The pudding Strikes Back

OBJECTIVE

Your mission is to defend Santa Claus and his friends against the evil Christmas pudding and other foes that are attacking Santa's home planet. So, get into your X-Wing and engage your engines for Santa's rescue!

System Requirements

  • Apple //e, //c, //c+ or //gs

  • 65C02 CPU

  • 128k RAM

  • Joystick

  • Optional: Mockingboard (game soundtrack will play if available)

  • Consists of two floppy or one double-side floppy. Can also be used in compatible emulators and floppy EMUs.

Thank you for supporting this software project! We hope you enjoy our game! However, if you do run into any problems or issues playing the game, please reach out and let us know!

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Key Features

  • Apple ][ Double LORES adventure game.

  • Keyboard Controlled, and keys can be configured by the player.

  • Mockingboard soundtrack (if Mockingboard is available),with 7different songs (one for each level).

  • Custom animations when move from level to level.

  • Custom speech effects throughout the game.

Joystick and keyboard commands

Key Action

PDL 0/1 (Joystick)

 Move the aiming crosshairs around

Button #0

 Fire button

Q

 Quit the game.  
NOTE: If you quit the game without using “Q”, a possible high-score will not be saved!

R

 Reset the score and Restart the timer. 
NOTE: This the same behavior when the "GAME OVER" message appears!

T

 Pause the game
WARNING: The pause screen is NSFW!

F

 Fill whole screen with current drawing color

Gameplay and Strategy

Objective: Shoot down the incoming enemy foes with your laser gun until the timer runs out! The timer is set to fixed 200 time units which are about 200 seconds of play time depending on having a MockingBoard installed or not. Without a MockingBoard the game runs slightly faster. See the technical tidbit section below for more information on that special behavior .

Enemies: five different enemies at varying trajectories with different velocities yielding score points depending on the difficulty to shoot them down!

  • Candy cane: easiest to shoot down being the slowest enemy (3 or 5 points).

  • Christmas pudding: medium difficulty (4 or 6 points).

  • Gingerbread man: more difficult to shoot down (5 or 7 points).

  • Turkey: fastest enemy with a high difficulty (8 or 10 points).

  • Champagne bottle: hardest enemy to shoot down, accelerates horizontally in both directions with fast movement changes (20 points). 

Strategy: There are different approaches trying to get the highest scores.

  • Some people like to focus on champagne bottles and camp somewhere at the screen's left or right edges with the crosshair in order to get the fast moving bottles in time. However, you cannot predict which direction the next bottle will fly so this also depends large parts on personal luck.

  • It is possible to follow the champagne bottle as it flies out of the screen if you initially miss it. The bottle can be outrun since it slows down before it finally disappears from the screen, but it is hard to do and needs some training!

  • Some people like to camp in the screen center and wait for objects to come like passing by fast turkeys.

  • However, another concept would be staying in the lower parts of the screen with the crosshair trying to catch the flying objects.

  • Whatever you decide, we wish you good luck and good aiming! 

CAUTION: Each shot costs one point! So be careful not wasting your ammo and to shoot only when you are definitely on target!

Known Limitations

  • Problems have been reported when using a FastChip on an Apple //e which can lead to a system crash or hanging game when the background music is playing. Be sure to switch the FastChip to normal mode using the white switch when playing the game.

  • You can play the game without problems using a TWGS on a IIgs (and a CFFA3000).

  • Even though there are some keyboard commands in the game engine the menu system requires a joystick for interaction.  No mouse support

  • If you only have monochrome video the game play experience is limited. We suggest playing the game on a color monitor.

  • Restarting the game with MockingBoard installed needs a power cycle to make the game work properly. The reason for that is yet unknown. Without MockingBoard the game can be restarted without any cold or warm boot.

  • Some sprites flicker when traversing the screen. This is caused by limitations of the DOLORES sprite engine.

  • If you run into any problems when playing the game with issues that are not reported here, please let us know.

Technical TiDBITS

  • The DOLORES library and the PT3-player module reside directly below the DOS 3.3 area. DOLORES was adapted for this game by removing unused functions in order to make the code more compact and faster.

  • PT3 is a file format of modules produced by Pro Tracker v3.xx for the ZX Spectrum which can be played back on the Apple II thanks to a PT3-library produced by Deater of VMW-Software.

  • Half of the zero page is used for DOLORES and PT3-player variables. The zero page is saved during the algorithm startup and restored when leaving the game which keeps the Apple in "normal" working state afterwards.

  • The song data is loaded at $2000 occupying 2kB of space (PT3-file / Vortex-Tracker).

  • AUX memory is used by the DOLORES library and the game: the machine code is copied to AUX RAM. When doing the background scrolling program execution temporarily switches to AUX memory.

  • The interrupt handler controlling the sound file playback got an extra JSR to a routine that will manage things that need timed action during the gameplay and enhance "random” game behavior. However, the game will run fine without a MockingBoard.

  • The PT3 player uses about 15% of the CPU cycles when playing music files, hence the game will run slightly faster when no MockingBoard is installed.

Credits

  • Code: Marc Golombeck

  • Graphics: Dan Henderson

  • Music: Unknown Artist

  • Additional Advice: Dr. N. H. Cham