==================== Stomper - by Matthew Goode ========================= Stomper was written by Matthew Goode in 1993. Graphics by Matthew Goode in 1993. Sound taken from various programs including North and South, Wanderer, Croak, Drip, Merv, Eye of the Beholder, an Astroids clone, and some other programs I can't quite recall. The Ren and Stimpy sample was sampled by someone I know but don't know the name of. The code, graphics, idea, and level design are all copyright (c) of Matthew Goode 1993. The game was written in 100% machine code. Completion date for Stomper V1.0 31/10/93 (well around then any how). Stomper is Shareware game, this is the registered versions instructions. If you have not paid the registration fee and just copied this from someone the I ask you to please send $15 (NZ) to the address at the end of this file to register. I can only hope you are honest enough to do so. Introduction ------------ Welcome to my first proper game Stomper. Its sort of a pacman clone with many extra features including not having a pacman character in it anywhere! New features and changes from pacman include * 20 different levels (5 Worlds, with 4 levels each) * 23 or so diffent monsters * 3 froms of monster intelligence (though only two are really noticable) * 3 speeds of monster * Over 130 frames of animation all in 16 colour graphics (though they should have been 32 colour) * A really nice fade routine * Lots of sound effects (none sampled by me though because I don't have a sampler) * New features for gameplay include - switches, teleporters, speedups, free men, bonus fruit, xmas tree power pills, illusionary walls and more! * Cursed items to add that extra twist (though they don't change place from game to game) * A cheat mode (if you want to know it write to me or ring me up!) * When monsters are Christmas trees you can't kill them! * You stomp the yellow dots instead of eat them (thats why its called Stomper). * Unlike pacman the bonus just don't appear, in Stomper they are always in the same place. * 1 mb or 512k versions * Other stuff as well! Story ----- Help little Stomper wander mindlessly around 20 mazes for no apparent reason! Well there is actually there is a reason, Stomper has lost his 'Greatest hits of Rolf Harris' CD so of course he has no choice but to wander around 20 mazes, has he? What he basically has to do is stomp all the yellow thingies on each stage in order to advance a level. (Gees that was cheap!) The Game -------- Control To control Stomper you use a joystick in port 2 (just like normal), there is no keyboard control because lets face it - who uses the keyboard to play games unless you are an IBM user. The button is used to confirm things and to pause the game. The left mouse button quits the whole game and returns you to DOS. The right mouse button returns you to the title screen if you are playing the game. Unlike pacman you don't keep moving till you hit a wall but you don't stop and are unable to change direction unless you are on a block boundery. Play the game to find out what I mean. Collectables Heres what you can collect (or stomp) and what they do. Yellow pill - You must collect all these to advance a level. Note, you only have to collect the yellow pills to advance a level, you don't have to collect the other items. Cyan pill - This makes you move at twice normal speed for a short time. Power pill - This turns the monsters into Christmas trees for a while. They are harmless during this time. Little - This grants you a free life. Stomper Cherry - This gives you 20 points Green apple - This gives you 20 points Red apple - This gives you 20 points Dollars - These give you 30 points Cup - These give you 50 points NOTE: There are cursed items. They do not change place from game to game and therefore can be avoided. The look like normal collectables but don't do the expected thing, for example some of the Speed up pills don't speed you up but instead reverse you joystick control! The Mazes There are 20 mazes as I'm sure I've said before. They change graphic style every four levels to reflect world changes. Around the mazes you will find teleporters and switches. The teleporters will transport you to a preprogrammed position. The switches will open up blocked pathways. Some of the walls are not what the appear and can be walked through. The monsters can also use these false walls in their travels. Monters There are four monsters per level, this does not change, and there will kill you if they get too close. The collision detection is slightly lenient and you can touch the monsters sometimes and not die, but in most cases you will. This was intentional (my spelling isn't). The monsters change from level to level and world to world. The monsters move at 3 speeds, halve yours, the same as yours, and twice as fast as you. Most of the time the monsters just wander around looking stupid but sometimes they home in on you. Technical Info -------------- The program file of Stomper contains around 10k of code (maybe more), 20K of level data, 150K of graphic data and the remaining 200K is all sampled sound effects. Upon running the program allocates an additional 128k for the screen, that is 3 16 colour PAL screens (320 x 256), 2 for double buffering and one that holds a copy of the maze. All moving objects are blitter objects being mainly 16 x 16 though some special ones are 32 x 24. The entire game runs from the vertical blank interrupt, that is, there is no actual main program except for a little loop that waits for the left mouse button. I started using this idea on my C64 and in fact you can run my best C64 game, Fish in Space, while programing (which is quite impressive for a C64!) which is actually very annoying as it keeps scrolling half the screen that you are working on into the great beyond! It should run on any Amiga I know of, if you are using a 1200 or 4000 and its doesn't work try using the original chipset emulation. I have not yet tryed Stomper on any computer other than my workbench 1.3, 512k chip/512k fast ram Amiga 500 but I do know you need at least 1 megabyte to run it. The source code is around 5100 lines long and about 85k, and is not available for purchase. Extras ------ This is my first real Amiga game (the other two I've done are Irish Tetris, and Puzzle which are not very good) but even so I think its okay, its not as good as I would of liked it and I didn't put in every thing I wanted. I wrote Stomper on my Amiga 500 with 1 Meg and nothing else using my TV as a monitor (I'm not lying) because you see I don't have much money (e.g none) so I thank you for purchasing this game. I used Devpac 2.15 to program the game, I used Deluxe Paint and Crap Ed (by me) to do the graphics, and I used Crap Map (also by me) to design the levels. I used Hunter III to rip out the samples from various games (I'm deeply sorry to the people who worked on them but I don't have a sampler and know one I know who has one will let me use theirs). The game took around 3 months to write but most of that time was spent writing things like blitter, sound, and fade routines, etc ... the actual game didn't take that long at all (its wasn't too complex to write!) I also wrote Crap Map during this time. Crap Ed and Crap Map will be released sometime in 1994 as Shareware. Crap Ed is a blitter object/font/map piece editor and is availble in 16 bit and 32 bit versions (width of object that is) with or without mask image and allows object heights of up to 100 pixels and can work with up to 64 colours. It has a number of features including the ability to store up to 65536 images, a buffer, image inverse, image movement, image flipping, buffer merge (including buffer AND, buffer OR, and buffer EOR) and an undo feature. You can pick up colours from the image using the right mouse button. It also has an onscreen RGB slider with the ability to save pallates seperately. It stores the image in normal binary format (not IFF). Future versions will have new features including a fill mode, a stencil, drop down windows, rotation, scaling, an animation utility, AGA capability, a file converstion utility (IFF to block format or ilbm format, etc..), rectangle & line drawing, and much more! Crap Map is a reasonble map edior that is cabible of creating maps of 65536x65536, works with 16x16, 16x32, 32x16, and 32x32 block sizes, has a similar control style to Crap Ed and uses Crap Ed files. Does not have a built in block editor. Can use up to 255 planes so is compatible with future Amigas. Both programs multitask well. If you need either of these programs now write to me and I'll think about sending you a copy (for a price!) Future games that I have planed for 1994/5 include a shoot em' up where you control a biplane, Puppy Pounder (how many puppies can you beat the hell out of in 1 minute), Sonic the Toaster (THE platform game), a cool 3D space dogfight sim, a Moonstone type game (my friends are doing the graphics) with lots of gore, and a neat little game thats a cross between North and South and Lemmings. Hopefully some of these will be commercial quality and hopefully not all of them will be cute comical games though some will be (Sonic the Toaster most definately!) Unfortunatly I don't think I can really write any of these games with my present system (I was pushing it with Stomper) or with my present computer (I'd love a 1200 to play with!) so any donations to my cause will be GREATLY appreciated! If you are interested in programming (in Machine Code that is), have some good ideas for games, or have drawn some good graphics for a game (or are capible of) then please write to me. Also if you have written any good music (in STmod or Med format) then write to me also I might be able to use it in a game. There may be money involved! (But I doubt it). If you live in the Auckland area and would like to meet me or are just interested in Amigas why not come along to a South East Amiga club meeting, on the second Tuesday of every month at 7.30 pm at the The Pakurange Community Centre, 13 Reeves Road, Pakuranga. If any body wants to know about me I 16 years old and go to Penrose High School in Auckland and am currently in the 5th form. I take Art, Typing, English, Science, 6th form Maths (I skipped 5th form maths!). At the time of finishing Stomper I only have 2 weeks left of school before a lovely 10 week or so holiday so expect some good games then! - Matthew Goode -