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Development Diary

February 20th 2002:

    Latest project...Ultimate's Cyberun!!

   This is a pretty ambitious project for someone who can only program games with The Games Factory, so don't expect anything to appear any time soon......but I HAVE started the project - whether I'll follow it through to the end is another matter entirely.

   Here's a test screenshot just to get you going :-

Cyberun: Harmless

February 25th 2002:

    I've been playing around with the game a little, now that I've managed to tweak the scrolling to run at a decent speed with the game engine running in 32K colours.

    As soon as I can get around to ripping all the sprites I'm going to need from the original game, I'll work on getting them updated so the game looks a lot nicer, but for now, even with my little tweaks...the game looks much better.......

Mostly Harmless :-)

  The ship now flies around quite nicely, and actually increases in speed once you pick up the booster rockets (as shown in the picture above).

   No animations have been put in place yet (again because I'm too lazy to rip the rest of the sprites....at least, until I've got the game engine running smoothly), and the ship doesn't fire.....and there's no aliens......ummmm....and the sprites are the original crappy Spectrum ones that look really nasty running in 640 x 480 mode....errr...check back soon for (hopefully) another update!

March 5th 2002:

    Not had much time to work on ANYTHING recently, but I've received some more sprites.....so here's what the game looks like at the moment....

    Don't get too excited........the aliens don't really do much on screen at the moment despite being animated.  The yellow flying saucer just sits there rotating, and blows up when you crash into it - the blue dome-thing homes in on you, and blows up on contact....but does nothing else!

   The coloured bar at the bottom of the screen is your shield level, which decreases every time you hit an alien....the only problem is, I can't seem to get the damn thing to stay in one place!!!  When the screen scrolls, the status bar scrolls with it instead of staying stationary!!!!!

   Any TGF help that will enable me to cure this problem will be GREATLY appreciated!!!  (and will result in a credit in the finished game......should it ever GET finished!..;-)  )

May 4th 2002:

    Well, a few more advances have been made.  Cyberun PC was almost consigned permanently to the scrap bin, but.......BUT.....success!!

   Now the on-screen displays stay in one place and scroll around quite happily with the play area......aliens re-spawn......your shield strength now goes down when you hit an alien no matter what add-on's you've collected (believe me, this was a WEIRD bug......your shield strength would decrease on impact with another alien, UNTIL you picked up a booster rocket...then they would quite happily blow up on impact, and your shield strength wouldn't be affected at all!!)

   The star field background has been altered slightly (too much blue....made your eyes hurt!) and my ever-faithful source of encouragement GeeKay is working on a MIDI composition of the original Cyberun music.

   Also, Hitman is busy working on sprites for me...so, with him doing the graphics, me doing the coding/bug-splatting, and GeeKay doing the music....this game should get finished!!......eventually!

   Here's an updated screenshot....not too much different, but it shows the shield strength and lives, and gives you a general idea of how things have changed, however minor they may be.

Holy crap, it's an ambush!!!

  Oh, and the game is going to be called Cyberun 2 now, just so die-hard fans of the original don't load it up and go "Hey!..It's nothing like the original!"  ;-)

May 8th 2002:

    Just a few small tweaks.  Firstly, the menu has a nice starry background behind all the text...and secondly, the booster rockets actually shoot out fire when the ship is moved in the appropriate direction!  Ooooo!  ;-)

   Also, I had a tweak around with the actual physics of the ship to make things a little more realistic in a gaming sense.  Firstly, the rear rocket booster pack gives you more speed when picked up......and the lower booster rockets allow you to soar up to great heights.

   It was a little tricky at first......but I eventually managed to prevent the ship from climbing too high without the lower rockets, thus making it mandatory that you pick them up in order to fly over high mountains/hills etc..

   In addition, I've also added a routine whereby collecting power crystals boosts up your shield again....believe me, you WILL need to! :)

May 9th 2002:

    Ok...new sprites are arriving thick 'n' fast now, including the natty new logo as seen at the top of this page, and things are looking VERY sweet visually I can tell you :)

   Also, the booster rockets now shoot out flames when you move in the appropriate directions; when you ascend, the lower rockets fire, when you go left and right, the rear rocket fires, and when you ascend diagonally, both sets of rockets fire!

   Now comes the fun part - I've got to sort out the landscape and place the bits 'n' pieces you bold on to your ship (although most of these are in place already)...then of course, I've got to place the alien nasty things, place a few more shield re-charging things (though not too many of course!), place a few more obstacles (such as hills and the like), and of course make the level completable, and not just some wide, vast area you can fly about in, shooting at things!

   Also, just to make things look a bit better, I've added a Hitman-smoothed version of the menu border to the game screen, and this is what things look like so far:

June 5th 2002:

    Yes, I KNOW it's been nearly a month since the last update!.....lol....but things have progressed as far as Cyberun 2 is concerned.   

    The game related issues are as follows: -

    1) Hitman has now completed ALL of the sprites needed for the game, and they are all in place.

    2) The first level is now complete, and completable.

    3) After the recent discovery of how to make TGF play MP3 files, GeeKay has done a fantastic remix of the original Cyberun music for inclusion in the game (cheers Gordon!)

    4) Level 2 is well underway (at present a catacomb level...ooooh!)...but TGF is being very un-cooperative right now, with random crashes and system freezes being a regular day-to-day thing.

    The other associates issues are :-

    1) I have consigned "The Trap Door-Berks final days" to The Dungeon, and deleted the file from my site.  The game was 15mb in size, and was not my best work by any means, especially seeing as it was only the second game I ever managed to complete on TGF!

    In addition, I am tired of people laughing at it, and me in regards to it, and taking something I spent a lot of time working on as a source of amusement - completely disregarding the fact that it was one of the first games I ever did.  If you've got the game, great....burn it to CD, as it is no longer available.

    2) Moley Christmas is now completed, and ready for release.  Originally this was to be a surprise project, but lack of interest in any of the other things that I am currently doing made me decide to hell with it, and announce it anyway to try and gain some response.  Ric Lumb (www.cheekymonkeygames.co.uk) has kindly re-drawn the graphics for me, and things are looking pretty sweet.  All in all, it was worth dropping "The Trap Door" for what is my first accurate "Remake" as such, of this easily over-looked Monty Mole game....(face it, it's MUCH better than Impossamole ever was!)

    3) As I was in the mood for announcing things, I decided to post up any available information about all the other projects I've currently got floating around on my hard drive.  These are all in various stages of development/playability, and may or may not get finished depending on time, ability, and interest.

    All in all though, problems permitting, Cyberun 2 should get completed and end up being a pretty reasonable game.

    Now that Moley Christmas is out of the way, and that I've had a break from dealing with the problems of Cyberun 2 (plus the other problems) I can return to work on the game.

    The next update will include a screenshot :-)

June 23rd 2002:

    Here's a quick update on the progress of Cyberun 2 so far:-

   1)   A power-up item known as an "Oxygen Compression Bomb" has been added to the game, just to give the player some sort of advantage.  When collected, the resulting explosion destroys ALL flying aliens (including bulletproof ones...more on which later) but does NOT stop re-spawing aliens from....errr...re-spawing :-)

   2)   Lava - Obviously, seeing as the second stage is a Catacomb based level, and seeing as if you decend far enough into a planets surface, you are eventually going to come across some of that nasty molten-rock stuff, I thought it was only fair to add it to the game as a "Natural Hazard".  The Lava does NOT destroy you outright however, instead it gradualy eats away at your shield power while the hull of your ship is in contact with it.  Obviously, if you shield power gets down to zero, the ship will explode.

   3)   As I mentioned above, a breed of Bulletproof Alien has been put into the game.  These Flying-Saucer/Sherman Tank hybrids are immune to your laser cannon, and can only be destroyed by detonating the Oxygen Compression Bomb (don't expect this to be too easy to find though!...hehe)

   Ok, here's some up-to-date screenshots :-

        There's still a LONG way to go with the game, so don't expect anything to be available for download any time soon!.......:-)