   SKATTABUGZ
  ------------

The bugz just wanna steal your Hearts!

Controls:
  SHIFT = Fire.
  I,P = Move Left/Right.
  X = Quit game.
  or use Joystick if available.
  (DOS: ESC quits to OS from title screen)

Skattabugs is a fast paced shoot them up for the C64, C16, Vic20, ZX Spectrum,
MSDOS (or Windows/Linux+DOSBOX).

Eliminate the bugs before they capture all your hearts. 
As each level progresses, the bugs become faster.
If you win, you progress to the next level. 
Avoid the bombs, if you get hit, you loose half of your hearts.
Each bug scores 10 points on level 1, 20 on level two, 30 on 3, and so on.
The maximum score possible is 655350.

Hints: It is better to eliminate the lower bugs first, and try
to protect the lower hearts, they are easier to defend. 
At least one bug is always on the move, usually the topmost one.
At random intervals a bug will step down one row, so you can have
2 or 3 bugs on the same row. If it is already on the bottom row
it will go back to the top.


In the title screen, you can select different game modes by
hitting the M key. These modes are:
 +1=SLOW
 +2=FAST (Double speed)
 +4=NO BOMBS
 +8=NO SOUND
For example, for a fast game with no sound, select 10.

For C64, C16 & ZX, you can select Joystick #1 or #2.

For the ZX the first joystick is Sinclair i/f #1, the second 
the Kempstone joystick. The ZX sound uses the AY8912 chip in
the Spectrum 128, running the program in 48K mode.


   COMPILING SKATTABUGZ
  ----------------------
 
Skattabugz is a working example for my "Very Tiny Development Layer" (VTDL)
portable library. This is a library specifically designed to be efficient
with very small target systems, for example Skattabugs runs on an
unexpanded 5K VIC20.
It will eventually target many systems, from Vic20s up to PCs.

The source code is included, "skattabugz.c", and the VTDL library in 
folder "tdl". Some compiler build scripts are also included.
The 6502 targets can be build with the OSCAR64 C compiler, which
is good for these small systems. For example to build for C64 and Vic20,
install OSCAR64, then from the work dir type:

 tdl/tdlmakosc.sh skattabugz/skattabugz -Os

For more details on VTDL, see "vtdl.txt" in the tdl folder.

See the file "bmp/skatta6.bmp" for the bitmap used for the UDGs,
and the tool "tdl/bmp2c.c" to convert that to C source code.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SKATTABUGZ - (C) A.Millett 2011-2026.
Released as free/open software under GNU GPL3 license. 
  See: www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
For updates and more programs see:     www.github.com/orac81
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
