/======================================\
|            The Settlement            |
\======================================/

The Settlement was created for DOS game
development competition hosted on

www.high-voltage.cz

#hvdosdev2022

- About the game

My goal was to create story driven
puzzle-adventure game for DOS, using
CGA graphics with pretty low hardware
requirements. Engine is mostly complete,
but lot of content is missing. If you
like the concept, let me know on my
twitter or mastodon so I know if I sould
keep working on this!

- Story

Year 2074, The Settlement is last lunar
base still inhabited by humans. Or at
least was before it went silent. You
were sent to investigate what happened
and report back to your employer,
Lunar Mining Corporation!

- Controls

Arrows - movement
Q/E - cycles items in inventory
TAB - opens data-pad
ENTER - use selected item
SPACE - interact with environment
ESCAPE - exit game

- Requirements

IBM PC-XT or compatible
200kB of free RAM
CGA graphics card

- Development

Game was written entirely in pure C
using OpenWatcom compiler.
No third-party libraries were used,
because I wanted to learn and understand
every aspect of machine I am making game
for.

Graphics were made using Aseprite and
converted using custom tools I wrote in
C#.

There is no sound or music yet, but
there will be! Ad-lib driver is complete
just disabled since there was no time
to create sounds and music.

Assets are compressed using custom RLE
algorithm.

I wrote custom memory analysis to
prevent memory leaks which there should
be none! (hopefully)

Base for main-menu image was generated
using DALL-E AI!

- Editor

Game contains level editor. You can play
with it but don't expect any usable
result. It's crude, undocumented and
buggy but it allowed me to create level
you can play today.

- Conclusion

I learned a lot making this game, not
only about ancient hardware, but finally
I was able to really understand lot of
C's quirks and features.

- Contacts

E-mail: petr.kratina@gmail.com
Twitter: @petrkratina
Mastodon: @petr@mastodon.social

- Thanks

I really want to thank to Sledge, who
runs high-voltage.cz, doshaven.eu and
is really active ambassador of DOS
gaming!