2000 Scott Wakeling
Platforms: PC Windows
Next up in the archives is a show reel game that was produced back in 2000 to tout to potential publishers in the form of this neat Space Invaders clone called Vaderz.
This was produced by Scott Wakeling and was done as a learning exercise for getting the hang of DirectX in around three months or so, tweaking and trying to get right to make as smooth a title as possible.
The game itself is a simple clone, but is fun to play with some nice graphics for its time and a great starfield at the back. Graphics are all borrowed, and there are some placeholder sounds as well which were borrowed from other sources just as part of a demonstration. The game is pretty much complete, but there were plans for powerups that never made it. It is possible that Scott did a later version.
There’s a number of glitches, including a small blue pixel on the left of the screen which Scott acknowledges is to due with the version of Virtual C++ (version 6) that was used. There are a few crash issues occasionally, though adding in DGVoodoo2 gave it some stability and it all now runs in Windows 10/11.
The title was only distributed to friends and for a demo disk that was sent out. Back then it seems that Scott didn’t want the game to get out into the wild, due to it being used as a showcase to potential employers. Considering it has now been over 25 years it shouldn’t affect any potential job interviews – hopefully it might even be something to be reunited with the developer if they no longer have it.
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