Upcoming H.E.R.O. game

[bjonte]

Hello friends!

Today I am happy to announce that a H.E.R.O. game port is being made for the VIC20! It is based on the Atari 2600 version.

The game itself is feature complete but it lacks an introduction screen. It will be distributed as a disk image and will require a 32 KiB RAM expansion to run.

[tokra]

Looks impressive. Can't wait for the final game!

[orion70]

really can't wait! It's been one of my favs since the early times, and always dreamed about a VIC port.

[bjonte]

Nice that you look forward to it. I liked the game a lot myself.

[mingle]

My favourite game on the C64... and one of the few I actually completed.

It would be good if the backgrounds had a bit more detail, rather than just plain colour - unless this is just a prototype?

Cheers,

Mike.

[bjonte]

It would be good if the backgrounds had a bit more detail, rather than just plain colour - unless this is just a prototype?

I agree it would be nice but there’s 0 characters left to play with. Any detail would look extremely repetitive so I’m actually preferring the Atari 2600 style.

This isn’t a prototype. It’s the (just about) finished game.

[Mike]

Nice! Another game to tick off my list!

I'd suppose the colour schemes of the player character and enemies are done with raster effects (changing $900F each raster, possibly even mid-line)?

The game [...] lacks an introduction screen.

Is this supposed to be a title screen that shows between gameplays or should it be a load screen similar to what I provided for Cheesy Trials? In either case it would be rather easy to incorporate a picture drawn in MINIPAINT into the game.

[bjonte]

I'd suppose the colour schemes of the player character and enemies are done with raster effects (changing $900F each raster, possibly even mid-line)?

Almost. It's raster effects poking into the color memory. Quite time consuming so the game sometimes suffer from framedrops on NTSC.

Is this supposed to be a title screen that shows between gameplays or should it be a load screen similar to what I provided for Cheesy Trials? In either case it would be rather easy to incorporate a picture drawn in MINIPAINT into the game.

It's going to be a sort of title screen that's shown only once with credits and perhaps with some info on how to play. The memory is too full to have anything left when the game is running. I imagine some graphics and music there. I'm unsure right now how much memory I have available but I hope it will be a nice introduction.

[Mike]

Almost. It's raster effects poking into the color memory. Quite time consuming so the game sometimes suffer from framedrops on NTSC.

Ah, O.K. - that's actually how Victragic's 2013 rendition of Pitfall! colours the player character and the snake/fire on the right of each game screen (background/trees/ladders/ponds/tarpits are all done with changes to $900F).

It's going to be a sort of title screen that's shown only once with credits and perhaps with some info on how to play.

I checked against several C64 cracks - some of them retained the intro screen with a rather bland "ActiVision® presents John Van Ryzin's H.E.R.O.™ Adapted by The Softworks © 1984 Activision, Inc." which surely could be bettered.

[Ola H]

Looks ace! I liked the C64 version a lot but was always much more impressed by the Atari 2600 version. The plain color blocks seems to work fine here too, and I agree that a repetitive pattern would look less elegant.

If it controls as well as the 2600 and C64 version, it will be a fantastic addition to the Vic library.

[mingle]

That's a real shame... Are you sure you couldn't squeeze some extra space for better backgrounds? I'm sure when I tinkered, (many, many moons ago!) with the C64 version - it wasn't much more than 32K in size?

The atmospheric backgrounds were one of the things that really 'made' the game... Tried and couldn't get into the 2600 version

Cheers,

Mike.

It would be good if the backgrounds had a bit more detail, rather than just plain colour - unless this is just a prototype?

I agree it would be nice but there’s 0 characters left to play with. Any detail would look extremely repetitive so I’m actually preferring the Atari 2600 style.

This isn’t a prototype. It’s the (just about) finished game.

[bjonte]

I checked against several C64 cracks - some of them retained the intro screen with a rather bland "ActiVision® presents John Van Ryzin's H.E.R.O.™ Adapted by The Softworks © 1984 Activision, Inc." which surely could be bettered.

Interesting! I didn’t know there was an intro screen! Thanks, I’ll have a look.

[bjonte]

If it controls as well as the 2600 and C64 version, it will be a fantastic addition to the Vic library.

The controls will be exactly like the Atari 2600.

[bjonte]

That's a real shame... Are you sure you couldn't squeeze some extra space for better backgrounds? I'm sure when I tinkered, (many, many moons ago!) with the C64 version - it wasn't much more than 32K in size?

The difference is that the C64 has sprites and double sized video RAM access. Nearly all the memory and all CPU time is spent om making software sprites on the VIC20. The comparison is unfair.

There are a couple of more technical decisions that leads to the blocky design. So even if there was a way to add more graphics it would have to be redesigned from scratch. I don’t think this would happen. It’s just too much work and it may not play out well technically since new problems surface.

[orion70]

Simple and clean as it is - slap a title screen in the game and please release it ASAP