Pushy IIb (Release # 4) ----------- By R - Fred - W for FishNet Software rfredw@argonet.co.uk http://www.netyaroze-europe.com/~RFREDW http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/rfredw Plot ====== The future of purple-blobby-kind is in your hands! Dangerous radioactive packing cases have been carelessly dumped on the floor of the warehouse (the purple blobby creatures all live in the roof, you see) The radiation leaks can be halted by pushing the cases onto the... err... IntelliNeutralizerQuarks, which -to the ignorant anyway- may look like chalked crosses on the floor, but are in fact sophisticated electronic lumps of widgetry. Shift all the cases and you will have saved the lives of countless purple blobby things, and will be rewarded with... with... a text message, a high score, and severe radiation burns. Um. The end. (I'll skip the story behind the brick & black levels, otherwise I'd be here all night) Intructions ============= Hit "start game", move using the D-Pad, & push the boxes onto the crosses. Boxes won't move if they've got something behind them. On later levels, balls, being round, won't stop till they hit something. There is no penalty, other than lack of score, for the timer reaching zero. On the frontend menu, "Password" entry is done with the D-pad, with Cross/Circle choosing letters. Square/Triangle are shortcuts for "delete", Start/Select are shortcuts for "OK". Entering any unrecognised password, including no password at all, will take you back to the main menu. Pausing the game (pretty much any button other than the D-Pad) gives a nice collection of options:- "Continue" means "That was just a pause for breath, I want to keep going please". "Retry" means "oops, what a silly mistake. Reset everything to its start position, ta very much". One thing it specifically DOESNT do, however, is reset the bonus timer to its starting value. If you're aiming for a high total score, don't make mistakes. "Restart Here" means "Start again, from this level". It's designed for people who are aiming for a fast time on a specific level: It resets the bonus counter, but also *zeroes your score*. As an added feature, it also makes future "start game"s from the main frontend screen start at this level (because that's what you'll want to do if you're going for best times). This effect is reset by accessing the password screen. "Quit" abandons the game & goes back to the main frontend menu. Every level is completable. ...Within the allotted time limit. ...As of release #2: With more than 100 left on the clock, in fact. Background ============ "Pushy IIb" on the Yaroze is a fairly straight port of "Pushy" and "Pushy II", a pair of Freeware games I wrote for Acorn machines in '94 and '96 respectively. It's come about largely coz I was a tad embarrassed at having this Yaroze kit here for so long without actually producing anything "show-off-able" on it. (Indeed, this is pretty much the same logic that led to the Acorn original!) There's not much really original here - the "push-the-boxes-onto- the-crosses" puzzler's been given numerous names on numerous platforms over the years. On the other hand, it *is* a complete game. This ain't a piece of yaroze testing/demo code. The 50 levels are 100% my own design: 21 from Acorn Pushy, 25 from Acorn PushyII, and 4 odd ones I had lying around afterwards. Afficionados of the Acorn originals may be glad to know that the passwords still take them to the same puzzles. The difficulty level's set pretty much at "easy" (it's a kids game, after all), but even experienced puzzlers have had problems with the later levels. In particular, I would like to stress that level 46 (5 letter name, starts with "B" - You'll know it when you get stuck there) *is* completable, as indeed they all are. This despite several emails complaining, and in one case offering a "proof", that levels were impossible to complete. They *are* all completable. What's more, they're all completable within the allotted time limit. (Sorry to rant about this, but people - now including SCEE's games consultants - keep telling me that levels are "impossible to finish within the time!". OK, I've got my original maps & solutions on paper, which helps a bit!) Diary ======= The ludicrously overlong "20 weeks" in the title page is largely down to the fact that programming at home is a "couple of hours a weekend, if I can be bothered" kinda thing: Here's the breakdown. (Given that the game, map, & graphics design had already been done two years or so ago) 1:Feb 14th/15th 98 - BASIC "Graphic-to-char[]" converter on the Acorn. Map plotter code on the Yaroze. 2:Feb 21st/22nd - P2's 20*12 Maps grabbed. (3:Feb 28th/Mar 1st)- No time for Yaroze this weekend. 4:Mar 7th/8th - sprites & map plotting properly. 5:Mar 14th/15th - Blob movement,animation, wall interaction. 6:Mar 21st/22nd - Box animation, interaction, & damping. 7:Mar 28th/29th - Alphabet grabbed. Ball animation & interaction. (8:Apr 4th/5th) - No time this weekend either. 9:Apr 10th-13th - Map expansion to 20*16, full 50-level mapset, bonus timer, level names, score, level progression basic front end scn work 10:Apr 18th/19th - The big map tidying sesh. Front end structure. retry/quit. Proper ball acceleration. 11:Apr 25th/26th - Random colour fade, password entry 12:May 2nd-4th - Text colours, password check, (13:May 9th-10th) - Time out... (14:May 16th-17th) - More time off:- Wakefield Acorn show... Nice new toy: "TV in a window". I'm now running the PC card in one window, and the Playstation thru the TV card in another window, all on the Acorn desktop! (15:May 23rd-25th) - Ummmm, Goldeneye on the N64... 16:May 30th-31st - Better palette/fading management for phasing colours phasing-colour menus & password entry 17:Jun 6th-7th - Checking all the maps are possible within the time Removal of diagnostic messages. Title page 18:Jun 13th-14th - Attempt to make sense of Sony's sound docs. 19:Jun 20th-21th - Sound. ("boing, boing, boing, yay!") oh, and the front end ones as well. Esp the password scn! 20:Jun 27th-28th - Yaroze "fame" page & tidying. Addendum:- ============ July 4th - All 3 versions (pal,ntsc,fame) uploaded to the NY website July 7th - Fame game entry deadline (phew!) July 10th - Comments list from Sony, resulting in... July 11th-12th - Graphics mods to the brick levels for (c) reasons, "continue" & "restart here" options on pause, Dimmer non-selected menu items, Upped the "yay" SFX frequency a tad, 100 added to bonus timers on 5 levels (all levels are now completable with >100 on the clock, rather than just >0) ...And that's Release #2... Bit of a break from Yarozzing coz I've just got Final Fantasy VII. (I may be gone for some time...) August 15th-16th - Two new graphic sets to break the game up a bit more. (a "wooden" set, and an ever-so-tasteful "carpetted" set) Once in, there'll be a gfx switch every 10 levels, rather than every just at levs 20 & 40. August 22nd-23rd - Re-graphic 30 of the levels with the new stuff. - Add vsn number to loading screen. - Finally tidied the "ball" graphic. It had lost a lot of detail in the "hires 24 bit" to "lores 256-colour" process, and defused balls were virtually invisible on the carpet backdrop! ...And that's Release #3... August 29th-31st - On request, turn off the interlace ...Quickie Release #4...