Land of Mire Mare
This game has to be considered as a tribute. It's inspired by the unreleased Mire Mare game & characters created by Ultimate Play The Game in golden 80's.
Finally, even if not officially, the legend has seen the light of day. Sabreman's last adventure, announced by ending credits seen in Underwurlde, Knight Lore and Pentagram, takes place in the Land of Mire Mare, where three volcanoes are on the brink to burn the whole territory. In order to avoid a disaster, Sabreman will have to find and use three magic jewels.
THE LEGEND OF THE THREE JEWELS
The mission is to find three enchanted jewels which have the power to turn off volcanoes, then throw them into the Well of Mire Mare, in order to break the curse.
Sabreman's vital energy is represented by a water bar, which will decrease when a collision occurs with an enemy.
Each jewel is defended by a Deadly Guardian: a Knight, a Gargoyle and a Fire Eagle. Watch out for the Guardians, because they are invulnerable!
In order to pick up a jewel, our hero has to leave a pledge, which can be found around the land. Once a pledge is exchanged with a jewel, it will be no longer possible to pick up the same object. If Sabreman has no items to be exchanged, jewels cannot be collected.
Rising enemies can be defeated by weapons. Three main weapons can be collected: a Sword, an Axe and a Staff.
Sword - kills all enemies except fire flames and Jewel Guardians.
Axe - is useful to extinguish moving fire flames, but can also be used to open wooden doors instead of keys.
Staff – can defeat all enemies including fire, except Jewel Guardians.
Along the way, our hero can collect some bonuses: water glasses and bottles restore the energy, keys open wooden doors (each key works only once, opened doors will close again). The keys are not unlimited, so use them sparingly! If Sabreman is running out of keys, he can use the Axe to open wooden doors.
Be careful and... good exploration!
CONTROLS (KEYBOARD)
Q - Move left
W - Move right
E - Move down
R - Move up
T - Use weapons / Pick up / Exchange objects
The game uses Kempston & Sinclair Interface II joysticks as well.
CREDITS
? Authored with Arcade Game Designer by Jonathan Cauldwell.
? Programmed by Luca Bordoni.
? Very special thanks to BiNMaN for graphic support and Mister Beep for having provided a splendid soundtrack!
A while back I was contacted by a couple of folks regarding the mock ups I did for MartynC's Retro Gamer article on Ultimate. One for the Spectrum and one as a spectrum style pc game.
The Spectrum version has been written by Luca Bordoni using Jonathans AGD. I must say what a splendid job he has done too. Luca contacted me to ask if he could use some of the graphics in his tribute to Ultimate and the Sabreman series of games. So he used the frame, a slightly altered loading screen, a couple of small graphics and I did an original sabreman sprite. Everything else he has put together (except for the music and some help with the menu). And over the last month or two we have struck up a really good friendship, which I hope will continue now his project is over.
His dedication to the game and the Ultimate legacy has been such that he has even produced cassette inlay artwork and cassette labels.
It has been a wonderful time discussing the ins and outs of AGD, how to achieve his goals for the game using AGD. This is his first game using AGD and initially he spent many nights picking my brains about how to do things in the AGD scripting engine, working around bugs and strange crashes. In fact I think I have learned more during our problem solving conversations than I have on my own over the last 6 years!!
He has inspired me to dig out some old projects and make more use of this great utility.
A great guy, I hope you enjoy his presentation.
BiNMaN
PS I've posted on speccy.org but if someone can put it up on zx.pk.ru as well that would be appreciated, I'm not a member there
Post edited by BiNMaN on
Comments
The link doesn't appear to work.
Cheers
Mike
cheers, fingers crossed should be ok now
Link link link, I need it now!!!:smile:
Love it.
:-)
Looks pretty, I'll have to check it later today.
Oh, and one time I died on a screen that was split in two, and then I respawned on the wrong part of the screen, so I had to find my way back to where I was. That was annoying.
But overall it's pretty good - you can see that a lot of love has gone into making it. I feels like an Ultimate game (with a heavy dollop of Firelord added) :)
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
Twitter: Sokurah
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
Oh yeah, I got this too.
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
Twitter: Sokurah
Any chance of a QAOP Spc version? I think QWERT will put people off. No time at the mo but I guess I could hack one if I have to...
yes a conscious decision by Luca to go with the early Ultimate controls married with the extra controls that AGD offers, respawn points are to do with how you can position sprites in AGD, I suppose in retrospect using the last x,y position to respawn may have been another way to go
still a good effort for someones first use of AGD, before this game he had no experience of the utility and he will tell you he is no z80 programmer
yes it is a ula+ problem, with the weapons (not all of them work on all the creatures) you just hit fire when they are close enough, I've run it on 48k, 128k+, +2 and +2a hardware
as I said Luca has done this in AGD and it's not a bad effort for his first game
Keys are like hell.
Difficult is high, like all Ultimate games.
I love it.
xD
he wanted to produce a game that had the look and feel of ultimate titles from his youth hence the choice of keys reflected this, possible change
pity the the controlmenu in AGD doesn't do a redefine part, may put that as a suggestion on the AGD forum
also respawning of the player will be looked at, because yo can place sprite starting points on each screen in AGD it may not have occurred to Luca to use the last x,y - as i say first game only recently started to use AGD and still learning
oh and big box art work will be done too
yes very true, we've just been discussing that very fact
but you've got to give him applause for a first attempt, at the very least
Ignore references to Alien 8!!
anyway the zip file will have any alterations added later today
very nice :-)
keep your eyes pealed for updates
thanks for sharing.
this a nice lovely bestoff of all ultimate icons.
One major issue tough:
I can not got the weapons to work - tried the wand and the axe. When pressing fire - saber man just moves in the direction that he is facing - with no effect on the enemies. I'm imagining it would work a bit like Sabre Wulf - but no weapons for me.
I tried with the latest version of Fuse and ZXSP on Mac - have not experienced this with other games.
:D
Great game (although QAOP controls could make it playable for me) !
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46352
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1694367894143130/
the main game is QWERT for Ultimate purists
QAOP and M version for everyone else
WASD and M for a special request over at speccy.org
the attack movement has been altered too, it was a sort of attack and run away
changed now to a colour cycle, no room for extra sprites (AGD is very costly in memory terms 4 frames preshifted takes up just over half a K)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1694367894143130/