A
little unusual and abstract shoot’em up game (from 1993), albeit
with a lot of experimenting possibilities. At most four (or less)
spaceships may fight against each other under various conditions
and circumstances. The fighting parties can be controlled in any
way at want: by the two joysticks and the keyboard even three
persons may be duelling at once; nevertheless any of them may
be entrusted to the computer (and the latter may also be as purely
random, as rather some „artificial intelligence” capable to manoeuvre
in at least somewhat limited way). The exterior and the behaviour
of every ship may be tailor-made in wide possibilities (within
the basic simplicity of the entire game of course).
The
title of the game originates from the name of English mathematician
John Conway, namely that so-called Game of Life
cell automaton was applied as the standard background, which was
contrived (or discovered?) by him, and published in 1970. Describing
and explaining this, well – that’s another story… (In a nutshell:
there is a cell population on a divided area of adjacent cells
permanently influencing one another, periodically evolving forth
step by step on following certain – previously defined – rules,
or laws. Every cell is changing state – either is born, or dies
again – depending on how many neighbours it has got at the moment
etc. Originally this all was invented for modelling the reproductive
circumstances of some certain living-spaces in nature, however,
it soon became an authentic, peculiar mathematical game, which
has still got many fans worldwide. If you are curious to know
more, then look for that on the internet. It is being discussed
at several places, as a first starting point see: 
Wikipedia
)
If you are already bored by the breeding of cells, the original
background can be replaced by another as you like: you can draw
anything for yourself creatively using all the „fantastic” possibilities
of the C64’s built-in character set, e. g. an obstacle ground
or a labyrinth… etc. At the right settings the spaceships may
collide with the background elements if required, too (that is
not recommended as they crash and explode then), or shoot them,
too. (This is not the basic setting, thus the standard background
is only an illustration first.)
The
program was rather made for my own entertainment only. Considering
this way, it has been so successful that sometimes I play it even
nowadays (but only a little bit of course). And then that anyone
else could whether also like it at all, or not, that’s another
question… (My other motivation for its development was to prove
that even the most primitive shoot’em up game could be
also made with idea and a bit of intelligent creativity.)
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You
can see the opening screen of the game in the above picture, that
serves for setting the conditions and the parameters for the players
before any actual game to play. (None of the players’ any datas
limit or depend on the others’ in any way, so thus you may even
set e. g. the same player to handle several spaceships at one
time etc.) Any „player” can be renamed to anything else
(e. g. to your real name). The speed of every ship and every shot
by them can also be set individually. (The first is speed,
and the second is shtsp. The bigger quantity results
the faster movement; and a zero quantity rather has a special
effect. A ship with a zero speed cannot move at all, only be shooting
standing at one place. If the speed of the shot is set to zero,
then a curious thing happens: when you shoot by the moving ship,
then it stops and you may control its shot instead: that becomes
some kind of „aim-controlled” weapon from now on… If the shot
is not any longer, then you get back the moving of your ship again.)
Each player can have a different number of their lives (see at
lives there of course). You may select amongst several
moving ways (move). (Here you may determine whether you
control – joy1, joy2 or key –, or the
computer – c64, rnd1-2-3 –, or perhaps nobody
does – off.) There settable are any colours, sizes and
their shots’ sizes for all the ships (color, ship
and shot). (With the only limiting that a shot cannot
be larger than its ship; maybe that is obvious.) The meaning of
swall is: whether you may go through (or move over) any
part of the background, or not. (If you set it to off,
then the ship – and also its shot – will collide with the background
from now on if meeting some; however, the base setting is on,
that makes it independent from the background at all.) The fight
parameter means: whether this spaceship plays at all. (Whoever
is set to off, he doesn’t take part of the game.)
You
may start the game by clicking on the start playing inscript
at the lower region. (While playing the Commodore key serves as
pause, and the RUN/STOP + RESTORE shows the actual scores at any
time, then it may be restarted or continued at will.) The background
menu option is for inspecting – and then for changing – the background
itself. (After entering the editor, you can return from there
by pressing the RETURN key. The F1 key gives a cursor for the
editing, the F3 also helps at this with grid points on or off,
and the F5 strews about some cells at random on the screen; the
F7 changes their colour. The left-arrow key changes the background
colour; by pressing between 0 and 9 you may even switch among
ten different backgrounds, each one being edited independently
from another, too. On returning back to the main screen you will
also see the number of the actual.) The cell speed is
a counter for delaying between the breeding phases of the cells.
(The bigger quantity it is set to, the more slows down them in
stepping forward; if you want the background to remain still and
motionless for ever, you must set it to zero then. When you draw
not cells into that, but anything else instead for a background
picture – e. g. walls or mazes etc. –, then you must set it to
zero, too, letting not to ruin or spoile your creation.) The follow
dst. means some kind of „following distance”. (It specifies
that how far the enemies will try to stay away from each other.)
The load/save background is used to save or load your
actually numbered background picture. The load/save datas
loads or saves all the other datas (all above).
Robert
Olessak (2011)
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My
Games (1987-2001) /4. |
09/01/2011 |
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Chapter
4: The Swan-Songs of the C64 Era |
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My
Games (1987-2001) |
09/01/2011 |
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My
personal confessions about the development of my games |
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Game(s)
Over… |
09/01/2011 |
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A
picture collection of my games and some others (200
pictures) |
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Conway
Fighter |
09/01/2011 |
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Download
the game (0.3 MB) |
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C64
Games |
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