New game released: Jack the Nipper

[Tezz]

Happy New Year!

The classic game Jack the Nipper published by Gremlin Graphics and released in 1986 is now available for the Atari 8-bit.

The game has been ported from the ZX Spectrum with music and sound effects being ported from the Amstrad CPC version of the game.

The character of Jack the Nipper is loosely based on the British comic strip character Sweeny Toddler.

Jack the Nipper is a side-view flip screen game with puzzle solving and platform elements. The player controls Jack, a naughty child who wants to break the record for naughtiness (recorded on the "naughtyometer"). He needs to carry out various wicked pranks on the unsuspecting inhabitants of his town, but if he comes into contact with angry adults he will be spanked. With each spanking his "nappy rash" (diaper rash) meter increases, and if it grows too high Jack loses a life. Contact with the monsters and ghosts which inhabit the town will also increase the nappy rash.

Instructions:

Jack was tired of all the wimps in his town, their boring games and goody goody ways sent him to sleep. So, Jack being of a rather naughty disposition set about livening things up a bit, he picked up his trusty pea-shooter and scarpered off to cause some trouble.

This is where you come in to take on the role of Jack and use your imagination to be as naughty as possible doing the things you always wanted to do but dare not (YOU WIMP!!). Jump on things, pick them up and drop them, use your pea-shooter to create smashing effects and toot your horn at the cat.

Use the items you pick up wisely then you must work out where you have to drop them to cause ultimate havoc. For instance what could you do with a tube of glue?

Controls:

Joystick Left / Right / Up / Down & Fire. (Fire & Up - Jump)

Keyboard 1 & 2 - Pick Up/Drop
ENTER - Enter Door
H - Pause On/Off
M - Toggle in-game music on/off
Q - Quit

Some of the useful Items:

Flower Killer Horn Fertiliser Soap Powder Battery Weight Glue Floppy Disc Credit Card Bomb Key Potty Clay


Both Mariusz and myself have worked on the game for the past few months preparing this release for the end of 2017. A considerable amount of time has been spent rewriting the sprite / screen engine for a significant increase in gameplay performance compared to the other platform releases.

There will be an additional 128Kb version of the game prepared in the new year utilising the additional 64Kb of RAM for pre-shifted/mirrored sprite cache. This should give a further performance boost for users with extra RAM.

The executable is attached which should work on all DOS versions, loaders and modern storage solutions. A standard DOS 2.5 disk image containing the executable is also attached.

The game requires 64Kb of RAM supporting both PAL and NTSC systems and running on CPU accelerators.

Credits for Atari version: Mariusz Wojcieszek, Terrence Derby

Enjoy!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JocX5RGQDA&feature=youtu.be

 

jack.xex

DOS2_5.atr

[Sikor]

Nice game. Thx for sharing.

[+Philsan]

Thank you very much Terrence (and Mariusz)!

[Heaven/TQA]

Thanks guys!

 

Still waiting for Mark to port Elite

[Jinks]

This game looks great!

[xrbrevin]

Huzzah!

another great classic - thanks

[Jinroh]

Great job guys this looks like a fun port!

 

Thanks so much for the hard work! Can't wait to give my 130XE some fun time.

[Stormtrooper of Death]

Wow ! Thank you very very much.

[Kaz atarionline.pl]

Hi Tezz, great work! The game looks amazing Congratz for you and Mariusz.

[popmilo]

Thanks for such an awesome present for new year !!!
Great work!

[Mclaneinc]

Thanks guys....Super work...Wonderful New Years pressie..

[+Adam+]

Many thanks for this game Terrence and Mariusz!

[R0ger]

Nice .. but anybody has some more info how to play it ? I'm walking around and can't find anything I can pick up ..

[_The Doctor__]

go inside of some place and root around... be a complete rabble rouser.. it's very bad to teach children this stuff... make a mess of things!

[R0ger]

That's the thing. I don't know how to interact with ANYTHING. I can enter door and that it. 1 or 2 doesn't do anything, anywhere. I need some specific example ..

[+Adam+]

I would suggest you to just watch closely the video created by Tezz (initial post in this thread). Or look how one of walkthroughs looks like

 

 

 

[R0ger]

Yeah, I couldn't watch the video before. Now I get it. Items are mostly on places which are easily accessed, and I thought you are not able to get there. Thanks !

[Lost Dragon]

Impressive.

 

Never a fan of the game itself on C64, but loving what has been achieved here.

[Gury]

Impressive! Another great port...

 

[Mclaneinc]

If it was a C64 porting idea then just 4 words...Monty on the Run...

 

Its basically just a hires game with great music, yeah I know I've hugely simplified it

[twh/f2]

What a cute game. Especially like it, because of my 2 years old little toddler

 

While tinkering with the game I have a nice Wiki website covering the C64 version of the game. It's a nice resource of background infos to the game.

Unfortunately german language only.

 

https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/Jack_the_Nipper

 

thanks Mariusz & Terrence! You guys ported an amazing game to the 8bit atari!!!

[_The Doctor__]

Now for Jack the Nipper II

Myth would be pretty darn tastey too!

 

\o/

_Doc__

 

I wonder how CPC Amstrad versions would convert?

Edited January 3, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

since the game is ported, we can visit the World of Spectrum at www.worldofspectrum.org or some nice C64 page, like e.g. www.c64games.de to find manuals and solutions.

 

While World of Spectrum provides several manuals and dozens of maps, I could not find a solution there - whereas at C64games we get both a manual package (ZIP includes manual+solution+tape covers) and a solution package (Lösung which is german for solution includes the manual+solution + half a dozen of maps). The fine thing is that both webpages (even the german one!) do have them in english language......

[Tezz]

Thanks for all the positive comments, here as promised is the v1.1 final release. The attached single executable works on both 64KB and 128KB+ systems. When 128KB+ RAM is not detected, the game behaves exactly like previous release. When 128KB+ RAM is detected however, sprite rendering routines now call the sprite cache manager. Cache manager creates a preshifted/mirrored copy of the sprite and returns it for sprite rendering providing an increase in performance. Scenes that had multiple sprites at the maximum size and height are now in keeping with the rest of the game performing without the slight slowdown in the 64K version. I've added a small indication on the bottom of the title screen to confirm when 128kb+ has been detected. Thanks to Mariusz for the work implementing the cache manager. Whilst preparing this final release, I have now also animated the overlay on the title screen to go with the animated "JACK THE NIPPER" text, it was a bit lame having a static overlay there in the previous release

jack.xex

DOS2_5.atr

Edited January 4, 2018 by Tezz

[Tezz]

Still waiting for Mark to port Elite

Not for much longer

 

If it was a C64 porting idea then just 4 words...Monty on the Run...

Yes, one on a long list of titles with interest in bringing to the Atari eventually. I did look at the original Monty Mole actually but the follow up Monty on the run is more refined. The author of Monty Peter Harrap a resident programmer at Gremlin Graphics gave some pointers to the author of Jack the Nipper with regard to sprite implementation. He also created the loading picture

 

Myth would be pretty darn tastey too!

I've looked a lot at Myth a few years ago. I've already created the intro but no work at all on the actual game so far other than studying the c64 version. With other projects in planning or on the go I'll hopefully get back to looking at Myth.