From: moon!cyberden!phbill@well.sf.ca.us
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: CrashMan!
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 22:33:33 PDT
Organization: Indescribable Creations

Hey all.  Once again I've started on a new game, but this time (since 
I've had a TON of practice in this style of game, and I also have a 
better BASIC than I used back then..aka TBXL) I'll ACTUALLY finish it! :)

Of course there's a catch.  I need some music files.  When I say music 
files, I'm being pretty general, but that's the point.  All I require is 
that it plays in BASIC, in the background.  Hell, I don't even need an 
actual playable song, just the note data and I'll program it into Sound 
Commander. (Remember that?  I think it was from Compute!  It would use 
machine language to play sound effects.  The only thing I ever made in it 
was that old Russian song- used in most versions of (the official) 
Tetris.)  Anyways, back to the game.

The game is called CrashMan (remember the "Subject:" up there? ;) ).  
It's a Stupid Mario Bros. clone (I've gotten quite annoyed with the 8-bit 
Public Domain clone called "Bros." which TRIES to mimic the entire game 
but does a terrible job.)  Just like Bros., this is being programmed in 
TurboBASIC XL and will be compiled... and just like Bros., it will use an 
IRG mode 5 (GRAPHICS 13, the 40 x 12 4-colored character mode) but with a 
MUCH niced character set.  I'm not positive, but from what I've got 
planned, CrashMan will be a bit bigger than Bros. (app.16k of data per 
level.  20 screens by 440 bytes per screen.  BUT, each screen has a ghost 
(which will contain the data on what the "?" boxes will give, where the 
enemies start out, and where all of the secret things are), so the data 
for each level takes up 17600 bytes).  Also, in Crashman, when you get 
the growth item (in Bros. and Super Mario Bros. it's a mushroom, in this 
game it's a beaker), you'll actually get bigger.  Not only that, but 
unlike Bros., the player is a player (confused? - player as in sprite, 
rather than redefined characters, like in Bros.).  

Well.. most of it is coming together rather nicely.  I've got the 
character set defined, as well as an alternate Daisy Dot III Near Letter 
Quality font for printing out documents (I may make this a (the term has 
lost me).. like Valgus^2.. you get the PD demo and then pay a bit to get 
the registered version of the game along with documents, etc.)  All I 
REALLY need to fit in there to be sure I have enough room in 48k! is a 
few music files.  I'm not even sure how many level's I'll have (maybe 
I'll upload the Mapper program I made so people can make their own 
levels..?), but I'll probably only need about 4 or 5 different songs. (I 
don't want the thing to take TOO long loading! :) ).  

If anyone'd like to help me out at all (I still need a NICE title screen 
and some good Player/Missle animation done.  I WAS going to get a friend 
of mine (who's an excellent artist) to draw a title on paper and then I'd 
digitize it and clean it up or do some other tricks to it, but he's in 
San Diego for a while :-( .), you're welcome to.  Just E-mail me and 
we'll see what we can do.


Thanx.  I hope this'll end up being one of my best projects in quite a 
while.
                                                                Phbill

___________________________ ||| __
PhBill: Bill Kendrick      / | \
moon!cyberden!phbill@well.sf.ca.us
__________________________________ PhBill @ Cyberden (415-472-5527)
                   August 17, 1992