Meteor Storm: pixels, objects and a race against time

Meteor Storm follows Meet Assembly with a complete game for a stock 48K PAL Spectrum. Dodge drifting meteors, collect stars and hold Space to boost through five storms, each harder than the last. One hit ends the voyage; faster storms earn larger bonuses, and later storms multiply them.

Thirty-six lessons start with a pixel crossing a byte boundary. Build up drawing, a frame clock, independent objects, collision, scoring and a finite course. Later lessons investigate the cost of drawing twice and preserve collision checks while reducing that work. The last lessons give every event a sound, play it without slowing the game, break the ship apart when a meteor hits it and colour the storm without colour clash. The voyage lessons chain five storms, give the score a second byte, multiply each storm’s bonus, make each storm harder from a table of rules, remember the furthest voyage, let the title play itself and load a picture while the tape plays.

Each lesson runs editable assembly in the browser. Inspect real bitmap bytes, object records and the paused CPU; change the companion artwork as well as the code. Download the finished source and tape, or build locally with Asm198x or Pasmo.