Alien Breed

Filename

Alien Breed

Summary

Series of shoot-em-up games

Authors

James Vernon

Site URL

http://www.jvti.org

Compatibility

TI-83/83+/84+/86

Language

Z80 assembly/TI-Basic

Alien Breed is a series of top-down view shoot-em-up games across many of the Z80 calculators by James Vernon, based on the series of the same name for Amiga/PC computers by Team 17. The first 2 games in the series were written in TI-Basic, then the rest are written in assembly, introducing more features as the series progressed.

Significance

The first game in the series, simply titled "Alien Breed", was released in 1998. As of 2014, the series is still ongoing, with "Alien Breed 5" released but still having future versions developed. This makes it perhaps the longest running game series on the TI calculators.

When "Alien Breed: Tower Assault" was released in 2000, it was one of the earliest examples of smooth-scrolling on both the X and Y axis at the same time.

Many of the releases have featured in news items on ticalc.org over the years.

List of Alien Breed games

Alien Breed

Calculator(s)	TI-83
Language	TI-Basic
Released	1998
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/382/38276.html
Description	Alien Breed is the first game in the series, written in TI-Basic and using ASCII characters to represent the play screen. It contains 6 levels including boss fights, however runs very slow — level loading alone takes 3-4 minutes, and each movement takes around 8 seconds to update the display.

Alien Breed 3D

Calculator(s)	TI-83
Language	TI-Basic
Released	1999
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/382/38276.html
Description	Alien Breed 3D was released in 1999, using a popular TI-Basic engine at the time for faux 3D games (like Wolfenstein 3D from the early 90's), taking on a first-person shooter style. The engine was originally written by Jareth Software for the game "Hell". Gameplay is still quite slow, however much faster than it's predecessor.

Alien Breed II

Calculator(s)	TI-83(+)/84+
Language	Assembly
Released	1999 - 2000
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/126/12686.html
Description	Alien Breed II is the first entry in the series written in Z80 assembly. It had many versions released between August 1999 and September 2000 (final release was version 3.3). The graphics and movement were very simple in this game, with the player, enemies and bullets moving 1 block (8 pixels) at a time. The original version was written to be compatible with AShell and SOS for the TI-83 only, up until version 3.0 when it became an Ion program and thus compatible on both the TI-83 and also the fairly new TI-83+. The game comes complete with a campaign of 11 levels, as well as a Level Editor to create single external levels.

Alien Breed: Deathmatch

Calculator(s)	TI-83(+)/84+
Language	Assembly
Released	2000
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/148/14832.html
Description	Alien Breed: Deathmatch was a failed attempt at creating a 2-player 1v1 "deathmatch" style link game for the Alien Breed series. There were 2 beta releases in May & September 2000, however neither were stable during gameplay and could potentially jam up or even crash the calculator(s). The project was discontinued upon the 2nd release.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault

Calculator(s)	TI-83(+)/84+
Language	Assembly
Released	2000 - 2001
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/180/18012.html
Description	Alien Breed: Tower Assault is the first entry in the series to feature smooth scrolling. It contains 20 levels, however not all levels are played in a single playthrough. Instead there are 4 different possible paths to take to complete the game. It was also the first Alien Breed game to use a dynamic passcode system, so that players could restart from certain levels with the items that they had acquired.

Alien Breed IV: Final Assault

Calculator(s)	TI-83(+)/84+/86
Language	Assembly
Released	2001, 2012
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/447/44709.html
Description	Alien Breed IV: Final Assault was intended to be the final game in the series. It combined the smooth-scrolling improved gameplay of Tower Assault with the idea of having external levels from Alien Breed II. The game comes with an 8-level campaign, and a Levelset Editor to create custom campaigns. Final Assault is also notable as being the only Alien Breed game that also had a TI-86 version made. The tileset and sprites received some minor updates; most notably the player sprite was changed to look more similar to that of the original Team 17 games.

Alien Breed 5

Calculator(s)	TI-83(+)/84+
Language	Assembly
Released	2012 - 2015
Ticalc.org URL	http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/453/45342.html
Description	Alien Breed 5 is the most recent entry to the series. After an 11 year gap since the release of Final Assault, James decided to make another instalment, feeling that there was still much more improvement to be made to bring the TI calculator Alien Breed games closer to Team 17's Alien Breed Special Edition '92 for Amiga/PC[1]. Much of the tileset was redrawn, weapons and animations were tweaked, levels are much larger in size and new gameplay elements were added, such as one level being shrouded in darkness. The game includes two 12-level campaigns, 1 & 2-player modes and many different weapons & enemies. As of February 2015, the latest released version is v2.0.0.

Bibliography

1. AB5 and James Vernon Interview on ticalc.org.