Abuse
| Levels? |  Editable |
|---|---|
| Tiles? | Editable |
| Sprites? | Editable |
| Fullscreen? | Editable |
| Sound? | Editable |
| Music? | Editable |
| Text? | Editable |
| Story/cutscenes? | Editable |
| UI/menus? |  Not editable |
| Demos? | Unknown |
Abuse is a side-scrolling action game and the only released game by Crack Dot Com. The story involves Nick Vrenna, a prisoner wrongly incarcerated in an experimental prison complex, attempting to prevent the outbreak of a powerful mutagen after an accident in the experiments taking place transforms the other inmates into xenomorph-like monsters. The game uses a distinctive mouse-and-keyboard control scheme that allows the main character to aim independently of movement.
The game was designed with modding in mind, and included a built-in level editor as well as the potential to customize various behaviors using a dialect of Lisp. The source code was also officially released.
The following tools are able to work with this game.
| Name | Platform | Group/archives | Levels | Graphics | Music | Sounds | Text | Saves | .exe patch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official level editor | DOS | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | No | Built into the game, invoke with "ABUSE -EDIT" |
| Satan Paint | DOS | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Official graphics editor. Handles tiles and tile group files. |
File formats
The following file formats are used by this game.
| Filename | Format | Details |
|---|---|---|
| *.spe *.lvl *.cpf |
SPEC Format | Contents vary, levels/savegames/graphic archives. .LVL is a rarely used alias for a .SPE containing level data. Most levels just use the .SPE extension. .CPF is an alias used for .SPE files that contain some sort of accompanying data for some levels, a single data lump of "cache profile info"? Do not appear to be necessary for the level to function. Debugging/optimization data maybe? ! Investigate |
| *.wav | WAV Format (Mono, 11025Hz) |
Sound effects. These are kept loose in the "SFX" subfolder rather than archived. Mods are probably able to specify their own location for added sounds (see LISP\SFX.LSP) |
| *.hmi | Human Machine Interfaces MIDI Format (HMI-MIDISONG version) |
Music. These are kept loose in the "MUSIC" subfolder rather than archived. Playing the music was supported on only a small subset of contemporary sound hardware. |
| *.lsp | Abuse Lisp | Lisp scripts; much of the game is customizable via Lisp. These are stored as loose files rather than archived. Most, but not all, reside in a "LISP" subfolder. |
Links
Page on RGB classics including downloads of shareware/beta versions as well as the source code