A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android

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Post Apocalyptic Petra is a game originally written for the MS-DOS Game Jam #2 held between February 28th 2020 to May 9 2020.  Most of the game, including its engine and tools, was written in about five weeks spread over the entirety of the jam period. The game is also available for Windows in both software rendering and hardware accelerated versions (including a Direct3D 7 version that can be used to play it on an original 3dfx voodoo accelerator).

In this game you control Petra, a woman found herself waking up in an empty room by the voice of a computer calling to her.  Your goal is to figure out a way to exit from the facility she is into.

The game is played from a third person perspective using the arrow keys, control and enter (see the supplied readme.txt file for controls)  Most of the time what you have to do is to explore the levels, find items, lock codes and read "note disks" and emails in terminals.  Sometimes you may also need to perform a bit of platforming to cross over gaps or climb to inaccessible (and sometimes not outright obvious!) areas.  But for the most part, platforming is very forgiving.

There is no combat in Post Apocalyptic Petra as the game is really all about exploration and puzzle solving.

After you have finished the game (which will not really take you long) you can try your hand at making a custom level with the supplied editor (requires Windows 2000 or later) or playing a custom level made by others.  To play a custom level, you can use the configuration utility launched by CONFIG.BAT.

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Petra099oSB16Fix.zip (SB16 fix for Petra 0.99o) 163 kB
Petra099o.img (DOS Floppy Disk Image) 1 MB
Petra099o.zip (DOS and Windows versions) 1 MB
Petra099oEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099oLinuxEditor.tar.xz 1 MB
Petra099oSource.zip 342 kB
Petra099n.img (DOS Floppy Disk Image) 1 MB
Petra099n.zip (DOS and Windows versions) 1 MB
Petra099nS3VirgeFix.zip (D3D S3 Virge patch) 137 kB
Petra099nLinux.tar.xz 747 kB
Petra099nLinuxARM.tar.xz (Raspberry Pi) 564 kB
Petra099n.apk (for Android gaming devices like OUYA) 807 kB
Petra099n.opk (GCW Zero / OpenDingux version) 700 kB
Petra099nSource.zip 320 kB
Petra099m.img (DOS Floppy Disk Image) 1 MB
Petra099m.zip 1 MB
Petra099mLinux.tar.xz 732 kB
Petra099m.dmg 1 MB
Petra099m.apk 781 kB
Petra099m.opk (GCW Zero / OpenDingux version) 676 kB
Petra099mEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099mSource.zip 316 kB
Petra099l.zip 1 MB
Petra099lLinux.tar.xz 732 kB
Petra099l.apk 781 kB
Petra099l.opk (GCW Zero / OpenDingux version) 672 kB
Petra099lSource.zip 314 kB
Petra099kAndroidAlpha1.apk (needs gamepad!) 697 kB
Petra099k.zip 1 MB
Petra099kLinux.tar.xz 731 kB
Petra099k.opk (GCW Zero / OpenDingux version) 672 kB
Petra099kEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099kSource.zip 222 kB
Petra099j.zip 1 MB
Petra099jLinux.tar.xz 567 kB
Petra099jGCW0.zip 885 kB
Petra099jSource.zip 178 kB
Petra099i.zip 1 MB
Petra099iEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099iSource.zip 176 kB
Petra099h.zip 960 kB
Petra099hEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099hSource.zip 161 kB
Petra099g.zip 821 kB
Petra099gSource.zip 143 kB
Petra099f.zip 821 kB
Petra099fEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099fSource.zip 143 kB
Petra099e.zip 821 kB
Petra099eEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099eSource.zip 143 kB
Petra099d.zip 831 kB
Petra099dEditor.zip 1 MB
Petra099dSource.zip 140 kB
Petra099c.zip 831 kB
Petra099cSource.zip 140 kB
Petra099b.zip 775 kB
Petra099bSource.zip 133 kB
Petra099.zip 775 kB
Petra099Editor.zip 1 MB
Petra099Source.zip 133 kB
PetraAll.zip (if you want to download everything) 52 MB

Development log

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Comments

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game was pretty cool. good job

Thank you :-)

Hi Bad Sector! I'm really really stuck trying to figure out what three aces mean, if you could give me a hand would help me a lot, great game btw

Hi.

So, here is a hint: consider a deck of playing cards (like in Solitaire/Patience), what number would an ace represent there? What number would three aces, placed next to each other, would represent?

So uh... can I play this game on my laptop or not? if yes, how?

(+1)

If you are using Windows or DOS (in case you want to try it on an old laptop from the 90s) then you can download Petra099n.zip and run one of the executables inside. For Linux download Petra099nLinux.tar.xz. If you have a Mac download Petra099m.dmg - it is a slightly older version, but there weren't any Mac-specific changes in 0.99n anyway.

Assuming you are using the Windows/DOS archive, the executables you may want to try are:

  • glpetra.exe - Windows: this will give you the OpenGL HW accelerated version
  • sdlpetra.exe - Windows: this will give you the software rendering version but wont support gamepad
  • gdipetra.exe - Windows: this will give you the software rendering version and supports gamepad, but it will be choppier
  • d3dpetra.exe - Retro Windows: Direct3D 7 HW accelerated version for old Windows PCs
  • winpetra.exe - Retro Windows: DirectDraw software rendering version for old Windows PCs
  • petra.exe - Retro DOS: DOS version for old PCs

If you are not sure and just want to check out the game and your laptop is not older than 15-20 years or so, you can run glpetra.exe.

Awesome to see a DOS game! It looks amazing.

Thank you :-)

(+1)

Played on the 350M, lags a bit and was sad I couldn't use joystick. I couldn't figure out how to escape, but I like the Tomb Raider vibes.

(+2)

You mean the Anbernic RG-350M? Might have to do with 640x480 output, i'm not sure if SDL on it does software or hardware scaling (the game requests 320x240 mode).

I haven't implemented joystick/gamepad support in the SDL versions - i might do that at some point. Though the engine itself doesn't really "know" about gamepad (originally the game was written for DOS with keyboard-only input), the versions that have support for gamepad simply generate fake key events, so it wouldn't be that different from using the D-PAD. But i might try it anyway in a later version.

Admin(+1)

Just came across this, wow this looks really cool. I bumped you up to the fresh games section on the homepage.

Thanks :-). I just realized i do not have a short description set :-P.

Hello, don't have time to play much (as I'm indie dev as well with not much time to play), but I want to praise the visual of the game and fact that it's under the DOS. It's heartwarming to see those screenshots, strongly reminds me of Tomb Raider 1 with color palette from System Shock 1. Thumbs up!

Hi and thank you :-).

I just can't workout the Filter Room Code, you know the; "Middle is where my favourite book is at. First front row chairs. Lastly next after first and second minus three." Tried all the combinations that made sense to me and to my stream viewers and even tried to brute force it assuming that the first number was correct. Any help, hints or just the code would be helpful. Thanks really enjoyed playing!

(1 edit) (+1)

Hi! I just finished watching the steam video :-).

About the code, basically it is a failure to provide good feedback on my end - the result of making stuff up as i go i guess. Someone wrote that it looks like Tomb Raider - initially i was planning to make a TR-like platformer but making those animations took time and as you noticed, controls are a bit janky... so i just started adding more and more puzzles instead :-P.

Your initial guesses were actually right, it is just that there wasn't any feedback about what to do about the middle number.

Since itch.io doesn't seem to have a way to mark spoilers, i'll give you a hint on what to do: go "at" the book's title (the "at" was intentional :-P) and use the action button. And now i guess you can see what i mean with failing to provide good feedback... there should have been a way to tell when you can interact with something (the same applies with the bookcases - only those in the room are interactive). But i thought of that too late (i made that room near the end of the deadline).

But this is basically a half-baked 3D platforming engine forced to become an adventure game engine mid-development :-P. Anyway, i can tell you the full code if you want, just send me a mail at badsector -at- runtimeterror -dot- com :-).

About some other things. The game didn't crash the first time, from what i can see in ~33:50 when you opened the inventory you had the Quit button highlighted and i guess you pressed Enter or Space which activated it. This is something i pretty much added the last moment (i was killing DOSBox or pressing Alt+F4 for most of the development to exit the game) and the UI system was hacked quickly together in an afternoon, which is why it doesn't have any confirmation popup... or why the note disk text sometimes reads in a weird way (there is no scrolling nor word wrapping so i was trying to fit the text in the few lines and characters as if it was Twitter :-P).

The sound was a bit choppy... my guess is the K6 you use wasn't fast enough. It'll sound counterintuitive but the software version (WINPETRA.EXE) might work better - i've only written the D3D code recently and only tried it on my 1GHz P3 machine whereas i tried the software renderer on weaker machines and optimized it a bit more.

About DOS not having audio and DMA issues: Soundblaster has two DMA types, low DMA and high DMA. The low DMA was there from the beginning but only supports mono audio whereas the high DMA was introduced in SB16 and supports stereo. Post Apocalyptic Petra requires SB16 to do stereo so it uses only the high DMA. Your sound card probably doesn't support the high DMA mode, which is why you get that. There might be a way to get stereo audio out of low DMA-only SB compatible cards because it sounds weird to me that these cards forced DOS games to be mono. Then again, i guess by the time they were new most people used Win9x and DOS support wasn't much of a concern. I might check that out at some point.

Thanks for the fast reply! For a game jam project with Windows and DOS versions I think it's pretty great. Will be giving it another go with that clue, I'll try the software renderer versions also.  Cheers

Hi can you provide a video for this game? It looks interesting but I can't get it to work even on DosBox-X. All it does is show a "RUNTIME TERROR" screen.

Does it do anything if you press space? It might take a bit to load the data (though the latest version should display a message when it is loading, are you using 0.99f?).

I'll upload a video later.

(1 edit)

Oh man. space worked. I tried return and escape but didn't think of pressing space. I'm not familiar with DOS games conventions.

This is really cool. It's like System Shock meets Tomb Raider. It's pretty unbelievable that this is done in DOS.

DOSBox needed `cycles=auto` for me, which ends up using `max`.