Star Avenger II

Star Avenger II

Release type: Shareware
Release date: March 8, 1995
Levels: 10
Author: Adam Tyner, Alan Caudel
Website: On Target Programming
Related games: Star Avenger, Star Avenger III, Star Avenger IV

The most interesting thing about Star Avenger II is that it is not a copy of the original Star Avenger; it's a mirror image. Here, Tyner and Caudel do everything backwards. It's still a single-screen shooter where you collect shooting stars to earn hit points, but now you're out of the ship and on foot. where Star Avenger has continuous eight-way shooting and uses the plus and Enter keys to move up and down on a line, Star Avenger has eight-way movement and uses the Enter key for continuous shooting in the last direction moved. Where the original provides little if anything recognizable as obstacles or goals, this sequel is full of enemy targets and lock-and-key objectives.

With Game-Maker's peculiar mode of scrolling, a fixed single-screen design is always welcome. It's also a hard thing to get right, due in part to the engine's strict demands and in part to its flaky physics. Star Avenger II does more with the concrete limits than some other games, but doesn't quite find a way around the hazier issue of glitches.

Because code tends to be binary, computer graphics tend to work on factors of two. So, if you're filling a background with tiles, the standard tile size will be 8 or 16 blocks. On a standard 320x240 display, this gives you 20x15 tiles to work with; 300 squares of real estate on a given screen. Game-Maker does its own thing, with 20x20 tiles on a 320x200 display. That makes for 16x10 tiles, or 160 squares of real estate. In other words, any given screen of a Game-Maker game contains half the information that it might in a more traditional arrangement. Each tile is 25% bigger, sure, but in design what tends to matter is less the detail of an individual object than the relationships amongst objects. 25% more pixels isn't going to make or break your tile or your sprite, but having half the on-screen resources is probably going to limit what you can do with the space.

So, if you're thinking of making a single-screen game you're already at a big disadvantage. You need to think smaller. More compact. Compounding the problem, Game-Maker doesn't really handle the blocks at the edge of the screen very well. So, you basically have a one-block-wide border all around the screen that is useless for any design considerations. Out of 160 tiles, that loses us 48 -- leaving just 14x8=112 squares in which to make our statement. Whoof.

Screenshot from Star Avenger 2

Still, needs must. We just have to get clever, right? We don't need the world to be creative. We just use what we've got. And that's true! Good spirit. Good point; well put. So now let's add a further complication: the character must start in the exact center of the screen. If you can work around that, and still make an interesting set of goals, then you are kind of brilliant and that almost certainly will show in your game.

As it happens, Caudel and Tyner do handle the limitations. You've got a small time limit to start scrambling toward the green crystal at the top of the screen, before the monsters come to ooze at your heels -- at which point you need to safely climb down again, and work your way to the exit. It's a good premise, well-conceived, implemented as well as it might be. Nothing but applause so far.

If the original Star Avenger recalls early arcade shooters before all of our ideas about shooters got frozen in place, Star Avenger II brings to mind early single-screen platformers, from before platformers were a thing: your Donkey Kong or your Lode Runner (the forerunner of all game creation systems). It's a neat feeling, and very unlike your typical Game-Maker game. It's especially notable because of how consciously different the two games are. Both games show a concerted effort to do things on their own terms.

Unfortunately, Game-Maker isn't here to listen to your terms. You can have all of the good ideas you like; if you fail to account for RSD's engine, its glitches will eat your design for breakfast. And, so it can be here.

If there is a problem with Star Avenger II, it's in Game-Maker's treatment of clipping and edge detection. Reasonably enough, the character jumps in a predefined arc: if you start here, you'll end there. It's nice and elegant and gives your design a certain predictable structure. These set jumps work in other Game-Maker games, and they help to define NES games like Ghosts 'n Goblins or Castlevania. For Star Avenger II, narrow spaces between narrow platforms, combined with staggered platform heights and one-way solidity, all conspire to glitch the hell out of RSD's physics routines.

This isn't something that you can easily work around. If you remove the mandate that a jump should finish its animation, you lose a certain precision to your design and generally make the game feel sloppier. The effect will be that the player can more easily account for the glitches as they occur -- but the glitches will still be there, and the player shouldn't have to take up the slack for the engine or the design. Unless the player is deeply familiar with Game-Maker, it may not be obvious that the course can be corrected -- and if it does become clear, that itself may come off as an undesirable glitch.

It is possible with some careful adjustment one could get the controls and the physics to cooperate just right, but we're talking hours of one-pixel, one-frame tweaks until the glitches just barely balance each other out. And even that is not assured.

Point is, Star Avenger II has its problems, but it comes from the right place and does its best with what it finds. It's a noble effort, in a series of games that's all about flaunting convention.

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Star Avenger series

Story

After crushing the swarm of aliens in Star Avenger 1, you are shot down by a remaining alien ship. You manage to survive a crash landing on a nearby planet.

You happen upon an alien station. You notice a strange door through which aliens are teleporting to and from different areas on the planet. You decide to try to make it through the door way, hoping you will finally find a ship that you can take to the inter-galactic teleportal....

Instructions

Cutscene from Star Avenger 2

Side-view Stages

Controls

           UP
jump left      jump right
     \     ^      /

LEFT  <          > RIGHT
        
     /     v      \
down left      down right
          DOWN

(enter) - fires weapon

Object

Try to reach the green crystal at the top of the screen.

Once you have the crystal, go back to the door at the bottom of the screen.

Wait for the small red light to turn green, and then jump into the door.

Hints

You will have several seconds at the beginning of each stage when there will be no monsters on the field. Use this time wisely to advance towards the top.

Collecting shooting stars will increase your hit points more than the original two that you are given.

Outer Space Flying

Controls

Controls for this portion are identical to the other stages.

Object

Try to find the inter-galactic teleporter. Once it has been reached, fly directly into the center as the star is flashing.

Hints

Don't get killed.

You can outrun everything. Time it right, and go for one clean sweep towards the center.

Credits

Star Avenger 2

Programed by:

Alan Caudel

Muchas Gracias a:

Adam Tyner

Availability

This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.

Archive History

On October 20, 2010, Caudel posted a comment to a YouTube video of Peach the Lobster, under the name dummyduckrulz; following up the conversation, on June 29, 2011 he provided a link to a collection of games recently uncovered by Adam Tyner. This initial archive included:

Adam's Birthday Game The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues Adam's B-Day 3: The Saga Continues Adam 98 Big Fat Tank! Blip!

The Complete Bone Adventures Dummy Duck II Dummy Duck 3 FireAxe Lil' Choklit Donit Man in: Choklit Terror!! Mister Spiff I

Mister Spiff III: Freeze! Mother! Freeze! Raiden II Return of the Jedi Scurvy the Squirrel Star Avenger II Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Links

• On Target Programming (Internet Archive)
• Play Star Avenger 2 online

Downloads

• Star Avenger 2 (120 kB)
• Level 1 map (5.1 kB)
• Level 2 map (5.6 kB)
• Level 3 map (5.4 kB)
• Level 4 map (6.7 kB)
• Level 5 map (6.4 kB)
• Level 6 map (5.8 kB)
• Level 7 map (6 kB)
• Level 8 map (6 kB)
• Level 9 map (51.8 kB)