|  Stop The Express | |
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| | Hall Of Fame |  | ian | 26,090 |    |
 | zbyti | 22,180 |  |
 | jolie | 18,080 | |
| 4 | Luca | 14,920 | |
| 5 | Csabo | 12,620 | |
| 6 | marcos64 | 11,960 | |
| 7 | C64Mark | 11,860 | |
| 8 | Plus4Punk | 8,280 | |
| 9 | David360 | 7,630 | |
| 10 | KiCHY | 7,060 | |
| 11 | RoePipi | 6,470 | |
| 12 | skim | 6,300 | |
| 13 | gerliczer | 5,540 | |
| 14 | George | 5,140 | |
| 15 | Saberman | 4,580 | |
| 16 | Retro Recollections | 4,560 | |
| 17 | siz | 4,440 | |
| 18 | Chronos | 4,240 | |
| 19 | TRP | 3,840 | |
| 20 | C64 Masters | 2,150 | |
| 21 | DGS | 1,700 | |
| 22 | Gaia | 1,590 | |
| 23 | Atisoft | 1,440 | |
| 24 | Mike Bailey | 1,360 | |
| 25 | Ransom | 1,320 | |
| 26 | Mad | 1,240 | |
| 27 | eldritch | 1,200 | |
| 28 | quadrusl | 530 | |
| 29 | ConjiComani | 400 | |
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| | Author's Comments | The game was converted from C64, but the code has been changed and optimized a lot. Below are some of the differences between the C64 and +4 versions.
Fixes:
- A bug caused the end-of-stage bonus to always be 71 * 10 (instead of "remaining-time * 10"), this has been fixed.
- A rare bug, which caused the wires to become garbage has been found and fixed. This only has a 1-in-43 chance of occuring, and given that the C64 original is very hard to complete, it's no wonder it went unnoticed. Below you can see two screenshots; the first one shows where the "pole" should be when you finish the level. If it's at that exact position (and only then!), the wires will become garbled (2nd screenshot).
 
Internally, the game used a 16-bit pointer to keep track of the wire's position. Normally, this counts down by two, but when the train is slowing down, it counts down by one. In this exact case, the value reaches zero when the train is slowing down, which causes the counters to become $FFFF. This was completely unnecessary though, since the wire position is actually just a number from $00-$54, therefore an 8-bit value is enough. All code relating to this has been rewritten.
- There was a slight graphical bug in the window of the train engine - two swapped characters. This has been fixed, along with lot of other graphical and color improvements.
- In the original, the player could not throw birds/snakes with joystick fire, so players using joystick still had to press the space key. This has been fixed in the +4 version.
Changes/Improvements:
- The C64 original used sprites for the main character and the gang, these have been redrawn or copied from the ZX Spectrum version.
- Added a title screen, converted from the ZX Spectrum version (thanks to Chronos!) Added title music as well (which can be muted by pressing "M").
- Completely rebalanced difficulty curve. The original is pretty tough, I'd wager that most casual players won't be able clear even the first level, and therefore move on pretty quickly. In this version, the first level is downright easy, and it gets to the original's difficulty by around level 4-5.
- As a reward for being able to clear more levels, more train designs have been added, modelled after real-life trains. Can you spot all of them? :-)
- Lots of minor quality-of-life improvements, such as: the game doesn't show the "GAME OVER" text initially, when paused, the game displays the text "PAUSED", the train stops faster (this just took way too long in the original), and the pauses can be skipped by pressing fire. These give the game a more polished feel.
- To eliminate the need for cheats, a practice mode has been added. Press "C" in the main menu. In practice mode, the player can see when they are getting hurt.
The development time was 3 months (too long!), went through 2 alpha, 7 beta and 5 release candidate versions. The game wouldn't be as good as it is without invaluable help from testers, so big thanks to:
BKP, Chronos, Gaia, gerliczer, KiCHY, Luca, Plus4Punk, RoePipi, Rüdiger, siz.
Have fun! |
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