Cooking With Melvin. 

By

Wilson Saunders 

7/10/09 

Description:

Run around as a 3 inch tall gremlin chef using a flame 
thrower and knife to prepare food. A sequence of food 
orders will appear in the top left of the screen. Once 
the player has made the current order the, next food 
order in the sequence will appear. Completing all orders 
unlocks the next level. 



Controlls:

...................Game pad supported...................
...............Experiment to find buttons...............

General Controls: 

[Left]..........................................run left 
[Right]........................................run right 
[X]................................................jumps 
[Tab]......................................switches Mode 
[Enter]...................pauses game and displays hints 

Flame Thrower Mode: 
[Z]..........................................shoots fire 
[Up]............................directs flame thrower up 
[Down]........................directs flame thrower down 
..Shooting the flame thrower down acts like a jet pack.. 

Knife Mode:", 
[Z].........................................swings knife
[Down].................picks up ingredient on the ground

Carrying Mode:
........Walk over another ingredient to combine.........
[Z]......................................drop ingredient



How this satisfies Speedhack 2009 rules:

Fantastically Mundane
Cooking is an every day activity, only the player does it while 
three inches tall, wielding a flame thrower and a knife. 

Dynamic Environment
Environment is destructible and in some levels it is a good 
strategy to set up traps for the ingredients by burning away 
part of the environment.

Zoom, Zoom!
When a food item is made it Zooms in to show the item in its 
full glory. The entire level doesn’t zoom, so to hedge my bets 
I am applying my Act of Anniversary to this rule.

Unlockable Content
At the start of the game the player only has access to the 
first level “Meat and Potatoes”. After beating that level the 
next level becomes available. The levels are designed to 
increase in difficulty while gradually introducing new concepts 
to the player. Such as using tools on ingredients, changing 
tools, and combining ingredients.

Post Mortem

When ever the user pauses the game, wins, or looses. A screen 
will appear with all the food items the player successfully 
made. That screen will also show how many ingredients made it 
to the exit, or were burnt/butchered unrecognizably. Due to the 
complexity of the game this screen will also show hints for the 
current level when in paused mode.


Act of Anniversary 
I did not like the Zoom Zoom rule and have thus implemented the 
Act of Anniversary on: 
Speedhack 2005: Make it a Classic: Four Button Joystick.
The game can be played with only four buttons and a Dpad on a USB 
game pad. For users that don’t have a game pad the arrow keys, 
key z, key x, tab, and enter act as surrogates. Instructions are 
given in the help screen.



Code Reuse:
A base allegro template was copied prior to the competition so 
that I could start with a working blank window. All other code 
was written during the event.

Art Reuse:
Files food20.bmp – food 29.bmp were copied from public domain 
sites and modified for alpha transparency and size during the 
competition period. All other .bmp files were done by me during 
the competition period.

Sound: 
Sound files were provided by Anthony Curry, a friend and co worker. 

Additional help:
Noah Kalb earned a place in the credits by assisting me with 
level design and play testing. Many bugs were caught by his 
diligent QA. In a less tangible aspect my wife Liz, and friends 
Zach, Kyle, and Mira helped keep me sane through this whole event. 
