Jetpack (DOS)

[RT-55J]

Jetpack is a DOS game that you can play in DOSBox:

https://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack/

It came with a level editor.

I made a bunch of levels between 2005 and 2011 that I once released as a zip on Dropbox.

After a brief bout of curiosity, I have found the zip.

Perhaps you too can create some Jetpack levels.

[RT-55J]

Note: I have only played one of these levels in the past decade lol

[veni-vidi-ascii]

I played some of your old levels, and it makes me glad that more work is being put into ZZT than Jetpack. ZZT has the potential for infinite interesting games, while Jetpack maybe only has a few thousand levels. The only dialogue is the level Title. I love that game, and I love that it does everything it does with a ultra-simple level editor, which is gives you full access to. A baby could learn to place tiles to make the levels in five minutes.

The game should have dumber enemies. Rocket, marble, and spring are great. I would add horizontal spring, a thing that crawls around surfaces like a metroid enemy. Delete the enemies that don't work with teleporters/switches/etc.

I did like your Jetpack levels but they were hard because Jetpack is hard.

[RT-55J]

Jetpack 2 had a scripting system as part of its level editor, but unfortunately that game never made any traction and it was built on top of Adobe Flash, which, uh, lol.

I like the chasing robot enemy, but it's definitely just there because this is a Lode Runner derivative. Having parameterizable enemies would be cool (mainly thinking speed, but I'm sure there could be other things).

idk I've always been interested in making a game that's a riff on this somehow, but have never gotten around to it.

(I think my levels are hard because I never had anyone playtest them besides myself lol. Also, there are some tricks that I have no idea how to do anymore.)

[RT-55J]

so, a really neat but seldom-used feature added to the last release of this game is support for different graphics packs. For instance, Christmas Jetpack used to be a separate release, but in the latest version you can just run JSWITCH.EXE to switch to that graphics pack the next time you load the game. It's not entirely ideal (it only chances the in-game graphics, and not any of the menus), but it's fun.

Anyhow this weird angel thing is a graphics pack for this game: @Cera Sizzle



I kinda wish it had some more extensive changes, but it's neat that it exists. You can download it on this webpage.

That webpage also has a zip with the things you need to actually create and distribute a graphics pack of your own. I don't know if I'll ever make one, but in the spirit of Passing the Tapes I'll attach the goods at the bottom of this post.



The most important file there is "Jetpack0.lbm", which is the actual image file (pictured above). There's also a couple DOS executables that convert it into the game's format, and a complete copy of the DOS version of Deluxe Paint. Other utilities exist that can edit LBM files, but it's one of those old quirky formats so who knows if things will break spectacularly or not.

Will anyone ever make a new graphics pack for Jetpack? It is impossible to know...