If you don't want to use an emulator / don't have an Apple II at home, you
can in theory play in a browser at the internet archive here:
Duke Nukem Apple II
Frequently Asked Questions
Why not hi-res?
I feel like I have to answer this question a lot.
Anyway, the simple answer is
hi-res is about 8x worse than lo-res in about every possible metric
except for raw pixel count. It's slower, takes more RAM, and is a lot
more difficult to code.
Just one example: it took me almost as much time to try to get the
colors right in the hi-res intro splash screen as it did to write
the actual code for the game.
Here is a quick conversion to HGR:
It would probably look better if someone took the time to dither
the art. You might say, what about purple
and green? The problem is if you try to mix purple/green with
blue/orange you get ZX Spectrum-style color clash, and having
transparent sprites becomes difficult. Even just using a proper
4-color subset, getting black in your sprites is difficult without
having an extra masking step.
Performance would be horrible too. Someone clever can make
a hi-res platformer (see Prince of Persia) but a scrolling
platformer would probably be really slow.
What about double-hires? Even more obnoxious than hires.
What about double-lores? Maybe doable, but I like code that
runs on an Apple II+ with 48k of RAM.
Why did you release the game in an incomplete state?
I did most of the easy stuff. The major remaining thing is the
enemy movement/AI which is difficult. Especially as there are two
co-ordinate systems (the tiles and the sprites) and it's a pain
mapping back and forth between them.
However the main reason I rushed the release is because I'm really
supposed to be grading final exams and final projects right now
so I needed to get a release done so I wouldn't be tempted to
spend more time on it.
Is there a level editor for the game?
The tilemap is just a big png file where certain parts
are tiles and parts are the map. Currently you can have a
256 column by 40 row map using 256 2x4 pixel tiles. This works out
to about 10.5k of data. This all compresses really well with LZSA.
Development Notes
17 December 2020 -- Release v0.03
Added an interesting Level #2, it's fun having a tile-based engine for
Apple II. Also added some appropriate Mockingboard music.
Was fine tuning the controls but possibly made things worse.
16 December 2020 -- Release v0.02
First full release, can more or less "beat" the sample level.
Enemies don't move and controls are still a pain.
14 December 2020
Unwisely fleshing this out to a playable demo.
Tilemap loaded from PNG. Can more or less walk around and
shoot, still no enemies yet. As always awful Apple II keyboard
makes the controls a bit awkward.
