Melkhior’s Mansion

Devlog

• Achievement unlocked!
  March 20, 2025 by Bob's Stuff

  6

  As of about 5:50am last Tuesday morning (yes, I code at odd hours) I've finished all the required game code - meaning that it should be possible to complete each character's quest without any issues a... Continue reading
• All tickety boo!
  February 20, 2025 by Bob's Stuff

  4

  Craig is doing some bespoke graphics, Alberto is working on the AY-sound, Richard is answering questions, and I'm managing to spend an hour or so a day on the code, so everything is all tickety-boo! (... Continue reading
• Year in review...
  January 04, 2025 by Bob's Stuff

  5

  Long time no see and all that, and 2025 already. At the start of 2024 I decided to myself that this game would either live or die at the end of the year - either I'd manage to make good progress and b... Continue reading
• <Insert specifics here>
  June 02, 2024 by Bob's Stuff

  2

  I've been up to lots of things in the world of Melkhior's recently - rather too many to keep track of to be honest. One thing of note which was recently added though is that, like the original version... Continue reading
• Eek! Monsters!!
  April 20, 2024 by Bob's Stuff

  8

  Sorry, bit overdue with this. Been meaning to write for a while, but kept making more changes and so pushing it back. Anyway, here now. For some years now - pretty much since I first got the game runn... Continue reading
• Ballistics
  February 24, 2024 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  After getting all the bullet collisions working correctly, I moved onto the actual bullet logic itself. Not that any of the characters have anything like that - they have axes, and orbs, and magical o... Continue reading
• An apology...
  February 14, 2024 by Bob's Stuff

  2

  Sorry, but I've just been playing the PC version and realise that I've given the player an extra life in my conversion. Fixed now. Sorry in advance for any additional frustration that this will cause... Continue reading
• Eats, Shoots, and Crashes...
  February 04, 2024 by Bob's Stuff

  7

  Due to illness the last month in 2023 was a bit of a write-off dev. wise, but I've been getting back into the swing of things lately and making good progress in a number of areas of the game. The majo... Continue reading
• AY-up & leaving the nest
  November 25, 2023 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  Being a 128K-only game means that, really, it must have some good music & SFX, given the AY chip available in all the 128K machines. Personally I'm terrible at music & SFX, but luckily I've two major... Continue reading
• The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
  September 16, 2023 by Bob's Stuff

  2

  So, long time no see eh? I had meant to write another update on the progress of Melkhior's Mansion in January, then April, then May, then July... you get the idea, but something always managed to get... Continue reading
• Summer-cleaning the frontend
  August 03, 2022 by Bob's Stuff

  5

  As the keen-eyed amongst you might have spotted, I've updated the project page with some newer images for the game's menu screens. Originally I was trying to stick to the template used by the isometri... Continue reading

  
• Hiatus
  June 07, 2022 by Bob's Stuff

  4

  Real Life (tm) has meant that I've been on hiatus from any home coding since late January - real life will always take priority over all of this. The most recent build of Melchior's is from the 29th o... Continue reading
• Fully-furnished (-1)
  July 15, 2021 by Bob's Stuff

  4

  Reached a milestone recently - every* room in the mansion is now furnished! I've always been a bit anxious about this, worried that it'd be out of memory before I reached this point, and I didn't real... Continue reading
• Could've been in contention...
  July 02, 2021 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  Ah, the joys of hardware revisions... Without a doubt, if there wasn't a 128K version of the Spectrum then I would no longer be writing this game. I had great hopes when I started on this dream conver... Continue reading
• Soft furnishings
  June 08, 2021 by Bob's Stuff

  2

  Another long pause in the dev. log - Sorry! - but it's recently been difficult to juggle work & home life with that of a retro-game developer. There's also a strange psychological block in that I've b... Continue reading
• Spring Clean!
  March 24, 2021 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  Long time no see, and all that! Sorry, I've been meaning to update this dev. log for a while now, but haven't quite found the time what with everything else going on. Oh well, here we are now. So it's... Continue reading
• Week 106
  December 21, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  The layout of the map is now up-to-date with the PC version, and all the chests and collectable objects can now be found where they should be. This means you can run around the whole mansion as any o... Continue reading
• Weeks 103-105
  December 14, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  2

  Sorry for the long pause since the last update, but I didn't get a lot of time to work on the game until recently. I did manage to get the player death sequence into the game though, and those 25 col... Continue reading
• Week 102
  November 23, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  1

  With the rewrite of the graphic system complete and working again I thought it best to get back to actually writing the game - and by that I mean the actual game-play elements of it. Pretty much sinc... Continue reading
• Weeks 100-101
  November 17, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  1

  Progress continues... It didn't make much sense to me to write a piece last week, as the game was totally broken with nothing to be shown whilst I continued on the re-write of the graphic system. The... Continue reading
• Week 99
  November 02, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  Not much progress this week - quite the opposite in fact, as whilst trying to add the graphics for the new Ghost enemy (as seen in the PC demo recently made available) I ran out of memory! I haven't... Continue reading
• Week 98
  October 25, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  Not a lot of progress this week unfortunately. I've been lucky enough not to have been furloughed by all this COVID, so am still working full-time, and sadly the real-world has also thrown a few curv... Continue reading
• Week 97
  October 19, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  4

  So that's the beeper sound effects sorted. Not completely, but enough for me to be sure that the system works and sounds good, and that there shouldn't be any problems with adding those that remain... Continue reading

  
• Week 96
  October 12, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  This week has been all about sound. With my ZX81 games I don't need to worry about sound, but for the ZX Spectrum - and especially the 128K hardware with its AY chip - there's no escaping it, Luckil... Continue reading
• Week 95
  October 04, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  4

  Yes, week 95! I've been making regular backups of the progress of this game, and the first backup is from the 8th December 2018. It really doesn't look much like anything though, and was a branch fr... Continue reading

  
• 10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD”
  September 25, 2020 by Bob's Stuff

  3

  Testing... Testing... 1... 2... 3... A quick ‘hello!’ and welcome to the first dev. log entry for updates and progress to the wonderful Melkhior’s Mansion game, which I’m converting to the hum... Continue reading