Bio Menace
| Levels? |  Editable |
|---|---|
| Tiles? | Editable |
| Sprites? | Editable |
| Fullscreen? | Editable |
| Sound? | Editable |
| Music? | Editable |
| Text? | Editable |
| Story/cutscenes? | Editable |
| UI/menus? | Editable |
| Demos? | Unknown |
Bio Menace (working title: Bio Hazard) is a series of three games known simply as Bio Menace 1, 2 and 3. They use a slightly altered version of the Commander Keen 4-6 engine, so the file formats used are almost identical.
The game follows the adventures of Snake Logan, a top secret operative at the CIA, who takes on missions others would see as suicidal, as he battles hordes of strange mutant monsters that have suddenly appeared and are taking over cities. The goals of the game vary, from rescuing trapped prisoners to destroying an evil computer. Notably, in the second game, if you do not get the portable nuclear device in one of the levels, the game becomes unwinnable and you are treated to the story of Snake's eventual death.
The following tools are able to work with this game.
| Name | Platform | Group/archives | Levels | Graphics | Music | Sounds | Text | Saves | .exe patch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abiathar | Windows | N/A | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | No | Offers templates for Bio Menace projects |
| TED5 | DOS GUI | N/A | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | No | Must be configured to work with Bio Menace |
| Wombat | Windows | N/A | Read | Read | Read | Read | No | No | No |
File formats
| File name | Description |
|---|---|
| audiohed.bm* audiot.bm* |
Sound effects and music in AudioT Format (and within that, music in IMF Format) |
| bmenace[123].exe | Exit text screens in B800 Text format |
| egadict.bm* egahead.bm* egagraph.bm* |
Graphics, text and miscellaneous data in EGAGraph Format |
| gamemaps.bm* maphead.bm* maptemp.bm* mapthead.bm* |
Levels in GameMaps Format |
- Sprite behaviours are governed by data structures in the .exe, arranged in Keen 4-6 Action Format
Music
AudioT Format Details
Bio Menace uses the uncompressed version of the AudioT Format to store music and sound. The main audio file for each game, the AUDIOT.xxx file, is called AUDIOT.BMx, where x is the number of the game (1, 2 or 3). For example, the file for Bio Menace 2 is AUDIO.BM2. The secondary files needed for this format, the AUDIOHED.BMx are external.
Levels Songs Assignment
There is a place inside the executables too, where each level in the game is assigned a song from the AUDIOT.BMx file. From that addresses, the following bytes indicate the song for each level. Every 2 bytes is a value corresponding to a level. The first 2 bytes correspond to level 0; the next 2 bytes correspond to level 1; and so on. Each 2-byte value is an integer corresponding to the song number used in that level, starting from $00 $00, and going up to $00 $01, and so on. This numbers refer to the order the songs are in the AUDIO.BMx file; $00 $00 is the first one, $00 $01 is the second one, and so on.
It is notable that Bio Menace has many more songs in it than the Keen 4-6 games upon which it was based.
Obtaining the game
The full version of this game has been released as freeware.
- Three different versions are available from Classic DOS Games