Latest version is 1.4
From the original Comet Busters! web page:
You think you've seen it all? Play the mutant offspring of the
grandpappy of video games -- with much awesome graphics, sound, and arcade
action for Windows 3.1/95! Evil saucers, alien cronies, and flying chunks of
dead planets are all waiting to tear you apart! Celebrate your video gaming
roots and download Comet Busters!
Comet Busters! started as an experiment to try and learn Windows programming.
These were the days of 16-bit
Windows, before DirectX, even before
WinG
(the primitive ancestor of Direct2D). There wasn't even a sound API in those
days (1991), much less a joystick or sprite API.
If that wasn't bad enough, what I chose to use for the implementation language
was Borland Pascal for
Windows, which was in its first edition. Eventually
this morphed into Delphi. It wasn't so bad, you could coerce BP into doing
whatever evil you'd otherwise do in C.
The original versions of CB didn't support WinG, so they had no access to
the framebuffer. The 286's of the time weren't fast enough to command an
entire redraw every frame. So all of the sprite-drawing had to be done using
the region functions in the Windows API. This turned out to be some very
convoluted logic, but it worked. Only problem was that each object had an
ugly black rectangle around it.
I was amazed at the feedback I got from the game. I asked for $9.00 for
registration in the help file, and uploaded it to a BBS, not expecting
to receive so much as a postcard.
To my surprise, I soon was getting up to six registrations in a single day,
from all over the globe!
CB soon was appearing on compilation CD's -- one was a Japanese floppy-disk
set, one was a French half-porn/half-games CD, and one appeared in the
Best Buy $1.99 bin with CB as the headliner.
But even today, it's a fun game. It was the first *decent* arcade-style game for
Windows (I believe) and had awesome multiplayer support. I remember trying
to fit four guys on one keyboard in my dorm room, while bullets and screamed
insults flew everywhere. If someone had a suggestion or tweak to the gameplay,
I went right into the BP editor, made the change, compiled, and started the
game up again. Let's hear it for progressive refinement! :)
Download it (it's free) and take a look at the source if you have your
peril-sensitive sunglasses on. It's quite a hoot.
Downloads
../cb14/Install.exe
(1452373 bytes)
-
The full registered version of the game.
Instructions:
- Run the .EXE to install. Enjoy!
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