NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!

[Zoe Robinson]

Roland Goes Rescuing, a small 20-level game I threw together over the festive period, is now available to download. It is written for the Amstrad CPC range of computers but could probably be ported to other systems as well, if anyone fancies giving that a try.

It's coded entirely in BASIC; utilises a rather underused Locomotive BASIC trick to colour standard CPC characters as if they are sprites; and can be modified to your heart's content.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed coding it.  

Download it here

[Gryzor]

Aww nice present ☺️

[Zoe Robinson]

Happy Gaming!

[Gryzor]

Tee-hee here I am on a Saturday night looking at a BASIC listing and playing like it's 1986

[Zoe Robinson]

There's nothing wrong with that; the Eighties were awesome.

[AMSDOS]

Tee-hee here I am on a Saturday night looking at a BASIC listing and playing like it's 1986

With a few adjustments, I can have it playing like it's 1984! 

[mr_lou]

Perfect timing!

We're heading out the door in 90 minutes, to meet up with our retro mates, to have a whole day retro gaming. This is just what I needed to bring with me! 

[megachur]

Very nice ! 

Maybe, you can improve your code : in line 100, don't print LIVE and LEVEL all the time... only when it's change ! This will increase slightly the draw of the screen ! 

and then, for the gameplay, you can change the x and y or the monster move with a random 1 or -1 and test if the new x, y column / lines stay in the map !

[Zoe Robinson]

I like the random movement thing, it would improve the game immensely. If I can get the damn thing to work, that would be wonderful (the game got delayed a day while I tried to do it but I kept getting out-of-bounds errors, so I took it out).

[VincentGR]

Thanks Zoe!

[dthrone]

Any chance of some screenshots being posted to the thread 

[Zoe Robinson]

Here you go.

[JayBlood]

Many thanks Zoe. Happy new year!

[Zoe Robinson]

Happy new year to you, too.

[dthrone]

Here you go.

Thanks, looks great!

[Zoe Robinson]

Thanks. It needs a fair bit of tweaking (and it turns out it won't work properly on a 464 because of string lengths) but for a few hours' work, it's not bad.

[AMSDOS]

Thanks. It needs a fair bit of tweaking (and it turns out it won't work properly on a 464 because of string lengths) but for a few hours' work, it's not bad.

With a few adjustments, it'll work on a 464, simply change the PRINT statements with the graphical string assignments in Lines 100-110, 590, 940 & 2630 to read PRINT USING"&"; followed by the graphical string asssignments from those lines and the game will work on the 464 as well.


I made a post about this midway last year (2019), after discovering this technique being used in an obscure 1986 Type-In Fort Invincible from Computer and Video Games Magazine.

[Zoe Robinson]

Thank you SO MUCH!! I knew I'd read about a method that would sort this out but I couldn't find where it was. You've saved me so much trouble.

[AMSDOS]

While I was playing with the game there were some glitches, Roland not being deleted from their old position, I'm not sure if it was an existing problem or one I created by not using PRINT USING"&";" " to blank the graphic, which I didn't think were necessary in that case.

[Zoe Robinson]

While I was playing with the game there were some glitches, Roland not being deleted from their old position, I'm not sure if it was an existing problem or one I created by not using PRINT USING"&";" " to blank the graphic, which I didn't think were necessary in that case.

Yeah, there are some glitches. Roland has never failed to be deleted for me but the goblins don't spawn in the right point on each level and the levels are too sparsely populated a lot of the time. I'll see what I can do to fix it all in the next update.

[Zoe Robinson]

I'm happy to say that the game is now tweaked and working just fine on the 464. I've also tweaked the goblin positions on each level, so the game works properly now.

You can download the DSK file here or download a WAV file to load into a 464 here.

[Zoe Robinson]

The game has been updated to tweak the code that prints Roland to the screen; which should hopefully remove the possibility of you leaving a line of Rolands behind when using the joystick. The presents also reset themselves now if you play the game more than once without stopping and RUNning the code again.

The links are the same as the ones in the post above, however.

[SRS]

I like the random movement thing, it would improve the game immensely. If I can get the damn thing to work, that would be wonderful (the game got delayed a day while I tried to do it but I kept getting out-of-bounds errors, so I took it out).

This seems to do it, just gave it a little try - and thx for letting us "hack" your game !

Code Select Expand

518 IF RND<0.016 THEN mondir%(t)=ABS(mondir%(t) mod 2)+1:IF RND>0.5 THEN mondir%(t)=mondir%(t)*-1

[mr_lou]

Nice coverage by Xyphoe yesterday!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/532001461

Kinda motivates me a bit to finish some of my own BASIC game projects.... I can't even remember how many I've started up at this point. But the common factor is that they always die, mostly because I imagine no one will be interested in them anyway. Xyphoe's enthusiasm for a slow BASIC game was a bit surprising to me.

[Zoe Robinson]

Xyphoe loves anything Amstrad and a new game is a new game. Don't look at it as "who will be interested in this", we aren't in the age where everyone with any interest in game making was pumping out a type-in to send to their favourite magazine; we are now in the realm of enthusiasts only, so not only are new projects relatively scarce but the recipients of those projects are eager to see the results. Code away!