Sabrewulf Released! Today brings a very pleasant surprise: a new game, Sabrewulf is released. The game - which is a bit similar to Treasure Island - runs on a Plus/4 or a 64K-expanded Commodore 16. It's a faithful conversion of the ZX Spectrum game by gc841.
In the game, your task is to guide Sabreman through a 256-screen jungle. He must collect four pieces of the lost amulet and then exit the maze. Of course the jungle is filled with dangerous creatures, including the invincible Wulf itself. Sabreman can also collect valuable treasures, and find jungle orchids in various colors, each granting its own special effect with picked up.
Like many Spectrum games, the gameplay is hard, but one can get into it with a little practice. Big cheers to Gary for converting this game, now hurry up and download it!
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Great news. I'd be hard-pressed to do a longplay for it though lol. Nice to see new games
I would like to see some obvious classics also, although I'm grateful for what we recieve.
What about Bruce Lee? Or an actual decent Donkey Kong with all 4 levels? The official Vic20 version is just about perfect, so it can easily be achieved to work on a C16. All we have atm is Climb It & Roller Kong
Or maybe some GTW's should finally be converted, mind you much of them were promised to work on C16, but a few of them are very possible, such as Gorf. It could even include the Galaxian level which are missed on other home versions due to copyright issues.
An english C16/Plus4 game programmer seems to be pretty rare these days. Hope to see many more from this guy
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Ati, be sure to pick up the orchids. They grant you lots of stuff, including temporary invincibility. It is playable, just pretty hard, especially at first
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Its pretty unplayable everybody agree. I will play with this game but not with this release. Please speed down the ghosts or something. Beta test is important! Sorry guys im tired of seeing technically perfect yet unplayable games...
I dont care what kind or flame i start but if anybody release a game it will be playable for us! I dont care the technical chitchat its a mature platform. So if i cannot play, i die frustrating lot of times on the first several screen i'll give it up! Please mind it!
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Sorry i was a little bit rude yesterday, but its not against the author rather the gameplay. I never used spectrum so if all games so tough on that platform it will be frustrating.. I'll try the game on the real iron soon..
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Once you past the wild boar the game opens up very quickly and your be lost soon enough. Time it right and get your self stung by a plant then nothing can hit you while your on the floor. I used this one to pass the wild boar, or invincibility which is even better. Sure thing some luck can go a long way as it's different every time you play but I thought it was ok having never played it before but knowing it's a sacred game on the Spectrum.
Maybe try playing it in Yape at 50% CPU speed if you want to run it at a slower pace if your reaction time is starting to fade with old age. I just did so now and it's not that bad either at this speed!
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Like Csabo said Spectrum games are often much tougher than games on other platforms (esp. Commodore). I recall AticAtac being incredibly hard as well back in the day. So, if this is a faithful conversion (or rather: remake) and not a genuine new game, it should stay so... methinks.
Thank you for the comments and suggestions. I can see that most of you think that the game is too difficult, so I'm happy to release an easier version. It's not unplayable though and I'll prove it when I have more time. Please bear with me until I get a new release out.
I would like to thank Csabo for his assistance with testing and feedback, it was really helpful.
Until the next release, using the orchids is the key, yellow (sickness) aren't much use, but the rest all make you temporarily invincible. You can hold down fire when moving horizontally/diagonally if that helps.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! nice game,congrat to the programmer! Surprising how much the nice artwork can compensate the technical limitations of Speccy. Ok, plussy also not true color Chronos, nice cover art. Unfortunately on cellphone the picture does not zoom well if i click on it. BTW if you set the speed to 20% then you are the king,haha! It is ok here till 140% if do not use the yellow ones... Ok, just kidding, 60% is my number. Maybe we should initiate a championship who can use the highest emu% reaching a certain point, proven by a freeze or screenshot. PEACE!
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Chronos, You are welcome to make cosmetic changes to the title screen, let me know what you need from me We could include this with the upcoming 'slowed down' release.
I like the cover design very much, it catches the spirit of the game. Please don't send out the cover anywhere else though, because the rights to the Ultimate games are owned by Microso_ft these days. They don't allow any of those old games to be distributed or used at all.
MMS I hope that the next release will mean that nobody wants to play at 20%!
If anyone has Java installed, here is the Spectrum version:
This is all cool. When you said about BiG Borther owning the rights ect... first game that came to mind was Jet Pac. If you get time to port something else this would be top of the wish list. Hope you can sneak a port out even if it mean's renaming it. A classic game that I have played many times, even on XBOX 360!
Cheers once again for all that you have done so far, looking forward to the update with new title screen.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Sabrewulf is a difficult game to play, and put you in frustration mode after some playing, but after a while you use to turn back to the game to see if it is so unbeatable as seen before. gc841 has the merit to have opened a gate to the straight Spectrum-to-Plus/4 conversions: the softsprite management of both machines basically submit to similar rules, though the Spectrum manages that at more than double speed, whereas converting 3D moving games should be a real mess, hence avoid like poison (say: Figher Bomber). If Sabrewulf is a straight conversion from Spectrum, and not from the very similar C64 one, there would be plenty of possible candidates for another conversion. If yuo all also wanna see a fairly playable Spectrum game running on a Plus/4, there are reliable charts for that too, and of course my best choice for an eventual forthcoming new conversion would be no.1 in the list: R-Type.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! anyone for Chuckie Egg? Another gem missing from the collection!
C16/Plus4 never had much to shout about when it came to old school platform games with ladders, Booty was nice enough but then look at Runner, Fury, Panik!, Hektik and even Roller Kong. It wasn't until Lode Runner +4 was released last year was the point when we finally had an epic old school platform with ladders.
Your have to forgive gc841 as it only takes one person to port something from the Spectrum and then the dreams and wish lists start coming. Take it as a compliment of your first production - yeah that good! Cheers.
Off-topic, but I was wondering how difficult it would be to port Oric games for the Plus/4. I recently found a site with 3 especially interesting Oric games: "Space: 1999", "Stormlord", and "Impossible Mission". There is also an Elite clone "1337" and "SkoolDaze". Source codes are available.
Re: Oric games I'm not familiar with the Commodore VIC-20. Since the Oric machine which Spektro quoted in the previous post, however, was driven by the same CPU as it was built into the VIC-20 (a 6502), I wonder whether there's already an existing Commodore adaption. I consider it easier to rewrite Commodore machine code rather than from 3rd party sources. - Even the better, the VIC-20 basic dialect 2.0 is part of Basic 3.5.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Very nice, I used to play Sabrewulf back in the on my C64 as a kid. Always died very soon, and I don't think my version had one of the common trainers.
Re: the Oric, the premier database on the web is here http://www.oric.org/index.php?page=software
I don't think there are that many cross-platform ports with C16/plus4, but I know some e.g Mushroom Mania and Mysterious Adventures like Golden Baton.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! It's certainly on Lemon64. Doesn't even matter if you enter "Sabrewulf" or "Sabre Wulf".
It's also on the BBC Micro ("Beeb"), and the CPC, one difference being I think that these ports use lower-resolution modes (I'm guessing so not having to sacrifice colours?).
Re: Sabrewulf Released! It's clear that there is still a lot of interest in converting games from other platforms, personally I'd like to see on plus/4
After the new release is up plus any bugfixes, I'll be ready for a break from coding for a while. If anyone wants to reuse and improve any of the code for other projects then they are more than welcome. I wrote the code in notepad and kept most of the files including comments, so if you want to refer to them just let me know.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Would have to get one of the guys like Csabo to sample off the speech from the arcade machine for Operation... Wolf! That would finish it off lovely.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! It's a pain using the joystick for that game, easier with a mouse. Not sure if C64 mouse support is available for our machines.
I wonder if lightgun support is possible too, I have a C64 lightgun lying around somewhere.
Anyway, I could list a whole stack of classic games worthy of conversion. Wizball, Hunters Moon, Paradroid, Bruce Lee, Impossible Mission to name but 5
Re: Sabrewulf Released! we have some impossible mission implementation, like Rózsaszin párduc. Lightpen is possible, but only with classic CRT TV or monitor. On Lcd or plasma tv there is no beam to follow. MOuse: it is possible via sid-card on the same(?) registers as on C64, or via BGSSZ RS232-USER PORT (MAX232 IC) implementation. Both have demo PRG , that it may work, but still no generic resident driver available to integrate/link next to joystick support. Maybe the next scene effort needed to optimize and standardize both,maybe to integrate into one and hacking few program to work with. Probably the mentioned action prg, Geos, multibotticelli as a start of a new age in PLUSSY's life
Re: Sabrewulf Released! plus4emu already has lightpen emulation via mouse. IMHO this may cover 99% of usable cases (emulators, crt). Mouse or lightpen driver for GEOS +4 will be one of the greatest program. BTW I am a bit confused by the idea of convertion of programs available for c64 from Spektrum. Spektrum has other screen size, peripherals , cpu, colors...
Re: Sabrewulf Released! yeah,but speccy has no hw sprite and that's the key. Converting a c64 game to plussy told to be an easy task till no sprite in the picture (PIGMY once told me,one of the graphical text adventures he converted in a whopping 3hours, and it was 90% ready, only some bughunting remained. Certainly you need big experience and routine to reach this speed). Vic20 could be better,but due to RAM limit games are too lame. Anything with 6502+no hw sprite sounds ok, but eg.ATARIs had strange gfx modes. If you have planar gfx instead of c=/speccy type hires bitmap,then things get complicated. I will check oric,maybe a good idea..
Re: Sabrewulf Released! holy suit! That video should have a very serious content! My nokia e66 always restarts after 2 minutes... So i can see only the chat part
A new version was released today by gc841. If features an improved title screen courtesy of Chronos and slower enemies, which should make the game more playable.
I don't think it makes sense to keep the "old" version in this case, since essentially it's the same... So basically just overwrite the old file.
Re: Sabrewulf Released! WICKED, on my way to grabbing it now. Many thanks gc841.
Edit:
Good work on the title screen Chronos, colours looks sweet!
Speed of it now, a little slower, has added more weight to it making it feel more solid than last time. Some people will still die quickly from the word go if you just rush about not knowing what your doing but as it's easier to make contact using the sword on the enemy now just stick with it and your soon get in to it! :)
Many thanks again gc841. Great little game you have ported. Would loved to see more some day. Cheers!!
Re: Sabrewulf Released! Nice work gc841 both porting it to Plus/4 & C16/64K and for donating this cool super replay of the game being completed. Sixteen Plus wanted a replay, now he has one so no excuse not to play it for anyone now!
Re: Sabrewulf Released! i just checked the speccy list. 6-7 out of top50 has a rather faithful repro on Plussy, 2-3more a less successful one . I think it is more of the top50 nostalgic/classic "original spectrum"games than top 50 best speccy games (jetpac? Formula one?? Elite low ranked,etc). Sir fred, laser squad, tau ceti, rainbow ireland or bruce lee unrealisticly low ranked too. They are not all really hard. Sabre wulf is a real eye candy and really tough, close to 40 i am just too slow for that
Sabrewulf Released!
