Upcoming H.E.R.O. game

[chysn]

Hey, that's very well done! I've never played the original, so first time here, and I'm not very good at it yet.

But it definitely has that 2600 vibe!

[Ola H]

Even though I had seen pictures, I was a amazed by how good it looks in play. Large screen, lovely background colors and amazing hires, yet colorful, software sprites. I really need to get a SD2IEC so I can play this on a CRT with a proper joystick!

[bjonte]

Thanks chysn and Ola H! I also think it looks good in motion. Colors bleed a lot on the real machine though so the main character kind of requires a good monitor. Some colors, especially red, looks pretty bad on some TVs/monitors. An s-video-mod is recommended.

[mingle]

Any chance someone could post a quick YouTube clip of the game running? I don't have access to my Vic-20 atm.

Cheers,

Mike.

[bjonte]

Any chance someone could post a quick YouTube clip of the game running? I don't have access to my Vic-20 atm

There’s a GIF animation on the web page where you can see it running in PAL emulation.

[bjonte]

It seems I have made a mistake when selecting the NTSC palette. Could someone with an NTSC machine try out a special build from me and take a photo on each of the four first levels?

[bjonte]

I have released a version 1.3 that only modifies the NTSC colors. No other functional changes. I'm sorry about the inconvenience.

[mingle]

The control and movement are very nice. I just can't get over the lack of texture to the background (makes it easier to see the miners though!) after placing the C64 version to death in the early-mid 1980s!

Is there no way it can upgraded/modified without a total rewrite?

Cheers,

Mike.

[Mike]

I just can't get over the lack of texture to the background [...] Is there no way it can upgraded/modified without a total rewrite?

Mike, please note that what I already wrote in my post of August, 20th still applies.

[Ivanhoe76]

This game shows once again that many early and mid 80's games could easily be converted to our beloved vic20 with minimum loss. Thanks for your excellent work!

[Ola H]

I don't think "easily" is the most adequate word in the world here But on the other hand it was certainly not easy to make those early AAA games for the Atari 2600 either!

[bjonte]

The control and movement are very nice. I just can't get over the lack of texture to the background (makes it easier to see the miners though!) after placing the C64 version to death in the early-mid 1980s!

Is there no way it can upgraded/modified without a total rewrite?

Having a background would mean that the background, hero, enemies and objects would have to become monochrome using the same color or it would look worse than ZX Spectrum games with color. I’m not excited by this.

[bjonte]

I don't think "easily" is the most adequate word in the world here But on the other hand it was certainly not easy to make those early AAA games for the Atari 2600 either!

Haha, true! I’m super impressed by the quality games produced on the 2600. You can’t even just set the horizontal position of a sprite on that machine. Super tricky to tame.

[Mike]

Having a background would mean that the background, hero, enemies and objects would have to become monochrome using the same color or it would look worse than ZX Spectrum games with color. I’m not excited by this.

... and it is not as if Mike (mingle) hadn't been told all about this in no uncertain terms before ...

[fuzzybad]

Just had a go in VICE, this is a wonderful version! The graphics are colorful and detailed, the animation smooth and gameplay is spot-on. Shame this wasn't released back in the day, it would have been a big hit I'm sure! (although few in the 80's would have had the necessary RAM expansion)