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Publisher:- |
Mastertronic |
Year of publication:- |
1985 |
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Original Computer:- |
48K Sinclair Spectrum |
Sales:- |
250,000+ |
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Design & programming:- |
Clive Brooker |
Other formats:-
Commodore 64
Atari 800
Amstrad CPC
Commodore C16-Plus4 |
Yes
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With Easter 1985 fast approaching,
with 10 whole consecutive days off work, I was itching to start a new
project and only had one slight problem. No idea's for a new game,
but the option to indulge a hobby, 15 hours a day for 10 days. If I
didn't begin something soon, this time would be wasted. Thinking back
on the previous two published games, both had used different code to
scroll a view on a larger maze, albeit only in a small portion of the
screen. So I had the opportunity to spend some time attempting to
develop a routine that would work faster and cover a larger area of
the screen. First I needed some graphics to test the code I was
developing. Designing a few brick characters was quite easy and for
some reason, I also had a go at doing a small sort of roof in a
similar style. With Knight Driver I had manually calculated and
inserted every character for the one single maze. Games needed to
appear a lot bigger with loads of different levels and only 48K of
limited memory to play with. I designed a few routines that could
insert entire vertical and horizontal tunnel structures from a
specific point in memory and this is where large sheets of graph
paper came to save the day. Suddenly, an entire complex maze could be
defined in only 200 bytes, the possibility for a 20 level game had
arrived! To test all these machine code routines, I thought it would
be handy to design an animated graphic that would remain centre
screen, whilst the scenery moved. Thus the spinning Droid was born.
Still no real game concept at this stage, but I was able to produce
some productive work.
With this part of the code
working, I then thought that it would look nice if I could get
something moving in the maze independently, yet still had no idea of
what the game would be. Not being artistic is a minor handicap when
you need to draw something visually acceptable for a commercial
product! I used a piece of graphic software I had developed, that
made it easy to draw a random squiggly shape, then let the computer
apply some mirror transformations. So, after all this time I must
confess that I simply bashed away at random shapes, joining odd bits
together, until they actually looked OK. These became the Ramboids
and to get them to move I applied a simple logic that they would
continue in a certain direction until they hit a stop and would then
reverse. I added some more code that also made them bump off of the
centre screen Droid. Now I could see something happening with the
game, but it still had no objective. I simply played the non playable
game waiting for inspiration as to what to do next. I can't recall
why, but I eventually came up with the idea that if there was a
single pot in the maze, the Droid could be used to coerce the
Ramboids into it, though this would be too easy and no fun. By
insisting that they each have to be inserted in the correct order -
suddenly the prospect of an original and thoughtful game emerged.
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Loading screen |
Opening titles |
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 |
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So there we have it. The game
concept for what was commonly regarded as a highly original idea,
really came from nowhere, simply as each part of the development
process pointed to the next stage. It has even been suggested that
One Man and His Droid may have been the inspiration for the very
successful and addictive Lemmings series of games, that came some
years later. Certainly, if one is to look at some of the basic genres
of games over the years, OMAHD makes a good candidate for Lemmings,
which also has lots of little men that you have to coerce home with
some building and demolition tools. Indeed OMAHD even had the
tunnelling tool that was critical in some of the later stages to gain
access to the Ramboids pot. And again, as in Lemmings, tunnel in the
wrong place and the game becomes impossible!
I felt that the game just needed
one further bit to make it complete and following the theme now
established, I introduced a pre level gamelette, that involved
steering the Droid up through a massive chamber, with lines of
Ramboids that would alternate their movement patterns. This created a
problem when then Ramboids squished the Droid into one of the side
walls. I solved this problem by adapting the game to force the Droid
back to the ground. Again, no fully developed ideas, it all just came
about. This approach to designing a game was rather crazy, yet
spawned an interestingly different game, quite by accident.
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Loading screen |
Top of the wild Ramboid chamber |
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With the entire game working in
under 10 weeks from starting, it was time to consider finding a
publisher. The obvious easy course was to approach Mastertronic, as I
already had the contacts. A simple telephone call was all it took to
arrange a meeting at their new London offices - Mastertronic was
expanding successfully, rather rapidly. The Mastertronic office was a
friendly fun place, complete with one of the most awesome pinball
tables I'd ever seen - not to mention loads of home computers. I took
my young son Simon with me to be the official demonstrator, after
ensuring that he could actually play the game (with a few helpful
tips from his Dad.) So Simon demonstrated the game to Mastertronic's
John Maxwell (acquisition and follow through man), he was rather
impressed, though I suspect that he may not have quite followed the
theme of the game. He said that he was keen to acquire the game, but
just wanted to run it past their star programmer, David Jones first.
Mastertronic not only made a very quick decision to buy the license,
but immediately committed to commissioning several programmers (and a
musician) to rewrite the game for other computers. The musician was
to be Rob Hubbard, who wrote the music for the commodore 64 version
of my game. He went on to become the Technical Audio Director for the
American games company, Electronic Arts. Rob was one of the master
craftsman of C64 music, being a brilliant musician and programmer.
Mastertronic's quality of output
was becoming main stream for a budget £2.00 price and One Man
and His Droid was launched amid a PR fanfare on a river boat on the
Thames. A fun and exciting evening, meeting the computer games press,
together with Mastertronic's star programmer, David Jones. Shame he
split his trousers just before his demonstration to the press - for
some reason, he always faced forward during the demo, I wonder why? I
do recall, that when my name was called to demonstrate OMAHD, I was
so engrossed talking to the team from Computer and Video games, that
I almost missed my cue. On a closing Mastertronic note, my small son
Simon (10 - 11) was the only kid on the block with a gratis
Mastertronic XL teashirt! Still, he liked it, even if it almost swept
the floor. John Maxwell dreamed up the name One Man and His Droid and
whilst I wanted a spacey sounding name, it was certainly right and
appropriate for the game - thanks John!
One Man And His Droid went on to
become Mastertronic's 13th best selling game with over 212,000 copies
sold, plus inclusion in countless anthologies. |
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You have flown to the planet
Andromadous with your droid to capture Ramboids, a male form of alien
sheep. They only have an active life of twenty minutes, so to
teleport them back to Earth in a suitable form you will have to move
fast. As time runs out you must control your droid up through the
hundreds of free Ramboids to gain access to the cavern entrance. The
left hand status panel will then show which order the Ramboids have
to be coerced into the teleport receptor, 4 or more Ramboids
correctly installed will allow you to move to the next cavern.
Being a bit stupid the Ramboids
only move in a certain pattern, either up right bump, down left bump
or vice versa.
The droid has three modes of
operation as shown on the bottom of the control panel. A quick press
on the fire button will alter mode from fly, to dig, into tunnelling.
A long press will show the location of all the remaining Ramboids.
Tunnelling correctly is probably the most important skill required to
succeed in capturing all the Ramboids in all 20 caverns.
When you have another go, the
password system will allow you to start where you left off. |
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The game must be run in a 48K
Spectrum emulation. With later Spectrum's there is a conflict with
the code that generates the starting gamelette, which makes it
virtually impossible to complete and enter the main game.
The main game has 10 different
mazes in which you first need to discover the location of the
receptor pod and then a strategy to coerce the Ramboids into it, in
the correct order. When the sixth Ramboid has been "sent
home", provided that 4 were in the correct order, the password
to the next level is revealed and you play the pre-game gamelette,
prior to starting the next level. Each maze is played twice, the
second time with additional bricks that move as Ramboids but do not
count - they only complicat matters.
In the higher levels, the
receptor pod is hidden and some tunnel exploring is necessary to find
it and also adopt a strategy to selectively install Ramboids without
them falling in at the wrong time. Also the higher levels have
"Ramboid Chutes" which they are sucked down, but are
impenetrable to your Droid.
In the pre game gamelette, your
objective is to travel to the top of the chamber and drop into the
game chute. A Random arrangement of Ramboids perform patterns of
movement that you need to bypass without getting squashed into one of
the sidewalls. The easyist time to move up is when the ramboid rows
are moving in opposite directions but you must avoid getting caught
in a "hoop". |
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By default, One Man and His Droid
tests to see if a Kempston joystick is attached. If it is then
whatever keys your emulator uses for a Kempston joystick are the ones
to use. However, if the emulator does not recognise a Kempston
joystick, then both of the two following strategies are adopted.
Sinclair joystick emulation:-
using the keys 6 - 0
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Keyboard controls if a Kempston
joystick is not detected |
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LEFT |
X,V,N |
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RIGHT |
C,B,M |
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UP |
Q,W,E,R,T,Y,U,I,O,P |
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DOWN |
A,S,D,F,G,H,J,K,L |
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FIRE |
1,2,3,4,5 (Advances through the modes. HOLD
fire to search) |
If the Keys are not working, this
is because the Emulator has inadvertently met the test my program
makes for a Kempston Joystick connected. When I designed my games I
wrote a single input routine that runs a test to see if a Kempston
Joystick is connected and if that it true, then it disregards the
keyboard. In this case, you need to select a Kempston joystick in
your Emulators settings, so it can actually use the joystick. |
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Passwords to start game level from |
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1: NONE |
2: EMPIRE |
3: PREDATORY |
4: RUMINATE |
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5: RYEGRASS |
6: VACUUM |
7: VAMPIRE |
8: RAGOUT |
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9: GRAIN |
10: AASVOGEL |
11: BLIZZARD |
12: CLOCHE |
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13: COLANDER |
14: ECTOPLASM |
15: ECOLOGY |
16: FEROCIOUS |
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17:FETLOCK |
18: GOOSEBERRY |
19: GRAVITATE |
20: UPANDAWAY |
A quick way to bypass
remembering these passwords, is to use the master password cheat
programmed into the game. It's PAULSIMON backwards, followed by a
letter where A=1, B=2 etc. For example, to start at level 10 the
master password would be:- LUAPNOMISJ (notice the J=10th letter of
the alphabet.)
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References kindly reproduced from The World of Spectrum |
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Magazine |
Issue |
Type |
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Crash |
12.85 page 164 Ediition 23 |
Review |
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Sinclair User |
1.86 page 122 |
Review |
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Your Sinclair |
1.86 page 38 |
Review |
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Sinclair User |
5.86 page 22 |
Tips |
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Your Sinclair |
11.86 page 42 |
Tips |
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Crash |
7.89 page 6 |
Cover
Game |
|
Crash |
8.89 page 36 |
Tips |
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SSD-II |
Web site |
Information |
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