Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

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aeb
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Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by aeb »

Released today. I hope you like it! This thread for discussion and comments.

Name: Archon - The Light and the Dark
Author: Aleksi Eeben
Genre: VIC 20 conversion of a classic arcade-strategy action/board game
Requirements: Unexpanded VIC-20

Title Screen.jpeg

ARCHON - THE LIGHT AND THE DARK

Unexpanded VIC 20 Version by Aleksi Eeben in 2021
First Release (24 June 2021)

Download:
archon.zip
(134.36 KiB) Downloaded 152 times
(Updated 29 June 2021)

Eight Bit Shed Dropbox: http://bit.ly/vic20archon
Announcement in Eight Bit Shed Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eightbitshed/p ... 7397248729

Board.jpeg
Credits.jpeg

Acknowledgements:

This Unexpanded VIC 20 port/adaptation of Archon is based on the original game by Anne Westfall, Jon Freeman and Paul Reiche III released in 1983. This version is not approved or endorsed by them, and I've done this solely as a hobby and as an act of showing respect to this immersively great game, that has definitely survived time. No code was copied from the original, it's all written from scratch during one month of hot summer nights in May-June 2021.

Icon graphics are copied pixel-by-pixel from the Commodore 64 version with minor adjustments in the outlines to make them fit the 8x16 pixel box and flat pixel ratio of VIC 20. Title image is adapted from the original Archon manual scans found on web.

Original title music was composed by Tommy V. Dunbar. A short jingle version is used in VIC 20 Archon title screen and when a game has ended.


About Archon:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_T ... d_the_Dark
Original manual: https://www.mocagh.org/ea/archon-manual.pdf
Detailed information on the official Atari 800 version: http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/44

Battle 1.jpeg

I have done my best to keep the essential gameplay as close as possible to the original, but due to the limited RAM (5K) of unexpanded VIC 20 and the limited graphics capabilities, I've had to leave out certain details.

Many of these are due to the memory limit: The game currently uses every single byte of RAM, so adjusting simple features like these is not quite as easy as it might seem - any changes always require size-optimizing or leaving out something else.

Differences to the original Commodore 64 version of Archon:

- Phoenix is not invincible while bursting flames. This makes Phoenix-Shapeshifter battles less boring
- Icons do not have walking animations, but they're mirrored in battle when moving to the other direction
- Icons do not regenerate their health over time
- Revive spell always revives the last defeated icon and allows placing the revived icon anywhere on the board
- Power points are only partially protected from spells: Teleport, summon and revive accept power points as target. This makes spells a little more strategically important. Power points are protected from other spells just like in the original, though
- Ground moving icons on board cannot retrace back to starting square to restore their steps. It's 3 steps and you've done your move. However, if you make a mistake on the first step and immediately step back, you can cancel the move
- Ground moving icons immediately attack an opponent when walking into their square on the board. Flying and teleporting icons obviously require a button press
- Original game didn't allow canceling moving a piece after it was picked up. I had to leave out the check for legal moves, so you can now cancel any move by pressing the button while standing on the starting square
- There's considerably less text in the game, especially when casting spells. Used spells are shown in red in the spellbook. Press button after selecting the spellcaster to open spell selector
- When opened, the spell selector shows the first spell Shift Time without any further instructions. Move up or down to browse through spells.
- "Cease conjuring" is just "Cancel", last item on the list
- Summoned elementals or revived icons appear on top of the spellcaster, just move them to their desired target location from there
- Teleportation (both the spell and spellcaster movement) use the same code as flying instead of the teleport animation
- Exchange spell requires selecting two icons after casting the spell. There's unfortunately no instructions on the screen, but you'll figure it out
- There's only 1 joystick on VIC 20. Light always plays on the keyboard (AWDX, Left Shift) and Dark on the joystick
- There's no single player mode. That is, no opponent AI. Find a friend and play! :)
- Bullet reload times, bullet speeds, health points, damages, light cycle bonuses, etc. are not 1:1 matched with the original, but they are quite close and proportionally the same. No big differences that would disturb the balances between the icons
- End game doesn't announce the winner in text, but the board frame color is changed to the winner's color and the Archon jingle is played. A button press on keyboard (Left Shift) starts a new game

Icon Roster.jpeg
Known bugs:

- Earth elemental summoned by Dark side walks backwards in battle (visual glitch)
- A colored block flashes on NTSC after some spells or after ending a battle (visual glitch)
- Disk drive keeps spinning after loading the game part. You can just turn off the drive after loading the main game

Please report bugs to aleksi.eeben@gmail.com with a screenshot and a description how to replicate the bug, thanks!

(The game requires no memory expansion, but the autostart disk version (load the file BOOT) should boot fine even with memory expansions installed.)
Battle 2.jpeg
(mod: this post moved from announcements to here, intro post in the thread here moved to announcements and annotated with info in a somewhat more compact form ...)
Last edited by aeb on Tue Jun 29, 2021 4:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Vic20-Ian
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Vic20-Ian »

Wow Aleksi, this looks great, downloading to try it out now.

The Vic20 seems to be having a renaissance in the years approaching it's 40th Birthday.

I am launching a competition in the next week to run from July to November with first prize over $140.

I hope folks on here are agreeable to 2021 releases being counted, it seems reasonable to me. Perhaps a version with your bug fixes or an expanded version could be entered.

Thank you - a game I was intrigued by like Chaos - War of Wizards.
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Mike »

Nice! Another one to tick off the list. ;)
aeb wrote:(The game requires no memory expansion, but the autostart disk version (load the file BOOT) should boot fine even with memory expansions installed.)
When one runs the game with a bigger (>= +8K) RAM expansion present, the upper part of the title screen is corrupted. Here's an alternate BOOT that works with both ",8,1" (autostart) and ",8" (then a RUN is necessary), with all RAM configs: boot.zip.

Greetings,

Michael
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by orion70 »

Image
aeb
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by aeb »

Thanks Mike, I just heard about this from Misfit/Mika as well and fixed it :) Archon is now updated in Dropbox and in the Denial releases thread.

I'll check your boot program, could be useful in the future!

(The bug was actually not just in the boot, but also in the file ARCHON, which assumed that it's always started with Y register having value of zero...)
Mike wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 7:38 am Nice! Another one to tick off the list. ;)
aeb wrote:(The game requires no memory expansion, but the autostart disk version (load the file BOOT) should boot fine even with memory expansions installed.)
When one runs the game with a bigger (>= +8K) RAM expansion present, the upper part of the title screen is corrupted. Here's an alternate BOOT that works with both ",8,1" (autostart) and ",8" (then a RUN is necessary), with all RAM configs: boot.zip.

Greetings,

Michael
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by ral-clan »

Oh my gosh! One of my favourite C64 games on the VIC-20! I never would have thought it possible!

(mod: post moved from Announcement section to here. See here: viewtopic.php?t=9969)
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tokra
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by tokra »

Oh my! What a brilliant port! I never would have thought you could squeeze the game into unexpanded memory as well. Also this proves that with sensible color-choices multicolor-mode does not have to look bad and can overcome technical difficulties.

Would really love a "deluxe"-version for expanded VIC-20. This could include

- support for 4-player-adapter (rather 3-player adapter for the VIC)
- play against computer
- character animations

Either way, much appreciating showing off what the VIC-20 is capable off. What's next? Summer Games?
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Mayhem »

As per my comment on FB, get some +8k RAM in there (or a cartridge version!) and make it 100% to the original heh. Stunning for what there is already though.
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Vic20-Ian »

Mike wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 7:38 am Nice! Another one to tick off the list. ;)
aeb wrote:(The game requires no memory expansion, but the autostart disk version (load the file BOOT) should boot fine even with memory expansions installed.)
When one runs the game with a bigger (>= +8K) RAM expansion present, the upper part of the title screen is corrupted. Here's an alternate BOOT that works with both ",8,1" (autostart) and ",8" (then a RUN is necessary), with all RAM configs: boot.zip.
Hi Mike,

This crashes with a Syntax error in 63344 on Vice using Autostart or if you load "boot",8 and type run?

I can load it fine with load "boot",8,1 though.

I am using Vice 2.4.

Thanks
Ian
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Mike »

Ian,
Vic20-Ian wrote:This crashes [...]
the file "BOOT" in my archive is supposed to replace the file "BOOT" in the original distribution of (VIC) Archon, either in the folder 'singlefiles' or in the 'archon.d64' disk image.

Edit: The line 63344 appears with LIST when you load the original BOOT file from Aleksi's first and second downloads. Unlike my BOOT file, Aleksi's BOOT file is not at all supposed to be LOADed with ',8' and then RUN - only a load with ",8,1" works there!

So you didn't use my BOOT file after all. This is a bug report you should have directed at Aleksi.

Michael
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by aeb »

2 joysticks is something I could look into. Could you suggest which adapter I should choose and is there any programming examples? It should be one of those supported by VICE and one that is also popular. How many people have these for VIC? I'd probably create it as a separate program build, just to keep the original tape/RAM version compact.

Opponent AI and character animations are bigger & more tedious tasks, perhaps out of my scope of interest at the moment :)

tokra wrote: Fri Jun 25, 2021 3:53 am Oh my! What a brilliant port! I never would have thought you could squeeze the game into unexpanded memory as well. Also this proves that with sensible color-choices multicolor-mode does not have to look bad and can overcome technical difficulties.

Would really love a "deluxe"-version for expanded VIC-20. This could include

- support for 4-player-adapter (rather 3-player adapter for the VIC)
- play against computer
- character animations

Either way, much appreciating showing off what the VIC-20 is capable off. What's next? Summer Games?
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Philsan »

Mayhem wrote: Fri Jun 25, 2021 7:29 am As per my comment on FB, get some +8k RAM in there (or a cartridge version!) and make it 100% to the original heh. Stunning for what there is already though.
+1
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by tokra »

aeb wrote: Sat Jun 26, 2021 1:29 am 2 joysticks is something I could look into. Could you suggest which adapter I should choose and is there any programming examples? It should be one of those supported by VICE and one that is also popular. How many people have these for VIC? I'd probably create it as a separate program build, just to keep the original tape/RAM version compact.
I would guess the one by Protovision/Icomp is the most popular around:

http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/4_Player_Adapter

There is example-code there as well (also for the VIC-20). Maybe from an implementation standpoint it is the easiest to just use the two user-port-joystick-ports for 2-player mode.
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by Jeff-20 »

:shock:
High Scores, Links, and Jeff's Basic Games page.
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Re: Archon - Unexpanded VIC 20 Version

Post by malcontent »

I agree with Jeff: :shock: (It helps that I am also a Jeff, it would be weird to disagree with myself) Insane and impressive.
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