Thursday 31 March 2016

C64 16KB Cartridge Game Development Competition - Status Update #4

Wow! Even with the two month extension, the time has whizzed by - there's only a few hours left for this year's competition entrants to complete and submit their games! Since February's update there's been quite a lot of progress and few new entries, but before we have a look to see how our devs have got on, it's (finally!) time to discuss this year's prizes!

This year our competition has four sponsors (well, five including RGCD). First up there's the £250 prize fund (a good chunk of which was generously donated by our own Antonio Savona), with £100 going to both first and second place, and £50 to third. In addition to this, Jens Schönfeld of Individual Computing has kindly agreed to send us two of his RR-Net MK3 cartridge boards and a handful of Commodore Billboard/Funet double-CD's, and I'll be offering up my entire Psytronik Software disk and tape collection(!) I've been collecting these for some time (with many sent to me by Kenz as part of our collaborative release agreement), but I haven't had a datasette or 1541 drive for years, and I'm unlikely to pick one up again in the future - so I'd rather they went out to someone who'll get some real use out of them!

Finally, I'm excited to announce that Stian Søreng is sending us three of his long-awaited 16KB cartridge C64FC 'dev kits' - a cartridge board that links your C64 to a PC/Mac via USB, allowing you to send 'real' cartridge rom files direct to the hardware. The perfect solution for those wanting to see their cartridge games running on real hardware. Oh, but of course, the REAL prize is that each entrant will receive their entry on their very own, 1-of-a-kind, exclusive boxed cartridge :)

Anyway, now for the bit you've all been waiting for, status update #4!



Competition Entry #1: Alienator
(Developer: Georg Rottensteiner - Status: Complete & Submitted!)


Hey! I received an email from Georg just minutes ago with the 'final as it is likely to get' version of Alienator! I've not had a chance to fire it up on the old breadbin yet, but Georg gave a pretty decent description; "Alienator is a spruced up Space Invaders game. 99 waves of nasty Vogons are at it again and you're our last hope to avoid their poetry. Shoot enemies and collect power ups! Careful though, you never know what the power up will accomplish. Defeat all 99 waves (with a few laughable bosses strewn in) and save earth!".

I'm looking forward to giving this a blast! Not sure what the meaning of 'poetry' is in the above context though!