[mickfarrow]

Hello again,

Here is my remake of the speccy version of 'Rambo - First Blood Part II'

Works fine on XP, look forward to any comments/niggles etc!

[KungPhoo]

Crashed for me .
Vista SP2.

Do you have absolute path names in the game, maybe? (the exe showed full path names to resources).

[Ian]

Doesn't work for me either - Windows XP SP3.

A reet shame, as it looks great.

[mickfarrow]

Oops, sorry! have updated first post with working version!

[d3v14n7]

Works here, but I was first playing it with silent/muted sound.
When I turned my sound back on, it had some godawful screeching, not unlike a Speccy fast loader.
This may be related to the others' crashes.

Win XP Pro x86 w/ SP3
DirectX March 2009

[Lobo]

Works here as well (XP).
It's pretty cool game, a bit dark (bkg) though. Rambo walks a bit weird, as if he's sliding but in robot style (this makes not much sense).
I couldn't get too far, kinda hard but will play more.

Oh, thing that is missing from the original (at least on C64) is that you can't cut the tress down with a knife .

[PeeJay]

Just about to have a play, but one slight bug - if you hit 2 to redefine the keys, there is no pause before the redefine function, so "2" is guaranteed to be put in as the key for up!

Right, let me have a snout ....

A little later ....

Okie dokie, I've been having a play, and have the following suggestions .....

It does play beautifully - the scrolling is smooth, the graphics great (on the whole), and it seems pretty faithful to the original. There are a few suggestions I would like to put forward for improvements, though:-

1) Redefine keys - see above
2) Rambo walking graphic - he does seem a little odd - kind of hands out mincing - seems a bit of a shame to not have a main character that looks a bit tougher!
3) Add death animation for Rambo - just disappearing is a bit lame, especially given the lovely animation for the death of the enemy
4) Lighten the graphics a tad - there are some lovely detailed pixels there, and it's a shame not to be able to see them clearly - see attached image for an idea of how it might look better with a big more brightness
5) Ensure enemies respawn off screen only - having an enemy suddenly appear from nowhere isnt great
6) Collision detection - very big for characters bumping into each other - just stand still and let the enemy run into you, and you'll see what I mean
7) Save preferences - if I redefine the keys, I'd love the new set to be saved down so I dont have to do it again next time I play
8) In the POW camp, there are a couple of buildings close together, though there should be plenty of room for Rambo to go between - but he can't - might be worth checking the collision detection routines there
9) Sound - tweaking might be nice - make the "loud" weapons LOUD! (they should attract the enemy after all)
10) Enemy bullet speed - odd - if you walk with the bullets, they go at the same speed as you for a while, then speed up to around double your speed for a while, then slow down to your speed again for a while, then speed up again ..... you get the idea
11) POW camp - collision detection again - I found a couple of areas of open ground that I couldn't walk on - almost as if there was something that should have been there (but there was nothing) - might need a tweak
12) Collision detection - around water - same again .....
13) Add option to keep sound but just turn the music off?
14) Helicopter - shame the graphics are only for the 4 diagonals. Even just adding up/down/left/right would make a world of difference. Buggy (see attached image) - the only weapons I had were the knife and grenade, and it was "letting" me throw the knife - when I say "letting", I wasn't pressing fire at all - it was just continually firing - great for killing the baddies though

These are just the things that jump out - I'd love to see this tweaked a bit, and it is brimming with potential. A bit more polish, and this could be a real gem! I also reckon the same engine could be used for a killer Commando remake

[Ian]

It's plays fine for me now too. I agree about the walking - it's a mincing non-macho looking animation - not very Rambo-like.

There seem to be  lot less guard in this version (I had the game on CPC and I seem to remember it being a lot harder than this version).

However, it plays well, looks good (if a tad dark, as mentioned earlier - although I suppose this is authentic to the movie). But it's definitely Rambo, so all faults are forgiven

[betpet]

What PJ said.  I agree about the redefine keys in particular.  I was going to raise it myself.  2 other things:

I love the graphical feel but it's just a bit too dark.  Not that it's unplayable, just too dark.

The other is that pausing seems to bring you back to the menu and only offers you the chance to restart from the beginning.  Either I missed something or it's not right.

Edit:  Works fine in the fully patched up Vista

[Lobo]

3) Add death animation for Rambo - just disappearing is a bit lame, especially given the lovely animation for the death of the enemy

Yep, I knew I forgot something, it's really weird when you die, kinda 'poof' and then nothing. One frame of Rambo laying down (IN BlOOOoD) should do the trick.

[PeeJay]

Oh, to help, the bullet bug was when I was walking left to right (as it doesn't seem to happen very often)

I've just found another bug - if you fire, the quickly change weapon, whatever you have fired changes to the new weapon too ....

Couple of other things ....

Rescuing the first POW - I can only free him when approaching from certain angles

Chopper - tricky to land (in the extreme!) - may need a bit of a looksee (or more explanation as to how to do it.) It also seems to get "stuck" on a direction graphic - very common if you fly to the edges of the map - will still let you fly around freely, and fire in the direction you're moving, but you're facing the wrong way. I also noticed that my rockets would blow up everything, but travel straight through the statues etc - even if they're not destructable, it would be better for the rocket to blow up at that point.

I landed, rescued the hostages, got back into the chopper, and it dumped me back unceremoniously to the menu.

Currently the bugs are casting a shadow over an excellent game beneath .... let's make it a winner Mick!

[mickfarrow]

Hello again, thanks for your replies.

Am now in the process of sorting out bugs people have come across, also taken on board some of your suggestions - cheers!

Hope to have an updated version online soon, thanks again.

[namco]

Very nice!

The keyboard response could be tweaked a bit, it seems that the walk animation has to cycle before moving in a different direction.

[mickfarrow]

Hello again,

have now uploaded a fixed version of RAMBO (get here or first post)

1) Have added a RAMBO death animation!
2) Tweaked collision detection.
3) Can now free POW from any angle.
4) Enemy bullets now fire normally(no slow down)!
5) Fixed unwanted firing when in helicopter.
6) Rockets now explode on impact with temple.
7) Have lightened background a little.
8) Fixed define keys problem.
9) Can now choose ALL sounds, FX only or NONE.

There are one or two GFX issues I'll have to live with though, I ripped the main character from IKARI III & don't really have the skills or patience to alter it too much, so the mincing stays I'm afraid!  Likewise with the helicopter, I only had one image to start with & spent an eternity trying to create alternative angles but gave up after doing one!

Anyway, hope the changes & bug fixes make the game more enjoyable/playable, thanks again for your comments!

[Kazziga]

Thanks! This brings back some nice memories. You've done a great job with the remake.

[spacefractal]

please remove the first version or update the first thread, so that one keep up the newest version of the game instead of have various versions. This make sure people download the newest version (and not like me downloaded the first version).

From the newest version, I noticed "Press Fire" still not allways respons and the UP redefine still have the issue (I noticed it like others). Howover you can quit the ingame to menu and refine UP and then it works.

I playtest this more later.

Nice to see the screen ratio aspect is keept on widescreen (I better prefer the piller letter box than strect the picture).

[RudyC]

Very good game, but IMHO the graphics are a bit too dark.

[pob]

Feels very authentic (and I'm still rubbish at it).

Couple of small issues:

I redefined the keys and weapon select didn't work.

Small bug when you get to the edge of the map.  The spawning for the bad guys must assume you are central in the screen.  When at the edge of the screen they spawn near the middle of the screen.

[Bobat]

Unfortunately, while I did get the game to work.  All Rambo did was to walk, automatically, diagnolly up towards the left of the screen.  Shame, it looked like a great remake too of a game that I loved when I was younger on the C64.  I'm using XP SP3.

[Sokurah]

Unfortunately, while I did get the game to work.  All Rambo did was to walk, automatically, diagnolly up towards the left of the screen.

Do you have a joypad/joystick connected? - if so - try to disconnect it. That might be the reason.

[donkeyspank]

Firstly, congratulations on a great remake of one of my all-time favourite Speccy games!  It captures the feel and difficulty curve of the original perfectly.  However when I redefine the keys for "Weapon Select" to either SPACE or RETURN it simply doesn't work, I can only use the knife.  Any ideas, or is this a bug?

[mickfarrow]

Hello again,

RAMBO rated 'Remake of the month' in Retro Gamer 69 - yay!

The problems with weapon select might be because a default key is being chosen (works fine this end) - or could be a bug.