Blessing of Ra

Blessing of Ra - a two-player pyramid escape for the Commodore 64 (ACME + VICE), in the same spirit as rabbitc64.

The legend: when the great pyramid rose, a worker was sealed in its peak. He prayed to Ra until the sun god took pity - now Ra bends the pyramid's labyrinth walls to lead him out.

Player 1 (joystick 2, or w a s d) is the worker, running the corridors toward the green exit portal. Player 2 (joystick 1, or i j k l) is Ra: a bracket cursor rides the corners of the walls - fire (or return) spins the four wall pieces around the cursor by 90 degrees, reshaping the maze in real time. A spin is denied while anyone is standing in one of the four slots (the border blips red); the spun pieces flash white.

Eight levels, each maze one cell bigger than the last: a square that starts at 4x4 cells and grows to 11x11 - the tallest square lattice the screen fits - always centered on screen. One more enemy joins each level (up to four): the cyan scarabs roam the corridors, and the light-red scorpions also spit a venom sting whenever they line up with the worker - the purple drop flies down the corridor until a wall swallows it.

The look: a desert palette of sandstone walls and brown pivot posts from a custom RAM charset, every actor (worker, cursor, bullet, sting, enemies) a hardware sprite gliding smoothly between the cells, an animated exit portal, a raster color band behind the status row, and a fade to black between all screens. The menu floats over a dark maze backdrop under the big gold-washed title.

The options screen adds two optional twists:

• worker gun - player 1 shoots a bullet with fire/space; a hit enemy respawns on a random cell after a pause.
• spin cooldown - each spin starts a recharge; further spins are denied until the bar on the status row drains (pixel by pixel) and the readout flips back from wait to ready (the cursor also turns red while recharging).

Screens: TTG intro (ported from rabbitc64) -> pyramid title card (the pyramid, the trapped worker and the pulsing sun of Ra) -> main menu (play / options / story / credits) -> game -> next level, and after the last one the escape screen (back to the menu); game over lets fire retry the same level with a fresh maze, m backs out to the menu. The story screen tells the legend and lists who steers what.

Build & run

make deps       # macOS: brew install acme vice
make build      # -> blessingofra.prg
make run        # build + launch in x64sc

Test builds can boot straight into one state:

acme -DAUTOPLAY=1 -f cbm -o blessingofra.prg main.asm
# also: AUTOOPTIONS, AUTOSTORY, AUTOPYRAMID, AUTOCREDITS,
# AUTOWIN, AUTOLOSE; add -DFORCEOPTS=1 to start with both
# options turned on

Files

• main.asm - entry point, BASIC stub, per-frame state machine, the border/status-band raster work
• defs.asm - registers, constants, zero page, macros
• intro.asm - TTG boot logo with the gold color wash
• pyramid.asm - title card: the pyramid, the worker, the sun of Ra
• menu.asm - main menu card over a dark maze backdrop
• options.asm - the optional extras and their toggle screen
• story.asm - the legend of the worker and Ra + the controls
• credits.asm - the crew
• play.asm - maze geometry + generation (recursive backtracker, animated) + the game and its eight growing levels
• win.asm / over.asm - end screens
• common.asm - shared routines: printing, big block font, the title wash, input, RNG
• sound.asm - single-voice SID SFX driver
• gfx.asm - RAM charset with the custom tiles, the sprite engine, the portal animation and the fade-to-black transition