Atop

ss7I’m currently in PST in the USA;  It’s about 11pm on December 31st as I type this, so I’ve managed to come in just under the wire for my “before the New Year” deadline.  (The website itself runs in Australian time, so is labelling this post as January 1st)

In the end, I created a remake of The Sentinel, a video game that’s about thirty years old, now, and is difficult to find a working implementation of.  I’ve sort of spruced it up a little graphically, but it’s basically the same game under the hood.  It’s not a replacement for the original game, since it doesn’t get into the more tricky levels that the original provided.. in fact, it doesn’t contain any level progression at all.  Just didn’t have time to get to it.

For those not familiar with The Sentinel, I highly recommend reading the instructions.  It’s not a simple or immediately intuitive game!  The general goal is to get higher, and to eventually absorb the robot that stands at the top of the level.  Going higher lets you see more ground (which is useful, since you can only affect things if you can see the ground they’re standing on).  But going higher also makes you more visible to the sentinel, so you’re much more vulnerable.

Anyhow, I’m going to go enjoy New Years celebrations.  I’ll write more tomorrow!  In the meantime, go grab Atop from the sidebar, executables are available for for Win32 and OSX.