An early version of Neil's Nightmare
Neil's Nightmare was a game - or rather, the first level of a game - written by Co, using Blitz3D. It was in the form of a surreal first-person shooter, where you could wander freely over a fairly small map all the while under attack from enemies in the form of Ron from Potter Puppet Pals. Lemon Demon CD's were randomly scattered over the landscape and these had to be collected in order to progress.
The final form of the game had various small puzzles which had to be solved before it was possible to take on the giant Harry Potter who stood at the top of the castle casting spells at you. These involved discovering new weapons, using them to discover and free other objects and being granted access to other areas.
The game went through several changes as Co's ability to program in Blitz3D improved, at one point being entirely re-written from the ground up.
Neil wields the Katana. Note the many severed Ron limbs.
Although it had its fans, eventually Co felt the interest of the Illemonati towards such a game (in retrospect, not the ideal people to present a first-person shooter to) was probably not enough to justify the extremely hard work that was going into its construction. Co also realised that the project had some fairly serious flaws, such as the tedious disc-collection and that it had also failed to capture much of the spirit of Lemon Demon. Therefore no more work was done to the game after the first level was completed.
A Ron is blown up with the speargun, showing off the particle engine
The game contained several interesting weapons, as well as the usual pistols and machine-guns.
- A katana which decapitated the Rons in a single stroke.
- A Bolt launcher. When the bolts struck the ground or a Ron they could be detonated with the secondary fire button, which had an area-of-effect on the Rons around it.
- A flamethrower. Ron's would ignite and also ignite any Rons they too came into contact with.
- A Steam Laser. A very powerful weapon, with a spread-shot for secondary fire.
Although Neil's Nightmare was ultimately not a success, there were certainly some positive aspects to it - the water effect, considering the platform on which it was written, is impressive, the physics of the pieces of exploding Ron added much to the entertainment value, the accuracy of the collision-detection improved the skill level and a great deal was certainly learned.