New in 1.5.3
------------
- Title screen can now be skipped with the Esc key or the
left mouse button.
- Now uses a custom mouse pointer to avoid weird things hap-
pening with hires pointers.
- Improvements to the audio and music code, and other little
improvements.
- Now includes an installer for the optional font.
- Changed the documentation to refer to this project as a
remake rather than a port, and added a few bits.
What is Labyrinth?
------------------
Labyrinth is a remake of a Commodore 64 game published by
Commodore in 1983 (not to be confused with the 1986 film
adaptation from LucasFilm), which was itself a souped-up
version of an earlier public domain game originally written
in BASIC for the Commodore PET.
In this game you must find your way through a randomly gen-
erated maze of your chosen size, playing from a first person
view. Can you do it without peeking at the plan?
- Runs on all classic Amiga models.
- Adapts to PAL/NTSC and overscan.
- 100% OS- and multitasking-friendly. Can even share audio
channels with other programs running at the same time, if
those programs support it.
- Faithful rendition of the original game's arrangement of
Greensleeves, using real time volume envelope generators
and the highest quality waveforms possible at all octaves.
- Uses menus, gadgets and requesters to provide a proper
Amiga interface, yet retains the feel of the original
game.
For a bit of fun, try starting up multiple instances of the
game and enjoy the ensuing chaos of all of them playing mu-
sic at the same time! Yes, the Amiga was always capable of
doing this!
Full source code is included under the GNU General Public
License 3.0.
Installation
------------
The program file can simply be dragged anywhere to install
it where you like.
Labyrinth will try to use a font called Proptopaz. That font
is included in this distribution. It is optional, but you
can use the provided installer to copy it into your system's
fonts directory if you wish to use it.
If you don't install it, Labyrinth will try to use Newtopaz
instead. If that is not available either, it will just use
Topaz (the font built into Amiga systems).
Other things
------------
Check out some of my other Amiga software on Aminet:
Harmonics - mus/edit/harmonics.lha
- A simple additive synthesizer.
KoalaView - gfx/show/KoalaView.lha
- View and convert Commodore 64 images with authentic
looking colors.
ScreenTime - util/time/ScreenTime.lha
- Highly configurable digital clock on any public screen,
with locale support and calendar.
Space Invaders - game/shoot/spaceinv.lha
- Arcade perfect and system friendly.
ToolsMenu - util/cdity/ToolsMenu.lha
- Add tools and projects to the Workbench menu, using a
simple interface similar to FKey.
About the implementation
------------------------
The game is written entirely in Kickstart 1.2 compatible
code. There is no direct hardware access; everything is done
through the operating system.
It takes advantage of audio.device's ability to share audio
channels between programs. Unfortunately, most other pro-
grams simply allocate all four audio channels at the highest
precedence, thus completely preventing other applications
from using sound.
In fact, the only other programs I know of that will share
audio channels are my own Harmonics and Space Invaders. But
at least you can now have Greensleeves as background music
while playing Space Invaders, or load up Harmonics and play
along! Or you can run multiple instances of the game and
have them all play music at the same time, if that sounds
enticing.
Channel precedences are carefully changed on the fly so that
other applications will tend to steal the channels that are
doing the least important work. That is to say, channels
that are playing the final (release) part of a sound will be
stolen before channels that are playing the main (sustain)
part, which in turn will be stolen before channels that are
playing the initial (attack) part.
The game implements the ATAK and RLSE chunks of the IFF 8SVX
file format (although it doesn't actually load IFF files, it
uses the format internally). It is able to accomplish this
even on an Amiga 500 (using about 10% CPU time for three
channels of music) by using a modified version of Bresen-
ham's line algorithm along with careful precalculations.
It also implements the IFF SMUS format. The music runs in a
separate high priority task signalled by an interrupt, so it
won't be slowed down when the game is rendering. It will
even play music while a floppy drive is active without slow-
ing down.
The music and multithreading is implemented in highly modu-
lar and reusable code, and I have done my best to document
the API for each module.
History
-------
1.5.3 (Aug 13, 2021)
- Title screen can now be skipped with the Esc key or the
left mouse button.
- Now uses a custom mouse pointer to avoid weird things hap-
pening with hires pointers.
- Improvements to the audio and music code, and other little
improvements.
- Now includes an installer for the optional font.
- Changed the documentation to refer to this project as a
remake rather than a port, and added a few bits.
1.5.2 (May 7, 2021)
- A couple of minor corrections to the music.
- The music thread now will not use any CPU time when the
music is turned off.
- Other improvements to the music code.
1.5.1 (Apr. 8, 2021)
- Fixed nonsensical music set up code that should never
have worked, yet somehow did.
1.5 (Apr. 7, 2021)
- Will now try to use proptopaz.font. If that is not found,
newtopaz.font will be tried. If that is not found either,
topaz.font will be used as before.
- proptopaz.font included in the distribution.
1.4 (Mar. 5, 2021)
- Fixed a divide by zero crash at the end of the game if the
player peeked too many times at the plan.
- Major improvements to the music set up code; it is now
much faster, smaller, and uses less memory.
- Minor improvements to the maze design routine.
1.3 (Feb. 15, 2021)
- Added joystick support.
- Improved title screen, especially on PAL.
1.2 (Dec. 31, 2020)
- Fixed bugs in the music code that could potentially cause
crashes or other problems.
- Various improvements.
1.1 (Dec. 17, 2020)
- Sped up the intro.
- Various improvements to the music, the code and the docu-
mentation.
1.0 (Dec. 3, 2020)
- Initial release.
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