More actions
| Castles of Dr. Creep | |
|---|---|
| File:Castlesofdrcreepwii.jpg | |
| General | |
| Author | segra |
| Type | Platform |
| Version | V1.1 |
| License | GPL-3.0 |
| Last Updated | 2014/12/15 |
| Links | |
| Download | |
| Website | |
| Source | |
Castles of Dr. Creep is a 1984 Commodore 64 game written by Ed Hobbs and published by Broderbund Software.
This project is an open source rewrite, allowing you to play the game using an image (D64) of the original disk. Additionally, a Castle Builder has been added allowing the player to modify existing castles, or build new ones from scratch.
History
As a programmer, I appreciate the difficulty of reverse-engineering the 6502 object code to C++. When I wrote the game, the C-64 assembler was very primitive (it couldn’t handle programs larger than 16 kb), so I had to write and assemble the source code on an Apple II, and then transfer the binary to the C-64 through cables connected to the joystick ports of the respective computers (my first experience with a “computer network”). So even though the game could not be executed on the Apple II, this computer still played a vital part in Dr. Creep’s creation.
One of the biggest problems was that the source code had to fit onto a single 144 kb floppy disk in order to work with the Apple 6502 assembler. The only way to do this was by eliminating all comments in the source code—there just wasn't any room for them. I maintained a notebook comprising hundreds of pages of flowcharts and data-layout diagrams. The nodes of the flowcharts were labeled to match the nametags in the source code. In this way, I was able to visually grasp what was going on in the code, and still fit it into the requisite space.
Furthermore, there was no such thing as a C-64 debugger, which added an additional twist to the programming.
I also didn’t have a level editor. I drew the levels out on custom graph paper, and then used these drawings to hand-code the level data."
- Ed Hobbs 2012
Required To Play
Commodore 64 Disk Image (D64) of "The Castles of Dr. Creep", which should be placed inside the game 'data' folder.
SD Card with folder '/apps/drcreep/data' containing your Dr.Creep D64 and CHAR.ROM
This file may have any name, but the 'D64' extension must remain.
Controls
Hold WiiMote on its side.
In-Game
- DPAD = Movement
- Button 2 = Fire Button
- Button A = Self Kill
Intro
- Button Plus = Option Menu
- Button 1 = HighScores
Screenshots
Media
Whats Broken:
- sound is not perfect
Changelog
V1.1 (11/12/2012)
- Fix three bugs (Sprite collisions, picking up of key issue, X coordinate issue if overflowed from a byte)
- Fix the channel banner
V1.0 (11/12/2012)
- Fix the last known graphic bug
- Heard from the original game author - Ed Hobbs
SVN-351 (11/07/2010)
- Fix sprite collision bug, Fix another object collision issue
- Fix the game speed, making it run at the original PAL speed.
- Adds the ability to edit text in Builder
SVN-345 (11/05/2010)
- All objects can now be placed and linked.
- The map screen can be edited with the door positions being adjustable.
SVN-338 (11/04/2010)
- A Castle Builder is now included, with the hotkey information available in the readme. While this feature exists in the Wii version, at present it is unusable due to a lack of controls.
SVN-270 (07/15/2010)
- Wii WAD/Dol Version now available! (sound is buggy)
- Options Menu is now implemented
SVN-219 (05/12/2010)
- Sound and performance have also been improved, along with some minor bug fixes.
SVN-168 (05/05/2010)
- Highscores
- Game Play Timer
- Save Game/Load Game (uses D64s, supports original savegames)
- Sound Effects/Introduction Music
SVN-125 (02/11/2010)
- This is the first public release, the game is completable with minor issues occasionally causing lockups.
Thanks
- Ed Hobbs, for the original game
- Christian Bauer, for his extremely detailed 'VIC-II' documentation (https://sh.scs-trc.net/vic/)
- Dag Lem, for 'reSid' the MOS6581 SID emulation library (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReSID)
- Peter Schepers and the authors of the documents contained in his collection (http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/formats.html), for the detailed disk format information
- Thomas Bätzler, for his website 'Castles of Dr.Creep Revisited' (http://www.baetzler.de/c64/games/creep/)
External links
- Official Website - http://creep.sourceforge.net/
- Wiibrew - https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Castles_of_Dr._Creep
- Github - https://github.com/segrax/DrCreep