Chapter 8

Classic Amiga Games in Action

Imbedded below are YouTube-hosted playthroughs of a few classic games given prominent mention in Chapter 8.

Defender of the Crown

Wings

Shadow of the Beast

Lemmings

The Menace reconstruction:

If you wish to explore further than the video samples below using a real or emulated Amiga, you may download an archive containing the commented C source code of the reconstruction along with the executable and its associated data files.

Stage 1:

The first stage of the reconstruction use a loop scroll to present an endless scrolling background texture.

Stage 2:

Using dual-playfield mode, we add another scrolling playfield to contain the foreground vegetation and other scenery. We scroll the foreground at twice the speed of the background, producing a realistic parallax effect.

Stage 3:

We add the status panel to the bottom of the display, implementing it as a separate virtual screen.

Stage 4:

We add the player’s ship, which she can control using a mouse or joystick. It is implemented as two attached sprites which we move in lockstep.

Stage 5:

We add the alien enemies. They are drawn into and erased from the background playfield using the blitter and a double-buffering technique.

Stage 6:

We use some unique features of the blitter to detect collisions between the player’s ship and the aliens, destroying the former when its shields are depleted.

Stage 7:

We give the player the ability to shoot back. We once again use the blitter to draw the ship’s laser bolts and to detect collisions between lasers and the aliens.

7 Responses to “Chapter 8”

  1. Massimiliano Scarano Says:

    Hello,
    cool book I am evaluating the purchase.
    Is it the source code / binary for each stage of the Menace remake available somehow? Perhaps bundled with the book?
    Regards

  2. Nice webpage. also with historical value of the Amiga platform.
    I’ll have a look at the sourcecode (new to the Amiga platform, not to coding)

  3. Most of the Menace Reconstruction videos are private on Youtube. Can this be fixed, or are those videos available elsewhere?

  4. Recently, re-visited this page 😀
    Sad to see the videos were set to private 🙁
    Hopefully it can be changed back

    • Jimmy Maher Says:

      So sorry about that. I haven’t look at this site in ages, and somehow missed being notified about these comments as well. I don’t know how or why the videos were set to private, but it should be fixed now.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.