Karoshi MSX Community

Name of the project: ZERO and the Castle of Infinite Sadness
Game size: 32k ROM
RAM size requirement: 16K RAM
Game genre: Action
Name of the group: Dioniso

[2014-06-22] NEW ROM (http://ul.to/2s9b4em2). Thanks to nenefranz a bug has been found: the game starts in the menu instead of showing the logo and PRESS SPACE screen. I forgot to change that in the final ROM.

[2014-06-22] A small update: ROM. Just a small synchro issue with the ZERO logo in the menu on MSX2+ and Turbo-r.

My PC don't work anymore; tools, old code/docs, passwords/tools of my website (that's why I had to upload the ROM to uploaded.to), etc, etc, etc. I will recover the harddisks but it will take some time. On a laptop and with NoWind I could at least fix that little problem.

Some notes on the game which I didn't mention before but they could be important:

-Entering passwords: if you have a password for NORMAL difficulty, you have to choose NORMAL in MODUS and then enter the password. You will start at level 1 if you introduced that password in EASY or HARD MODUS. This is done on purpose.
-If you clean 5 levels, you'll get a password and all your 3 lifes again. This is done on purpose.
-If you lose a life, you will start that level from the beginning. This is done on purpose. Stop crying and work hard on it  :griel:
-The game is meant to be played at 60HZ (press "6" when booting on a PAL MSX2 model or superior). Recommended model: any Japanese MSX1 computer (THIS IS A MSX1 GAME COMPETITION; any other model is an extra although compulsory in the rules).  :magicalstones:
-I think the levels from 15 onwards are the best/most beautiful ones. Later on, some new tiles are used.

Tools used (thank you very much, guys):
-tniASM 0.45 (Patrick Lesparre)
-PCX2SPR (Eduardo Robsy)
-Routine to create sine curves with asMSX (Eduardo Robsy) *<also used in SP8 INVADERS and KRAKONIA.>
-EditPlus (Sangil Kim)
-MS PAINT (all the graphics were created with this tool)
-BMP2MSX (HRA)
-TILED (Thorbjørn Lindeijer)
-Darkbasic Pro (The Game Creators) *<I use it to convert TILED screens to compressed levels and BMP2MSX data to compressed tilesets.>
-Bitbuster (Bombaman Team)
-Slots/RAM/48k ROM routines/theory (Armando) *<I still couldn't use it but I will to improve ZERO a little bit.>
-BlueMSX (Daniel Vik)
-NoWind Interface (Jan Wilmans and Aaldert Dekker)
-MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD (Manuel Pazos)

I hope some of you have fun with my game  ::qbiqsbeam::

[2014-06-14] Download the game: here (http://www.mojonwarez.com/temp_files/ZERO.zip).

Summary: Clean every room of the castle from evil forces, starting from the the top and going down to the base.

-More info will be added-

[2013-11-23] An upload of the video  (http://www.mojonwarez.com/temp_files/castle00.avi)directly recorded on OpenMSX. Better a "save as ...". The quality is much better but still no soft scroll in the video, only on your MSX.

[2013-11-22] A little test  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IHfQEAWa8M) on video with the logo. I don't know why on a real computer I get a soft scroll and on this video after emus and video codecs I get a really bad/jumping scroll ... There's a problem here with emulated framerate.


Screenshot: Just a W.I.P. menu screenshot created these days (Ugliest "R" ever). I prefer not showing in-game screenshots for the moment.
(http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3690/10058431194_5a880d1ea7.jpg)

-More screenshots will be added-

Art/Related material: 3 drawings a good friend of mine did 6 years ago ...

(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2869/10059210506_723e135209.jpg)

(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2891/10059170235_0bdae74be7.jpg)

(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2848/10059270653_8f31d6bb68.jpg)

You can see the author himself in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6GvKsYRn9o), with sun glasses and as Freddy :)

What a good thing to see again, a Dioniso's project in the MSXdev again! Moreover with those nice artworks!

[Edit: English!!]

Cool!
Is it somehow related to the Smashing Pumpkins' album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness"?
Even the first artwork reminds me some details (winged hourglasses) of the inlay :D

Announced on MSXBLUE-DEV :

http://msxdev.msxblue.com/?p=2315

Sorry about my post in Spanish before. I usually pay attention to this basic rule, but I got so excited with Dioniso's new entry that I totally forgot: I got carried away!

22nd and 23rd November. A little update of some "PRESS SPACE" test.

Your AVI file seems to be broken :

- only 202 Ko when the MP4 video from YouTube is 899 Ko
- only a green screen on VLC
- not accepted by Windows Media Player (but maybe the specific AVI format of openMSX is not supported by this Windows tool)

Only 202k is right. Use Windows Media Player, for instance. It also works on tablets with Android. I tried first with BlueMSX but I couldn´t get a proper video just a almost 2GB AVI without compression. Anyways, if you want to discuss this write a private message to me.

Ok, now it works. The problem was also with AVI's created by Fixato with openMSX.

Actually, I'm using now a new PC with Windows 8. After installing updated codecs, it's OK in the Windows Media Player.

For VLC, I've found a very useful tool that converts the openMSX-AVI format into a standard AVI format : Free AVI Video Converter.
No more green screen with the converted file (896 Ko instead of the 202 Ko, so almost the same size as for the MP4 file).

Hi. Not having much time for coding and trying to finish the game ... I just wanted to say the game will write directly to the $98 and $99 ports and will use the mix mode, which, taking into account the rules of the MSXDev'14, should be accepted ("VDP: TMS9918/TMS9928 or compatible video processor"). Although it also states that "If a game does not run properly in all MSX computers with at least 16 KB RAM it could be disqualified by the organization."

Well, I don't want to start the same discussion again. I'm just saying how my game would be and that I hope to finish it before the 16th of June  ::phone::

To the iron!!!  ::qbiqsbeam::

Awesome !!! Mixed mode allows plenty of possibilities and we will use mix mode too ;)

But then why don't use Screen 4? Is that simple.  :-\
Yeh, then can't fit the dev, but nobody is gonna put an X to you if you make a game outside the dev.

Yeh, but then, also does Screen 4. It seems like you both gonna love Screen 4. So my point it, and why not? It's a nice screen mode! Why don't take profit of it?

Hell, I just noticed this.  :o

That will be for the msx 2 version :)

I wish there is one :) Tho, as developer, I know that doing twice the same work is a pain and not very rewarding.

If I only had one more month ...  :-\

What do we know about the other projects? Will everyone be ready on the 15th of June?

Mine is already playable and has most of the stuff, but it's gonna be tight to have it properly finished (musics, sfx, cutscenes) on time... :/

So... gif me more coffee! MOAR!!1 ;D

mine is playable but many things are missing (some enemies, two levels, cut scenes, some sfx....)
anyway there is no prize either...
why not give extra time waiting for donations ?
without prize the competition is just for glory...
 ???

I'm running adjusting the playability and debugging and finishing many things. A few extra time will be very appreciated although I'll do all possible to arrive on time!

Well, I don't mind if there's no price at all. I do it for the glory :) But I can understand that it can motivate people to work harder, better, etc ... and have projects in time for the deadline.

I think there's still no way to donate money to the MSXDev'14.

In my first post you can download the game.

yes, i’m playing it now! quite unique (and a bit difficult at first, but it seems pretty addictive) - this one really surprised me! :)

nice sprite effects! :)

Thanks, nitrofurano and hap.

Nice game which smells Dioniso's style all around! ;)

It seems quite solid and well done. I like the ground changing into harmful tiles following different time patterns, but I miss a feature giving you some advantage like inmunity time or something like that (typical in that kind of games).

All in all, I think it's the best Dioniso's game so far!  :)

:) Thanks, Imanok.

I wanted to do some experiments but in a playable game. Every coder creates programms they like, and I really like this game. I know some people don't, as I have read in MSX.ORGm-for instance-, but that's fine. Everyone has his/her taste.

About the technical part: (I know you didn't ask, Imanok  :police: )

-"PRESS START": there are 2 screensplits: the first one from SCREEN 2 to SCREEN 3 (with the "PRESS SPACE" sentence), and the second back to SCREEN 2 for the "copyright".
-MENU: There's a mixture of magnified SPRITES and normal SPRITES. The logo ZERO are 4 magnified SPRITES with a sine curve movement horizontally and with some synchronization I split every line and move the same SPRITES but the odd lines are red and the even lines are white and move in opposite directions. The synchro goes on and when the raster has passed the ZERO magnified SPRITES I change to normal SPRITES, so that the red whale is not that big.
-GAME OVER: sine curve movement horizontally changing the colours of the SPRITE, having 8 colours per sprite (it could be changed per vertical pixel but I didn't have much time (nor space in the ROM) for everything I wanted to do so I changed it every 4 pixel.
-And you also have the 1bit sample I already played in SP8 INVADERS.

My sound experiments were just left out ... but they will be included in a possible future revision for the cartridge version. The game won't change but I would like to add the story of ZERO flying to the island/castle and crashing at the top of the castle as introduction and some things like envelopes with volume and some other little things.