Posted June 18, 2022 by Shahid Kamal Ahmad
I've threatened to do this for a long time.
An age.
I made the first version of Chimera on the ZX Spectrum, with encouragement from my friend Geoff, and some help to push it over the line from my friend David.
This started when I saw Knight Lore for the first time in December 1984 and decided that I'd have a crack at this impossible-looking technique.
Then my development career took off. And I'm going to write about that in Code is Just, my long-running and popular thread on my early career. The next season is launching on Monday 20th June at 8pm BST on my Twitter, so I'll save the detail for the thread.
As I started planning Code is Just Season 3, I had a crazy idea. How about I try to launch Chimera 2, I mean really, really early, embarrassingly so, and build it live?
No permission from publishers, no funding, if you fancy paying, great, if not, no problem. Of course I'd like it if you paid, but I'd hate it if you thought you were about to get a great game and end up with a ropey prototype that isn't even as complete as the original ZX Spectrum version! I don't expect it to stay that way for very long.
I've made huge progress in record-breaking time, bearing in mind that I have several day jobs, one of which is exceptionally demanding and rewarding.
I've had very little sleep, but I feel so fired up, so this must be something I have wanted to do for a long time. I figured why not just stop being coy and bloody well start?
So here I am.
And there's going to be a surprise. If you play either of these builds, and hit the escape key, a console comes up. In later builds, this will only come up if you engage the terminal. There are a few scattered around.
What's the surprise?
Well, every day in my Code is Just thread, I'll be inserting codes without warning. If you type "code <whatever-the-code-is>" then something will happen. You'll get a new feature, or a new mini-level, or new mechanics, or well, let's just see.
It's mad. It's absolutely mad, but I thought it was fun and the few people I mentioned it to thought it was great. So there you go.
Chimera 2.
It's about time.
Keys are WASD. No interaction for now. Go ahead and look at the original in YouTube if you like. Much more to come in the thread over the coming week.