Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit (a.k.a. SEUCK) was a "construction kit" for the
Commodore 64,
Amiga and
Atari ST created by
Sensible Software and published by Outlaw (part of
Palace Software) in 1987. It allowed the user to make simple
shoot 'em ups by drawing
sprites and backgrounds and editing attack patterns. The advertising promoted the Kit with the phrase "By the programmers of
Wizball and
Parallax".
Design
The Kit presented users with a series of menus for customising every aspect of the game. Level graphics were created in the Background Editor using a series of blocks for plotting into the level maps, and all the moving graphics in the Sprite Editor. Sprites were assigned to "Objects" - for example, an enemy bullet - with separate animation and colour settings. Editing the "enemy bits" changed the behaviour of an enemy (which bullet it shot, how many points it was worth), while "player limitations" did the same for Player 1 (or player 2, if enabled). A simple Sound FX editor with slider controls on the C64 was replaced by IFF sounds on the Amiga and ST versions.
Enemies were added to the game by placing them on the background and then moving them, with options to link enemies together. The front end (title screen) could also be edited.
Games could feature still screens (held for a set number of seconds), "push" scrolling (based on the player's movement) or constant vertical scrolling. Bonus point items were...
Read More