Gem Drop Deluxe by Bill Kendrick New Breed Software August & September, 1997 Ported to C, July-October, 2015 & March 2021 2021_03_21_beta bill@newbreedsoftware.com http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/gemdrop/ https://github.com/billkendrick/gemdrop_deluxe Welcome to "Gem Drop," a fast-paced puzzle game for the Atari 8-bit from New Breed Software! If you want to dive right in to the game, feel free to skim over the controls listed below and try out the game! It's simple enough to figure out yourself! TITLE/MENU CONTROLS: [START] - Begin game Fire - Begin game [SELECT] - Choose starting level [OPTION] - Toggle controller type (Atari (one-button joystick) or Sega (two-button support)) [F] - Toggle the in-game SuperIRG flicker effect [ESC] - Quit to DOS GAME CONTROLS: Joystick: Left / Right - Move Down / Fire - Grab gem/object Up - Throw carried objects Sega Genesis 3-button Controller: Left / Right - Move Down / B-button - Grab gem/object Up / C-butotn - Throw carried objects Keyboard: (arrow keys, w/o [CONTROL]) Left / Right - Move Down - Grab gem/object Up - Throw carried objects Other key controls: START - Abort SELECT - Abort OPTION - Abort [ESC] - Abort [SPACE] - Pause [F] - Toggle SuperIRG flicker effect on/off (also works during pause) OBJECTIVE: 3-In-A-Row: The point of the game is to grab gems (which are appearing at the top of the screen) and then throw them back up to get three or more in a vertical column. When you grab a gem, you will also pick up any gems of the same type that are directly above it. This means you sometimes can't take just one gem... You can tell how many gems you are carrying by looking at the little guy at the bottom of the screen. If you carry none, you'll see none. If you carry 1 or 2, you'll see gems on one or both sides of him. If you carry 3 or more, you'll just see a collection of gems. (Knowing whether or not you have more than 3 doesn't really matter, since it will definitely be a match anyway.) Getting a match of three or more gets rid of that column of matching gems, as well as any matching gems adjacent to the column, and gems adjacent to those gems, and so on. This makes for neat chain reactions! Scoring: The more gems in a match, the higher score you get for that match. Be warned... if you always match three in a row, you'll finish the level more quickly, but... if you always match three in a row, you won't get as high a score! You'll have to decide when it's more important to get rid of lots of GEMS or lots of MATCHES. Winning: When you get enough matches ("lines") you advance to the next level. The number of lines you've made so far, and the number of lines you need to make to complete the current level are listed on the left side of the screen, below your current score. There are 20 unique levels total. Levels 15 through 20 become harder because you have twice as many different gems to deal with, making getting matches that much more difficult! (You'll especially hate one of the pieces I've created!) Note: When you first start playing Gem Drop, only levels 1 through 5 are available. As you advance through higher levels, you will then be able to select them later. (ie, if you've beaten EVERY level, you will then be able to select any level.) Note: The stand-alone XEX version does not do any disk I/O, so does not save its state. Use the "gemdropd.xex" version with your favorite DOS. Or, use the "gemdrop.atr" disk image, which includes uDOS (ultra small DOS) by Dietrich (see his ABBUC forum thread about it, found here: http://www.abbuc.de/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10347) Dying: As time goes on, more gems appear at the top, pushing the rest down. You'll know whe this is about to happen because the screen shakes and you'll hear a rumbling noise. If the screen fills up (the gems go beyond the bottom of the screen) the game ends. When you return to the title screen, the level you were just one will be pre-selected, so you can keep trying. But, of course, your score will be reset to 0. Special Objects: There are also a number of non-gem objects. To "activate" them, you must throw two or more of the same gem onto them. Note: You CANNOT grab and carry these special objects! Bomb - explodes, destroying any gems directly above, below, and to either side of it. Wildcard - it will match any gems next to it or above it, often causing nice chain-reactions! Clock - this freezes the game for a moment. You still get to play, but no more new pieces will appear for a few seconds. (You'll hear a clicking sound until the clock stops.) This gives you some breathing room! ABOUT GEM DROP: Gem Drop is loosely based on the SNK Neo-Geo game "Magical Drop III." Gem Drop was originally written in OSS's Action! programming language, and 18 years later was ported to C and cross-compiled with CC65. (Previous to that, shortly after it's initial release, it was ported to C & libSDL and made available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and a variety of other platforms, as "Gem Drop X".) Gem Drop uses a special software-based graphics mode to produce the high amount of colors see on the screen: one 20x24 5-colored text mode with one set of 5 colors and two character set fonts, which are toggled at every vertical blank. (This means NTSC machines (at 60 cycles) will look better than PAL machines (at the slower 50 cycles).) Press the [F] key to toggle this effect on & off at (almost) any time. The fonts were created using my own simple font editor in BASIC. (Amazingly, I was able to create these 4-pixel, 2-bits-per-pixel graphics using an 8-pixel, 1-bpp editor! It was pain-staking!) ADDITIONAL CREDITS: * FIXME: RMT player * FIXME: Music * uDOS by Dietrich http://www.abbuc.de/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10347 * Title / Help screen font based loosely on Ubuntu Mono https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Ubuntu+Mono THE END! Please tell me what you think of this game! Thanks! New Breed Software c/o Bill Kendrick bill@newbreedsoftware.com http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/gemdrop/