3D Star Hunter - ZX81 version of Atari Star Raiders
Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 10:45 pm
I finally got my latest ZX81 project finished. This has been in the pipeline since 2023. I have a lot of other things to do, so finding time to work on this has been difficult. Anyway, it's now ready to post here and let you all try it out.
3D Star Hunter is inspired by the 1979 Atari 8 bit game Star Raiders. The aim of the game is to clear all 16 sectors. It features a full 3D environment with X,Y and Z calculations for the targets. The game is over when you win, run out of energy or the hull damage goes to zero. The main difference with the Atari game is that there are no base stations to defend and repair at. Instead, you can use energy on the damage control screen to repair your ship. Gain more energy by shooting asteroids which appear randomly in some of the sectors.
There are four difficulty levels and the 15 keys this game uses can be displayed and redefined from the title screen. Keys include engine speed, aiming/firing the lasers, turning shields or the radar on/off and more. This is a record number of keys for any game I've worked on.
The raw fun of just shooting lots of stuff makes this a fun game to play. It's easy on level one, but by level four you get less energy and take more damage in which case you'll need to be careful using engines and radar to save power, so there is strategy involved. The sector contents are remembered by the game, so you can't cheat by zipping out of a sector and back in to see if you get asteroids rather than fighters when you return.
Here's some screenshots:
Attacking fighters fire at you
Shoot this asteroid to add to your energy levels
Select the next sector to clear
Use energy to repair your systems. Systems go glitchy when moderately damaged and fail when damage is below 50%.
Here's the game. It works with colour and sound using Chroma and Zonix, but will run on just a standard 16K Ram pack.
3D Star Hunter is inspired by the 1979 Atari 8 bit game Star Raiders. The aim of the game is to clear all 16 sectors. It features a full 3D environment with X,Y and Z calculations for the targets. The game is over when you win, run out of energy or the hull damage goes to zero. The main difference with the Atari game is that there are no base stations to defend and repair at. Instead, you can use energy on the damage control screen to repair your ship. Gain more energy by shooting asteroids which appear randomly in some of the sectors.
There are four difficulty levels and the 15 keys this game uses can be displayed and redefined from the title screen. Keys include engine speed, aiming/firing the lasers, turning shields or the radar on/off and more. This is a record number of keys for any game I've worked on.
The raw fun of just shooting lots of stuff makes this a fun game to play. It's easy on level one, but by level four you get less energy and take more damage in which case you'll need to be careful using engines and radar to save power, so there is strategy involved. The sector contents are remembered by the game, so you can't cheat by zipping out of a sector and back in to see if you get asteroids rather than fighters when you return.
Here's some screenshots:
Here's the game. It works with colour and sound using Chroma and Zonix, but will run on just a standard 16K Ram pack.