Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit

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Commodore 64 version of SEUCK

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 edit attack patterns. The advertising promoted the Kit with the phrase "By the programmers of Wizball and Parallax".

The Kit came with demonstration games to show you what could be done. The Commodore 64 (C64) version came with Slap 'n' Tickle (inspired by Slap Fight), Outlaw (a Wild West shoot 'em up), Transputer Man (set inside a computer) and the bizarre Celebrity Squares (featuring graphics drawn by several C64 personalities). The Amiga version featured Slap 'n' Tickle, Quazar and an "army man" game, Blood 'N' Bullets. Games could feature still screens (held for a set number of seconds), "push" scrolling (based on the player's movement) and constant vertical scrolling. Bonus point items were possible, as well as extra lives awarded at regular scoring intervals.

Since it was possible to save games as stand-alone files, games companies and magazines received many games created with the Kit.

While in college, Ray Larabie who is best known for his custom typefaces, created a number of games using SEUCK. Because of their quality and uniqueness they spread throughout the Amiga community quickly via the BBS network, many ending up on Amiga Magazine coverdisks. Titles include "Monster Truck Rally," "Wielder Of Atoms," "Mulroney Blast," and "Smurf Hunt".

[edit] Criticism

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Games created in SEUCK were sometimes considered crude compared to games written in traditional programming languages. This was less noticeable on the Commodore 64, but the Amiga version suffered from poor scrolling and collision detection. Sprites moved jerkily around the screen, and a lack of AI meant that they always took the same path. The players rate of fire was limited by only being able to have three bullets on the screen at once, and there was no provision for power-ups. Collision check between the player and the background was present only in the C64 version. The Amiga version was also limited to 16 colors. Essentially, SEUCK didn't make the transition to 16 bit well.