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CHAOS - THE BATTLE OF WIZARDS

Based on the original game by Julian Gollop
Game Boy Advance version by Quirky

• GBA controls
• Overview of spells

April 2003

This was my second attempt at a remake of Chaos for the Game Boy Advance. The first was a "clone" based on playing the game in emulators and mimicking the gameplay. This version was made by reverse engineering the original Z80 assembler and re-writing the code in C. About three quarters of the game is based on reversed engineered code, the rest being made up of the graphics and GBA specific routines.

The advantages of this approach are

• The final result is a fairly precise recreation of the original gameplay
• Hand coding means "bugs" from the original could be fixed, which would not have been obvious if an automated conversion had been made.
• Portability - a Windows port is now available.

The disadvantages are the sheer amount of effort and patience required, plus the possibility that errors were introduced by mis-interpreting the assembler code.

The original Spectrum version of the game is available from World Of Spectrum at http://www.worldofspectrum.org

The latest Game Boy Advance version can be found at http://www.geocities.com/quirky_2k1

chaosadvance.zip contains a compiled version of the code designed to run on the Game Boy Advance using a flash card or similar "backup" device. It has been tested with a Flash Advance Pro 256M. You will have to add the Nintendo header to the file, but most card writing software does this automatically. chaosadvance_source.zip contains the GBA specific source code for Chaos - The Battle Of Wizards. If you want to recompile the game then you will need:

• The Unofficial Game Boy Advance Software Development Kit available from http://www.io.com/~fenix/devkitadv/download.html
• My GBA library functions, also available from the download page

Known differences from the original

• The "info screen flicking to remove engaged to enemy" glitch is not present.
• Highlighting creations highlights them in the owner's colour, rather than the creature colour. * No longer applies! *
• Some soundfx are a bit crackly (and crappy). Probably due to the WAV creation program I used. Ahem.
• Possible to quit halfway through a game if there are just CPU players left.
• An "Advance Wars"-inspired addition - pressing Select moves the cursor to your next creature (or wizard) yet to have moved.

Credits
Original Chaos by Julian Gollop.
WinZ80 disassembler/debugger by Gerton Lunter.
Sound FX code by Uze at BeLogic.com.
Wav to GBA raw conversion tool by Sylvain Rochette.
Graphics conversion tool by Markus.

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