RISC OS

RISC OS Stuff

Coming soon?

A recent trawl of my archives uncovered a stash of programming previously thought lost to history. This cache of code included several games that my brother created in the mid-1990s. He had recently remarked about one of them, some kind of isometric 3d game involving a bouncing ball. Well, the hoard did include this game, a screenshot of which is included below.

I recently passed this archive of material over to him, so he can have a 'look'. I've played the 'Crystals' game on VirtualAcorn. Running in old school 16 colour display resolution, it proved to be too fast to play, so a timing loop was added. I have to say it holds up pretty well. The game is incomplete (there are only 3 levels, and the data for each level is very complex, requring positioning code for not only the objects, but the paths the monsters follow), and has no presentation whatsoever. But it is fun to play :-)

Update (23rd March 2011): My brother has been rifling through his code, and converted the game sprites to a higher resolution mode - it all looks rather crisp. Check out the latest images:

high resolution crystals shot 1

high resolution crystals shot 2

As for this last shot, not sure what happened here, but it does look a bit 'early 90s amiga demo?'

high resolution crystals shot 3

One day, not too long in the future, I hope that my brother's 'look' at his game will result in a release.

Cavern Duel

2 player sword-fighting action, for practically any RISC OS computer. Go to my special page for more details. The game can now be played on VirtualAcorn installed computers.

The software also includes a fairly rudimentary level editor, so you can design your own arenas to annoy your mates with.

General merriment all round really!

V1.271 (188k, 26th Feb 2011)

Top of page

TankDuel

This was written by my brother in mid-1996. It's an overhead game for up to 4 players, where you must move your tank over the terrain, and destroy your opponents. You can adjust the amount of terrain and obstacles to make the game easier or harder.

I've adjusted the game so that it could in theory, run on older editions of RISC OS. It is written in Basic V however, and uses a high resolution screen mode, which exists in version 3.50 of RISC OS or greater. I can't vouch for whether it works on the Iyonix, but it uses old sound modules, so my guess is that it requires Aemulor to run it.

RISC OS Zip file (44k)

Top of page

Birds of War Manual

Many years ago, I created a replacement manual for 4th Dimension's (now APDL's) flight simulator. You can download it from here:

This manual is also available in HTML format on ADPL's Flight Simulator Collection, 9 of the best flight sims on one CD-ROM - excellent value for money!

Top of page

Copyfit

Copyfit was written during my art college days, when I did a subject called print theory. And very boring it was too. One of the things we learned was how to work out the number of words on a given page, depending on various things such as leading, type size, measure and page depth.

This program does all the calculating for you. It's a bit pointless, what with these tools called DTP packages to do the stuff for you in a much friendlier way. Yet in the good old days of printing, working this stuff out was vital in order to work out how much paper a book would use according to type size.

RISC OS Zip file (14k)

Top of page

Cache

Cache is an ARM cache toggler, written for ARM3 users, such as the older Archimedes models and A3000 computers. I was working on a StrongArm version with another programmer, but we lost contact.

The program sits on the icon bar. Click on it, and a cross or tick will appear over the chip icon, to determine whether the cache is on or off. Very handy before running games, but there is no hotkey option for toggling it outside of the desktop. It's a very messy program, and one of my early attempts at RISC OS programming in the Wimp.

RISC OS Zip file (5k)

Top of page

BBC Micro Games

The two games presented here are available in two forms:

Ready to play disc images for transfer to your BBC Microcomputer, or more likely, an emulator such as Beebem on Windows, or !6502Em on RISC OS.
If you're a purist, you can obtain these games as listing booklets in both PDF and Impression Publisher format. The PDF versions contain a number of minor formatting errors.

The booklets are still of interest, because they feature developer diaries and novellas, and for anyone interested in BBC BASIC, they serve to demonstrate one approach to programming these kinds of games.

I hope that everything here works properly. If you have any problems, don't hesitate to get in touch.

Androidz

Androidz Screenshot Androidz was my first 'proper' piece of programming. Consisting of 20 levels, you must destroy all the robots in each 'factory' before proceeding to the next. The game was published in the June 1994 issue of Acorn Computing magazine, a last gasp attempt to inject some life into the Acorn magazine market. The magazine closed in March 1995.

It's a very basic piece of programming, and some bullets go straight through the robots if both bullet and robot move towards each other at the same time. I guess it's down to how I coded it at the time. The above screenshots show that each level is rendered in three colours on a black background (Mode 5), which is quite restrictive when using single coloured characters.

Top of page

Headcase Hotel

This game contains strobe effects, so play with caution if necessary.

This game was started in 1992 and ended up being finished three years later, for my end of year show at college. It's a similar game to Androidz, but features multi-coloured characters, at the expense of fewer levels.

Dave Edwards, who runs the Acorn Electron World site very kindly managed to produce a disc image which includes the title screen. I remember using some art package which came on an edition of the subscription-based Fast Access disc magazine - Megadraw I think it was called. Dave has also reviewed both this and Androidz on his site.

The booklet features a short story, some screenshots (also shown here) and a diary on the game's development, covering the few months leading up to the end of year show, plus a bit further beyond. The whole text is quite an interesting read, even if it serves to illustrate how bad I was (and perhaps still am) at writing storylines.