Oldies part 2: Bikez 1
22.03.2010So this Pharaoh from Egypt comes to me and says: "Love your Bikez 2 game, but I have a kinda stupid question - was there any Bikez 1 game? It bugs me and my friends 
" Well, Ramzes and friends, you're in luck, because it's time for part 2 of our oldies list.
Bikez 1 was a GTA 1/2 style top-down deathmatch for two players split screen style. There was a level editor, a shop for choosing from a dozen or so weapons, and more importantly, you could shoot the civilians.
Sadly time has not been so kind on Bikez 1, as the transparency function doesn't work on any modern hardware. You can download it, but be warned, it's in Finnish! And if you see the pink borders on everything, it's not playable. 
I somehow managed to make Magebane 1 without ever learning to use things like arrays, for loops, while loops, or even any kind of structures. This time I had used actual DirectX, and most of the code that actually worked came from DirectDraw example code. I still have no idea how the whole thing took 7000 lines of code, whereas the simplistic game I do at work goes well into 200 000 and counting.
Bikez 1 was probably my least downloaded game. At first I released it as shareware, but sadly I really didn't know how to use the internet to sell it. Later on in 2004 I released it as freeware, but I could never really get it working with modern hardware. Surprisingly it seems to work fine on my Windows 7 right now.
I'm still hoping to do another split screen game someday. Now that I have a wife I can force to play with me, it should be much easier than in 1999, when I had to wait for my brother to come and play with me.
I'm really hoping someone asks of The Forge next, so we can do this chronologically.