Hungry Horace PC

Here's my update of one of the first games released for the ZX Spectrum. Let me know what you think.

Downloads : Exe (702k) Source (97k) Original .TAP File (6k)

Darren Salt's Linux build is Here and David Powell's port to BeOS is Here



23 January 2001
It's finished...what should I do next?
18 January 2001
Sussed out how to use Datafiles, updated graphics, added a Spectrum font and fixed a couple of little bugs. I've also changed the timer routine to speed up the game every time all 4 levels are completed. Only the sound to add now, and I'll be finished. As per, here are the Source and Exe.
15 January 2001
First playable version (v0.9) is ready! There's no sound yet, and I haven't updated the graphics (any artists out there)? but everything else is done. Let me know what you think - here's the Source and Exe.
13 January 2001
Added the flowers, and allowed Horace to eat them. Also added the routine to scare the Parkie when Horace grabs the bell (the little scamp). Hopefully, I will have an actual playable game in the next few days. As usual, here are the Source and Exe. Also, here's a link to the Allegro Tutorial that I have been using - it's not finished but the stuff that's there is pretty good, especially the examples. BTW - If anyone wants to know why I had trouble with the palette stuff, I found it helped a lot when I used the 'set_palette' function to tell it what one to use :-(
12 January 2001
In a bit of a hurry - today I have been mostly getting a Park Keeper to chase Horace, working out how timers work, and finally getting the palette thing fixed. Here's the Source and here's the Exe. I'm off to the pub - have a nice weekend!
11 January 2001
Just a quick update - I've got Horace running about the mazes, going through tunnels and under bridges and stuff (why is the bridge on the first level one way?). Next, I'll code the movement routines for the park keepers and have them chasing our freaky hero about the place - I suspect this will be the hardest part of the whole game. Once I've coded that part I'll put the new source and an EXE on here.
09 January 2001
OK - for the moment I'm going to use the original graphics nicked from the game (mainly because I can't draw - If anyone wants to supply some nice graphics, let me know). Created main loop and initialisation routines & set up a Makefile to stick 'em all together. I've also written the routine that reads the level info (from an array at the moment) and sticks the walls and stuff up on the screen. Next thing I'll do is the routine for the lovely (well weird looking, really) Horace and have him running about under YOUR control. Shouldn't take long, I hope. Oh! The source, so far is here (You'll need DJGPP and Allegro to compile it)
08 January 2001
First 'interactive' program - Horace running around the screen. You can download it (with source) here (293kb). There really isn't anything much to it yet, though. The animation is done in a very crap way - just clearing the screen and sticking Horace back on again. I've got a tutorial about double buffering and timers which I'll read tonight so I can do this sort of thing properly. I also had some trouble with the palette which I sorted by adding a set_color_depth(16) command but I'm not entirely sure why it works - I'll have to find some more stuff about this on the old InterWeb 'cos I'm sure it's quite simple when you know how...
06 January 2001
Found a few useful Allegro tutorials on the Net - I'll add links to them when I remember where I got them from. Played about with the Allegro sprite libraries - got an animated Horace sprite running about the screen - My first C/Allegro program!
05 January 2001
I've decided to use DJGPP and Allegro to write this game. Here's a tip - when you're trying to compile Allegro, make sure that you don't have three different versions of 'Make' in your path :-(
04 January 2001
Welcome to the Hungry Horace PC development diary. I've decided to do a HH conversion as a way of learning games programming and to improve my C skills (that won't be difficult). I'm going to keep a diary of my progress so that hopefully other people wanting to try this can learn from my (many) mistakes - if one other person decides to remake a classic Speccy game it will be worth it...

Visitors Since 09 January 2001