Woohooo! I made 2nd place with "Bitcoin Miner" and 9th place with "Golf64" at the BASIC 10Liner Contest 2018. Very cool!

Download BitcoinMiner.rar

Download Golf64.rar

Download Golf64WithCourseSelector.rar

I had the honour to speak about "My favourite game but not my own" at the inspiring indie gameZfestival 5.0 event (http://gamezfestival.ch) in Zurich, Switzerland. Talked about and praised "Elite" for the Commodore 64. Such a great masterpiece and influential game.

But I couldn't resist to mention my own game anyway - at least for one slide. Haha. ;)

Best time of the year with another BASIC 10Liner Contest in 2017. Unfortunately my contribution "iNVERSO64" didn't make it to the top scorers. It was a lot of fun anyway and I am very happy with the result.

Download iNVERSO64.rar

Download iNVERSO64IconMaker.rar

Hooray! I made the 2nd place (PUR-80) in the 8-Bit BASIC Tenliners Contest 2016! So cool :)
Here is the link to the results: Winners of the BASIC Tenliners 2016 Contest

This was my contribution: FireFighter64 for the Commodore 64 (see download link below):



Download FireFigher64.rar

What can I say about my motivation to take part in a contest to make a BASIC game in 10 lines of code? Isn't BASIC something for beginners you may ask? Don't be fooled: It's all about what you make out of it. And further to that...

1. Game development is still a passion of mine.
2. I like challenges.
3. The limitation forces you to be creative.
4. It didn't take me 4-5 years to code (unlike Traps'n'Treasures).
5. The contest gave me a valid reason to spend some time on my retro hobby (accepted and approved by family members).

Although, I wasn't aware how tricky it actually will be to write a game in ten lines of code in Commodore V2 BASIC until I discovered that an IF THEN statement affects the whole rest of a line (END IF does not exist) and therefore cannot be used anymore for other things. And that is where the fun only started.

But what a great opportunity to re-experience how it all began and to get in touch again with my old beloved C64. Honestly, this contest is one of the the best things to learn more about your 8-bit machine and to honour the early computer era. I can highly recommend it! Looking already forward to BASIC Tenliners Contest 2017.

BTW: There was a nice article about last years Tenliners contest in the german "Return" magazine #23.

Surface Pro 3 - Pimping my N-trig Pen

I have recently bought myself a Surface Pro 3 - mostly for the purpose of game development and drawing/sketching some ideas for future game designs. Really like the use of the pen (e.g. in Manga Studio 5). The aluminium feels nice and cool. The downside is that it feels a bit slippery between my fingers especially when I need to work with pressure and lacks then a bit of control. Also when drawing it happened a couple of times that I lost the he ideal position to quickly reach the eraser button because I do tend to roll a pen between my fingers when it's shaped round like this one.

To fix that I have tried out various rubbery pen holder helpers that you can buy in many paper shops (see picture). The triangle one - after being shortened - was a perfect fit and makes it so much better. 

 

Stunning introduction and let's play videos of Trap's'n'Treasures by MsStandart

It was with great pleasure to discover this really nice introduction video to our game and to see someone play and comment each of the four challenging levels of Traps'n'Treasures. The videos are in german and obviously addressed to the 'Let's Play'-community but I have never seen someone taking so much care and effort to talk about a game. Much appreciated. Thank ye.



Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SNlbWO3pTc
Level1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VP7nvd_o80
Level2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm8ucCu5Yu0
Level3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibScslBQ2JA
Level4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3cicQGHl3I

...and btw: bats in caves is an unwritten law, sorry matey. ;)

Traps'n'Treasures @ the gameZfestival in Zurich

Yay! Traps'n'Treasures was presented (among other Swiss Amiga and Atari ST games created in the 80's/90's) at this weekend's games festival happening in Zurich, Switzerland.

Being part of a retrospective about the young days of game development in Switzerland was a great honour for me and it was nice to see again many familiar faces from the past days of the Swiss C64/Amiga/Atari ST scene.

The festival was organized really well with a lot of passion and care for detail and I would like to thank the committee for their great effort.

One cool feature was for example, that you needed to throw a dice to figure out the price for your entry fee. Or the squeaky chicken to draw people's attention was very funny. Great ideas and good atmosphere.

I really hope there will be another festival like this next year. Would even throw 2 dice next time.
 

Traps'n'Treasures among the top rarest AMIGA 500 game titles!

The issue #113 of the english magazin "Retro Gamer" featured an AMIGA 500 Collector's Guide.

And guess what: Traps'n'Treasures is listed there among the 6 top rarest PAL game titles! Wow!

I was told that especially the Krisalis (english) version of the game pays high figures at auctions (CHF 200 and more). Well, I'm happy for all the folks out there, who still have the original box.

Traps'n'Treasures Box Scan

If you are a collector, this is how the original box has looked like;

 
(front and back cover of the German version)

Play Traps'n'Treasures on your Windows PC - No emulator needed

Check out the following website where you can download an ".exe" file of Traps'n'Treasures that will run the original game on your Windows PC - without the hassle of installing an AMIGA emulator. Nice work!

Download Link

Thanx to Anthrox from TheCompany.

Swiss Newspaper "20 Minuten" looks back into the 90's

The digital version of "20 Minuten", a daily newspaper in Switzerland, published an article about Swiss game designers in the heydays of AMIGA and Atari ST and mentioned Traps'n'Treasures, Clown-o-Mania and Leonardo. Yay!

Here is the Link.

Congratulations Flynn!

Yo-ho-ho! Splice the mainbrace!
Our little matey Flynn from Traps'n'Treasures has turned 20 years this month!

Let's celebrate this with a special present to all of you who have spent oh so many hours trying to survive the deadly traps, pirates, sharks, skeletons, ghosties and all the other meany monsters in the game.

Dive in and enjoy the relaxing underwater tune from the game completely remastered by Ruedi Hugentobler.

If you like it - don't hesitate to leave a comment - or walk the plank. Arrr!

This pixel art is an appropriate contribution for the Bejing 2008 spirit, don't you think? (ok, ok... but hey, at least, he looks asian)

I can't remember what I made this one for, but I think it was probably one of the many trials that didn't make it into Traps'n'Treasures. You know, in the old days, you just started with a pixel and then something came out. If you were unlucky enough, it looked so cool that the whole game concept had to be changed to fit to that one image (and this is not really wise if you have to fullfil a contract on time).

Longplay Video of Traps'n'Treasures (2h:40m)

There is a unbelievable video of Traps'n'Treasures on YouTube showing a player called LEMM playing through all the levels in one go! It took him 2 hours and 40 minutes only!

I'm really impressed and didn't know that such a thing is even possible (Must make it even harder next time). ;-)



BTW: Thanks to the Anonymous user to point this one out in the last post's comment.

100 Amiga games in 10 minutes

I just discovered that YouTube-video with the title "100 Amiga games in 10 minutes" and feel honoured that Traps'n'Treasures is one of the 100 games presented (Love the "old school" background music). Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUoJBerFDsA&v3 .

Thanks to laffer35 for his contribution.

Essential Game Development Tools

Talking about essential tools for game development I have to mention LevelEd. This one was used to create the Levels for Traps'n'Treasures on the Amiga. It allowed to create big level maps with only 255 32x32 Pixel character blocks. I always try to find the time to develop my own tools so I can expand the functionality along development.

My Amiga Music Legacy on AMP!

I'm very happy to announce that my original SoundFX Songs from 1987-1992 finally made it to the AMIGA Music Preservation Site.

With the link below you can directly access my profile and download the songs I composed:
http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?detail=modules&view=6317

Note: You need the Deliplayer if you want to play them on a PC.

Redbeards Revenge - Traps'n'Treasures Secret #2

Ahoi There!
If you believe it or not but the evil pirate Redbeard - that was playing the counterpart of Jeremy Flinn - actually existed. Here, and for the first time ever, the fans of Traps'n'Treasures can finally see who they had to fight against in these hours and hours of tough gameplay.

There were actually plans that we put end-bosses in TNT but there were other priorities that were more important (e.g. "Why is this damn memory management losing the released bytes!!!" ). Another reason why we decided against end-bosses was that in a Jump'n'Run end-bosses were always associated with "Jump with own bottom on enemie's head". We did not want to go the same way.

About Scooter!

As already mentioned, the little girl called "Scooter" was the predecessor of Jeremy Flynn (who later had his apperance in the commercial title Traps'n'Treasures). Scooter was going to be a cute Jump'n'Run Heroine but because I went to study english abroad the whole project was put on ice. Well, here at least some screenshots of a demoversion that already used some of the logic that was later used in TNT.

Trick or Treat!

For all the ghosties out there I have a couple of themes that make you feel in the right place today...

http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/DancingWitches.mp3
http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/GatheringOfTheGhools.mp3
http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/MistOnTheSerpentsPath.mp3

Bob Wizard

Today I present you a screenshot of my first semi-professional program written in 68'000 Assembler. It was called Bob Wizard and it was meant to be an editor for designing Blitter Objects that later could be used in games:



Unfortunately I was so focused on the design of it that instead of making a logical size of the pixel area like 32x32 or 48x48 I used 40x40 which was complete nonsense. That's probably the reason why it was not even a desired object on copy parties. However - I worked out a cool fill routine which was my pride and joy.

Pixel Art #2

Et voilà! Here he is - errrr - before the conversion. Yes - this little girl was the first draft of the hero (or better heroine) for Traps'n'Treasures or at least the beginning of it. Actually at the time the game was called "Scooter" which was nothing more than a working title. Over the years the plot and the character changed into something more adventurous as you know.

Here is the complete metamorphoses:

Pixel Art #1

Okay. Here's a little eye-catcher for a change. This little hero here is called Flynn - Jeremy Flynn.

He's the main character from Traps'n'Treasures, the game I designed with Ruedi Hugentobler (Level Design, Music) and Orlando (Graphics) in 1992. Orlando, responsible for most of the graphics, did a great job especially on the wonderful title screen, but more about that project later.

However - It took Orlando and me several weeks or even months until the final shape of Jeremy was formed the way he appeared in the game.

Next time you'll find out what Jeremy looked like before his workout sessions... You'll see and be flabbergasted :-)

Cover Versions

Not like today but around the 80's it was quite a challenge to bring real music onto a computer like the Amiga. The SCA (Swiss cracking Association) group successfully demonstrated a digitized version of the Miami Vice score spread on several swap disks.

An alternative way (and sizewise more moderate) was to sample only some core instruments or beats of the original song and rewrite the song with the help of a soundtracker. Here are some results of that approach:

http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/ForeverTonight.mp3
http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/Zoolook.mp3
http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/Bad.mp3

Eliminator

When Hewson's Atari ST version of Eliminator was converted to Amiga, Linel needed a title song for it. Just one day before mastering I was asked to provide the missing element. Unfortunately I said yes, worked the whole night through and delivered a rather disappointing piece of music. Nevertheless it made it onto the disk:

http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/Eliminator.mp3

This is what the title screen had looked like:



By the way: I have only contributed the main intro title song for the AMIGA version of Eliminator.
The other in-game songs and sounds were 1:1 converted from the original version of the Atari ST.

Leonardo 2 - In the Circus

Unfortunately this game never made it into the shelves. Orlando started designing some great artwork, characters and even a titlescreen for this game but somehow the project got buried after some time.

Inspired by Orlando's graphics I provided two songs for the circus theme. On the titlescreen you could see Leonardo on a unicycle doing some magic tricks out of a hat (As far as I remember):

http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/Leo2Unicycle.mp3
http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/Leo2InsideTheCircus.mp3

Leonardo

Leonardo was the first official project I participated on and off course was very flattered when I was asked to provide the in-game-sound for a commercial game. It's kind of a mind-puzzle game and I think it was for everybody of the team the first step into commercial game programming with all its pluses and minuses. The game was not incredibly successful but everybody was very proud to see the reviews in the computer mags.

http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/LeonardoIntro.mp3
http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/LeonardoSong.mp3

To make yourself a picture of the look:



Note: If you once play the game then listen carefully to the sound effect that the squelching rock makes - It's a bag with cornflakes being crunched in my right hand :-)

Clown-O-Mania

The following SoundFx Mod I wrote for a game called Clown-o-Mania by Roman Bosshart. I think especially the first song conveys the right kind of jolly-factor to the gamer.

http://www.kingroman.com/tunes/Clown-O-Mania.mp3

The graphics wizard Orlando (Roland Petermann) designed the picture for the title screen which is one of my favourites from his portfolio (Just after Traps'n'Treasures):

Ever heard of LINEL's SoundFX?

Hi

In the next days I will upload some of my old Amiga tunes of which many of them never made it into a game. However most of them are unfinished or short harmony trials. Also the variety of samples used in my songs is a bit limited because at these days good quality samples were not that wide spread. I had my set of instruments that I preferred - and reused them a lot. :-)

Nevertheless - Just listen and feel the good old 4-Channel-Sound-Memories return.

All songs were composed with SoundFX, a great soundtracker made by Christian Haller for Linel.


To convert them to MP3 I first used DeliPlayer (The only mod player I know that manages to play SoundFX Mods on the PC) with its great recording feature to save the output as wave file and then encoded it into MP3. The free version of DeliPlayer only supports Mono output but it's actually quite pleasant to listen to the songs that way.

July 1993: TnT German Version Release Day

After almost 5 years (1989 - 1993) development, Traps'n'Treasures got finally released for the German market. Exhausted but happy to have finished the product and looking forward to seeing the product on the shelves.