A 4k real-time one-button puzzle game for the Commodore Vic-20
(C)2011,2012 Malcolm Tyrrell
Fickle is a very unreliable sort, always flitting around after new and different things. This game has decided to teach Fickle to be steadfast by playing hard-to-get.
Fickle has two moods, red and green, which can be toggled by pressing any key except Restore. That's all the control you have, but fortunately it's enough to help Fickle win the game's heart.
When in a red mood, Fickle ignores the markings on the level floor. However, in a green mood, Fickle responds to the markings, for example by turning left at clockwise markings, or by picking up a key.
The game has two speed, slow and fast. Toggle between them using the Restore key at the welcome screen.
The timer gives you a lot more time than it will take for Fickle to reach the heart, so I recommend you try to plan a route through the level before you start moving.
You can skip levels with the Restore key, but this will cause the game to withhold its love.
Fickle requires a Commodore Vic-20 with no memory expansions. It should work on both PAL and NTSC Vics.
Fickle was made with the cc65 compiler suite (http://www.cc65.org/), the Exomizer 2 compressor (http://hem.bredband.net/magli143/exo/), and knowledge distributed at various places on the Internet, but particularly in the Denial forums (http://sleepingelephant.com/denial/). Thanks to all those responsible for the above.
Requirements:
- Building exomizer requires a C compiler and Yacc/Bison.
- Fickle itself is build with tools from the CC65 compiler suite (specifically ca65 and ld65).
Ensure you populate the exomizer submodule after cloning and call make in exomizer/exomizer2/src. Then change into Fickle's src folder and call make there. All going well, you will have a usable Fickle.prg.
Please distribute and enjoy Fickle.
The main Fickle source code can be used and distributed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. However, to build Fickle requires the use of the Exomizer 2 compressor and the exodecrunch decompressor. These are copyright Magnus Lind, and have a different Free Software license. Since Fickle requires a modified version of that project, I forked it in GitHub, and this project uses it a submodule. The modifications to that project (which are very minor) are marked with "MALX".
To my knowledge, Fickle's game mechanic is original. Please clone it if you'd like, but I'd appreciate a credit for the design. The levels are copyright me, so please ask permission if you want to reuse them in any non-free software context.
Enjoy,
Malcolm Malcolm.R.Tyrrell@gmail.com