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[Coding competition 2017] Io by PkK
Post Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:01 pm
http://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/Io-SMS



Quote
I've noted the suggested theme of romance and love. Considering the
famous quote "I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe
in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is
about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life." this
entry might be just a little bit off from the suggested theme.

The game is about managing a sulphur mine. The main aspect of the game
is to supply enough sulphur to your HQ by building a transportation
network consisting of sulphur sources, depots, roads and rail. At the
start of the game, you should first connect your first sulphur source to
the HQ. Rail connections have higher capacity than roads, but need more
time to construct. One unupgraded sulphur source supplies enough sulphur
for one idle worker. Busy workers need twice as much. Building nodes in
empty space results in sulphur depots. Building nodes on sulphur vents
results in sulphur sources.

The current tool can be changed by the second fire button or by clicking
on the toolbar. The first fire button starts construction.

UI elements on top bar:

* "Sulphur in HQ" (upper left corner): Shows the current amount of
sulphur in the HQ (you loose when this reaches 0, and the sulphur
storage capacity of the HQ

* "Workers" (just next to the above): Shows the number of free workers
(i.e. those not currently working on a construction site) and the total
number of workers

* "HQ Level" (upper middle): Current HQ level. Higher levels increase
the amount of workers and the sulphur consumption. You win the level by
increasing this to 10.

* "Toolbar" (upper right): Shows the currently selected tool (same as
cursor) and a clickable list of tools (you can also change the tool by
using the right fire button). At certain moments,such as after changing
the tool, the toolbar is briefly replaced by a display of the name of
the new toll.
When the cursor is a above a node (HQ, depot, source) of the
transportation network, the toolbar is replaced by a status display. The
status display shows the current amount of sulphur in the building under
the cursor, and the sulphur storage capacity of the building as well as
the level of the building.
In case of a threat, the toolbar is briefly replaced by a descirption of
the threat, and the background flashes.

Thre are three difficulty levels, which affect the game in various ways:

* Starting amount of sulphur in HQ

* Storage capacity at HQ

* Amount of rocks on the map

* Frequency and severity of threats

The game is meant for the SG-1000, SC-3000, Mark III and Master System.
It was not tested on real hardware. but it seems to work ok in emulators.

While Io is still work in progress (e.g. no sound or music yet, no
sports pad support, no variation in levels) it is already quite
playable. Early versions for the ColecoVision were presented earlier on
the AtariAge forums
(http://atariage.com/forums/topic/261988-homebrew-sulphur-mining-game-io/),
but the version 0.12 submitted to the competition has substantial
improvements over those earlier versions and is much more playable.
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 7:04 am
While the game is meant for SG-1000, SG-1000 Mark II, SC-3000, Mark III and Master System, it uses the memory layout to detect the system it is running on. Most emulators (e.g. Meka) do not emulate this correctly (they tend to always use the Mark III / Master system memory layout).

If you want to see how the game plays on SG-1000, SG-1000 Mark II or SC-3000, you need an emulator with correct emulation of memory layout. I use MAME/MESS. On Windows AFAIK, MAME/MESS is usually used with a GUI. On GNU/Linux MAME / MESS can be invoced from the command line like:

* mame sg1000 -cart Io.sms
* mame sg1000m2 -cart Io.sms
* mame sg1000m3 -cart Io.sms
* mame sc3000 -cart Io.sms
* mame smsj -cart Io.sms

Philipp
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 7:38 am
Interesting, will give that a try tonight. (With Meka if you rename the rom to .sg it should adopt a memory map will less memory.)

I still need to wrap my head around the actual game rules!
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:59 pm
Unfortunately it doesn't work on SMS1 through Master Everdrive. I tried with VA1, VA3, 50Hz, 60Hz.

I can play it on an emulator, but I need to work out how to play first :)
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2017 8:09 am
I tried to test this ROM on my setup yesterday evening (I'm using a Master EverDrive on my SMS II fitted with a 50/60Hz switch).
Unfortunately all I got was a black screen and a continuous PSG tone :|
Of course I'm going to test the entry on an emulator but I wanted to let you know your entry doesn't work on hardware.

edit: ops, I didn't read preavious post...
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 3:59 pm
BKK wrote
Unfortunately it doesn't work on SMS1 through Master Everdrive. I tried with VA1, VA3, 50Hz, 60Hz.

I can play it on an emulator, but I need to work out how to play first :)


sverx wrote
I tried to test this ROM on my setup yesterday evening (I'm using a Master EverDrive on my SMS II fitted with a 50/60Hz switch).
Unfortunately all I got was a black screen and a continuous PSG tone :|
Of course I'm going to test the entry on an emulator but I wanted to let you know your entry doesn't work on hardware.

edit: ops, I didn't read preavious post...

This issue is also related to an odd filesize (also see: http://www.smspower.org/forums/post97313#97313).
But here it's the other way round. While old versions of the Master Everdrive OS seem to handle it properly, recent versions fail.
Padding the rom to a filesize that is a multiple of $4000 should fix it for recent versions of the Master Everdrive OS. Padding it to a multiple of $10000 should fix it for all versions of the Master Everdrive.
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 8:35 pm
why don't we try to fix the Master EverDrive OS?
we can try patching the current OS ROM, later I'll try again contacting Krikzz for the sources - an OS supported by the SMS Power! community would be a win-win condition for both.
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 12:26 pm
I found the time limit to be quite punishing but maybe I was not approaching things the right way. There are not many strategic games like this on sms so nice to see. Hope to see more progress.
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 9:59 am
I now have a first version that works on Sega hardware. It has been tested on a French SMS II and seems to work fine there. It has been tested on the Mark III, but does not work there (probably a sprite mask bit issue that will be fixed in the next version).

In MAME it works in emulation of at least the following machines: sg1000, sg1000m2, sg1000m3, sc3000, smsj, sms1, sms, smspal, smspaln.

Improvements since version 0.12:

0.15 (2017-06-04):
* Size optimization
* Fix handling of VDP regs 3 and 4 for Mark III hardware.
* Header for SMS BIOS support.

0.14 (2017-05-07):
* Savegame codes
* Fix late-game buffer-overflow bug
* Increased number of levels to 3
* Fix score calculation

0.13 (2017-03-27):
* Performance optimization in mode 4 sprite handling

Philipp
Io-0.15.sms.gz (24.95 KB)

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Post Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 11:16 am
Unfortunately it doesn't work on SMS1 through Master Everdrive. I tried with VA1, VA3, 50Hz, 60Hz.
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Post Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:06 pm
check EverDrive OS version - or just pad the file to 64KB
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