MonkeyEye (Amiga OS3) CanDo Demo + Source

Warning: Contains drug use. Unsuitable for persons under 21 years.

Introduction

This was started in November 2023, as a way to take my mind off a court case where I was the defendant (I won the case!). I knew that CanDo can make a Defender of the Crown game and a King of Chicago type game, but again my mind was changed because I wanted to see if it could do a point and click adventure.

This was only ever mean't to be a demo, for those who might want to play around with it within CanDo, and maybe refine my code a bit for educational purposes. So I always intended to include the Source code.

However, not all of the features of a point and click game are in the demo. In fact, only 4 buttons on the HUD are working. The more buttons there are on the screen, the more the engine slows down, and I didn't want this to crawl along at a snails pace.

The demo is fully playable and contains a mini puzzle or two, so that it is completable.

There are still lots of bugs with my code, especially with clearing the text bar when something is slightly not working, but I'd say it is 95% of the way there, and perhaps something to play around with? I have no plans to expand this demo, mainly due to issues with having to remap the colours of the main character when adding new screens.

Requirements

• Any Amiga Kickstart 3.0 or better (does NOT work with other roms).
• 0.5MB chip ram and at least 1MB of other ram.  1MB Chip and 2MB Fast Ram recommended for HDD installation.
• Any CPU, but 020+  is recommended.
• Optional: Turn both Cycle Exacts OFF if using UAE emulation.
• Optional: A way to copy the files onto a real Amiga hard drive.

Features:

• 3 Screens - 1 Title, 1 Ending, and 1 Main
• Dynamic lighting depending on Day and Night cycle.
• 7 Interactive objects!
• 4 Working Buttons!
• 5 Rooms (4 scrolling rooms + ending)
• 2 and a half puzzles
• Full musical accompaniment
• Palette Cycling Introduction
• Some jokes.

Update Log:

V0.1.0 - Initial Demo 

V0.2 - Added Scrolling Routine 

V0.3 - Added Poster, Door, Look, walk bar button. 

V0.3a - Added Sun/Moon, Time and Palette changes. 

V0.4 - Updated walking routine 

V0.4b - Added Pickup, Use, Walk, Key, Palm, Seed 

V0.4e - Added hidden Info Box. 

V0.5 - Added interactive text when using items. 

V0.6 - Added a blank Bar to cover lower display text.

 V0.6a - Added Elephant with random naming,  and using Sun 

V0.6b - Added Room 5 and Ending sequence 

V0.7 - Added main titles and Intro sequence. 

V0.8 - Added random palette cycle when game is completed. 

V0.8a - Added cycle to Room 5. 

V0.8b - Fixed Sun and Door not working. 

V0.8c - Created a second button for the Sun and corner Quit. 

V0.9 - Re-pathed all pics and music from CanDo: to MonkeyEye: 

V0.9a - Fixed some file path bugs to MonkeyEye:

Bugs!

• Flashing character and items. I decided to refresh the screen after each frame of walking, so the screen, and any items on the backdrop image will flash. This is because I redraw the backdrop, and then pop all the items back in to place. This doesn't affect the items which are not over the backdrop image. The middle frame of walking animation is also a bit wider than the other frames, so it flashes on that one frame (if would be easy to fix this by making walk frames a standard width).

The way to get around the items flashing might be to set up each frame of the characters walk as a separate button. Then move those on and off the screen as necessary to perform the animation. However, the Sun would have to be an animbrush to still function, and animbrushes in cando can't seem to support background transparency what I have found, so having hit a dead end, that's why I used brushes instead of buttons.

• If an option fails to be carried out correctly, sometimes the bar does not blank out the combination of words from the failed operation.

• No message appears when you try to combine certain items twice. In the original code, it was possible to reproduce an item by combining two items more than once, but I took out this code.

• The inventory stops the player from holding more than 9 items, because I couldn't work out how to scroll the inventory section. Although there is a way to do this using the 'clip screen area to brush' option. I couldn't work it out, but of course in the original Monkey Island game, they just had a simple scrolling Text Array!
(edit: It would be possible to draw the inventory box off the screen, and make that area into a brush with each item added, and simply scroll that brush up and down. That would mean items can be swapped in their positions or dropped simply by moving the item image/button image before grabbing the brush. But then, you'd still need to keep track of the buttons.)

Editing the Source

1) Load up CanDo V3, making sure Setpatch is running.

2) If you are using the HD ADF, insert it into the disk drive and load up the source using Design Mode, Load.

3) If you are using a HDD install, you must Assign MonkeyEye: to the place you installed it first. Either by using CLI, or run the HDD Launcher and then quit the game. Then you can load up the source in Cando with the path set to your HDD.

4) When the file loads, you will have to sit through the intro sequence. This is normal. After the buttons come up, you can click the 'Music Off' button on the intro screen with Browse Mode.

5) Now click the 'Enter' on-screen option, or the 'Next Card' Cando button to go into the main game. From here, click Edit and Button to look at all of the buttons, or click Routines and a list of routines will appear (double-click them to edit).  The 'Draw Backdrop' routine controls most things, while the walk is actived with the WalkBar button.

6) The intro sequence is not a routine. To access it, click to edit the stack of cards button, and then choose to Edit Card_0. The intro sequence is performed After the page is Attached (click this button to edit).

FAQ

Is the game 100% finished? Hopefully.  I have no plans to continue with it, due to palette clashes when adding new screens. If you find any major bugs, requester popups, or game Crashes!, please let me know.

Why is movement so slow!? - The game will run a bit slowly on 000 CPUs, and I'd say 020 is needed for a nice smooth game. Turn both Cycle Exacts OFF if using UAE emulation. The timing of the intro was actually designed for the timings of the 030, so the intro may seem out of sync with other CPUs.

I'm totally lost!! - Pick up everything you can. Combine everything you can. Get a light. The end.

Are there any hidden secrets? - Apart from the fairly obvious advertisement screen for my first game, Holiday, there is also a hidden Info Box and music toggle option in the top Right corner of the main game screen. Pressing this a few times will also turn the music off completely.

How Do I Quit? - There is a hidden quit button in the top Left corner of the main game area.