If you have ever held up two mirrors facing each other and put something between them then I guess you will know what I’m talking about.

Now we just need scoring, level progression, death, game over, title screen, sound, high score tables (online?), etc, etc.

Not much to do then eh. LOL

What is a frame? It’s just another name for a level.

There are a couple of extra frames in the Dragon32 version of the game which I’m going to try to uncover and add to the game also – and perhaps a few more extras of my own. Maybe take it up to about 10 frames in total?

After some mutterings in the Retro Remakes forum about the game looking a bit overly glowy and stuff due to the plasma code I’ve had a bit of a shake up in the visuals and I think it looks more classy now. Not as full-on in the glow, but nicer for it. Scanlines too to give it that arcade style look.

Here is a little look at Frame 4 so you can see what I mean.

Is that a big improvement? Hopefully.

It might be due to the nice boost I got when contacting the original author of the game who is more than happy to let me remake it and seems enthusiastic about Cruising still after all this time.

Mega thanks to Jeff for being such a bloody nice bloke and making my week.

I spent some of this evening/morning after spending a nice day with my missus working on the Chaser code – hopefully it does a good job of mimicking the behaviour in the Spectrum version already but if it needs some tweaks then not to worry.

Apart from not being able to die or progress the code for a level of the game seems to be filling out rather nicely.

I’ve been looking at videos and screens of my old games and thinking maybe they weren’t so bad and maybe I still have a little more to offer to the remaking fraternity even if things have progressed and quality levels have increased.

I’m not going to try and compete but I’m just going to have some fun and code a little and if a new release comes out of it then all the better.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can capture even a little of my previous remaking passion.

At the moment I’m just playing around with my most recent aborted project that I started around a year ago and which didn’t progress past more than a few 100 lines of code.

I’ve imported and tweaked some plasma code from Super Obliteration and am going to just have a mess about and see if anything comes of it.

Oh, it’s Cruising on Broadway btw. About the simplest game I could think of to have a play with to try to get my footing again.

This of course includes the reviews for my 24 hour coded entry. They are not for the easily offended as one or two of them may contain naughty words, but you can take a look at them here.

Many congratulations to the other people who made a game for less able players, and especially to the curve-ball winner. Good work, Shane!

May all site defacers and nasty pasties die in a freak yachting accident and leave us alone in future, please.

Onwards and upwards.

Coded very quickly, in less than 24 hours, it is a very simple to get to grips with sliding puzzle just like the ones you might have had in your childhood where there are numbered squared an an empty square in the corner and you have to put the numbers in order.

This one has four difficulty levels and ten background images which can be customised.

The whole game can be controlled with just one key (the Space Bar) which hopefully makes it accessible to lots of people.

You can find the game in the sidebar banners, or by going to the Download Section of the site. Or perhaps even by clicking here.

I’ve spent the last month emailing until my fingers are raw doing my utmost best to get together an impressive prize-pool to excite you all, and I’m pleased to say I think we are almost there.

All the pieces as starting to fall into place and this is going to be most excellent!

Hopefully everyone will feel the good games have been rewarded.

The bad games on the other hand will be pelted with rotten tomatoes, virtual ones at least, because if you can’t put in the effort to make your game stand out – and at least make it playable and fun – after we have put in months of effort putting this competition together then you really need to go back to the drawing board and play more games and see what makes a game fun and enjoyable to play.

I’m wishing on a star that we get the magical 100 entries this time around as we have come close in the past but never hit that milestone. Of course I want it to be 100 great games of course, not just filler.

It’s you guys out there in internet land that can make this possible! Do us proud then there might be another competition.

There are lots of great sponsors and great prizes and my heartfelt thanks go out to each and every person and company that has put into the prize pool and helped make this look so tremendous. I can’t wait to be able to tell you and show you all the things we have on offer. “Look what you could win!” but that is still a month away I’m afraid.

Feel free to rev your engines loud and proud but be sure not to start early or the rules (which are still in draft form as I write this) might make you wish you had waited.

I’m buzzin and can’t wait to see what all you guys out there come up with. On your marks…

The example tune from the ZX Spectrum 48K manual works without any alteration, apart from the removal of line numbers of course.

Here is the code and example for anyone who is interested…

Strict

' create audio sample

Local sample:TAudioSample=CreateAudioSample( 41,11025,SF_MONO8 )
For Local k=0 to 41
        sample.samples[k]=Sin(k*360/42)*120+120
Next

Global beepsound:TSound=LoadSound( sample,True )
Global beepchannel:TChannel

' Spectrum BEEP function
' note: program is halted while a BEEP is playing

Function BEEP (length:Float,note:Float)

	Local rate:Float=2^(note/12)
	beepchannel=PlaySound(beepsound)
	SetChannelRate(beepchannel,rate)

	Delay length*1000 ' wait for our note to finish
	StopChannel(beepchannel)

End Function

'an example tune from the ZX Spectrum 48K BASIC Manual

Print "Frere Gustav"
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,2
BEEP .5,3
BEEP .5,2
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,2
BEEP .5,3
BEEP.5,2
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,3
BEEP 1,5
BEEP 2,7
BEEP 1,3
BEEP 1,5
BEEP 2,7
BEEP .75,7
BEEP .25,8
BEEP .5,7
BEEP .5,5
BEEP .5,3
BEEP.5,2
BEEP 1,0
BEEP .75,7
BEEP .25,8
BEEP .5,7
BEEP .5,5
BEEP .5,3
BEEP .5,2
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,-5
BEEP 2,0
BEEP 1,0
BEEP 1,-5
BEEP 2,0

It’s very simple but it does the job and even halts your program until the sound is finished just like on the real machine.

Probably next is making a function for the music like in Manic Miner etc that plays (seemingly) without stopping the gameplay. I guess some kind of “BEEP queue” would do the trick.

I don’t think I have the grey matter to put together my own colour clash routine but thanks to Trashman on the RetroRemakes forums I know it’s possible – his BMax engine is very impressive and I can’t wait to see the resulting game that comes from it.

Please please if you have played any of my games and enjoyed them in the past. Consider donating by clicking on the Buy Me A Coffee in the sidebar. It is a paypal link – If you need a Nochex link please get in touch or let me know here and I will be able to set that up too.

I am coding again at the moment and I’m going to save the email addresses of the people who donate and they will be able to see what I’m working on first, before anyone else.

The game itself could possibly be donation-ware, and if that is the case I will consider any donations to be pre-orders. LOL

I don’t mean to sound like I have a little black storm-cloud over my head but at the moment I really do have.