Re: Zodiac Deluxe Great C16 game with nice improvements to this classic.
Our German-language review can be found in our recorded livestream starting at 00:39:03. English subtitles are also available. Subscription to our YouTube and Twitch channel is welcome.
Re: Zodiac Deluxe This is fantastic. Like playing a brand new game. I always found the original way too hard without a map but I clocked this on my first go, but it thankfully then cranks up a notch. The map really helps.
I love the fact that you kept all this within 16k too, and not only added extra features but also added a fantastic tune, and a much nicer title screen.
So I finally got to see the whole game. If this was released back in the day, I would have called it Udo Gertz standard. Great job Csabo. Now, just your top score to beat
Re: Zodiac Deluxe 1) It shouldn't You may have found a bug. 2) Each new room entered (including the first one) scores 10 points. I wanted to reward players for exploring further.
Re: Zodiac Deluxe Great Suprise! One thing though, it would be cool if the character stay in this way where i moving, and don't need arrow and space to use simmultaneously! Thanks for the game!
Re: Zodiac Deluxe Oooh, consistency at last! Now it can be called "a game"! You guys have just demonstrate that choosing the right points in an old game design to be enhanced, can revolutionize the whole of it, still respectrfully keeping unaltered the core and the lore of the original!
Re: Zodiac Deluxe Thanks guys I thought of a couple of more things to add after I made the post/video:
A few of the testers said "this is like a new game", TBH, that's not far from the truth What BSz mentioned about the music, I did want to elaborate on that. Something new here, an interesting experiment: the music doesn't use any drums, and I made the step function as the hihat and the shots function as snares. The player steps every 10 frames, and at first I wanted to keep that temp, but I found it too fast, so I slowed it down to 15 frames. So the step sounds you hear don't actually match up to the frames, but it doesn't seem to matter: it "works". And it's always on beat, just like the snares. (What's especially cool is when you turn the music down, and you hear it fade out, while the sounds remain at the same volume.)
Another thing related to the music, I tried finding songs that use the same chord progression (v sus4 add7, IV sus4, I sus4 add9, I add9) but couldn't find any. So... I guess it's a chord progression never used before? (Not that writing something like that is a big achievement, just curious, I guess). Seems like sus4 chords are pretty rare nowadays While working on the tune, on a whim I turned on Shazam, and to my surprise, it (mis)identified my song as "Hush" by "Devoted Symbols"; which appears on a 2007 compilation album. Looks like a completely unknown band. Ever since then I've been very curious about this, I want to hear what that song sounds like. I can't find it anywhere though; it's not on Spotify, or YouTube, or iTunes, or Bandcamp, or anywhere really. If anyone finds it, let me know!
One more thing; the game ends at $3F57 compressed (in other words, only 167 bytes are free when loaded into a C16). This might be the most densely packed C16 game ever :-)
Re: Zodiac Deluxe I had a lot of fun testing it too! This is pretty much how the original version should have been. My personal favorites are step sounds in time with the music.
As far a graphical updates, there are too many things to list. Thanks to KiCHY's design, I think the game looks much better. Certainly a lot more colorful! Let's focus on the gameplay changes.
Gameplay
Each room has a fixed number of enemies, this number increases as you get closer to the Time Vaults. Once an enemy is killed, it doesn't regenerate, so it's possible to clear out rooms completely.
The player respawn mechanism has been rewritten. In the original, if a player dies in a room with a Zodiac sign in it, they respawn in an empty room - no Zodiac, no enemies. However, when you leave and re-enter, both will be there. To me, this made the game's world feel "fake", inconsistent. Now, when the player dies, they respawn at the point where they entered, but the number of enemies in the room and the Zodiac sign remains.
The map size has been reduced from 20x20 to 12x12 rooms. I think you'll find that even at this size the map is quite large. I've also edited some room layouts and made new room types. There's also a brand new map function, which can be accessed by pressing HELP, this will help navigate the maze. In addition, the room colors are also fixed, which to me makes the game's world more consistent, and it can help with navigation as well.
There's also fewer Zodiac signs, specifically, there's exactly 12 of them, one each. Since there's less of them to find, I feel like finding one is a bigger deal, so I also introduced a new game mechanic: powerups. There are 4 power ups you can gain by picking up the Zodiacs: extra life, frozen demons, lightning shot, and invulnerability.
As I mentioned previously, the original game had a "Cubic Gate" mechanic, which was not very clearly defined, and never mentioned on the cover either. I removed this completely, but I wanted to leave the gate itself in the game. The Cubic Gate appears in the penultimate room, and will only open once all Zodiac signs are collected.
In the Time Vaults, you can no longer shoot. Shooting the undestroyable demons here was a very easy way to rack up score, and I didn't think this made sense, so I removed this. Otherwise the scoring was completely overhauled too.
The Deluxe version has a little end sequence, which I won't spoil here.
Once you win the game, the game will restart, and you can have another go, but the difficulty increases. Maybe some players will enjoy the extra challenge. It's not possible to play indefinitely, eventually the enemies will be too fast to avoid.
Extras
There's an intro, which explains the game's backstory, such as it is.
There's also new music throughout, which can be toggled with the M key.
You can quit from the game by holding ESC for a few seconds.
Some bugs from the original were fixed, such as Joystick fire from port 1 not working. The Deluxe version also has SNES controller support.
I also made CRT and TAP versions of the game.
Thanks
Thanks to Rüdiger for inspiring me to work on this project. Huge thanks to KiCHY whose work never fails to amaze me. Thanks to all the people who helped with testing: BSZ, Gaia, gerliczer, George, SukkoPera.
