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Time Pilot (Vic-20)

A home-brew VIC-20 port of the classic arcade dogfighter. Strap into a fixed-position fighter while the world scrolls beneath you, and fight your way through five eras of aerial combat — biplanes to flying saucers — using nothing but a joystick and 24K of expansion RAM.Double buffering to play smooth. Runs on real hardware with a standard 24K expansion (or in VICE with -memory 24k). How it plays Your fighter always stays centered on screen. Steer with the joystick or WASD through all 8 compass directions, and fire with the button or spacebar. Enemy squadrons close in from every side, era bosses guard the way forward, and parachuting pilots drift down after certain kills — fly into one for a score bonus. Five eras of combat Era Enemy 1910 Biplanes 1940 Monoplanes 1970 Helicopters 1982 Jets 2049 UFOs Clear each era's boss to move on. Beat all five and the game loops back to 1910 at a higher difficulty — for as many loops as you can survive. Scoring Action Reward Shoot down enemy aircraft, bombs, or rockets Points per target Rescue a parachuting pilot Increasing bonus per rescue, capped Reach 10,000 points +1 extra life Every 50,000 points after that +1 extra life You start with 5 fighters. Lose them all and it's game over — but a brief flashing invincibility window after every respawn gives you a moment to get clear before the action picks back up. Secrets There's a hidden code entry screen in the title menu. Clear every era and the game will hand them to you.Bonus filesThree variations of the never released Commodore PET prototype.Technical Details The game uses double buffering to allow the screen to be updated in one buffer while the second buffer displays the screen. The buffers are then toggled to provide a seamless display. Without this, the screen would flicker. The character set has several scratch locations which are repurposed continously as needed. The character data from two overlaid objects is merged into these scratch locations because the Vic-20 does not use sprites.