
  GBAX COMPETITION ENTRY
 ========================

 NAME : MIKE HAWKINS

 EMAIL: mike.hawkins@fsmail.net

 ANDROID 2 ADVANCE (A2A)
 -----------------------

 NOTES: THERE ARE 2 VERSIONS OF THE A2A ROM INCLUDED. A2ACHEAT.GBA IS NOT FOR RELEASE AND HAS BEEN COMPILED TO AID YOU IN TESTING. TO
        COMPLETE THE LEVEL YOU NEED TO DESTROY JUST 1 MILLITOID INSTEAD OF THE USUAL 5. (A2A.GBA BEING THE FULL RELEASE VERSION)
                                                    ===========  

        THERE IS AN UNDOCUMENTED SECRET IN THE GAME, AT THE TITLE SCREEN PRESS LEFT SHOULDER+RIGHT SHOULDER+SELECT TO VIEW THE ORIGONAL
        SPECTRUM CASSETTE INLAY ARTWORK.

  This is my entry for the 2004 GBAX dev competition. It is a remake for the GBA of the 1983 Spectrum classic 'ANDROID 2'. Android 2 was
 written for the ZX SPECTRUM by Costa Panayi and published by VORTEX software. It has always been one of my favorite Speccy games and I
 decided it was high time I converted it to play on my GBA.

  To acheive this I had to reverse engineer the origonal Speccy version, mainly to rip the map data and initial bot positions. The maze
 map turned out to be just 60 blocks wide and about 240 blocks high. The maze is wrap-around so appears much bigger than it actually is.
 The initial bot positions were a bit more difficult to find since they are not stored as a single table nor sequentially in RAM. The
 Hoverdroids (Blue) and Millitoids (Snake type) bots are stored in a single table which is reset each time you begin a new game, the
 Bouncers (Red) are not reset between games. To complicate matters further, the Bouncers have two seperate tables, one for the vertical
 movers and one for the horizontal movers. This is because the horizontal movers have a third animation frame that spans two 8x8 blocks.

  Problem, as you know the ZX Spectrum has a graphic resolution of 256x192 pixels, the GBA however, has a resolution of just 240x160
 pixels. The origonal game displays a maze window of 24x24 8x8 pixel blocks which equals 192x192 pixels which is obviously not possible
 on the GBA. Two possible solutions presented themselves, I could either retain the origonal 8x8 pixel blocks and reduce the maze window
 size or reduce the size of the blocks from 8x8 to 6x6 pixels and retain the origonal maze window size. I could'nt decide which I prefer-
 ed so I decided to include both, and have the graphics mode switchable as an option.

  In the early stages of the games development I thought about changing the maze graphics and experimented with brick wall effects etc.
 this ended up as another option when 8x8 pixel graphics mode is selected.


 Thanks...

 MIKE

 email: mike.hawkins@fsmail.net
