Forums

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

Quote

Long time ago, in an era of magic and monsters, of gods and legends, there was a peaceful land.
But an old prophecy was told. The angels came down to say the world will know an eternal dawn. The monsters will spread on the world bringing with them death and destruction.
To prevent such chaos, every century, the king gathers all heroes and adventurers of the realm. And send them to a crusade inside the dungeon of the Styx.
It is called the Stygian Quest.

Hey amazing game... I would never play this kind of games because I feel. lost between so many numbers and objects.....
But this is not the case, so I commited myself to play It.. found It more interesting that most AAA titles full of videos and nonsense, from a gamer poinr of view.

So.... Two questions (at this moment)
1. Found that music breaks when I continúe a game... Maybe is that, I have tryed It in génesis plus gx, in my mobile (later I Will play It in emulicious)
2. Blocked in level 6... Cannot kill the Monsters and. i do not found way to continúe ... i suppose I am missing something.... Right???

Great game! Sometimes the spiders kill me even when I have health to spare, and the amulet says I'll win. Is that a bug, or is it supposed to be this way? About the messages the player can read, I think the options to "read" or "attack" or whatever should appear before any message is displayed, so the player can choose not to read anything he already has read - and, personally, I think the game would feel more polished this way. Apart from these nitpicks, one of the best entries this year!

Thanks for feedbacks !

eruiz00 wrote

1. Found that music breaks when I continúe a game... Maybe is that, I have tryed It in génesis plus gx, in my mobile (later I Will play It in emulicious)

This is clearly a bug :), what Emulator do you use ? I do not have the same problem with Emulicious.

eruiz00 wrote

2. Blocked in level 6... Cannot kill the Monsters and. i do not found way to continúe ... i suppose I am missing something.... Right???

Ahah, sorry but this is a soft game-over ^^, in fact the game is not an RPG. It's a puzzle and you need to find the right sequence of actions to solve all the chapters.

You can check this video for an example of what path you need to choose for chapter 1 (it is an old version but the first chapter hasn't change since so it's still relevant) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGbDQrCgc2E

eruiz00 wrote

Hey amazing game... I would never play this kind of games because I feel. lost between so many numbers and objects.....
But this is not the case, so I commited myself to play It.. found It more interesting that most AAA titles full of videos and nonsense, from a gamer poinr of view.

Thanks a lot ! That is a great compliment !

mateusbond wrote

Sometimes the spiders kill me even when I have health to spare, and the amulet says I'll win.

Okay ! This is obviously another bug ! What emulator do you use ?

mateusbond wrote

About the messages the player can read, I think the options to "read" or "attack" or whatever should appear before any message is displayed, so the player can choose not to read anything he already has read - and, personally, I think the game would feel more polished this way.

Yes I understand, at the beginning it was like this, and maybe now I have the nearly-final version, I will take more time to polish all that kind of details. Thank for the feedback !

mateusbond wrote

Apart from these nitpicks, one of the best entries this year!

Thanks a lot ! :)

Naarshakta wrote

Okay ! This is obviously another bug ! What emulator do you use ?

I'm using Kega Fusion. Yeah, I know. I will check if the bug appears on more reliable emulators as soon as I have the time, than I'll tell you about it.

First chapter finished!!!!!
But.... Two things:
1. The first time I completed the chapter I began with so low energy that, even with the red potion, did not cant pass the level (ornI am wrong???)
2. The second time the Game freezed to black screen beforr printing the resume of the first stage

Continúe playing.... .

Yeah, confirmed.
If I load the Game on last screen of stage 1… kill the boss, get the axe and the other chest and then exit the screen to the previous level and return, then I can exit the stage without trouble...
But if I try to exit the stage without going back and returning then the Game freezes.

mateusbond wrote

I'm using Kega Fusion. Yeah, I know. I will check if the bug appears on more reliable emulators as soon as I have the time, than I'll tell you about it.

I tried the game on Emulicious and the bug happened again.

So far, this is my favorite! Great atmosphere, awesome graphics, nice music, interesting gameplay, lots of fun! Just finished the first chapter and decided to come here and praise it, great work!

This is astonishingly good. It looks like it's going to be something like Gauntlet but you've crafted a genius level puzzle game without it actually being mind bending.

The point at which I realised in chapter 1 I needed to go back to go forward sold me instantly. Love it.

Oh I'm playing on a UK SMS1 and I've not seen any of the small above bugs.

The music bug when loading a game happens on my Brazilian SMS2. Turning the music off and on again fixes it.

Interesting, I'll have to try further, my captured video certainly always has music and I continued a couple of times, although now I think about it, not after a full reset of the machine.

Great demo !!
I love your game, even if I can't finish the second level.
It really requires you to get involved but the puzzle side is really cool and create a different approach to the classic dungeon games.
It's a shame that the music slows down and speeds up at times. Hopefully this can be fixed in the future.
Great work, I can't wait to see the final version to dedicate myself to it.

This game is really good.

I was blown away by the opening graphics and had to double-check that it was indeed an SMS rather than a GG game. Also from a technical perspective you even avoided CRAM dots in the palette fades - very well done indeed for this sequence!

The gameplay proper is really addictive. I like the puzzle element of having to plan and think ahead. The Amulet idea which tells you the stats is really very interesting and I think it works very well as a game element.

Also the music, although simple, is *super* creepy, and puts a chill down my spine - really evokes the feel of being in a dungeon!

A few small notes:
- I agree with mateusbond that a confirmation dialog might be nice. Sometimes I've accidentally performed an action by moving into a space I didn't intend to, which is a pain. I guess the counter to this is that it is pretty cool when you have to carefully move around a room avoiding the enemies you *don't* want to fight, so I can see this working either way.
- I find the usage of button 1 vs. button 2 a little counterintuitive with respect to text paging - I think I would expect that button 1 should advance the text rather than 2, but I can't quite put my finger on why.
- Sometimes the music appears to get interrupted by other sounds, which make it seem like it's slowing down. Very hard to identify exactly when this happens, but I suspect it's most noticeable when there's a heavy tremolo or glissando effect that gets interrupted with an event.
- This is more about me than the game, but at one point I really screwed up because the first save point is so far back towards the beginning of the game that I died trying to get there! For a few seconds I was cursing that there wasn't another one later one :)

EDIT: oh also this is the only game this year apart from GoblinKartRescue I couldn't flash onto a 512KB chip to test on hardware. I know it doesn't affect most people, but would have loved if it had been just slightly more compressed!

willbritton wrote

- I agree with mateusbond that a confirmation dialog might be nice. Sometimes I've accidentally performed an action by moving into a space I didn't intend to, which is a pain. I guess the counter to this is that it is pretty cool when you have to carefully move around a room avoiding the enemies you *don't* want to fight, so I can see this working either way.

Actually, I was talking about the things the player can read, such as plates and NPCs, not the enemies. I prefer the action being the way it is, with "dangerous" movement where we have to pay attention not to press the button that will send us towards the stronger monsters. But, if possible, it would be nice to have both options, so different types of players could still enjoy the game.

Quote

1. Found that music breaks when I continúe a game... Maybe is that, I have tryed It in génesis plus gx, in my mobile (later I Will play It in emulicious)

Same problem with orginal hardware.

Wouah thanks you all !
I have really few time right now due to my personal family schedule BUT dont worry I read and take note of everyone feedback.
The core game is finished but I still have lot of work to make a really polished game.
I will answer with details in the future.
But be sûre that I read everyone comment ❤️

I'm probably missing something, but how can I use the pickaxe?

I encountered the same issues as some people in the previous comments.
I beat the first boss, and then when it was time to get out, the game froze on a black screen.
Then I restarted my save just before the boss, but the music wasn't working properly anymore and I still couldn't move on to the next level.
I'm playing on Emulicious at 60hz. Were those who encountered this problem also playing at 60hz?
The game is excellent other than that. I am sure that the final version will be a must have!!!

I tried the game and it is very well executed indeed. You get a good sense of the puzzle/strategy to move forwards. The opening artwork is really good ! And the dungeon visuals are great too. The dark/moody music is a great fit as well.

As far as I am concerned, there are too things I think would be nice to address in terms of presentation :
- not interrupting background animation when moving
- not interrupting the music when switching between screens

Both of these would help making the game feel perfectly polished. I don't know if you are using devkitsms ?

If that's the case, for movement you can simply have a dedicated waitForVBlank method that does SMS_waitForVBlank, then counts animation_cycles (global variable) and updates the visuals at certain thresholds (not all of them at once, for exemple update 4 tiles of candles at 60, 4 tiles of water at 61 etc...). And you always call this new method instead of the SMS_waitForVBlank.

For the music if you are using PSGLib, are you calling PSGFrame in an interrupt ? Because this would fix the issue I think.

Great game, very promising !

Great game, and a new concept I really like. Graphics and music are top-notch, even though the latter skips when swapping between game sand inventory for example.

Is it possible to maneuver oneself into a cul-de-sac? I’m in chapter 2 now, but I don’t see any way to get ahead. I always die. Would be unfortunate if it’s possible to save the game in an unwinnable state, but maybe I’m missing something?

Also, I’m clearly too stupid to find out how to use that amulet. If I push button 1, nothing happens, if I push button 2, the inventory comes up. What do I have to do?

Kagesan wrote

Also, I’m clearly too stupid to find out how to use that amulet. If I push button 1, nothing happens, if I push button 2, the inventory comes up. What do I have to do?

The amulet is automatic, when you open the inventory you can see the stats for each monster, and you know if you can hit them and how much health you'll lose fighting them. The pickaxe I don't know how to use, though.

Hello everybody !

First of all : thank you all for the feedback, I never imagined that the game would be so popular so thank you all.

I have noted multiples bugs :

- The black screen at the end of chapters. I didn't notice until now but I have it very often now lol :)
- The sound glitch at the title screen ( already fixed in my dev version )
- The music is not really smooth, I know. In fact I added the music when the game was almost finished so I never had the time ( for competition ) to make it more integrated.

For feedbacks :
- The "auto-speak" dialog for npcs ( and stuff ), you may imagine that I have worked on the two versions and I really didn't know wich type of interraction would be the best... I'm gonna re-try now with no "auto-speak" on the npcs and see what feeling I have.
- The button 1 / 2 may be counterintuitive ? Maybe yes ! It's the kind of stuff I need to dig into now the game is finished !

mateusbond wrote

Sometimes the spiders kill me even when I have health to spare, and the amulet says I'll win.

I never reproduce this situation for now... BUT I will continue to look into it.

cireza wrote

Two things I think would be nice to address in terms of presentation :
- not interrupting background animation when moving
- not interrupting the music when switching between screens

Oh yes ! I really want to do this don't worry. But I have to re-write some code to achieve that. The main reason the music stops when talking to NPC is : I did'nt have enough time to make it work like I want for the SMS Competition

cireza wrote

If that's the case, for movement you can simply have a dedicated waitForVBlank method that does SMS_waitForVBlank, then counts animation_cycles (global variable) and updates the visuals at certain thresholds (not all of them at once, for exemple update 4 tiles of candles at 60, 4 tiles of water at 61 etc...).

It is exactly the way it works, I planned to make it but ... time :)

willbritton wrote

EDIT: oh also this is the only game this year apart from GoblinKartRescue I couldn't flash onto a 512KB chip to test on hardware. I know it doesn't affect most people, but would have loved if it had been just slightly more compressed!

I'm sorry but I really can't do more than what you have :( in fact the final version may be heavier because I want to add more music inside :x

chirinea wrote

I'm probably missing something, but how can I use the pickaxe?

You need to find a wall that can be breaked... Sometimes it's obvious, sometime it's well hidden and sometimes you will find some NPC to give you a hint :)

Kagesan wrote

Is it possible to maneuver oneself into a cul-de-sac? I’m in chapter 2 now, but I don’t see any way to get ahead. I always die. Would be unfortunate if it’s possible to save the game in an unwinnable state, but maybe I’m missing something?

In fact, yes it is. The problem is I cannot know if you are in dead-lock gameover so... Yeah, you can have your saves to be all in soft gameover.
What I can say is : each chapter can be completed on it's own. If you finish a Chapter, not matter what life / stats you have, you SHOULD be able to finish the chapter ( if not, it's a bug lol ). This is achieved by adding more / less potions inside the chapter depending on your starting life.

Kagesan wrote

Great game, and a new concept I really like.

The concept is not entirely new, and certainly not mine :), I took my inspiration ( well... I almost copied the gameplay tbh... ) on a quite unknown game that I LOVED back in 1998 ( and still love ) : Tower of the Sorcerer. If you like StygianQuest , just go check it !

Finally I want to say that the game is difficult, I made it to be difficult.
There is 10 chapters of 10 boards, I know it's a lot and maybe I will be the only one to know about but I wanted a game where you need to invest yourself, where you need to search and discover secrets and items. For all the love I have for SMS, games are too short so I wanted to change that :)

Naarshakta wrote

I never reproduce this situation for now... BUT I will continue to look into it.

To tell you the truth, I am not able to reproduce it myself anymore. Maybe I had misread the numbers before?

Naarshakta wrote

You need to find a wall that can be breaked... Sometimes it's obvious, sometime it's well hidden and sometimes you will find some NPC to give you a hint :)

I figured that much, but the thing is: when I find it, what should I do? Just press in the direction the wall is? Do I need to select the pickaxe first? Do I have to press a button? That part isn't clear for me.

chirinea wrote

I figured that much, but the thing is: when I find it, what should I do? Just press in the direction the wall is? Do I need to select the pickaxe first? Do I have to press a button? That part isn't clear for me.

Just press in the direction the wall is :)

For example, in chapter 1 level 6 I suggest you to run into this wall :

secret.png (26.03 KB)

I played the game for almost two hours now, it's really good and surprisingly well balanced. Every time I think I am stuck I eventually find a way to make progress.

It feels odd in the UI that when you reach the right-most "system" menu you cannot leave it with the same left/right controls. The last entry "Save & Quit" is a little confusing as 1) "Save" here is for saving settings data only (not game data) and 2) I would expect "Quit" to exit to title screen rather than go back to the game. So I reckon perhaps this screen could be redesigned.

There are quite some English mistakes, I am sure if you post the script somewhere people would help you to fix the English here and there.. but otherwise I suppose that makes it charming :)

Great game! I've been watching the progress of this game via youtube, and it has come a long way!

Bock wrote

It feels odd in the UI that when you reach the right-most "system" menu you cannot leave it with the same left/right controls. The last entry "Save & Quit" is a little confusing as 1) "Save" here is for saving settings data only (not game data) and 2) I would expect "Quit" to exit to title screen rather than go back to the game. So I reckon perhaps this screen could be redesigned.

Yes, I added this screen in rush before Competition :D so I planned to redesign it.

Bock wrote

There are quite some English mistakes, I am sure if you post the script somewhere people would help you to fix the English here and there.. but otherwise I suppose that makes it charming :)

I also plan to create a way ( google doc maybe ) to have people contribute to the localisation :)

Hi Naarshakta - awesome entry - it is obvious you have put a look of hard work into this game - great graphics and really like the box art also - and the game is localized in multiple languages - great work! - I don't think we see this much extra effort from the usability perspective - well done

Just finished level 2. This game is wild, I'm totally hooked!

Couple of issues I keep coming up against:
1. Most annoyingly the game crashes sometimes between levels, i.e. the screen goes black and everything freezes, need to reboot. This happens quite readily when entering the portal between levels, but I've also seen it happen when saving / loading. I'm playing on Emulicious.
2. Seemingly under similar circumstances, the music gets stuck on a single note, but the game still works. There is a fix for this which is to go into the game settings via button 1, turn the music off, save the settings, turn the music back on again and save. This is enough to recover it.

I'm curious how many levels you've written here, but no spoilers please, I want to keep going until I beat the thing.

Level 2 was a lot of (mental) work for me. It took me a long long time to realise the significance of the upgrade system and I'm still not sure I've optimised my strategy but we'll see...

I was looking at the yellow title text and was thinking it could use better antialiasing.

Basically dark brown color is missing, which is actually already in the palette.

I upscaled it with Scalefx and then downscaled it again. The result is not bad, but it can be improved further with manual tweaks (top of S for example).

StygianQuest-SMS-1.0-_Scalefx_256x192.png (4.92 KB)

willbritton wrote

1. Most annoyingly the game crashes sometimes between levels, i.e. the screen goes black and everything freezes, need to reboot. This happens quite readily when entering the portal between levels, but I've also seen it happen when saving / loading. I'm playing on Emulicious.
2. Seemingly under similar circumstances, the music gets stuck on a single note, but the game still works. There is a fix for this which is to go into the game settings via button 1, turn the music off, save the settings, turn the music back on again and save. This is enough to recover it.

Yes Im working on thoses bugs I have it too and Its not major bug I found unfortunatly 😱 I have already fixed some of them but I am still digging... The version 1.1 with all corrections is on the tracks I will publish it as soon as I Can 😶.

But thanks you for playing and enjoying👍 I Hope you will not be blocked by other bugs I found🤦🏻

willbritton wrote

I'm curious how many levels you've written here, but no spoilers please, I want to keep going until I beat the thing.

Not a spoiler but the answer to that question is written on the cover 😉

Just finished level 3!

Another little issue found: on the very last screen, with all the green mushrooms, sometimes I managed to get into a situation where the game wouldn't let me move into the top two rows of the screen. Haven't really managed to figure out what causes it to happen, but presumably something about the nature of the puzzle on that screen.

Hello everybody,

I wanted to publish an update version 1.1. It fixes multiple bugs but the main fix is the black screen bug when going through a Portal.

I hope it's a more stable version...
I still have sound artifacts sometimes and I don't know why really. I will keep this bug in my sight.

Hope everybody will enjoy it :)

PS : vote for Stygian Quest if you think it deserves it :p
PS2 : @Maxim can I request the rights to edit the StygianQuest Page thank ^^ ?

StygianQuest-SMS-1.1.zip (248.46 KB)

Nice one, glad to hear that black screen bug has been fixed.
I'm using 1.1 now, and also on to level 5. Game seems to play fine so far, although it seems to me the music slows down a little more than with 1.0; could be just my imagination though.

One thing I noticed was that I didn't immediately get the new music for the Magic chapter - I still got the music from the previous level until I visited the game settings screen and then it suddenly started playing the right track.

Really good game but very, very difficult. I managed to beat level 2 but then discovered I didn't have enough health to get past the first few enemies on level 3!

edwithmj wrote

Really good game but very, very difficult. I managed to beat level 2 but then discovered I didn't have enough health to get past the first few enemies on level 3!

I might have misunderstood, but Naarshakta made a comment above which seemed to imply that should be impossible, because the game should be spawning enough health to ensure you can finish the level.

Are you talking about floors 20-29? If so, can you get to the Dark Angel? If you can, that might help...

First and foremost, congratulations on this entry. It's a pretty solid one! Been playing the game for several hours now, I'm currently trying to solve the final puzzle on chapter 4 so I can beat the boss, but almost everything seems to be flowing nice, with most of the issues already covered by the people above me.

You weren't lying when you said the game was difficult. There's a lot of thinking ahead involved, as well as replaying stuff because we're inevitably becoming stuck at some point, since some things are trial and error.

But I'd like to mention two things that got my attention:
1) The final page on the menu

Bock wrote

It feels odd in the UI that when you reach the right-most "system" menu you cannot leave it with the same left/right controls. The last entry "Save & Quit" is a little confusing as 1) "Save" here is for saving settings data only (not game data) and 2) I would expect "Quit" to exit to title screen rather than go back to the game. So I reckon perhaps this screen could be redesigned.

This really needs fixing. TBH, I'd remove it altogether. I know we're in 2024, but this is a game made for a system that's almost 40 y.o. Some modern QoL features are not really needed. Leave it as an option only on the title screen, we'll be fine without having it in-game. What was needed, and I believe you nailed it, is the save system. I replayed some dungeons (3rd and 4th so far especially) more than I'd like to admit, and if this was made like the devs did in the 80s, I'd probably have given up on it by now.

2) Regarding chests

I had some chests exploding on me, even if I had checked the content beforehand and found that they should have gold instead. Is it a bug or an intended mechanic? Also, I also had chests exploding in some runs that were not exploding in previous runs, meaning I couldn't even memorize what to open safely. So I repeat the question: bug or intended mechanic?

And, to finish, something out of curiosity:
It is possible to get these goodies marked inside the green circle in the image below? I tried pretty much everything I thought possible, including using the pickaxe, but got nothing.

Stygian Quest-02.png (12.13 KB)

Locked goodies

fabioriato wrote

Bock wrote

It feels odd in the UI that when you reach the right-most "system" menu you cannot leave it with the same left/right controls. The last entry "Save & Quit" is a little confusing as 1) "Save" here is for saving settings data only (not game data) and 2) I would expect "Quit" to exit to title screen rather than go back to the game. So I reckon perhaps this screen could be redesigned.

This really needs fixing. TBH, I'd remove it altogether. I know we're in 2024, but this is a game made for a system that's almost 40 y.o. Some modern QoL features are not really needed. Leave it as an option only on the title screen, we'll be fine without having it in-game.

Personally I'd disagree with this, I at least like having the option of turning the music off (without having to use a valuable save slot and quitting out to do so). This is exacerbated by the current problems with music corrupting still in v1.1 which necessitates using this menu to disable and re-enable the music to fix it.

To be honest I think the simple fix here is to have a button 2 option which cancels the screen, together with optionally changing the slightly misleading menu label about saving and quitting.

fabioriato wrote

I had some chests exploding on me, even if I had checked the content beforehand and found that they should have gold instead. Is it a bug or an intended mechanic? Also, I also had chests exploding in some runs that were not exploding in previous runs, meaning I couldn't even memorize what to open safely. So I repeat the question: bug or intended mechanic?

I've also been curious about this - I had assumed that the purpose of inspecting a chest is to see whether or not it's an exploder but apparently the magnifying glass can't tell you that.
I hadn't noticed any significant number of chests which had inconsistent exploding behaviour. Only once early on I thought that a chest which originally exploded turned out to contain loot, but I never managed to reproduce it, so I chalked it up to my bad memory!

Perhaps it's part of the supposed mechanics of making all levels solvable - if you start low on health then some of the exploding chests contain potion instead?

Anyway, I don't really see the point of exploding chests other than to irritate. I just learn where they are and use save points to restore and avoid them, which is a bit of a grind.

willbritton wrote

Perhaps it's part of the supposed mechanics of making all levels solvable - if you start low on health then some of the exploding chests contain potion instead?

It's exactly how it's work :)

There are very few real annoying trapped chest in the game :) but there are many variables chests that adjust their behaviour to the life you have at the beginning of the Chapter.

For the tip : each Chapter should be possible to clear with 1 Life but to adjust a little bit the game I used variables chests.

Not the best idea I had to be honnest...

I was just thinking to do something a little bit different :
The variables chests could be empty rather than being trapped if you don't need extra life ( less annoying ) and I could add variables monsters and/or tile traps depending on your life.

This could be a better option.

Sometimes I'm so focused on development that the obvious things escape my mind... Inspecting the Chest SHOULD obviously tells you if the chest if trapped or not...

I added this to change for the next version ( 1.2 I hope )

Along with the settings screen that I am currently working on :)

fabioriato wrote

And, to finish, something out of curiosity:
It is possible to get these goodies marked inside the green circle in the image below? I tried pretty much everything I thought possible, including using the pickaxe, but got nothing.

This chest is unobtainable, it's a bait for the trap :)

fabioriato wrote

First and foremost, congratulations on this entry. It's a pretty solid one! Been playing the game for several hours now

Thank you ! Every feedback is welcome and I take notice of everything :)

Naarshakta wrote

willbritton wrote

Perhaps it's part of the supposed mechanics of making all levels solvable - if you start low on health then some of the exploding chests contain potion instead?

It's exactly how it's work :)

Aha!

Naarshakta wrote

Not the best idea I had to be honnest...

Actually I think it's a very clever idea, but maybe some small refinement needed to make it play more fairly.

Naarshakta wrote

I was just thinking to do something a little bit different :
The variables chests could be empty rather than being trapped if you don't need extra life ( less annoying ) and I could add variables monsters and/or tile traps depending on your life.

This could be a better option.

My opinion: empty chests is better than trapped chests which are undetectable, but if you fix it so that the magnifying glass can find the trapped chests (as you say in next version) then I think that's even better than empty chests, because it means the player has to make a decision whether to trade coins for magnifying glass, so it's a little bit of a puzzle.
Alternatively, using monsters instead of variable chests is interesting too, because there's always a decision to be made whether to try and fight each monster or leave them alive, particularly as the chapter progresses, so that might also add to the puzzle element.

Finished chapter 5 yesterday (do I have my terminology right - that's floors 40-49?) for the second time, having gone back to solve it a different way after the first time.

Very interesting that one, I'm not quite sure I fully understood what I was doing, and also not sure whether there's a "bug" with one of the clues. Don't want to give any spoilers, but the clue reads "3E 2N 4S 4N etc." and I think maybe the 2N and the 4S are the wrong way round?

Anyway, I'm going to do my voting soon, and without saying explicitly what I'm giving this game, I don't mind saying that I think this is some of the most fun I've had playing a game on this system. Probably not since playing Asterix have I spent so much time trying to complete a game, and the more I play, the more astounded I am by the effort that must have gone into this. I am curious @Naarshakta - I presume you designed all the levels yourself, as they don't appear to be cloned directly from the level designs in Tower of the Sorcerer? I feel like it must have taken as long if not longer to design the levels than to build the engine!

I feel honored you enjoy it so much ^^

To answer the question : YES I designed all the levels myself. I just took the game system of Tower of the Sorcerer but I wanted to tell my own story ^^

And yes, it took me time. I started the development in 2021 so It's not a big deal, I just had time to make things as good as I wanted to be ^^

Thank you for the comments and the feedbacks. Do not hesitate to tell everything you think accurate about the game.

I do not implement all the suggestions but I read them all :)

PS : for the Clue, this is not a typo :p

This is an impressive work and probably one of the most expansive project I've seen developed here in these past years. Hats off!
Running on Emulicious, I did notice recurring CPU spikes and I tried to understand what was causing those - I suspect it's because you're not staggering the screen updates. I have no idea if this really matters on hardware, and I can't test on my SMS II at the moment, but I feel this can be improved by performing just certain amounts of updates per frame.
Also, fast VRAM updates are available during vblank, but it seems to me you're using only slow updates. There's an advantage here that can be used to make the whole experience much smoother.

Hello svrex,

I notice the lags during drawing the animated tiles and I fixed it.
It was because I am STUPID lol my function was redrawing ALL the tiles not only the necessary tiles...

Now I draw 6 tiles / frames and it is waaay more fluid :)

1.2 coming very very soon

Here it comes : Version 1.2 ( and final version for the competition )

- Fixed performance issues
- Lens now tells you if a Chest is trapped
- Settings screen redesign

StygianQuest-SMS-1.2.zip (248.73 KB)

This is awesome :D

I remember spending plenty of time playing Tower of the Sorcerer way back when. It's great to see something new with similar mechanics come to the Master System :3

Forums

View topic - [Coding competition 2024] Stygian Quest by Naarshakta

Rate this entry!