to blast left and right

Heck! The author even submitted games
for the TND SEUCK competition The
game can be downloaded here: tnd64.un
ikat.sk/seuck/SEUCKCompo2014/Shaken.z
ip and while it may not have been the
best entry in the competition it is a
worthy entry nevertheless.

The author follows this with a
walk-through of its creation in the
book of the SEUCK games concept and
final released version. It's a pure
SEUCK so you can follow the tutorial
if you have ever wanted to use this
tool, but stumbled. This may be the
tutorial to get you through to a
finished product.

We have some brief overviews of the
machines architecture as he says:

For example, a simple SFX for a
gunshot could be programmed by
selecting The noise channel (bit 7
in 54276), setting the highest
possible volume, defining Very fast
Attack and Decay times and then set
a Release time possibly in
accordance With the reverberation
suggested by the particular virtual
environment:

10 POKE 54273,21: POKE 54272,31 : REM
set a low frequency for the gunshot
20 POKE 54296,15 : REM volume maxed
30 POKE 54277,16 : REM attack/decay s
et to 8 and 6 ms respectively
40 POKE 54278,250 : REM setting susta
in volume to 15 and Release time to
1.5 s
50 POKE 54276,129 : REM select noise
channel. Start note (Attack, Decay,
Sustain)
60 POKE 54276,128 : REM stop the Sust
ain to start the Release phase and
end the SFX

And I love the photos inlay text that
reads:

Great Giana Sisters (© Rainbow Arts
1987). "Look, she has a sister, not
a brother and they are great, not
super!" unfortunately these
arguments were not enough to
convince Nintendo's lawyers about
Giana's legitimacy as a videogame
heroine.

The book charts the machine's
software history from early games to,
as stated earlier, the latest
developments on the machine, with a
look at how software was taken from
the bedroom coder to a multi-million
Pound big-business empire with the
later software being created with
"game engines" (and you thought that
the engine was a new idea didn't
you?)

The book is light-hearted and does
list some mistakes Commodore made and
maintains that nothing is perfect,
but what it does offer is a realistic
history of the machine and what it
means to be on of the people who
still love its quirkiness. There are
nods there to other Commodore systems
like the Pet and the VIC; however, as
you would expect, this is mainly
hardcore 64 territory.

I spoke with Robert and he insisted
he didn't want the book to be just
another "academic literature".
However, it would seem Springer Press
had other ideas and the book seems to
be listed for a rather unrealistic
price. Maybe pressure on Springer to
re-price the book more realistically
from us "users" would show that there
is still demand and ultimately (as
they are a publishing company) money
to be made from a reduction.

The book covers the following items
(as taken from the index):

1 Computers for the Masses, not the
Classes
2 The Commodore 64 and Its
Architecture
2.1 The VIC-II
2.2 The SID
3 Ready
4 Games, Games and More Games!
4.1 Action Adventures
4.2 Adventures
4.3 Arcade Conversions
4.4 Driving Games
4.5 Edutainment
4.6 Movie Tie-ins
4.7 Platformers
4.8 Puzzles
4.9 Role Playing Games
4.10 Shoot 'em Ups
4.11 Sports
4.12 Strategy
4.13 Virtual Life
4.14 3D: Vectors and Polygons
5 Rise of the Game Engines
5.1 The Quill-Adventure Writer
(Gilsoft 1983)
5.2 The Graphic Adventure Creator
(Incentive Software 1986)
5.3 Adventure Construction Set
(Electronic Arts 1984)
5.4 Garry Kitchen's Game Maker
(Activision 1985)
5.5 The Shoot 'em Up Construction
Kit (Sensible Software 1987)
5.6 A SEUCK Primer
6 Windows and Icons
7 BBS: The Internet Can Wait
8 Verba Volant, Scripta Manent
9 Today and Tomorrow
Appendix A: Collecting for the
Commodore 64
Appendix B: Online Resources
Appendix C: VIC-II Registers.
Appendix D: SID Registers
Bibliography
Index.

=====================================

*************************************
REVIEW: SUPER STARSHIP SPACE ATTACK
*************************************

Programmer: Misfit
Requirements: 16k VIC-20 + Joystick.
Tested: VICE 2.4 (NTSC and PAL)
and real VIC (PAL)

9 Levels + 2 Bonus levels

3 Game modes:

* Child Mode (easy) (no bonus levels)
* Gamer Mode (normal) (all levels)
* I am Legend (hard) (all levels)

Find 3 power units and leave the evil
spaceship. At the Bottom of each
level there is an escape area. Every
power unit raises your firepower.

* Up / down = acceleration and brake
* Left / right = move your spaceship
* Fire = shoot

Personally I was quite excited to see
another Misfit program released
towards the end of last year. He
seems to have a very unique style of
programming on the VIC. It's a style
I think not only fits the VIC's
format but is "easy on the eye" and
superbly slick. So you can imagine I
quickly plugged in my memory upgrade
and loaded the game into memory.

From the title screen you know this
is going to be something special; the
Crazy VIC music playing was enough to
get me dancing around. I quickly
hooked up the sound to my Hi-Fi and
turned the volume up. As the music
belted out, the screen actually jumps
up and down in time to the music
playing, a lovely touch and just
shows the level of detail the
programmer puts into his work. It
would be a great tune with just the
base and drums belting out, but as
the zany tune kicks in, it really
becomes a work of VIC art (assuming
art is music or music is art). The
tune itself is quite short but loops
well.

OK, finally pressing a key and
getting to the main screen:

Very odd colour washes in this game,
interesting but still odd sort of
psychedelic!

The screen is shrunk slightly -
presumably to keep the VIC nippy as
the game is running.

You have to collect 3 items on the
screen. As you collect the last the
screen goes green colour so you know
to head for the exit and onto the
next level. You need to ride over the
flashing power units and not just
shoot them! If you do it doesn't
count. Could the game be improved?
Yes, I think it could. Does it stand
out well? As it is, yes. More VIC
music please... it's excellent!

SCORES

Graphics: 8/10
super slick scrolling and effects
Music: 9/10
superb!
Gameplay: 7/10
really good to get into and
difficult to stop
Overall: 8/10

A very unique-looking game, with some
mind bending music, but that's
something you expect from the
programmer. The term "classy" may be
overused but it's justified!

=====================================

*************************************
REVIEW: TANK BATTALION
*************************************

Name: Tank Battalion
Author: Beamrider
Requirements: (PAL) 16k VIC-20
+ Joystick.
Description: Port of the Namco
classic tank arcade
game
Tested: VICE 2.4
real VIC (PAL)
Commodore 1701 monitor

!! PAL only!!

Download

drive.google.com/uc?export=download&i
d=0BypVxYomFCZfeklKclJQNGRhaUE

Discuss

sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin
/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7199

After his conversion of Pooyan I was
excited that Beamrider had converted
another of my favourite games to the
VIC. This version sadly suffers from
annoying problems, the game feels
very slow paced and a little jerky,
its faster than basic, but is by no
means a machine code zoomer. The game
was written in C and really needs a
re-write in Machine code to add that
extra boost of speed, I believe its
still a work in progress so who
knows? By the time you read this….
maybe it can be speeded up somehow
with code optimisation. Anyway, it's
a small negative and now that's out
of the way lets look at the review.

I found a Namco version on YouTube
here

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxizVvzMko4

You can see it's very close to this
conversion on the VIC.


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