Amietia • MSX

Pallo September 2024

Note: Requires FM-PAC or compatible (also known as MSX-MUSIC).
ROM size: 48K, RAM requirement: 16K

The objective of this game is to get the red ball to the goal in as few strokes as you can. The goal is marked by a chequered flag. You can use as many strokes as you want.

There are fifteen levels in total. The password for each level is shown in quotes on the statusbar, note that the passwords are case-sensitive.

Controls:

At the title screen, press spacebar to start the game or F1 to enter a password. The password for a level is the name of the level, displayed on the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
During the game, use the left or right arrow keys to set a direction to kick the ball in. You can also use the down arrow key to turn the direction upwards.
To kick the ball press and hold spacebar and then release it. The length of time that you hold down the spacebar for determines the strength with which the ball is kicked.
Hold ctrl and press left or right to nudge the kick direction by one unit.
Hold shift and press up or down to take a look around the level.
You can also press F3 to restart a level, or F2 to go back to the title screen.

Changelog:

   03/09/2024  * First release

   08/09/2024  * Reduced appearance of garbage frames
               * Added backspace support to password screen
               * Improved the rotation of the rotating cube
               * Made automatic scrolling go faster
               * Added down arrow key control for kick direction
               * Changed "Enter Password" text to "Enter Level Name"

Credits:

Game designed and programmed, and graphics created, by Edd Biddulph
mig68000 font created by Zingot Games - https://opengameart.org/content/bitmap-font-pack
Broadway Rag, Pineapple Rag, and Peacherine Rag composed by Scott Joplin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Joplin
Assembled with the Glass Z80 assembler by Laurens Holst - https://www.grauw.nl/projects/glass/
Tested and debugged in the openMSX emulator - https://openmsx.org/
Tested on SX|2 MSX FPGA and FM-PAK from 8bits4ever - https://www.8bits4ever.net/
Additional custom tools written in C.

Download is available from File-Hunter here and the game can be played in a browser via WebMSX here.

Fruit Mazes June 2024

Fruit Mazes is a simple game for MSX 1, in a 16kb ROM using 16kb of RAM. The goal of the game is to navigate the maze in each stage and pick up all of the fruit in the maze within ten minutes, without touching the walls.

It features omnidirectional smooth scrolling, which is not typical of MSX 1 games since hardware scrolling is not a feature of the TMS9918 video chip used in MSX 1 computers.

The scrolling is achieved by pre-generating multiple sets of patterns, one set for each vertical scroll offset modulo 8, and by setting the TMS9918 pattern base address correspondingly.

The game also has accurate roll-on/roll-off of sprites at all sides of the viewport, achieved by setting the EC bit on every sprite and by pre-generating copies of the sprite patterns with pixels masked out from the right.

There are twelve stages, the second set of six stages has narrower corridors.

Download is available from File-Hunter here and the game can be played in a browser via WebMSX here.