Jetpac - The Return

Jetpac - The Return is a remake of the original game Jetpac for the ZX Spectrum and (I believe) the BBC. The old version was about a space man with a rocket pack who had to construct his rocket and fill it with fuel before taking off to reach the next level. It wasn't quite this simple however because aliens and asteroids and all sorts of nasties hindered the space man's mission.

This remake will attempt to stay true to the original formula whilst at the same time improving the graphics and adding lots more baddies, upgrades, features, levels etc, etc, etc.

The game is written in C++ using SDL for its thread support and graphics.

New Development Release May 2006

5 years have passed since Jetpac - The Return was released. That makes me feel terrible. Not only about not releasing anything for such a long time, but 5 years of life have flown by. It all went a little too quickly for me.

There is a new version, although it is probably not as fun to play as it is a development release. The following improvements have been made, although this required such a large rewrite that Ive had to take a few steps back before making more steps forward. Here goes:

  • Multithreaded game engine - The entire engine was rewritten from scratch. Player controls, drawing routines and AI routines are all running separate threads, and it runs much faster. No deadlocks yet either :-)
  • Real gravity implemented - The player accelerates and decelerates (as do aliens) rather than moving with constant speed.
  • Large maps - The maps now have the ability to be larger than the screen is. As the player moves around, the screen "camera" will follow him
  • Sporing creatures - Creatures can now spawn other creatures.
  • Level editor - A very basic wxWidgets level editor that lets level designers import their own graphics
  • All new graphics - Ive redone quite a lot of graphics, I think its an improvement :-)

Ill put some screenshots up as soon as I find the time. Bear in mind that these changes were made over a year ago. Sorry.

Old News

19/5/2001: Version 0.2.5 is now out. I've really been running short of time because of my exams and revision and everything. There are some pretty big improvements in the game, so check it out! Soon as my exams are out of the way I should have much more time. A Windows version will be available very soon.

20/4/2001: I got my web space extension so I can start thinking about uploading the new version very soon now as it is almost finished. Version 0.3.0 is being based around making the game replayable. I know that dodging asteroids just for the sake of it gets a little boring after a while when there's no overall goal. In the new version levels are split up into 5 stages (including an end of level boss). Every time the player manages to complete the 5 stages (which is meant to be very hard) and get onto the next level a code is presented which will allow them to load that level from the start menu any time they like. This will mean that a player has to complete 5 stages with 2 lives and then they are safe and never actually have to do the previous levels again if they don't like. Some of the graphics has also been improved in v0.3.0. These are small cosmetic alterations that I hope make the game look slightly nicer. I would have liked to have had different rockets for each level eventually, but I think that I will save this for a slightly later version. Oh yeah, and another thing, I know that some of the levels in v0.2.4 were a little annoying with asteroids that were 'super fast'. These have been removed and the game is a whole lot less irritating :) Expect version 0.3.0 in about a week. It would be sooner, but sadly I have a 2 week uni assessment coming up which will slow me down quite a bit. Since uploading the game to www.libsdl.org the game has received a lot of interest which has really inspired me to continue development. I would however be grateful if someone was to send me an email suggesting improvements, telling me what they think etc. thanks...

26/3/2001: Player can now fuel the rocket. Lives implemented, fuel indicator sprites for rocket implemented. Code reorganised to help keep organised. Three levels in the game. More graphics. I spent a week indoors doing this hardly leaving my house. I guess I got a little obsessive :) Oh yeah and theres a whole new title screen with an instructions page (just incase you haven't played Jetpac before)

21/3/2001: Implemented rocket parts into game. Player can now collect them and drop them onto the rocket base.

20/3/2001: All new "Jetpac-The Return" web site is created.

13/3/2001: Rewrote the entire game core in a more object oriented way. This caused quite a few problems initially but eventually they were ironed our and the game was back on track.

1/3/2001: Jetpac - The Return project started.

Screenshots

Because seeing is believing :-)

version 0.2.4

Download

Bear in mind that the development release is almost a complete rewrite of the code. Don't send me patches for the old versions, they should be considered deprecated.

Developement Release May 2006

Version 0.2.5 jetpac-0.2.5.tar.gz

Version 0.2.4 jetpac-0.2.4.jar.gz