Save a Frog!
Posted by Steve Revill Sat, 05 Jul 2014 21:29:00 GMT
Many users might remember playing the BBC Micro version of Hopper (Acornsoft, 1983) having loaded all its 8 colour goodness off an audio cassette.
The game was a clone of the ‘Frogger’ arcade game from Sega. The Acornsoft version was cunningly renamed to avoid having to licence the brand by using Professor Andy Hopper’s name, one of the original Acorn design team members and later honoured with a CBE in 2007 for his services to the computing industry.
In 1994 a RISC OS version of the game was penned by Simon Foster, who has kindly rummaged in his loft for the source code and granted permission for RISC OS Open to publish the game alongside the other diversions of HardDisc4. A new higher resolution application sprite has been provided by Chris Wraight.
The game’s objective is to get the frog safely home at the top of the screen, avoiding heavy road traffic, a snake, the rapids, and a hungry crocodile. There are bonus points to collect in the form of tasty flies, and for completing each level. Subsequent levels are a little more tricky with more cars to dodge, for example. The frog can be controlled using the keyboard (with configurable keys) or any joystick which adhers to the Joystick API.
For developers, it’s also worth mentioning that the PsychoEffects module by Andy Southgate is included in the game which fades graphics in 256 colour modes. Andy has also been kind enough to allow RISC OS Open to publish an updated 32 bit compatible version of his effects module.
There’s only 10 months to go until the next National Frog day, so it’s time to get some practice in. What’s your high score?
