Quasimodo's Christmas Caper - R2

Thank you to all those who have taken the time to purchase Quasimodo's Christmas Caper and support my work.  I really appreciate the positive feedback about the game.   The only negative has been that one of the buyers decided to spread the game illegally and upload it to other websites for free download.  This may affect other releases going forwards and I may have to release to a limited number of people and employ extra tracking measures.  It's not something I want to do, but sadly there are those who believe everything should be free and are ignorant of the time and effort that went into the game.  I hadn't planned to charge for every single game I write - some may be entirely free, but to deprive an individual author of a potential sale is selfish in the extreme.

On a positive note, for all who have been playing the game and enjoying it (some of you tell me you've been playing it every day - which is great to hear!) there will soon be a Release2 of the game with some subtle changes and fixes to a few issues picked up in the first release.

Release2 changes

• IMPROVEMENT: Reworking of the timer routines - I've decided to make the countdown timer routines more flexible and allowing me to set times more accurately in the game.  So, every level has been playtested again and the timings re-adjusted.
• FIX: The timer display routines were being called too often and in too many places in the code.  This has been corrected and in addition, they are no longer updated as much.  This will free up extra raster time.
• FIX: The previous timer routine had a bug in the code which would cause multiple calls to a sound routine more than it should have done which caused some sound clipping when the Game Over tune was called - effectively losing a channel.  This has now been fixed.
• CHANGE: On Level Complete, the Elves despawn sounds can now be heard fully before the music starts.  This was how it was originally many months ago, but changed due to the moving of a few routines and a couple of STATE logic changes.  Now it has been corrected back the way I always wanted it.
• FIX: Pressing RESTORE (which quits the game) in certain situations could cause unexpected side-effects if quitting at a time it made no sense to quit.  Extra checks have been enabled to stop this.
• IMPROVEMENT: Some minor graphical tweaks to the Elves.
• CHANGE: Some people had commented that the game was too quiet.  I've added a very short, low key background piece of music on 2 channels.  Now this may work in reverse and start to irritate some people, but if it does I may look to introduce another option to enable/disable music in-game (if a Release3 is required).  I may extend the tune a little further.
• ADDITION: a .d64 image will be included in the Release2 bundle along with the standalone .prg. 
• CHANGE: reworking of the draw routine for the bitmap logo - still needs a further refinement.

The tape version of the game (.tap file) is still being worked on at present as the loading screen isn't quite finished.  Hopefully, it won't be too long and when ready will be included with the .prg and .d64 files.

Thanks again for the support. 

Rob.