YOU S.E.U.C.K.!!!!
Hey, remember when I used to post crapflood-esque galleries of gaming screenshots in my journal?
Shoot Em Up Construction Kit
I had an interesting conversation with Alex reminiscing about a cute little programme on the Amiga called SEUCK that you could use to create you own games. No programming knowledge was required whatsoever to use this programme, it was really simple and easy to use. You couldnt do a whole bunch with it, you were limited to only vertically scrolling shoot em ups. Simple dodge and shoot affairs with no fancy extra weapons or anything but you could draw all your own graphics and create the levels and attack waves however you liked. However, through creative use of invisible sprites and other things you could create features that you otherwise wouldn't have thought possible, given the limitations of the programme. Things like fake paralax scrolling, collidable scenery, boss characters made from background graphics that seemed to explode when you defeated them, neat little things to make your game more fun.
The average time it would take to completely make your own game was a Saturday afternoon - I only made two or three back during my Amiga days, as I never had a reliable copy of the editor. Every copy I had would erase itself at some point. I bought the darn thing twice and had numerous pirate copies. Alex was luckier than me however, and created hundreds of games in his spare time. He just knew how to look after his disks a lot better then me (didnt have to share with a little brother) so his copy of the editor survives to this day.
At the moment, I do not have the equipment to convert my old Amiga disks into a format that I can use with an emulator on my PC. I would really like to get all these old games converted just for sentimentality's sake. That and the fact that the floppy disks will eventually rot away. These games arent really all that good but we cherish our own creations and are proud of the many inventive ways we came up with to jinx what was effectively a really primitive programme.
There is no way at the moment to take screengrabs on my PC of these games but my Dad's camera took reasonable enough pictures of the TV screen.
Sometimes we worked together, sometimes individually - all our games carried the brand "STAB Software" (a composite of our initials) although later games carried the "FATDOG Productions" brand.
TIN MACHINE (Alex Storer - 199X)
I tried really hard to locate the superior "TIN MACHINE II" - a much more creative game with a beautifully rendered human heart as theend of game boss. Lots of other games of Alex's were missing from my collection. I could only find a version of SCORPIOX that I had vandalised and MEGAWING was getting disk read errors.
The first boss. This thing makes a lovely clanging noise.
Gradius influence is apparent here. Alex will tell you that he's never played it though. He was never an arcade bunny like me so this is pretty strange.
The metal man will destroy you.
BIOFORM (Tony Bates 1995)
I remember trying to cram every trick in the book into this one. There was a limit to the amount of sprites and graphics you could use so I kept the backgrounds really simple in order to get the maximum amount of levels I could. I also drew all the boss characters first, rather than put the game together in a chronological, as-you-play-it order. You draw enemies (sprites) and background gfx separately. I chose to build all the bosses out of background blocks and cover them with invisible sprites that would fire their weapons and act as destructible points. I wanted to get in as many bosses as I could and this limited the ammount of detail I could actually put into the level graphics themselves. Because of this, there are a bunch of levels where you are simply flying through darkness.
Level one, spinning orbs tumble towards your craft. I tried to make the animations as complex and beautiful as I could.
Wiggly worms torment you during the plant level. The graphics are really simple. Why am I defending it? This shit is 12 years old.
The crazy disco level. This is just horrible. The grey blobs are aliens that you have shot down. Rather than explode, they turn to stone. These cycloptic blobs are the "Bioforms" of the title. I dont think there was a storyline for the game though.
I tried to give the player some sort of reward once the game is beaten,as the programme doesnt really cater for end sequences. A message is displayed that assesses your score. You are then presented with a cast of the characters. After that, you are shown all the boss characters you have defeated with their names. All this is directly inspired by the end sequence to Super Mario World on the SNES. You then go through a super fast level that zooms you through the entire game again at high speed (a 2nd loop, so to speak) and there is even a crazy extra level made of random graphics on the end of that. Then it's back to the start. I did put a lot of effort into balancing the game, you can get creamed if you dont have a good start - it seems that it's possible to rack up enough extends to be pretty much unkillable by the later levels though.
YAHOO WE HAVE WON
Shoot Em Up Construction Kit
I had an interesting conversation with Alex reminiscing about a cute little programme on the Amiga called SEUCK that you could use to create you own games. No programming knowledge was required whatsoever to use this programme, it was really simple and easy to use. You couldnt do a whole bunch with it, you were limited to only vertically scrolling shoot em ups. Simple dodge and shoot affairs with no fancy extra weapons or anything but you could draw all your own graphics and create the levels and attack waves however you liked. However, through creative use of invisible sprites and other things you could create features that you otherwise wouldn't have thought possible, given the limitations of the programme. Things like fake paralax scrolling, collidable scenery, boss characters made from background graphics that seemed to explode when you defeated them, neat little things to make your game more fun.
The average time it would take to completely make your own game was a Saturday afternoon - I only made two or three back during my Amiga days, as I never had a reliable copy of the editor. Every copy I had would erase itself at some point. I bought the darn thing twice and had numerous pirate copies. Alex was luckier than me however, and created hundreds of games in his spare time. He just knew how to look after his disks a lot better then me (didnt have to share with a little brother) so his copy of the editor survives to this day.
At the moment, I do not have the equipment to convert my old Amiga disks into a format that I can use with an emulator on my PC. I would really like to get all these old games converted just for sentimentality's sake. That and the fact that the floppy disks will eventually rot away. These games arent really all that good but we cherish our own creations and are proud of the many inventive ways we came up with to jinx what was effectively a really primitive programme.
There is no way at the moment to take screengrabs on my PC of these games but my Dad's camera took reasonable enough pictures of the TV screen.
Sometimes we worked together, sometimes individually - all our games carried the brand "STAB Software" (a composite of our initials) although later games carried the "FATDOG Productions" brand.
TIN MACHINE (Alex Storer - 199X)
I tried really hard to locate the superior "TIN MACHINE II" - a much more creative game with a beautifully rendered human heart as theend of game boss. Lots of other games of Alex's were missing from my collection. I could only find a version of SCORPIOX that I had vandalised and MEGAWING was getting disk read errors.
The first boss. This thing makes a lovely clanging noise.
Gradius influence is apparent here. Alex will tell you that he's never played it though. He was never an arcade bunny like me so this is pretty strange.
The metal man will destroy you.
BIOFORM (Tony Bates 1995)
I remember trying to cram every trick in the book into this one. There was a limit to the amount of sprites and graphics you could use so I kept the backgrounds really simple in order to get the maximum amount of levels I could. I also drew all the boss characters first, rather than put the game together in a chronological, as-you-play-it order. You draw enemies (sprites) and background gfx separately. I chose to build all the bosses out of background blocks and cover them with invisible sprites that would fire their weapons and act as destructible points. I wanted to get in as many bosses as I could and this limited the ammount of detail I could actually put into the level graphics themselves. Because of this, there are a bunch of levels where you are simply flying through darkness.
Level one, spinning orbs tumble towards your craft. I tried to make the animations as complex and beautiful as I could.
Wiggly worms torment you during the plant level. The graphics are really simple. Why am I defending it? This shit is 12 years old.
The crazy disco level. This is just horrible. The grey blobs are aliens that you have shot down. Rather than explode, they turn to stone. These cycloptic blobs are the "Bioforms" of the title. I dont think there was a storyline for the game though.
I tried to give the player some sort of reward once the game is beaten,as the programme doesnt really cater for end sequences. A message is displayed that assesses your score. You are then presented with a cast of the characters. After that, you are shown all the boss characters you have defeated with their names. All this is directly inspired by the end sequence to Super Mario World on the SNES. You then go through a super fast level that zooms you through the entire game again at high speed (a 2nd loop, so to speak) and there is even a crazy extra level made of random graphics on the end of that. Then it's back to the start. I did put a lot of effort into balancing the game, you can get creamed if you dont have a good start - it seems that it's possible to rack up enough extends to be pretty much unkillable by the later levels though.
YAHOO WE HAVE WON