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Title Rodland
Game Type Platform
Company The Sales Curve
Players 1-2
Compatibility All 1 meg machines
Submission Graham McClelland Graham@dorrie.demon.co.uk

Review
Rodland has a typical platform plot, your mother has been
kidnapped and you have to rescue her. In addition, the style of this game
is similar to most platform game, very cute graphics. However, there is
one major difference between this and most other platform games, its
playability. This is easily the most enjoyable platform game on the Amiga,
if not any format!
The game is screen based, so to complete a level you have to
destroy all the bad guys (cute rabbits, crying sharks.) on screen. After
you have completed about 10 levels, you have to destroy the end of level
boss. These take the form of giant animals, the first being six crocodiles
and then a giant Whale. To kill the bad guys on each level you trap them
with your wand and then you smack them against the ground. On each level
there are several flowers and if you collect them, all the bad guys turn
into special creatures. When you kill these creatures, they drop a letter
from the word EXTRA. When you have collected every letter, you gain an
extra life.
This game is a great one player game but where it excels is in two
player. The game is the same as the single player but you have your
friends helping you. Things can get quite heated because it is easy to
kill your friend by mistake.
Overall, I think this is one of the ‘must have’ Amiga games,
especially if you play many multi player games.

Another amazing 16 colour game from Ned Langman! His palette looks brighter than the arcade, another case of bettering the original! Would Ned always be a little ahead with the graphics or would you have to use placeholder graphics until he was able to make them all?

We used placeholder graphics. But it didn't take him long. We got the original graphics data from Jaleco. Ned had to do a lot of work to make it all fit, and make it look good with the limited palette, but after so many Amiga/ST titles, he was so experienced that he could do that very quickly.

Who chose the colour palette - programmer or artist or a combo?

That was all Ned. He's the man with the pixels.

There seems to be 3 different Amiga versions of the game, v1.30, 1.30s and 1.32. Do you have any idea what the differences are between the 3 versions?

I didn't know there were other versions!

Who came up with the (brilliant) idea that the score panel for Rodland should be completely composed of sprites? (I assume a smaller display window area, so lots of extra DMA time etc!)

I'm pretty sure that was me. Thanks. It was my fourth and last full size Amiga project, and by that time I knew the platform quite well. Among other things this trick allowed me to scroll the playing field, and keep the panel static. Essentially a vertical screen split.

How much help did you get from the coin-op people Jaleco with the game?

They gave us the original graphics files, and the music score. Ned converted the graphics, and I converted the music. We did not have any contact with Jaleco other than that. We did not get any code.

Did someone have to play through the arcade and draw/photograph the levels to duplicate them including start positions for the monsters? Or you had maps?

Yes, I believe the levels were duplicated by observing the arcade machine. We had one in the office, and on free play of course. It's not a big game, simple maps, so doing the maps this way was not a big deal.

Did you know at the time that the coin-op has a special "extra" set of 32 levels that could be accessed with a certain set of moves before depositing a coin? (Apparently also made available if you completed the game). If you didn't know this but had at the time, would those extra 32 levels have been able to be included in the Amiga version or there was no time?

Hmm, I recall seeing the sprites. They were included in the data we got from Jaleco. And I recall wondering what they were for. Now I know!

Map question again - this one surely used 16x16 tiles? What map program was used this time?

Yes the maps were tile based. As for the map editor - I have to get back to you on that. I will ask Ned!

Were baddies simply placed on the map and their own logic would make them chase the player hence levels could be constructed quite quickly?

All the behavior of the baddies was done in code. They just needed a starting position.