Vampire Hunt
Vampire Hunt is the name of a game that I recently completed for my
Advanced Programming class. The minimum requirement for code length was
1000 lines, but I went far beyond that! However, since I was on a deadline
I was not able to add many of the features that could have made the game better.
Oh well. It's not like I charge people for the game! Anyway, I probably
spent a total of 30 hours on the game. I spent about 10 hours on the art
because I revamped all of it a week before
the project was due. I decided that I didn't want to make a Mario style
game after all. I spent about 2 hours on the excellent music and sound FX.
I originally posted this game with no sound, but now, a year later I finally put music and sound in the game for all to hear! Overall,
I probably spent about 18 hours programming. Since I wrote 1800 lines of
original code for this game that figures up to be... GASP?! 100 lines an hour?
Am I some kind of machine? Am I superhuman? This figure is made only more
astounding when one takes into consideration that I have only been programming
in C for less than a year (I actually learned Assembler before I learned C...).
The Game Itself
Vampire Hunt is a Castlevania rip-off. Of course, my game is not as good
as Konami's, but I am sure they spent more time and money on theirs too.
Vampire Hunt only has one never-ending level. There are no points, no score,
and no bosses. You simply kill enemies until your energy is depleted.
The level scrolls horizontally for about 2 screens and then repeats these same
screens over and over again. Enemies are generated randomly which makes the
gameplay a bit more interesting. The music and sounds are pretty good though considering that all sound was done by me with little time spent on it. You're probably wondering why this and every other
game I make is some kind of rip-off. Well, I just feel like it would
be a waste of time, effort, and ideas to make an original game right
now. Why? Because my programming skills, artwork, and budget would
leave me with a game that looks and plays like
fecal matter (I can think of another word for that!). However,
when I hone my programming skills to a razor tooth edge and get a good
artist (still looking) and a better compiler (which I now have), THEN I will make a great game with tons
of originality and depth to sink your fangs into. Until then, just call me Dman the Ripper.
Tech Specs
Actually, Vampire Hunt is quite a technical piece of work considering
that it runs in real mode with graphics mode 13h. It is a tile-based
game (as usual), and the graphic tiles are 20x20 pixels in size. The
horizontal scrolling occurs in increments of 2 pixels at a time. One
pixel scrolling was too slow for the game so I decided to sacrifice
a tiny amount of smoothness for more speed. I could rewrite the graphics code in 32-bit code, but I won't have any free time until summer. As usual, the game is written
in a mixture of C and Assembler with most of the code being in C.
You may download Vampire Hunt below.
If you have any questions or comments,
feel free to e-mail me at
sdkess@geocities.com.
Download Vampire Hunt (now with sound)
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