Degz
C O D E : C Y R A N O _ J O N E S
M A I N _ M U S I C : 5 O 5 / C H E C K P O I N T
A L T E R N A T I V E _ M U S I C : T E M P L E T O N / C V S D
S O U N D _ R E P L A Y : L I N K O V I T C H
G F X , S F X : S H 3
M A P S , I N F O _ & _ O U R _ T H A N K S _ T O : P A C _ M A N _ P L U S
C D _ A N D _ D V D _ C O V E R _ D E S I G N S : F E L Y X
Degz is our homage to one of the truly great arcade games of the 80s - the daddy of all side-scrollers. It's another of our RaptoR example games, therefore the source code and assets will be distributed with the public release of RaptoR. We're not going to sell this game, please don't ask for it, we obviously can't with this one. It's offered freely to all Jaguar fans in the same way all our other games have been.
This game is unique for us as the programming was done entirely using Virtual Jaguar! Of course the game has been tested by the usual suspects on many flavours of Jaguar and with all manner of different devices.
There are 9 difficulty settings for the default game mode. There is also the map from the North American release, this is much harder. Once you've got to grips with the game, try this mode and make sure your Memory Track cart is plugged in - it saves your best score on this setting. Difficulty in our version is slightly toned down from the arcade game. This is mostly due to the collision detection between the player ship and the landscape being fairly generous, something we had to implement due to the lack of control offered with the Jaguar's d-pad. For anyone who says there is nothing wrong with the Jaguar's d-pad, we'll be expecting to see some truly spectacular high scores and multiple wrapping of the 5 stages :D Collision detection with player missiles might seem a little wooly, but it is actually pixel-perfect - it's just that only the most central pixel in the bullet or bomb is checked (the original used a single point for these but that looked crappy... if collision was checked agains the entire 8x8 missile/bomb the game would be ridiculously easy. So the difficulty is exactly how it shoudl be, you just see a little more gfx than the original. If that upsets you, go play the arcade game or the xbla version and quit sulking!)
DOWNLOADS:
BOX COVER: Arcade Deco
CD LABEL: Arcade Deco
BOX COVER: Lego Scramble
CD LABEL: Lego Scramble
(Covers by Felyx, Lego designs using art from http://www.sevensheaven.nl/ with permission)
FURTHER INFO
We saw the version Pac Man Plus made for the Atari 7800 and were suitably impressed. Cyrano Jones fancied a little break from what he was currently working on and thought this might make a good and quick release for a side project, something to use as another RaptoR tutorial. PMP and CJ discussed various aspects of the game and the assets used for the 7800 game were offered, along with some technical info. In a matter of days CJ had the game up and running in a basic form and it wasn't far away from what he had envisioned. Then life got in the way, as it often does, so progress slowed. The game was worked on in little bursts of activity, new features and effects were added and the game was shown at the AC 2012 meeting in France, early in 2012. Up until release time we added extra features such as RaptoR particle effects (rocket trails, explosions, starfield), worked on the graphics and generally tidied things up. High scores and saving, multiple maps, difficulty settings and new features of U-235 SE19 were also implemented.
If button-mashing isn't your thing, there's an exclusive auto-fire version available at AtariAge in the Degz release thread. It can make navigating the tunnels a less tricky task ;-)
