MMBasic: Knightmare Game

Author Message
Turbo46

Guru

Joined: 24/12/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 1630
Posted: 02:45am 09 Dec 2023      

Hi LeoNicolas, I had never come across this game so I did a little research and found a PDF manual for it here and a description:
  Quote  Knightmare is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game starring Popolon, a warrior who embarks on a quest to rescue the princess Aphrodite from the evil priest Hudnos. The player controls Popolon through eight increasingly difficult stages across a Greek-esque fantasy setting, populated with an assortment of enemies and obstacles, over a constantly scrolling background that never stops moving until a boss is reached, which must be fought in order to progress further. The player must also avoid or take out enemy formations to gain bonus points, and reveal hidden bridges to cross rivers by shooting at it.

Popolon is equipped with a bow and arrows as the main weapon, which can be upgraded or changed by collecting a flashing weapon crystal. Picking up a new weapon grants its initial state and can be upgraded by picking the same weapon twice in a row. Popolon can also obtain temporary power-ups via power crystals branded with a "P" icon that initially appears colored black. These can be cycled through other weapons and power-ups by firing at them, ranging from boomerangs, three-way shots, swords, speed increasers, temporary invincibility and a shield to withstand enemy projectiles. If grabbed in their initial state, these crystals grant extra bonus points instead.

Scattered on the playfield are question mark blocks containing chess-themed magic jewels that can aid or hinder the player by shooting a block to release the jewel. While many of the blocks are visible onscreen, others are hidden and must be unveiled by shooting at the block until the jewel is released. The player can also uncover secret exits within certain stages and warp into the next stage. Getting hit by an enemy or blocked by an obstacle and scrolled offscreen will result in losing a live stock, as well as a penalty of decreasing Popolon's overall firepower to his original state. The player can obtain more lives by earning 100.000 points each time or collecting a yellow magic jewel, but the game is over once all lives are lost.

I ran the game on MMB4W and it went well until it crashed with the error:
  Quote  Error in line 186: Buffer not in use

Then I ran it on a real CMM2 with the latest beta firmware until that crashed with the error:
  Quote  Error in line 63: 200 is invalid (valid is -15 to 199

Also the sprites don't display correctly as you can see in the picture;



It looks to me that the parts of the sprites that are meant to be invisible are displayed as black. There must be some difference in the way sprites are supported.

Because I don't get on well with keyboard controls I was going to try to add in joystick support but I decided to put that off and hope that you will, eventually (apparently the original does). If you check out Tom's (thwill) Lazer Cycle game on FITHUB, that includes support for most (if not all) controllers that you can connect to the CMM2.

Bill