Fitzroy Feels the Heat

Description

After so many confounding labyrinths Fitzroy is now seeking a fresh new adventure.

Fitzroy has decided to go treasure hunting, having arrived at a suitable tropical island paradise he is ready to begin. However, once Fitzroy arrives something is wrong, he is feeling decided odd, he is FEELING THE HEAT.

A little heat on a tropical island might be expected but his core body temperature does not know what it is doing. It is as if his core body temperature has a mind of its own, one minute he is burning hot and the next one he is cold as ice.

And to top it off it turns out that this island isn’t a paradise at all! (Never trust a brochure!) There are enemies, traps, dangers, and spikes (always spikes) lurking around every corner.

Help Fitzroy to battle through a series of challenging levels while managing his increasingly erratic body temperature so that he can make his escape with the treasure.

Fitzroy Feels the Heat is a top down action  game (with plenty of challenges to solve) for the Amstrad CPC and is a 2023 entry for the CPCRetroDev game competition.

The game has been developed using the amazing CPCtelera game library.

How to Play

Default controls are as follows (or rebind them to your own preference)

• Left: Move the player left.
• Right: Move the player right.
• Up: Move the player upward.
• Down: Move the player downward.
• I: Inventory (choose an item to equip in the game)
• X: (Use or Equip) Use an interactive object, equip an item or activate an equipped item.

Temperature

Fitzroy Feels the Heat is a game about temperature. It involves managing both the temperature in the current level as well as Fitzroy’s core body temperature.

Your actions will have an impact on both of these types of temperatures.

There is a great range that a temperature can be but not every temperature is safe. Be careful to keep Fitzroy’s core body temperature in the safe zone between the minimum and maximum values.

The lower part of the hud includes the temperature bar for Fitzroy's body temperature as well as the important temperatures to pay attention to. (This will only be visible once you pick up the thermometer.)

There are four temperatures displayed on the hud (left to right).

1. The current level temperature (this is the room temperature).
2. The minimum safe body temperature for Fitzroy (this is where the yellow begins on the temperature bar).
3. Fitzroy’s current core body temperature (this is the red line on the temperature bar).
4. The maximum safe body temperature for Fitzroy (this is where the yellow ends on the temperature bar)

Equipment

In this game there are inventory items that are  persistent across multiple levels that are accessible from the inventory screen.

Use the inventory key (I by default) to access the inventory.

To equip an item, press a number between 1 and 9.

When an item is selected there will be an indicator under the item on the inventory screen.

Press the activate key to equip the item (X by default).

When an item is equipped, it will be show on the left side of the HUD.

Some equipment will require you to chose where to use them (such as a spade).

This is an example of how to use a spade.

1. Equip the spade from the inventory screen.
2. Face the desired direction.
3. Press the use\activate key (this will show where the spade will be activated).

4. If you are happy with this position wait for the spade to complete digging

   

5. Looks like you dug a hole, no treasure was found there!
   

   
   

Everything else

If you need any more information or hints look at the user manual, you might be the first person to actually read it!

Saving and restoring game

On the main map you can generate a save code by opening the exit dialog (Escape by default). This save code provides a method to save and load the game instead of starting the game from the beginning every time you die.

Using the restore menu, the code previously obtained can be entered to restart the game at the state when the game was saved. This will include all the inventory items that Fitzroy is carrying and the current temperatures. The score is not included in the save code, if you want to maximise your score you must play the game without saving and restoring.

Gesture

Fitzroy Feels the Heat includes a gesture for Super Cauldron in the form of a plant enemy. This enemy opens and closes its mouth just as Super Cauldron does, it is only safe to pass the plant when it has its mouth shut. Super Cauldron was also an inspiration for the music in this game.

Tribute

As a tribute to the commercial life of the Amstrad CPC there is a screen at the end of the game (win or lose) showing sprites gesturing various various games released during the CPCs commercial life span.  Each sprite represents a different game that was published on the CPC for that year. As you progress further through the game more sprites will be appear on the tribute screen.  If finding all the gestures in the game is too easy you should try to figure out what each game I am gesturing is. (I'll give you a hint, each game is published by a different publisher.)

Authors and Licenses

This game has been developed by:

• Adrian Parker (awergh) - Everything but music

Additional help has returned again this year with two pieces of music:

• Eric Love - Music and testing

The game source code has been released under an MIT License.

The game was developed with the help of the following software:

• CPCTelera 1.5 (dev) (ronaldo / (Cheesetea, Fremos, ByteRealms)) - Tool chain and libraries building the game for the Amstrad CPC.
• Retro Game Asset Studio (lachlank) - For game graphics
• Microsoft Visual Studio Code and Microsoft Visual Studio - Text Editor and Integrated Development Environment.
• Arkos Tracker 2 - Sound and Music
• Arkos Tracker 2 with CPCtelera - Arnaud provided assistance and helpful source files for integrating CPCtelera with Arkos Tracker 2.
• WinAPE (Richard Wilson) - To run the game I used WinAPE 2.0 Beta 2 and my Amstrad CPC 464.
• CPCEC (cngsoft - Cesar Nicolas-Gonzalez) - I also used CPCEC for my testing as an alternate emulator and it had a closer matching green to my GT64 than WinAPE.
• WinCPCTelera (Arnaud) - In order to leverage the Microsoft Visual Studio Debugger I used WinCPCTelera by Arnaud
• Allegro 5.2.8 - As part of my development process I created a map editor using Allegro for creating levels.
• Azure DevOps - Every project needs source control, task tracking and continuous integration.