MSXdev22 #09 Mix

To whomever it was that talked about using screen 2 as bitmap sometime last year in the forums -- this game is your fault

I can see two bugs already (time bonus is always doubled, not only when the cabbage heads are split on different sides; and rarely I clear the level without a proper reason), but I won't be touching those until my workload balances (possibly only after the contest deadline).

If you happen to be interested in the tech side, I wrote a high-level blog on the dev process.

I am interested, though, if there are more finished Qix-inspired games on MSX.

Improving audio... the sound heard upon clearing the stage is the absolute pinnacle of my skills in audio. I don't see this happening.

Speed up the display -- you mean the painting of new areas ? I have two ideas how to improve the speed. The bigger effect would likely be in vertically limiting the area to repaint (if you look at the right-hand edge of the playing field when painting the first section of the map, you can see the fill scanline progress), but I'd have to add more bookkeeping as well.

I'm sorry, I've had big trouble in understanding what people say lately.

"The display of the next level is too conspicuous after a level is clear" -- do you mean I should allow the player to skip the timer bonus countdown and do whatever to make the transition from finishing one level to starting the next level quicker and less of a break in the flow?

"go back (with the button 2 for example) when we missed our exit" -- I tried Qix on Nintendo Switch and I don't think I could back on the line I was drawing, with any button. Or maybe I don't understand what you meant by "missing our exit"?

Okay, that display speed-up I can do and I've noticed it myself as well. I have a char free in every pattern block, so I'll define that as all-black and swap that in over the playing field while I redefine the playing field chars to display this before swapping back in.

On going back... So basically, you'd like to be able to "reel the line back in" / undo the current line in progress. I'll have to think about that. I don't think that's in the original Qix (given how the attract mode even describes the "spiral death trap" where the player has driven themselves in a cul-de-sac), so it'd be a change in the actual gameplay.

Thank you for showing interest in this game. It helps me feel this game is appreciated.

I've now fixed the screen redrawing, the first bug I mentioned at the top, a few I found later (0% coverage, inconsistent coverage% displayed, areas that are connected only by one corner pixel), and made the green heads move diagonally as well.

I won't submit this as a new version yet, in case I spot more bugs or make further updates, such as that drawing-undo feature.

I had a similar idea at one point: changing the foreground colour in some tiles to one other option per level, and then using Bayer dithering on 4x4-pixel areas to display at most a 44x44 image with 16 shades of brightness. Even now the background tiles have a filling pattern.

Maybe if I make an upgraded version of this after MSXdev, it might have something like this.

The update has been published
https://www.msxdev.org/2022/04/28/msxdev22-09-mix/

Thanks for the update. You are doing a good job. There is another little problem: It would be good if the player becomes invincible for a short time or back to the border when he reappears after losing a life because he happens to die 2 or 3 times in succession when he is hit by the green beast. And I hope you find someone to make sound effects to brighten up the game. The only such game we have is Sex Bomb Bunny.

Another similar game is Night Flight, from the early eighties, which has a nice theme.
I used to play that one a lot.

Without knowing Qix, I thought it was the origin of these kind of games .

Don't say that. I found this game and played with it a little bit. The filling of the new zone is not faster and the rest of the game is very slow, much too slow. This game has a certain little charm but your game is starts well and is very promising.

I'm not keen on trying to make games like others, since I won't make better games. I try to avoid direct comparison by making games not like others on MSX(1), and I think Night Flight fills the Qix-like niche. Had I known of the game, I would've tried making a twinstick top-down shooter (since I could've set the hardware requirement of two joysticks in MSXdev'22), and probably failed in these time constraints.

@ewsnatcher Wading through the rest is just a bit too much to ask, though.

Nowadays it's very difficult to make a game that doesn't look like any other. There are so many. And then, it is not because a game exists that it is known to many people.

Your game is of the same genre but does not resemble so much. Besides, I prefer really yours, that's why I reacted. I think it deserves to be polished with a few sound effects. Music is not necessarily required.

Hopefully the final version (v1.2) has now been uploaded & updated to MSXdev site and tfh's site. The changelog is very short:
- longer delay before the border-tracing enemies respawn after the player died (effectively an invulnerability period unless the player begins drawing a line)
- reintroduced background shading that still blocks the player from drawing "outside the line".
- player death animation

Thanks! Don't forget Night Flight, which was mentioned earlier in this thread, as an early Qix-like on MSX.

When the player completes a new line, the first green enemy determines which of the two parts is painted: this enemy will always be on the part that will be left unpainted. If there were two enemies on the screen and the second was left on the painted side, the level would end and the player be awarded points as if 100% of the remaining area was painted. And the timer bonus would also be doubled. Or that is the plan anyway.