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https://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/SKBN-SMS

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Yes, yes, another Sokoban clone.. But this one has lost its vowels ;-)

SKBN is a sokoban clone called SKBN. The 128kB ROM contains the 1043 levels of the Microban and Sasquatch level sets created by David W. Skinner.

In this project, I focused mostly on making sure that all levels of those sets would be playable, even large ones.

To achieve this, the engine supports different tile sizes: 16x16, 12x12, 8x8 and 4x4. The 12x12 engine was the most challenging, as the two grids of 8x8 tiles (native) and 12x12 tiles (virtual) create interesting complications, combining
vertical and/or horizontal splits. The required tiles are built on-the-fly while displaying and playing the level.
The 4x4 engine is useful for previews, but also for very large levels. Those may not be very playable unless you use
an emulator or an RGB-connected display. I would like to add support for 24x24 tiles, but the level sets I included do not contain such small puzzles.. Maybe in a future version.

The in-game menu has options to undo a move or the last push. The history can hold 1000 moves.

Of course, solving more than 1000 levels in one session is unthinkable (probably) so the completion status of the levels is saved in SRAM, or directly on flash, if the game is running on a compatible cartridge.

I did not have time to compose music for the title screen, but I did manage to include sound effects for walking and pushing crates.

Tested on real hardware using a Japanese SMS and a US Megadrive.

Wow

How much work you are done here... Not only for the screens (i know, it is easy to get all them in text format or even in custom binary format) i am talking about the additional modes on big screens.

Liked the parallax effect when you finish a level and the menus in general.

Well done!

Great game and great work ! Hours and hours of play! I really like the menu management, the idea to undo the last action, the variable size of the play area and saving method.

All this give a very PC feeling to this Sokoban. it's impressive !

Great version of Sokoban. I really like the idea with the differently sized blocks. Creating 12x12 and 4x4 mode must have caused some headscratching. Great work.

My only complaint would be that the game doesn't ease you in exactly, as the puzzles are fiendishly difficult from the get-go.

eruiz00 wrote

Liked the parallax effect when you finish a level and the menus in general.

Yes! I may have to steal that for my mermaid game . ;-)

Kagesan wrote

Great version of Sokoban. I really like the idea with the differently sized blocks. Creating 12x12 and 4x4 mode must have caused some headscratching. Great work.

Yes, that was quite a challenge, the kind that I like! I did the 12x12 mode twice (my first attempt failed) and after that the 4x4 mode was easy.

Kagesan wrote

My only complaint would be that the game doesn't ease you in exactly, as the puzzles are fiendishly difficult from the get-go.

The easiest levels should be in the Microban 1 set. Did you try those? Sorry, it's difficult to judge difficulty, I have played too much Sokoban in my life... But there are (said to be) easier levels I just added in v1.1!

Hello!

I built a new version with additional levels and various small corrections:

- Added a short "end level" jingle.
- Added "Dimitry & Yorick" and "Sokogen-990602" level sets by Jacques Duthen (Easy levels)
- Fixed the "parallax" effect at the end of a level (was not well controlled and jittery on real hardware).
- Corrected initial player position (was not centered until first movement)
- Fine tuned player sprite position in 12x12 tiles levels (was a bit too low)
- Removed the debug info (number in upper right corner) in 12x12 tile display mode

I noticed some most levels in the new sets are small enough to be displayed with 24x24 tiles. This will be in v1.2!

skbn-12.png (4.36 KB)

Menu with new levels

skbn-11.png (7.67 KB)

SKBN Version 1.1 Title

skbn-v1.1.zip (115.16 KB)

SKBN version 1.1

eruiz00 wrote

Wow

How much work you are done here... Not only for the screens (i know, it is easy to get all them in text format or even in custom binary format) i am talking about the additional modes on big screens.

Liked the parallax effect when you finish a level and the menus in general.

Well done!

Guy wrote

Great game and great work ! Hours and hours of play! I really like the menu management, the idea to undo the last action, the variable size of the play area and saving method.

All this give a very PC feeling to this Sokoban. it's impressive !

Thanks! The additional modes, especially the 12x12 mode was a fun challenge and part of the reason I chose this game project. I wanted to try doing this!

The great thing with Sokoban is that there are so many level collections available. Much more than I could ever hope to create. I did not design any of the levels, I simply used sets that can be freely distributed, but sets I had never played (or played a very long time ago and forgot).

When I'll be done coding, I'll sit down and have fun playing all those levels for the first time!

raphnet wrote

- Added "Dimitry & Yorick" and "Sokogen-990602" level sets by Jacques Duthen (Easy levels)

Thank you! Some levels I can actually solve.

I seem to have encountered two minor bugs:

1. If you solve the last level displayed in the list and then scroll down, the following levels all appear marked as solved even though they are not.

2. In the preview, a target square will not be shown as such if the player's starting position is on top of it.

A new version is now available.

Changes:
- Added a 24x24 tiles mode.
- Boxes now move smoothly, in-sync with the player when pushed. (instead of teleporting).
- Reworked the player artwork and other small cosmetic details.
- Corrected a bug which caused unsolved levels to show as solved in the menu when scrolling.
- Display "player on target" correctly during previews.

Thank you Kagesan for reporting the last two issues above!

About the 24x24 mode... I wrote in the initial description that there were no levels that small in the sets I initially included, but for some reason I was wrong! It turns out most Microban levels do fit!

It may not matter much today, with emulators and sharp RGB monitors, but I like to think that if this game had been made back then, large tile modes would have been an important feature for this game, for clarity on the typical home user RF-connected TV set...

skbn-13.png (3.32 KB)

Level played in 24x24 mode

skbn-03.png (3.61 KB)

Level preview in 16x16 mode

skbn-v1.2.zip (121.4 KB)

Thank you, page updated: https://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/SKBN-SMS

This is GREAT. The definitive Sokoban - huge amount of levels and almost unlimited undo! Great work on the different size engines, I'm sure the 12×12 should have been everything but straightforward.

Minor technical note: never write any text onto the leftmost column on screen, many TVs don't show that (at all / or anyway a part of it). In fact, title/art screens apart, you better forget it exists ;)

Version 1.3 is now available!

Changes:
- Added a "Well Done" message when a level is solved.
- Fix a bug where the player could move in diagonal, and undoing the last move would then remove a wall block and add a new box to the level!
- Move the Level number in the status bar one column to the right to avoid displaying text in the first column.
- Small tweaks to the tile screen (sharper box corner, black contour)

welldone.png (3.38 KB)

title_v1.3.png (7.66 KB)

skbn-v1.3.zip (125.22 KB)

I love a good use of the sprite zoom feature, and this is good use because there are only max 4 on each scanline, thus working around the original SMS VDP's infamous zoomed sprites bug.

[also, unfortunately MD users won't see zoomed sprites too - but who cares? :P ]

I gave this a quick test last night and ended up losing hours to it.

Extraordinary work.

Nice game with tons of levels [how long did they take to design?]. I'm not sure if I'm doing things right but undo last move / push didn't seem to do anything?? I think I'd be a bit quicker if maybe button 1 was for in game menu and button 2 for in game [general] undo action i.e. without popup menu. PS: is the player sprite meant to disappear when the in game menu appears? Thanks

SteveProXNA wrote

Nice game with tons of levels [how long did they take to design?]. I'm not sure if I'm doing things right but undo last move / push didn't seem to do anything?? I think I'd be a bit quicker if maybe button 1 was for in game menu and button 2 for in game [general] undo action i.e. without popup menu. PS: is the player sprite meant to disappear when the in game menu appears? Thanks

I don't know, I did not design the levels, I used free levels available on the net. My job was limited to writing a tool to parse, compress and convert to a binary format suitable for the game.

I tried to make consistent button use throughout the game. This is what I came up with:

Button 1: Validate a choice in the menu (i.e. open the selected level set, play the selected level, etc)
Button 2: Go back or cancel (return to previous menu/title screen)

When playing a level, button 2 opens the menu. Since it is a menu, button 1 is what selects the action (for instance, undo a move). Pressing button 2 when the menu is open simply closes the menu, going back to the game without performing any action.

When playing a level, pressing button 1 (action button) by itself does nothing since there are multiple possible actions. But two shortcuts are available. While holding down button 1, press the D-Pad in the Down or left direction to under the last push or move respectively. (I tried to communicate the availability of those shortcuts through the in-game menu).

Yes, the player sprite disappearing is "intentional", in the sense that I had to hide it since the menu is drawn using normal background tiles. I can't set the priority bit on these, otherwise the arrow sprite used within the menu would be hidden. (I thought of hiding the player or not depending on its position, but there are cases where it would be half-covered by the menu...)

SteveProXNA wrote

I think I'd be a bit quicker if maybe button 1 was for in game menu and button 2 for in game [general] undo action i.e. without popup menu.

Since my previous post I have been thinking... why did I need two types of undos easily accessible in-game? If I only kept one (the undo "move") I could do as you suggest, and I think it would indeed be more natural. I'll give it a try.

Undo push is nice when you walked far from the last pushed crate and realize you shouldn't have pushed it as the player automatically walks back 100 steps if it has to, then "unpushes" the crate. But in practice, this is rare, so opening the menu only in those cases only seems reasonable.

Ah... user interface design is difficult!

raphnet wrote

Yes, the player sprite disappearing is "intentional", in the sense that I had to hide it since the menu is drawn using normal background tiles. I can't set the priority bit on these, otherwise the arrow sprite used within the menu would be hidden.

You could either use a background tile for the arrow (instead of a sprite arrow) or have an arrow sprite on top of solid sprites of the same color of the background on top of every other sprite on screen. Just saying ;)

raphnet wrote

Ah... user interface design is difficult!

Yeah - I ask a UX designer for ideas sometimes as can be tricky... I was just trying to shout out some options... the game is nice and the overall feedback is really positive... well done!

The original author of the levels has kindly pointed out that I misspelled Dimitri in "Dimitri & Yorick" :-O

So in this version, only one byte has changed ;-)

title_v1.4.png (7.65 KB)

skbn-v1.4.zip (125.2 KB)

After about a year of working part time on this project, version 2 is finally ready!

- Added 100 raphnet levels (mostly very easy)
- Added more levels by Jacques Duthen, previously unpublished: Sokogen-990702, Sokogen-990917, and Sokogen-991123
- Updated the title screen
- Added options and credits screens
- Added themes: New (V2), Mac and Ksoko. V1 theme still available.
- Changed keys in-game: Button 1 opens the menu, Button 2 undos the last push.
- Support for point mode (with path finding)
- Support for the Sports Pad and the Mega Mouse
- Added background music (can be turned off in the options)

In the first version, what I had fun with was displaying levels with 4x4 and 12x12 tiles on SMS hardware. This time, I had fun with path finding (so you can just point to the destination and the character moves there) and adding support for the Sports Pad and Mega Mouse as pointing devices.

I was pleasantly surprised by the the Sports Pad. My experience with it, using the Sports Pad Soccer game was far from good... but it turned out to work very well when used as Trackball to move a pointer!

Anyone with Sega Mouse (the one with only two colored buttons) or a North American Sports Pad? I have not tested with those. (I only have a Japanese Sports Pad and the American Mega Mouse for Genesis)..

skbn-v2-1.png (6.77 KB)

skbn-v2-5.png (3.29 KB)

skbn-v2-6.png (4.69 KB)

skbn-v2-16.png (3.45 KB)

skbn-v2-10.png (3.71 KB)

skbn-v2-11.png (3.04 KB)

skbn-v2.zip (186.71 KB)

I recorded a video of the new version:

And this one shows an example where a level is solved using the new "Point mode"

Today I designed box artwork for SKBN, for emulator frontends etc or for making your own box.

Full size image and PDF can be downloaded from my website:
https://www.raphnet.net/programmation/skbn/index_en.php#7

The fake box was rendered using Maxim’s POV-Ray Box
https://www.smspower.org/maxim/Misc/POV-RayBox

skbn-box-art-small.png (246.09 KB)

skbn-box.png (42.57 KB)

looks awesome!!

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