Well,
another „hell-game”… Yet not belonging to my former ones. (That’s
another sequel, independently from those. The title means: „The
Angel of the Hell 2.”) This would have been the third game of
the Mantis Software. (After A pokol angyala (The Angel of
the Hell), released in 1992, and A kastély (The Castle),
released in 1994.) Eventually I joined Mantis Software at the
end of ’93 (we got acquainted on the Computer Christmas party
programme of that year), and afterwards we worked on this game
together from ’94 to ’96. Those who beside me (Robert Olessak)
also took part were: Attila Heredi, Zoltan Nagy and Oliver Gaspar.
Unfortunately the program was never finished yet. From the very
beginning it was about to be bought and released by the 576
KByte: in the course of years we were continuously in contact
with them, and discussing with them, until finally it turned out
that they would still not to do so. (It was not necessarily the
576’s fault; namely meanwhile – just beginning from ’94 – the
C64 platform was increasingly drifted out of the mainstream, since
the Commodore company had gone bankrupt, and neither the machine
itself was being manufactured any more… Although the fanatic players
– and later on the demo scene – were going to constantly stick
to „him” so even for a long time further on.)
When
we stopped, the game was nearly 80-90% in ready state, and also
stayed so afterwards. Therefore you might play that, but with
only certain functions not working, for this reason only at a
limited game experience; and of course could not either be finished
(not playable to the end). Practically you can walk through the
scenes and look around, find and take the objects, examine them,
open or close some doors… and so forth. Similarly to the previous
games of Mantis Software this is also basically graphical
(though continuing even classic text IF style, too, more or less),
icon- and menu-driven adventure. The plot continues the same entitled
first game’s story on, but now embedded in a cyberpunk environment
(as being laid in future Budapest). Essentially all contemporary
Hungarian game-computing journals (that beside the 576
mainly also were the Guru and the CoV) published
any infos, critics, reviews about it. Nevertheless the most of
them were based upon its preview/demo version still released in
1994 (we publicly introduced and showed it on the next Computer
Christmas ’94, too, and achieved a real and instant success at
the spectators present), yet truly demonstrated already the „final”
version, too (that could not „finally” be born).
Both
the demo and the „meant-to-be-the-final” program starts by just
the same cinematic, movie-like and long-spun intro consisting
of several episodes, which contains not only some changing, standing
pictures and texts, but also animation (and moreover of full screen
size!). In respect of style and manner, and the same technical
background, it is very much like the Horsekiller intro,
which was actually born at the same time, and also by me (what
a coincidence!). However, somewhat longer, more various and complete
(for example there is some music within, too). It also meant a
similar development challenge to me, as we had got to get along
with that weak storage space of 64kB. In the interest of this,
all kinds of conjuring tricks and juggles had to be thrown in.
As I have already told it at the other intro, too: the phase changing
between the picture frames must be done with exact raster timing
(for avoiding the flashing of the screen), and the building up
the next frame meanwhile in a secondary, invisible video area.
So that because of these circumstances there were much less such
RAM memory area left free, where each of the single image elements
– cut apart and comprised – had to be previously crammed into,
and then drawn forth one by one. (Since the very first tries noways
wanted to be fit in yet, we finally had got to reduce the actually
used and actively covered screen space of the animation a little
for the stored elements to take up less room in the memory; just
like in the pictures enclosed can be seen, as if the thickness
of the border was a little more; while that’s just some empty
space.)
I
even invented an own and special graphical effect likewise exclusively
for this animated intro, which I named as „raster passage” then.
This symbolized entering the matrix, and, in its reversed variation,
quitting there. The essence of the trick was to create an effect
that shows the illusion of a continuous colour scale seeming as
if there were far more shades or colours present on the screen
at once than those maximally sixteen pieces that the C64 had;
that I reached by ordering the colours by their luminous intensity
(from black to white – and backwards, too), then quickly moving
on the screen. (Hereby the differences became imperceptible to
the naked eye, and rather seemed to melt together in a continued
transition instead.)
Just
the same rainbow scale appears at the printing of our superscription
texts, however, organized into narrow streaks of the background
colour (with one by one next timed raster interrupt within each
and every pixel line); and the letters of the inscripts are actually
inverse characters in real: that continuously changing background
colour can only be seen through these „holes” of letters on the
whole screen solidly filled with adjacent black pixels everywhere
otherwise.
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The
intro of the game is worth inspecting during run even at least
for looking those tricks described above (and of course the game
itself). The original, freeware PA2 package downloadable
from my website contains both the demo and the half-made game
versions together. Unfortunately, while converting into emulator
file formats something surely might go wrong, and because of that
the originally still faultlessly running program became some sort
of disk-erroneous one (or, much rather, the emulator environments
are somehow incorrectly running it…): at the end of the intro
consisting of two acts, when it comes to a disk change for the
second side, often happens to fail, and not always succeeds in
stepping forward to the game. (In the demo version it still works
flawlessly. Notwithstanding there is neither any disk change within
that, as being entirely on one side.) In the package, I wrote
down in an annexed note file how to avoid this small problem.
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
More)Over… |
01/01/2012 |
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A
picture collection of my games and some others /2. (200
pictures) |
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Game(s)
Over… |
09/01/2011 |
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A
picture collection of my games and some others /1. (200
pictures) |
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A
pokol angyala 2. |
09/01/2011 |
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Download
the game (1 MB) |
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A
pokol angyala 2. (CoV) |
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The
description of the game in an old Hungarian gaming magazine
(CoV 53) |
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A
pokol angyala 2. (IFDB) |
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The
IFDB page (Interactive Fiction Database) |
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’Angel
of Hell 2’
Recovered (GTW) |
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GTW64
(Games That Weren’t): abandoned or unfinished C64 games |
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’Angel
of Hell 2’
(Commodore Free, PDF) |
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The
above article in Commodore Free magazine no. 59. (see at
the 11th page) |
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C64
Games |
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