Denial

Hey Mayhem, thanks for pointing that out! After many years, at last a VIC port of this iconic game (see how many people asked for it in the Games we want to see thread). Any more info about it? Has anyone tried it yet? I'm at work now

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9974&start=30#p114524

I tried it and it's really good. Very smooth and responsive.

A big thanks to whoever developed this.

Wow! There's one off my list of games to make
Looks great!

It doesn't seem to behave well on my (NTSC) VIC 20 - the screen is offset to the bottom right to the point that the bottom few pixel rows aren't on my monitor and the farmer disappears when he gets close to the right side of the screen, only to reappear when he gets caught by a chicken. Maybe this is the excuse I need to get (or convert) a PAL VIC 20? This was my favorite game on the BBC Micro I had as a kid after my VIC, and I spent hours wearing my keyboard out playing it. I'm so sad that it doesn't work properly on my VIC.

doug_in_nc wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:46 pm It doesn't seem to behave well on my (NTSC) VIC 20 - the screen is offset to the bottom right to the point that the bottom few pixel rows aren't on my monitor and the farmer disappears when he gets close to the right side of the screen, only to reappear when he gets caught by a chicken. [...]

Check this topic: http://sleepingelephant.com/~sleeping/i ... 50#p114566

doug_in_nc wrote:It doesn't seem to behave well on my (NTSC) VIC 20 - [...]

Besides the game being incompatible by accident, the sprite engine also seems to get into time pressure (with the lesser time available per frame on NTSC - just 1/60 second vs. 1/50 second on PAL): the hens first flicker and then disappear when they approach the lower stairs.

Now it's not as if that kind of issues never had been discussed here in Denial - maybe someone in contact with Derek (Mayhem?) should tell him, that the game needs some bugfixes/optimizations for NTSC.

Thanks for the link. There's so much useful information on this site that it takes time to know what's here to even know to search for it. I'm getting back into the VIC after a break of almost 30 years, so what little I knew back then I have forgotten anyway.

On the subject of flickering hens, I seem to remember that they flickered occasionally on the BBC Micro, even though that was running at 50Hz and had a 2 MHz processor, so it isn't surprising the VIC struggles to keep up. The fact that there is a port at all is pretty amazing.

Just as an update, the game has been updated on the author's site to version 1.1, which apparently means it now runs on NTSC VICs (though faster than on PAL hardware) and has some bug fixes

https://reset64-magazine.itch.io/chucki ... v22-update

Have they improved the tolerance getting on/off the ladders. It has to be pixel perfect in the original release which makes it unplayable imho.

[just tried it] ...no they didn't . It's not totally unplayable, but I agree this is SOOO annoying. A nice game overall, very Spectrumish indeed (color clash included ).

I played this game A LOT on the BBC Model B back in the day, and from what I remember, it always required pixel-perfect position. I’m rather rusty at playing it, but I’m not having any issues with getting onto the ladders, probably because the muscle memory is still there.

Yes, it would appear to be the same as the BBC.

It's very difficult to play with a joystick. Keyboard is easier; you can anticipate the next direction and turn ahead of time a bit like PacMan but if you have stopped and you are trying to align with a ladder entry/exit it's very very tricky.

Surprised it was so popular given this quirk.

Ah yes, the joystick thing would make sense - the BBC micro had analog joysticks by default, and very few games catered for digital ones, so pretty much all arcade-like games were played on the keyboard.

It looks great but without the ability to redefine the keys I'm completely stuck, particularly since this keyboard doesn't allow me to press up and left at the same time.
I also feel like the chicken collision is a little different - not pixel perfect as in the original.
If it was flickering with just some chickens, I'm worried about the later levels when there are more chickens and the duck is released from the cage!
@beamrider, as for the getting on/off ladders, it's easy if you keep running as pressing up or down takes precedence over left and right.