.

Download from RetroSpec.

Linux (and BSD) on a HP OmniBook XE2 - Part 2

Although I've had Linux working on the old OmniBook, one problem had shown up - that was that the wireless card drops its connection after a couple of minutes. So my quest for the perfect free operating system for this old laptop continues.

FreeBSD has a reputation of good support of wireless cards, so it was with high hopes that I downloaded the latest version PC-BSD and installed it on the laptop.

First impressions weren't promising. The installer doesn't fit on an 800x600 screen, small, unimportant things like confirmation buttons are not visible and can only be accessed by the old "hit and hope" method of hitting tab and pressing enter and hoping that the correct option has been selected. Through a mix of luck and bloody mindedness I got PC-BSD installed.

The graphics card was detected, but showed some corruption once KDE had started up. Sound worked fine. The wireless card on the other hand was absent without leave. After a bit of searching through all the options looking for the configuration program for the card (there wasn't one) I discovered that you need to run a shell command and have the Windows drivers to hand to get the wireless card running.

Although this is nice as a fallback option, really this shouldn't be the default. Linux manages to support the cards natively, why can't BSD?

As a last resort I tried the distribution formerly known as Mandrake - Mandriva. Their latest release is Mandriva 2008, which runs as a live CD but can also be installed to disk. Running the live CD was a slow process as the CD drive isn't that fast on the OmniBook, but once the OS was installed to disk - wow! Colour me impressed - this is really good.

The wireless card was detected without any problems at all - and has remained connected to my wireless network without any problems with dropping the connection. The default desktop looks great, with no graphical corruption (unlike BSD). The onboard sound has been detected and works well. The local network shows up without any issues at all (browse smb:/ through Konqueror to see the local Samba shares).

What is really good is that even on this old laptop the whole thing feels snappy. Apps launch with very little delay. Web pages launch quickly. In fact, there is very little to complain about. I really like Mandriva 2008. It feels like a lot of time has been taken in getting things "just right" and compared to the other distributions this just feels so much better.

The on-screen fonts look better than I would have thought possible, the icon scheme looks slick, the only slight downer is that by default MP3 playback won't work. This is down to licensing issues, but luckily there are third party solutions for this.

All in all, it looks like the perfect Linux for this laptop may turn out to be one of the least likely ones.

Like a Meat Loaf out of Hell

It looks like Meat Loaf may be having some personal "issues" at the moment.

It has been reported that he pulled out of his concert at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle due to throat problems. Reading the comments (and from some of the later TV news reports) it looks like there may be other issues.

Finishing a concert early due to illness is bad, but forgivable. Walking out after 40 minutes of a sub-par performance with the parting shot of "this is the last f***** show I'll ever do" is more difficult to forgive.

Metro Radio Arena are refusing to give refunds to the Meat Loaf fans (or ex-fans as they may now be) because he performed for over an hour - a fact disputed by some of the audience.

Here's hoping that, unlike that famous Bat out of Hell, he won't be gone when the morning comes, but instead will get himself sorted out and give a proper apology to those who paid money to go and see him.

Naked Pictures of Your Mother

I had a bit of a shock when I checked my email this morning. My wife had an even bigger shock. I'd received a couple of, erm, artistic snapshots of an older woman, along with a message saying how much she was looking forward to seeing me again soon.

????????

Luckily for me (and my marriage) she lives somewhere in the Netherlands, and the accompanying text was in Dutch so my my wife has seen the funny side of it. I'm not too sure if I dare reply to her to let her know that she has got the wrong address as I REALLY don't want to a) embarrass or b) encourage her.

I'm going to have to hope that she doesn't send anything racier as it could certainly put me off my cornflakes.

Really, I was lucky that this was very obviously a mistake (or at the least a scam email), because if the mail had been from someone in the UK then I could have had a very difficult time explaining it!

Announcing: Batty Junior

Well, I've had a bit of a play and have decided on the next game from Dan's Remakes.

It is sort of a remake of Batty, an Arkanoid clone that appeared on quite a few 8 bit systems such as the Sinclair Spectrum.


Batty - Sinclair Spectrum

I'm going to simplify the game a bit so as to appeal to younger players, which is why I'm calling the game "Batty Junior" rather than just "Batty".


Batty Junior - Coming Soon

I've no firm date set for when the game will be released - I'll have to see how it develops.

Choosing the next project

Now that RetroVaders (apart from the Mac port which will follow fairly soon) It's time to decide what game I'm going to do next. Having a look through my blitz directory there are five or six "nearly started" games. These are the ones that seem like a good idea, but haven't had any real work done on them, or are in the "messing about with" stage (such as my "Hungry Horace" test code).

Having a look through these one of them caught my eye. I honestly couldn't remember how far I had got with it - as it turns out I'd got as far as setting the screen mode before getting side-tracked. Out of curiosity I downloaded some screenshots of the original game, snipped out and upscaled some of the graphics and had a basic game structure running quite quickly.

One thing that surprised me with RetroVaders is how much my kids enjoyed playing it, so with that in mind this game will be another fairly straight forward one, and something that I hope they'll enjoy playing too.

I'm off work tomorrow to do the school run, but while the children are out of the way I may get some more time to play around with this.

What game is it? I'm not telling. Don't drive yourself batty trying to work it out, I'll post more once I've got a "proof of concept" demo version ready.

RetroVaders 1.30 released

RetroVaders 1.30 is now available for Linux and Windows at the usual place. The MacOS X version will follow shortly.

Halloween cakes

Halloween is fast approaching, and those of us with younger children may be looking for something easy and fun that they can do that doesn't involve a computer.

Halloween sponge cakes are probably the easiest cakes to make, and the children can help measuring out, mixing and icing once they've been cooked.

Ingredients

110g (4oz) Butter or margarine
110g (4oz) Caster sugar (you can use normal sugar at a pinch)
110g (4oz) Self-raising flour
2 eggs
Vanilla essence and / or lemon essence
Blue and yellow food colouring

Method

Preheat oven to 190°C: 375°F: Gas 5.
Whisk together the butter and sugar until light and creamy.
Add the beaten eggs gradually with a little of the flour.
Fold in the remaining sieved flour and add the flavouring (about half a teaspoon of each).
Also add half a teaspoon of each of the yellow and blue food colourings - the mix should go a very nice shade of green.
Divide the mix into twelve individual cake cases (make sure the cases have been greased first).
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
Turn out on to a wire rack to cool

Don't forget to ice the cakes in green or red once they've cooled.

.
Halloween cakes - as iced by three children,
aged 4, 7 and 33. . . .

Retrovaders: Heading towards 1.30

I'm wondering whether to make an early release of RetroVaders 1.30.

There are a couple of reasons that I'm tempted to release it now. The main one is a bug in the invaders movement code which I'm not at all happy about leaving out there. The other is that there have been enough improvements (imho) to make it a worthwhile upgrade.

The downside to releasing now is that Mac users will have to wait a bit longer for their version (I don't have regular access to a Mac to compile it).

Let's have a quick run through of the new features and see what we have.

Bug Fixes:

UFO Scoring - Now works correctly between 50 and 300 (was going up to 310)
UFO Movement - Bug fixed that could cause the invaders to drop straight down the screen (I've only seen it twice and I've probably played it more than anyone)
Invader drop speed tweaked to ensure that they always land at the same height (there was a slight variance depending on which row landed)

New features:

Joypad support
Options Screen
Game options saved to disk
Multiple backdrops (Invaders, Deluxe Invaders, Retrovaders, None)
Multiple invader sprite sets (Retrovaders, Classic, Atari 2600)
Number of bunkers increased to four
Number of invaders increased to 50
UFO no longer appears if there are less than eight invaders on screen


I've still got some polishing of the options screen to do but I could release the next version this weekend some time once I've got that finished.

I'll have to think about this one.

Dan at work - Dan vs MySQL

Todays challenge was to port the back-end code of our company Intranet from SQL Server 2000 to MySQL. This is due to our company Intranet sitting on our web development server (not the best place for it really).

In theory this shouldn't be too difficult a job as the SQL queries that we run to generate the site aren't really that complicated (no nested procedures or anything like that), the only parts that I was a bit concerned about were moving the data (especially binary objects held in database tables) from SQL Server to MySQL.

I didn't want to install MySQL on the same server as SQL Server 2000, then I remembered that I'd already set up a MySQL database on a test server for use with Merak Email server, so that can hold an extra couple of tables till I can sort out a more permanent home for it.

MySQL comes with a migration tool which takes care of moving the tables and data from the old server to the new one. It will also make relocating the database later on an absolute breeze. There were a couple of gotchas - namely codepage support on some of the databases - the data wouldn't move over until I set the target database to "international" mode.

A couple of the ASP pages needed a little tweak here or there - the original SQL Server 2000 table name was "northeast.dbo" (this was to match a remote version of the database used for our "live" client pages) - the MySQL version is "northeast_dbo" so some of the queries needed a little nudge here and there, as well as MySQL not supporting things like CAST or TOP. All told it took a little over five hours to port our company Who's Who database, Newsletters databases (three of them), Editorial Style Guide and Administration pages (including fixing up the ASP pages).

Tomorrow I've got to create a version of our Intranet site for one of our sister sites, and I get the feeling that will be followed by one for another site too. So it looks like things could be a little busy for the next couple of days (at the very least).

BlogRush weekly update

Now that a further week has passed, let's have another look at BlogRush.

Well, there have been a further couple of referrals passed through - which is good. My site has passed their "strict quality criteria" and is not amongst the 10,000 blogs which have been removed. Apparently this should give an increase in traffic, so it seems only fair that as a blog of quality (how about this for a tag line: "Half a page of scribbled lines - a blog of quality") I should give them a bit longer to see if things pick up.

The dashboard still isn't done (aaaargh!) but I'll give them a bit longer and see how the site functions once it's finished.

I'll give it another look in a week and see if things improve.

Oh no! Another release of RetroVaders?

Don't panic, it will be a couple of weeks before the next full release as I want to add some more features into the game, as well as finish tweaking the gameplay / difficulty levels some more.

There has been an update to 1.20 for Windows, basically I've ended up releasing two binaries for Windows: one for OpenGL and one for DirectX.

Why?

Well, today I did some testing on Windows: PC 1 - NVIDIA GForce 5 card - wouldn't run the OpenGL version, but ran DirectX with no problems; PC2 - a very old onboard Intel graphics card - no for DirectX, but ran OpenGL perfectly. Hopefully releasing against both systems should cover as broad a spectrum of users as possible.

I've made a start towards what I'm expecting will be the final version of RetroVaders ("Finally!" I hear you cry) so some of the new features will include:

• Multiple Backdrops (three backdrops at present, and an option for no backdrop too)
• More invaders
• Tweaks to drop speed, enemy shots etc
• Code optimisations
  

A lot of this is already done, as well as some other bits and pieces, but I want to wait for further comments from users before putting this game to rest.


RetroVaders 1.30 - Coming Soon. . . . .

RetroVaders 1.20 released for Windows, Linux and MacOS

RetroVaders 1.20 is available for download from the usual place.

New features for this version include:

All versions:

Full colour invaders (can be disabled)
Mystery UFO now follows the 24, 14, 14 pattern
UFO bonus now displayed when shot
Backdrop can be disabled
New main screen
Minor bug fixes

Windows only:

Windows version now using DirectX for graphics (was using OpenGL)

MacOS only:

Switching between full-screen and windowed now working
Changing resolution now supported

The first review of RetroVaders

Well, I've just found what is probably the first review of RetroVaders, by the chaps at Tectonic. I think it's a positive review. Sort of. Probably.

Perhaps a quote from the review would be in order:

Which is why RetroVaders appeals to me so much. The graphics are pixelated, the movements jerky, the colours uninspiring. I love it.

Riiiiiight.

I'm still not sure if I've been mildly insulted or if he's just being ironic. What do you think?

Update: I've just found this part of it, so I'm now verging towards flattered rather than insulted, again - to quote the new part:

As a kid I spent hours, and innumerable 20c coins, at my corner cafe playing Pinball and Space Invaders. RetroVaders brings back fond memories in today's dated-but-still-cool game of the week.

Game of the week? Cool!

Update #2: On a side note I wonder if they are using Windows Vista? That could cause some performance issues even on a fast machine, due to Vista's problems with OpenGL.

The slowest PC I've tested RetroVaders on is a Celeron 800 with a 16meg Matrox G400 graphics card (not exactly an ultra-modern PC) running Windows XP. The CPU usage never went over 50%.

Sadly, unless someone feels like donating a PC with Windows Vista for me to develop on I'm not going to be able to fully support it. I may look at doing a DirectX version of RetroVaders if this looks like a big problem for a lot of people - I'll have to see how many people (if any) shout up about it.

RetroVaders version 1.20

One comment that had been made about RetroVaders was that the Mystery Ship frequency was wrong. In the original game the ship would appear after 23 shots, then every 14 shots following. The shot frequency resets after each wave of invaders.

Well, now RetroVaders does that too. I've also included the "maximum mystery bonus" cheat from the original, so now if you can shoot the Mystery Ship on the 24th shot (and every 15th shot following) you'll get the maximum 300 bonus points.

I've updated the title screen a bit too so it looks more authentic.

I'll be releasing the next version either late on tonight or tomorrow morning for the Linux and Windows version, with the MacOS version following later on tomorrow evening.

I'm going to try compiling the MacOS release with an earlier version of BlitzMax to see if that fixes issue with switching between full-screen and windowed modes.

Update: Well, compiling under version 1.24 of BlitzMax fixes the screen problems on MacOS. I've also made some more changes to the program, the backdrop can now be switched off, and the invaders are now in colour (which can also be switched off). I've a similar colour scheme to Space Invaders Deluxe. I'll post some screenshots of the new version later on.

Blogging Reality

I hope no-one assumed any bitterness in the previous post about BlogRush. Their site made promises that it can't keep.

So let's be scrupulously honest here for a second and talk about blogging and why we do it. There are three main reasons that people blog.

Reason One - To publicise a product or service

There are a lot of commercial blogs around these days, more because blogging is seen by some as "the next big thing" and "something for the kids". Some can be very entertaining, many less so. Chances are if you are behind one of these then you'll only be reading other blogs that mention your product.


Reason Two - To make money

Work from home! Free money! Accept sponsorship and adverts and make $1000 a week with minimal effort! There are one hell of a lot of these sites around, and to be honest they are up there with chain letters - for every one that makes money, there are hundreds that don't.

Ask yourself this - how many people are going to sit and look at your adverts? How many visitors are you going to need before you get enough click throughs to earn anything? Do you really believe that you will get money for nothing? Really? If you do then please pop by, click on a couple of my adverts and don't forget to tell your friends!


Reason Three - For Fun

Really this is the best reason for blogging (in my humble opinion). Most of us aren't going to get a lot of hits, in fact we'll be lucky if we hit double figures most days. So why bother?

In my case it is another creative outlet, something I enjoy doing. Blogging allows me to write something other than code or job reports (there are only so many times you can write about unlocking someones user account and still be interested in it).

If you are going to spend all your days staring at web stats for your personal blog then you'll probably end up disheartened and disappointed. Just in case you think I'm exaggerating about the sort of hit rate that most sites have then head on over to BlogToplist and have and check out the Unique Visitors for each site. Yes, there are some high flyers, but most sites are just like us, writing for whoever passes by.

We're currently riding high in the Video Games list at #122 (out of 300), and considering we've only been around for a month and a bit I don't really think I'm doing that badly.

By comparison, at present Dan's Remakes (my other site ) averages 150 unique visitors a day. I didn't think RetroVaders would generate so much interest. Once the interest drops off though then the number of visitors will drop down to the low double figures range again.

So again, why do it?

For me it is an easy answer: "Because I enjoy it!" And I hope that is the reason that you do too.

BlogRush update - still waiting for traffic

I've posted a couple of times about BlogRush, so here is the long awaited status update:

It's Crap.

There, I've said it. For smaller blogs like mine it just doesn't work. Over the past few weeks I've kept an eye on how much traffic BlogRush has sent my way, so here is the total number of people that they have referred to my site:

1

That's right folks, one. The administration BlogRush section still isn't finished which makes tracking what the service is doing difficult. It all makes it impossible to recommend.

In the interest of fairness (or just bloody-mindedness on my part) I'm giving it one more week, and then I'll be removing the link. Reciprocal linking should work both ways, but at the moment I'm sending them more traffic than they're sending me.

I'll update this in one weeks time.

RetroVaders - 1.10

I think I've got the screen resolution problem on MacOS X sorted now, but I'll have to wait till later on tonight before I'll get the chance to do a recompile.

I've ported the screen mode / resolution switching code from Chaos Caverns to RetroVaders and set the default resolution to 640x480. This should be enough to get all three platforms running properly.

There are a couple of other tweaks in the 1.10 release such as removing the auto fire so the base now acts more like the original one, reducing the frequency of the UFO from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10000, and slightly reducing the amount that the invaders drop each run to give the player a bit more of a chance.

The Linux and Windows versions will get updated later on today, the Mac one will probably be released late tonight or early tomorrow morning.

If this version compiles and runs OK then I'll also try a MacOS X compile of Chaos Caverns.

Update 1: The Linux and Windows versions are now online.

Update 2: The MacOS version is now online too. I've also uploaded a MacOS port of Chaos Caverns 1.000 (I'll post an up-to-date version at the same time as the next Chaos Caverns release).

RetroVaders for MacOS X - Test Release

I've managed to compile a version of RetroVaders for MacOS X (Power PC). There are a couple of minor issues with it - but the game itself should work OK.

Head on over to http://dans-remakes.sytes.net for more information and downloads.

RetroVaders - Coming soon for MacOS X

As an experiment I've compiled RetroVaders on MacOS X and will put the binary on Dan's Remakes later on tonight.

The minimum OS version required is MacOS X 10.3.9. The binary is a PPC one and has only been tested on a genuine PPC Mac. If anyone gets it working on an Intel Mac then please let me know (and also how well / badly it worked).

There are some things that I'll want to fix before I target MacOS properly, but at least the game works. It is full-screen only at the moment (and only fills a quarter of the screen) as the windowed mode looses its graphics after a couple of seconds.

I've got some ideas on how to fix the problems, but it will probably have to wait for Super RetroVaders before I try and implement them.

I've started adding a couple of things into RetroVaders so I'd say that Super RetroVaders is almost a certainty at this point.

Typhoon 2001

Going back ten or so years ago, I'd often pop over to see one of my mates on a weekend. His girlfriend and mine would sit and chat whilst we drank beers and played on the Atari Jaguar.

There were only a handful of good games available for the Jaguar. Alien vs Predator was one, Rayman was another. But the best of the best was Jeff Minter's Tempest 2000 (an update of Dave Theurers's classic Tempest). This was the most intense gaming experience I'd ever played. The visuals were psychedelic, the soundtrack was hypnotic, the action was fast and unrelenting. I know it sounds cliched but it was more an experience than a game.

Tempest 2000 expanded the original game by updating the graphics and sound, and adding extra features such as weapon upgrades, an AI droid and unlockable bonus rounds. Somehow it managed to add all this whilst still keeping what made the original Tempest so good in the first place.

Tempest 2000

There have been a couple of attempts at bringing the game to other systems. The PlayStation got Tempest X3 which was close, but didn't quite work as the game mechanics were changed around too much. The PC got a straight forward (if uglier) port of the Jaguar game (follow the link for the full history of the game).

There have also been a few attempts to create a follow up, both official (Tempest 3000 (Nuon) and Space Giraffe (XBox 360)) and unofficial (Tsunami 2010) but nothing quite captures the feel of the original Jaguar game.

Typhoon 2001

Until now. Typhoon 2001 is a freeware remake of Tempest 2000 which attempts to update the visuals and game play whilst retaining the qualities that made the original so damn good. The game has been in development for over a year and has evolved into a game that may be even better than the original. The game uses the original soundtrack, a mix of new and old sound effects, massively updated graphics (compare the screenshots) and now looks astounding.

Static screen shots really don't do this game justice.

Rather than trying to describe the indescribable, why not head on over to the Typhoon 2001 web site and try it for yourself. The game is available for both Windows and Linux, and requires a 500MHz processor and 3D accelerated graphics.

Right, I'm off for another go. See you later.

RetroVaders - Final Thoughts

Well, that's the initial release of RetroVaders out of the way. The response so far has been largely positive too, which is nice.

I've submitted the game to Retro Remakes and Happy Penguin - I'll have to go through my list of other places to submit to later on. Judging from past experience it will take a couple of days before the game appears on the sites, so I'll have to be patient.

I'm toying with the idea of making a "Super RetroVaders" rather than making an update to this one. The update will incorporate any new ideas I've had, as well as suggestions made by others.

I've also started updating the main Dan's Remakes site. This is long overdue and now is probably as good a time as any to start, especially as I need incorporate RetroVaders into the site. I've begun with the "Finished Projects" page, which now uses animated GIFs for the screenshots and also shows the comparison between the original game and the remake.

I'll start working my way through the site over the next couple of weeks, and move some of the non-remake stuff onto this site.

RetroVaders now available for download

RetroVaders, the new freeware space-invaders inspired retro game from Dan's Remakes is now available for download for Windows and Linux.

Head on over to http://dans-remakes.sytes.net for the download links.

RetroVaders - Updated release schedule

The finished game is now ready to go, all that is left is for me to upload the files to my site and update the downloads page.

Unfortunately Virgin Media have chosen today for their FTP service to stuff up - so although everything is finished and sat here on my hard drive I can't update my site.

AAAAAAARGH!

If I still can't get into my site by tomorrow lunchtime then I'll sort out an alternative download location for the files.

New release - RetroVaders

Well, the cat is definitely out of the bag now. If case you hadn't guessed it by the title, this is my "tribute" to Space Invaders. This isn't an identical clone but the basic gameplay is the same.



I made a point of not playing the original whilst writing this, because I wanted this to be my take on it (use MAME if you want the real thing). Some of the main differences are that you score 10 points for each of the invaders instead of different amounts for different types. The UFO scores between 10 and 300 points. Bonus lives are awarded every 1000 points. There are only three bases instead of four.



I'll be doing a final bug hunt tomorrow, writing the documentation (not that it requires much) and releasing the finished game at some point over the weekend (probably Saturday).

Binaries will be available for Windows and Linux. I'll provide a MacOs (PowerPC) version only if there is any demand for it - so if there are any Mac users out there who fancy a quick game of RetroInvaders then make sure you let me know.

The game is being released as freeware and has been written in BlitzMax (hence the ease of porting it between the three systems). Source code is not provided - but again, if there is any demand for it then I'll certainly consider cleaning it up and releasing it under the GPL.

Visit http://dans-remakes.sytes.net for this and my other remakes.

PlayPal - Retro gaming on the go

Once upon a time there was a handheld games system. No, not the Game Boy, this one was in colour. No, not the Lynx either, but Sega's Game Gear.

This was a rather cool little system that unfortunately ate through batteries like a battery eating machine, but on the upside had a crystal clear colour back lit display and some rather decent games available for it, mostly ports from the Sega Master System.

It lasted six years against the unstoppable might of the Game Boy before being put out to pasture, but that isn't the end of the story.

Last year The PlayPal was released. It's based on the Master System rather than the Game Gear and comes with 20 built in games, including some fairly rare ones.

First though - let's have a look at what you get for your money (currently around £15).

Retro Gaming on the go

First off - the packaging is actually rather decent. This is certainly no cheap Chinese clone system - all these titles have been officially licensed by Sega. You get the console and an AV lead. Yes kids, you can also play this on the telly (as long as it supports NTSC)! The d-pad is comfortable to use and the controls are responsive. The console is a little smaller than the original Game Gear and should be OK for all but the smallest hands.

A Mini Master System?

The 2.4 inch backlit display is clear with bright colour definition, albeit at a low resolution. The sound is clear enough and even supports the FM sound samples in games such as Altered Beast ("Power Up!").

There is a good choice of games albeit with a couple of stinkers such as Snail Maze. High points are Sonic - Triple Trouble, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Altered Beast, Columns (and Columns II), Global Defence, Eco II - The Tides of Time and Fantasy Zone.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World

That's seven really good games. Add the others into the mix (and who knows, you may even like some of them too) then you're looking at a bit of a bargain.

The PlayPal certainly gives you good value for your money. At the current exchange rate it's around 75p per game(!) on the handheld it is costs less than some budget games, plus you get the console too. Hopefully they will make a follow-up release with some more of the better Master System games.

In the couple of months since I first wrote this for Dan's Remakes the PlayPal has had daily use, not only by the kids but from my wife too. She has discovered the delights of Columns (no sniggering at the back there) and is hooked.

As a side note, I bought mine via Play Asia. Delivery took less than a week from Hong Kong and was very well packaged. They even gave a discount voucher against my next purchase.

Conclusion: A nice piece of nostalgia at a bargain price. Suitable for all ages.

One step closer to release

Another couple of items have been ticked off before the release. I've embedded the graphics and sound into the executable, so it should be a single 1.3 meg file which can be placed anywhere on your system regardless of whether you're using Windows or Linux.

I may be able to reduce the size of the executable a bit by ditching some of the none-required code modules, but I'll worry about that at the end.

I've changed the program to running in "strict" mode (something I should have done from the start). This is the same sort of idea as "option explicit" on QBasic / Visual Basic style programming languages in that all variables must be declared before use, and the variable types cannot change without being re-declared. This is handy for catching typos in variable or object names.

I've change the front screen to make it a bit nicer and added a basic high score feature to the game.

There are only a couple of small things that need to be done now which I should get done tomorrow. It's looking like I'll be releasing the game this weekend providing no show stopping bugs show up when I start testing the game on Windows.

Just for reference (and because I can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not), this is being coded in BlitzMax. This is down to it being relatively easy to use and cross-platform (you buy it once and can download and use it on all available operating systems).

One less reason to buy a PS3

Sony seem intent on shooting themselves in the foot again.

After the ill-feeling caused by the removal of the emotion chip (used for PS2 compatibility), and despite the PS3s less than stellar sales figures, they have now announced that they are removing PS2 compatibility completely. Yes folks, anyone upgrading will need to keep their PS2 around if they want to play PS2 games.

As before, UK and Australian gamers are being shafted first, with the downgrades being made available in other parts of the world later on.

This is apparently to get the price of the UK PS3 down to £299 (around $600) for the low end 40GB model.

As a comparison, the Amazon US price for the 60GB PS3 is $499 (around £250) and this includes backwards compatibility as well as the larger hard disk.

Speaking personally, any chance of me buying a PS3 in the immediate future have vanished. The thought of paying more money for less features is just plain idiotic, and unless Sony wise up to that idea then the future for the PS3 will continue to look bleak.

On a Bug Hunt

One of the most labour intensive parts of game programming (and programming in general) is bug hunting and optimisation. Even if you are a programming genius like what I is bugs can still sneak in to your code when your back is turned.

The only way to track them down is to play, play and play your game again. Be your own most dedicated play tester. One of the tests that I do is create a windowed mode for the game, and play it alongside a CPU monitor. This can give you some big clues as to where there are performance bottlenecks in your game.

For example, I found that while the game was playing, the CPU usage was only 2 - 3%, but pressing fire knocked it up to 70%. Ouch! That was fixed by merging the base drawing and player shot collision code into a single run.

Another bug was down to programmer daftness. Because I'd made the enemy shots part of the enemy structure, when an enemy was destroyed their shot vanished too. D'oh! Needless to say I've created a new structure just to hold the shots and moved the enemy shot code into its own section. This involved some major restructuring of the code but was well worth it.

I've added a simple (but effective) end sequence that fits in with the retro styling of the game.

I'll have to have a run through the code and see where else it can be cleaned up before adding in the final missing features. Dull work, but necessary.

BlogRush updates - Phase 2

Well, it looks like BlogRush is going to be changing. I hadn't realised that BlogRush hasn't been around for very long - in fact, it started around the same time as this blog (around a month ago).

During the two weeks that I've been with BlogRush I've had a grand total of 1 referral from them. Now, that is one visitor that I might not have otherwise had, so it is all for the good I suppose.

BlogRush Phase 2 may shake things up a bit. Some of the more exciting things for me is "Say goodbye to all the non-English blogs, junk blogs, and any low-quality blogs you may have seen from time-to-time in the widget" (hopefully that won't include me!), "Bonus Syndication For All Users, But Weighted Towards Low-Traffic Members" (yay!), "More Categories! (a lot more)". This last one is good, hopefully I'll find a category closer suited to this blog.

A "Random Wibbling" category perhaps?

Those toilet blues

To quote John McClain, "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"

Yes folks, it is time for the revenge of the toilet.

Last time it was the flush mechanism, this time the cistern is out for revenge.

"So whats wrong this time?" I pretend to hear you ask? Well, after visiting the porcelain reading room for a bit of quiet time, I'd flushed, washed my hands (of course) and was about to head off down stairs when I heard a dripping tap.

Oh well, I'll turn it off. That's funny - the cistern is still filling up. And why is the floor wet.

Oh no.

On checking, the cistern was leaking and dripping from where it connects onto the loo. There is a wing nut underneath the cistern which, sadly, hadn't been tightened properly when the loo was fixed the last time, and by the looks of things it has been working its way loose ever since.

Well, we've mopped it all up, said some rude things about plumbers in general (and the one who we had last time in particular) and will see if that has stopped the leak. If not, we'll be getting the bugger out again to do the damn job properly.

Dan's Remakes - New Game Update #1

The countdown has started for the new release. It is kind of difficult to say too much about the game without revealing what is actually is, but here goes.

Most of the original arcade games features are intact, in fact there are only a couple of things that I still want to include before the final release. I've reduced the number of enemies (but made them larger and chunkier). This makes the game a bit easier at the start, but the difficulty ramps up as you progress through the levels.

I've upped the speed slightly too. The graphics have been kept simple, but I've used transparancy to help emulate the original reflected backdrop effect (you'll see what I mean when you play it).

Bonus lives are in (every 1000 points earns a new life). Unlike the original all enemies have the same points value.

Things left to do before a release:

• Implement missing game "bonus points" feature.
• Tweak the difficulty levels a bit.
• Tweak the shot mechanism a bit.
• Create a proper intro screen and menu (there is only a holding page at the moment).

Things that might be in the game:

• Multiple screen resolutions.
• Fancy pause screen (same as Chaos Caverns perhaps).
• Special in game effects (although I don't want to overdo it this time round).

I might do a second release after all to add in the extras (and fix any bugs that might make an appearance), we'll have to see what the reaction to the game is.

There will definitely be Linux and Windows versions of the game (the game is being developed in Linux using Blitz Max).

I'll post more later on this week when hopefully I'll be that bit closer to the final release.

Release date: When I'm happy with it.
Price: Freeware.
Primary download site: Dan's Remakes.

Linux on HP OmniBook XE2

(last updated 07/10/2007)

Sometimes working in IT does have its benefits. Take today for example. We´ve been clearing out some of our old hardware, and amongst the 80486, Pentium I and Pentium IIs was a small stack of old laptops. Most of them were digital doorstops, but there was a stack of three HP OmniBook XE2s. All three of them had problems - but thankfully not the same problem, so I was able to swap things around a bit and come out with a working (if low-spec) laptop.

The spec of the rescued laptop is a Celeron 433, 160 meg RAM, 40GB hard drive, 800x600 resolution display. Although the laptop doesn´t have any in-built network ports I do have an old wireless card that I´ve wanted to try.

I wanted to test the laptop out with Linux, but the only distro I had to hand was an old beta version of Freespire, but what the Hell, at least I could use it as a quick test even if I was going to replace it with Ubuntu later on.

The install was straight forward, taking around half an hour. I accepted the defaults and took over the entire hard drive. Everything (including the sound card) was detected OK. So far, so good.

Now here is a good thing. Freespire auto detected my wireless card and it works fine with my home network. In fact, I´m posting this from the Laptop.

I´m probably going to install something a bit more lightweight on this (probably Slackware), but I´ve got to admit that I am impressed with how easily everything was installed, and how little configuration was required.

I´m going to play around a bit more with this - who knows, I might even keep Freespire on for a few days.

. . . .

Update #1 - 6/10/2007

Or maybe not. One problem with Freespire is that it is dog slow on older hardware. This is a shame - as overall the distro seemed rather nice. Click'n'Run works well for installing additional software and updates, but the laptop just seemed to be running slower than my old Pentium MMX 233 laptop. I'm not too sure if this was entirely Freespires fault, as I was running on battery power so it may have stepped down the CPU speed. One good positive is that at least I know that my wireless card will work with Linux.

I did give Ubuntu Gutsy a try but couldn't get it to boot into the live CD. This is strange as Freespire is based on Ubuntu and it worked fine. I'll maybe give Ubuntu another try at a later date and see if I can figure out what is going wrong.

So instead I'm re-installing the laptop with Zenwalk, a Slackware derived distro. I've always fancied giving something like Zenwalk a shot and I'm certainly curious as to how it will compare with something more "modern" like Freespire, Ubuntu or Mandriva.

Ths Zenwalk installer is very similar to the traditional Slackware one in that it is text based. One important difference is that you don't choose the packages that need to be installed, this is a single CD with everything you need on it. I'm installing using the default options, so this will be taking over the entire hard drive and configuring the partitions itself.

The Zenwalk install took around 40 minute and takes up a similar amount of space to Freespire. One notable difference is that whilst Freespire creates one large partition, Zenwalk gives us separate Root, Home and Swap partitions. I've got to admit this is a much better way of laying out the disk, as at least if you need to re-install at some point then your home directory and files will be safe.

After the main install has finished, there are a couple of options to configure for things like the Admin password, adding a new user and so on, then you reboot, the sound card is detected and on you go.

Or not, as the case may be. Zenwalk uses a very minimalist desktop enviroment (XFCE) - too minimalist for my liking. Also although it detected the wireless card (whoo!), it doesn't work (boo!). It took a while to track down the problem - which turns out to be the firmware for the card (an Atmel based one) isn't included. Once I'd tracked down the firmware and copied the .BIN files into /lib/firmware, one reboot later and everything was working great.

Not a difficult thing to do once you know about it, but not really that well documented. Yes, there were warnings (available via dmesg) but how many novices are going to check there?

Oh well, at least it does work. Zenwalk certainly feels faster than Freespire, it also boots up a lot faster (around half the time that Freespire took). Right - time to play around with it a bit more.

. . . .

Update 2 - 7/10/2007

Well, Zenwalk works OK, MP3 and MPEG playback worked out of the box, USB devices are automounted, everything pretty much works as expected.

One issue I have found is with the Zenwalk tools. If you are running in 800x600 then you can't use all of the tools. This is especially true of the update tool - which although you can view the software, and add it to the list to install, the install button is hidden - presumably somewhere off the bottom of the screen.

I'm going to install KDE from the Zenwalk repositories and see how that works, as I'm still not sure about XFCE.