Tower and Dragon has been released for the Commodore PET with only 8K!

If you're looking for another Commodore PET news story, then have we got something special for you! As thanks to a heads up by Jason Cook in our emails, we've just learnt of a new game that has been released for the Commodore PET called 'Tower and Dragon'; as in the words of Jason " Welcome to Tower And Dragon for the Commodore PET with only 8k. The game has also been written in assembly language". Without further ado, make sure to check out the footage of the game and even more info sent via email below.

I don't think that Frederick is going to make it out of this one!

Here is what was Jason Cook said in our emails about this brand new game. "Tower And Dragon is a classic dungeon crawling adventure with primary and offhand weapon, armor, quest storyline, moving walls, teleportation, and unique tilesets and monsters for each dungeon level. Your character starts out just after climbing down the stairs into an ancient ruin, discovered by following a dream. The game is a tribute to the game that inspired me to become a programmer: "Dungeon" from 1979. Like Dungeon, this game only requires 8K of memory".

Since Tower and Dragon runs with only 8K, only simple audio is available while playing the game. That said, the BuzzKick engine being utilized on the splash screen is quite impressive.

"Tower And Dragon is by far the best game ever released for an 8K Commodore PET and is playable by disk drive or tape cassette on ROM1, ROM2, and ROM4 systems. You can play with more memory, but part of the design was to make sure the game would work on some of the oldest stock PET systems still around. Designing under these tight constraints was a monumental task where every byte counted".

"The audio soundtrack on the splash screen uses Shiru's BuzzKick engine, converted to the PET and gives Tower And Dragon a unique and distinct audio that new games will follow. He also converted the theme music to run under BuzzKick. While the splash screen utilizes BuzzKick engine, it is not used in-game due to lack of memory. Therefore, only simple audio is utilized while in-game".

Game Instruction Screen

"Norbert Landsteiner has an excellent online PET emulator and just released version 2.0 that includes audio. His emulator can be found here: https://www.masswerk.at/pet/ This will make it easy for anyone to try the game, as well as other vintage games for the PET. His powerful emulator correctly works with "Back To The Pet", "A Bright Shining Star", and "Faulty Robots". Lastly, to keep with the vintage theme, I recovered the data from maps in a game that I made as a boy in 1980. Those vintage maps are utilized in Tower And Dragon!".

A few quotes from play testers:
  • Kimberly Cook (my wife) - "It was beautiful."
  • Marshall Sutherland - "The thought that this whole thing runs in 8K just boggles my mind."
  • Richard Suematsu - Reference Plot: "I like how you don't understand what's going on in the first 2 levels and then it starts to come into focus."

Play Online Using Masswerk.at Emulator Here:

https://masswerk.at/pet/?run=dragon.d64/dragon&ram=8k&repeat=off&screen=white&sound=true

You Can Also Download It And Play Locally:

https://www.masswerk.at/pet/prgs/dragon.d64

Full 12 Minute Tape Cassette Version:

https://www.insanerocketry.com/personal/TowerAndDragonCassette10.zip

Note: On some systems you may need to invert the audio.

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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous3 March 2023 at 08:19

    Nice, but can someone convert the wav file to a tap file? There are emulators out there which can only handle prg and tap.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jason Cook3 March 2023 at 12:14

    Vice and the online link provide handle d64 since it is a full disk image with many files. It would be annoying to play with many prg files.... (Unless from cassette since they are ordered)

    I have used the readily available audiotap to convert the wav to tap. I can't test, so if it doesn't work, I'm not going to be much help here... https://www.insanerocketry.com/personal/TowerAndDragon10.tap Good luck let me know if you get it working. If not, try downloading and converting https://wav-prg.sourceforge.io/audiotap.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous4 March 2023 at 03:15

      I play on MiSTer's PET2001 core and the game starts fine with normal (not fast) tape loading, but when I get to the stairs to load level 2 I just get a black screen after pressing key 2. You cannot pause and resume the virtual tape if needed. It loads continuously until the red LED (loading indicator on the MiSTer) goes out, regardless of where you are in the game.
      But thanks anyway! Was worth a try.

      Delete
    2. Jason Cook4 March 2023 at 12:06

      Interesting. Is it possible to switch tap files while playing?

      I could segment each level into it's own tap with a 2 minute delay between text screen and level so you have time to read. Let me know if this sounds possible.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous4 March 2023 at 16:49

      I think all of this makes no sense. It's a pity that MiSTer doesn't support D64 files on its PET. Only prg injection or tap (without multiload on same tape image). Yes, in theory in the middle of the game you can start the loading process with another tap file again, but I doubt that the whole thing works flawlessly.
      I also have another VICE - based emulator ( BMPET for Raspberry Pi: http://accentual.com/bmpet ).
      There the d64 file works perfectly.
      If you want, I can contact you by e-mail next week and make different tests with my MiSTer instead of further discussing here on IRN, but I think the demand for MiSTer users is near zero and that is simply not worth the effort.

      Delete
    4. Jason Cook4 March 2023 at 20:51

      Sounds good, I went ahead and updated https://www.insanerocketry.com/personal/TowerAndDragonCassette10.zip with many tap files w/ two minute spacers.

      For further work with solving MiSTer, email me: jason at insanerocketry.com

      Delete

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