Death Castle

Download: executable .zip archive
To run: DOSBox or DOSEMU
Compiled with: Turbo C 2.1, TASM
Technologies: x86 assembly for fast blitting, FSM based NPCs, original graphics

Keys:
LEFT/RIGHT ARROWS - move left/right
CTRL - jump; press longer for higher jumps; combine with arrows to jump horizontaly
ALT - fire; press to arm the slingshot, release to fire it
UP ARROW - flip a switch (skulls); a particular switch set combination will unlock a door

Cheats:
TAB - show map
CapsLock + F2 - get golden key
CapsLock + F3 - get silver key
CapsLock + F4 - get the onion (for some reason I made the design decision that onions are good against ghosts - I guess garlic was taken by vampires)
CapsLock + + - increase health level
CapsLock + - - teleport to final screen

Inspired by Apogee's Hocus Pocus, this was my first major C program, and also my first contact with x86 assembly. I found myself during its development reinventing a bunch of concepts that I later found to be fundamental: finite state machines, object inheritance, concurency, project modularization, etc. I developed this on a 386 SX/33MHz in our school's computer lab and I remember it taking 5 minutes for the project to recompile.

I also had to write a simple graphics editor (not included in the archive) for all the pics and the levels as I didn't have anything in DOS I could use at the time. A class mate from Middle School, Alexandru Ion, helped with some of the graphics. The main character and its animations I designed myself - you can actually see it featured on the main page of this web-site.