Castles of Dr. Creep Wii

Castles of Dr. Creep
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 classic Commodore 64 game released in 1984 and developed by Ed Hobbs and published by Broderbund Software. This open source reimagining allows you to play the game by using an image (D64) of the original disk. Moreover, a Castle Builder feature has been added, allowing players to customize existing castles or construct new ones from scratch.

Game Development

Ed Hobbs, the programmer of the game, sheds light on the difficulties he faced while reverse-engineering the 6502 object code to C++. In the early days of the C-64 assembler, it was limited and could not handle programs larger than 16kb, so Hobbs had to write and assemble the source code on an Apple II and then transfer the binary to the C-64 through the joystick ports of the respective computers, marking his first experience with a "computer network". Despite the game not being able to run on the Apple II, it still played a crucial role in the creation of "Dr. Creep".

One of the major challenges was to fit the entire source code onto a single 144 kb floppy disk that was compatible with the Apple 6502 assembler. To do so, Hobbs had to remove all comments from the code, leaving no room for them. He maintained a notebook with hundreds of pages of flowcharts and data-layout diagrams to keep track of the code and understand what was happening in the code.

Furthermore, there was no C-64 debugger available, adding an extra layer of complexity to the programming process. Hobbs also lacked a level editor, and had to draw out the levels on custom graph paper and then hand-code the level data.

Requirements to Play

To play "Castles of Dr. Creep", you will need the following:

A Commodore 64 Disk Image (D64) of "The Castles of Dr. Creep" which should be placed in the game's 'data' folder.

An SD Card with a folder '/apps/drcreep/data' containing your Dr. Creep D64 and CHAR.ROM. This file can have any name, but the 'D64' extension must remain unchanged.

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

The Castles of Dr. Creep r270 - (Cid2Mizard)

Known Issues

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