Back to the Maze - 1 - TERROR AND MADNESS

I think it's about time for another video game. In the spirit of last year's Cloudy Climb remake, why not take another of my old games out for a spin? Why not, say, AMAZE?

What could go wrong?

And So It Began

It all started innocently enough: A certain art community that I'm in announced an activity about re-drawing an old piece of work. Just for fun, I thought I'd grab a screenshot of AMAZE and make a mockup in my style. However, AMAZE doesn't really work anymore. The Linux build compiles, but the old renderer doesn't, err, render.

The Windows build fared a little better in Wine, but crashes frequently. I can't really blame Wine for this, I'm not entirely convinced that the game is crash-free under normal circumstances...

Foolishly, I began to think: "Man, I wonder what that drawing code looks like? Maybe it's a simple issue, I'll bump up the OpenGL version and we'll be all set."

As it turns out, the game is running OpenGL 2.1's fixed-function pipeline. For the unaware, OpenGL 2.1 is roughly 13 years old at this point, which is very interesting considering that AMAZE is only 5.

Delving Deeper

So, ok, maybe the rendering code is unsalvageable. You win some, you lose some. However, I thought it might be fun to poke around the rest of the codebase and see how I used to write code.

After all, why not take a fine trip down memory lane?

   23 class Game{
   24  public:
   25   Game();
   26   void loadspr(string s){Sprite spr = spriteLoader.load(s); sprites.insert(pair<string, Sprite>(spr.id, spr));}
   27   Sprite* get_sprite(string s){return &(sprites[s]);}
   28   void frameStep();
   29   void gameLoop();
   30   void end();
   31   bool get_keydown(byte key){return keys[key];}
   32   MapLoader* get_map(){return &maploader;}
   33   float camera_x = 0;
   34   bool camera_xlock = false;
   35   float camera_y = 0;
   36   bool camera_ylock = false;
   37   float camera_xscale = 1;
   38   float camera_yscale = 1;
   39   void drawText(float xpos, float ypos, SpriteFont f, string text);
   40   unsigned score = 0, level_score = 0, hub_score = 0;
   41   unsigned equipment = 0;
   42   float equipment_percentage = 0;
   43   unsigned lives = 3;
   44   unsigned max_lives = 3;
   45   unsigned hub_max_lives = 3;
   46   game_states gamestate = SPLASH;
   47   float splash_alpha = -1;
   48   float splash_timer = 30;
   49   string disptext = "";
   50   vector<c_CResponse*> active_scripts;
   51   vector<int> script_positions;
   52   vector<int> script_timers;
   53   vector<pair<int, int>> script_args;
   54   void updateScript(c_CResponse* script, int& position, int& timer, pair<int, int> arg);
   55   ScriptLoader scripts;
   56   unsigned disptxttimer = 0;
   57   bool keys[5] = {false, false, false, false, false};
   58   int menu_select = 0;
   59   string hub_level = "Z1-Beginning.rma";
   60   string hub_tileset = "Tutorial_tiles.tla";
   61   string hub_song = "/TitleMusic.ogg";
   62   string current_song = "/TitleMusic.ogg";
   63   int hub_progress = 0;
   64   map<string, ALLEGRO_SAMPLE*> sounds;
   65   bool scripts_run = true;
   66   bool game_running = false;
   67   MapLoader maploader;
   68   int triggers[10] = {-1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1};
   69   string var(string input);
   70   void alter(string key, string val);
   71   bool compare(string key, string val, char op);
   72   float sound_volume = 1.0f;
   73   bool godmode = false;
   74   void writeSave();
   75   bool dead = false;
   76   bool shield = true;
   77   int dcooldown = 60;
   78   int difficulty = 0; //0: easy, 1: med, 2: hard
   79  private:
   80   Sprite* s;
  ... 
  105 };
  106 #endif

oh no.

Some of you may be wondering to yourselves: "Strange, what's that 'Sprite* s' for?"
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

Next Time: Busting out the hacksaw