Forums

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

Quote

You’ve secured pole position and you’re clear of the field. But this is Monaco and a
momentary lapse of concentration could mean the difference between certain victory and failure. Not to mention, you’ll have to navigate your way around the backmarkers, and some of them seem less than keen to move aside. Prove to them that you are the true Monaco Master!

This game originally started out as an attempt to recreate a simple traffic dodging game called 'Autobahn' that I originally made in College (aka High School depending where you're from :-P) when I was 16. While that game was a text only affair and ran in the command prompt, I thought I'd try and flesh it out into a 'proper' game for the Master System, even if the gameplay itself is more akin to an SG-1000 title...

simple,additctive gameplay, very polished graphics and music, I love it!

kamillebidan wrote

simple,additctive gameplay, very polished graphics and music, I love it!

I'm glad you like it ^_^

It's noteworthy (my standard music joke) that the game has FM music! The tunes are very catchy. Nice to see smooth scrolling cars (sprites?) without flicker.
Looks very complete. Respect that you we able to code, compose and draw the whole game.

slogra wrote

It's noteworthy (my standard music joke) that the game has FM music! The tunes are very catchy. Nice to see smooth scrolling cars (sprites?) without flicker.
Looks very complete. Respect that you we able to code, compose and draw the whole game.

Thanks, although in reality there actually is sprite flicker, the demo video is using an emulator :-P

Bravo it's very rare and very nice to include an FM soundtrack in a homebrew.

I saw via the soundtest that you use PSG + FM. Respect. This gives an overview of what SMS, well exploited and with the appropriate extensions, could have produced.

On the game itself we are on a basic concept that pays homage to first generation games on SMS. This remains very effective, you could perhaps add some effects to simulate the movement of the wheels (pallet or other). To give even more feeling of speed.

A very cool hombrew !

Guy wrote

This remains very effective, you could perhaps add some effects to simulate the movement of the wheels (pallet or other). To give even more feeling of speed.

I completely agree that animation on the wheels would be a nice addition. I'm still not completely used to using palettes yet (it's still a new concept for me!) which is why I didn't end up implementing any kind of sprite animation unfortunately.

I did get a comment saying that a Game Gear version would be nice due it's short and simple gameplay, so on the off chance that I do ever make a Game Gear version, it's definitely something I'll try and implement :)

Nice job - graphics are really nice and real smooth vertical scrolling. The music is awesome - FM mod chip?? It would be cool to persist the hi scores across game sessions - classic racing game - you always want to beat the latest hi-score. Well done

This game has a very nice Game & Watch quality to it. It’s also hellishly addictive. I wonder if you could have avoided the sprite flicker in mode 3 if you had rendered the wall of cars via background tiles instead of sprites.

Some sound effects and maybe a crash animation would enhance the game immensely, imo.

The music rocks! How did you do it? Did you get around trying Moonblaster despite your initial reluctance or did you find another way of implementing FM sound?

Kagesan wrote

This game has a very nice Game & Watch quality to it. It’s also hellishly addictive. I wonder if you could have avoided the sprite flicker in mode 3 if you had rendered the wall of cars via background tiles instead of sprites.

Some sound effects and maybe a crash animation would enhance the game immensely, imo.

The music rocks! How did you do it? Did you get around trying Moonblaster despite your initial reluctance or did you find another way of implementing FM sound?

I originally wanted to have the game running using tiles as it started out as a text only game so would've worked quite nicely. The problem is the speed at which the cars move at would cause horrific slowdown issues as just drawing a score bigger than 100 causes slowdown! The last 0 is actually part of the background so I could delay the slowdown from starting for a while (yeah this entire game is kinda bodged together) :-P

I did consider adding sound effects but decided against it as I feel like it would be nothing more than a droning engine sound and repeated overtaking noises like in Monaco GP on the SG-1000, and I find the sound in that game kinda irratating. That being said, sound effects when the level increases (i.e. the cars speed up) or if you beat the high score might be nice additions (as would a crash animation like you mentioned).

As for the music... yeah I had to learn how to use Moonblaster as there was no other way to implement FM >_<
I do like how PSGlib and MBMlib can run perfectly in sync though as it made FM + PSG music possible, even though I designed each version to be played seperately (hence why FM + PSG has to be manually enabled in the sound test).

SteveProXNA wrote

Nice job - graphics are really nice and real smooth vertical scrolling. The music is awesome - FM mod chip?? It would be cool to persist the hi scores across game sessions - classic racing game - you always want to beat the latest hi-score. Well done

Thanks :)

Yeah the music supports PSG, FM, or both at the same time ^_^
It's quite rare for homebrew games to have FM music and since I spend a lot of time making music for various old platforms, I really wanted to go all out on the music side!

Absolutely adorable, does exactly what it's supposed to.

The only problem I have with it I don't think you can avoid. The LCD "parent" games go in steps so if you've passed something you've passed it. I lose most of my lives in this by clipping the front of another car as I move across.

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

Thanks, although in reality there actually is sprite flicker, the demo video is using an emulator :-P

Yeah, I've capturing these off original hardware because frankly I consider it the respect the effort deserves and I indeed see flicker in mode 3.

Nothing remotely affecting gameplay mind.

Yesterzine wrote

Absolutely adorable, does exactly what it's supposed to.

The only problem I have with it I don't think you can avoid. The LCD "parent" games go in steps so if you've passed something you've passed it. I lose most of my lives in this by clipping the front of another car as I move across.

Yeah I can understand your frustration there a bit, as even overlapping by a single pixel is enough to cause a crash. Although, in actual F1 even the slightest bit of contact can often cause race ending punctures ;)

A Game Gear port is now available! Some changes had to be made to accomodate the smaller screen resolution (no HUD, zoomed in playfield and increased spacing between the rows of cars), but hopefully it's still a playable experience.

Additionally, both the SMS and GG versions now have animated wheels!

You can download both versions here:
https://louistheseganerd.itch.io/monaco-master

Nice straightforward fun game, very well executed, and absolutely banging soundtrack.

As others have commented, I reckon you could have figured out some clever way to avoid the sprite flicker somehow, but like yesterzine points out it doesn't affect the gameplay.

The two player mode is simply incredible.

willbritton wrote

The two player mode is simply incredible.

Ah I was wondering if someone was gonna give that mode a go :)

Another well-put-together game, I get a solid arcade feel from it.

Even if the concept is simple, I think this is a very fun game! I really like the fact that you can not only choose a car, but also select a music track!

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

A Game Gear port is now available! Some changes had to be made to accomodate the smaller screen resolution (no HUD, zoomed in playfield and increased spacing between the rows of cars), but hopefully it's still a playable experience.

Additionally, both the SMS and GG versions now have animated wheels!

You can download both versions here:
https://louistheseganerd.itch.io/monaco-master

Have added GG version to wiki and updated SMS version.

willbritton wrote

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

A Game Gear port is now available! Some changes had to be made to accomodate the smaller screen resolution (no HUD, zoomed in playfield and increased spacing between the rows of cars), but hopefully it's still a playable experience.

Additionally, both the SMS and GG versions now have animated wheels!

You can download both versions here:
https://louistheseganerd.itch.io/monaco-master

Have added GG version to wiki and updated SMS version.

Hi, in the readme file I mentioned not to repost any of the files from the itch.io version so please don't just post direct download links here :)

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

Hi, in the readme file I mentioned not to repost any of the files from the itch.io version so please don't just post direct download links here :)

Ah apologies, I misunderstood that comment in the readme.
Not quite sure what you would prefer - should I revert the SMS wiki page to how it was before, with the previous version, or would you prefer the attachments removed completely from the wiki pages? Note that I don't think it's possible to have the wiki pages link directly to itch.io, at least not from the regular version "boxes", only as a text link in the body of the wiki page itself.

willbritton wrote

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

Hi, in the readme file I mentioned not to repost any of the files from the itch.io version so please don't just post direct download links here :)

Ah apologies, I misunderstood that comment in the readme.
Not quite sure what you would prefer - should I revert the SMS wiki page to how it was before, with the previous version, or would you prefer the attachments removed completely from the wiki pages? Note that I don't think it's possible to have the wiki pages link directly to itch.io, at least not from the regular version "boxes", only as a text link in the body of the wiki page itself.

I think the best thing to do would be to leave the sms/gg files on here, but delete the changelog and readme files and I'll create an smspower specific readme with a link to the itch.io page :)

raphnet wrote

Even if the concept is simple, I think this is a very fun game! I really like the fact that you can not only choose a car, but also select a music track!

Honestly this project went from being a quick remake of an old college project to a mini ep with a playable game on the side :-P

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

I think the best thing to do would be to leave the sms/gg files on here, but delete the changelog and readme files and I'll create an smspower specific readme with a link to the itch.io page :)

Okay I've re-uploaded both SMS and GG zip files with just the games in and no readmes or changelogs for now, hope that's what you meant. Let us know if you have a new readme you want added back into the zips.
Sorry again for presumptuously uploading your new versions!

willbritton wrote

Louis The SEGA Nerd wrote

I think the best thing to do would be to leave the sms/gg files on here, but delete the changelog and readme files and I'll create an smspower specific readme with a link to the itch.io page :)

Okay I've re-uploaded both SMS and GG zip files with just the games in and no readmes or changelogs for now, hope that's what you meant. Let us know if you have a new readme you want added back into the zips.
Sorry again for presumptuously uploading your new versions!

I'm a bit late with these sorry but here are the updated readme files :)

README_SMS.txt (1.73 KB)

README_GG.txt (1.49 KB)

Well, I have to say that the music is great, and we have yet another game that goes through the effort of providing a PSG and a FM version of their soundtrack this year, which is great!

The game itself reminds me of old "Brick games" that came with a two-lane "racing" game. This is basically a better version of these, can't beat having 3 more lanes!

The Type 3 game mode is my favourite! My high score is 1360.

I think I would add some sort of crashing animation before booting the player off to the game over screen, it's a bit sudden at the moment, and would allow the player to see what mistake they made.

Good work overall !

So after encountering an issue where the FM audio is heavily distorted on real hardware, I've lowered the volume of all of the music which seems to have fixed the issue. Idk who is in charge of managing the homebrew page but please could you update it with the new version please :)
Download link is below.

Monaco Master V2.91.zip (1.29 MB)

I can do that, but given what I've read in the other topic, and since this is the first time anyone brings this up at all despite the ever increasing amount of FM homebrew, I'd like to have an independent confirmation of this supposed distortion, from another real hardware user, just to make sure it's not an issue of your specific console. We don't want to push out a new release which fixes things for you, but breaks them for everyone else.

Reproducibility is at the core of bug tracking; if anything, we might learn something new.

Tom wrote

I can do that, but given what I've read in the other topic, and since this is the first time anyone brings this up at all despite the ever increasing amount of FM homebrew, I'd like to have an independent confirmation of this supposed distortion, from another real hardware user, just to make sure it's not an issue of your specific console. We don't want to push out a new release which fixes things for you, but breaks them for everyone else.

Reproducibility is at the core of bug tracking; if anything, we might learn something new.

I think that's fair enough. This won't break anything for anyone since the only change is that it makes everything quieter but if you want to wait for more info on the situation that's fine :)

Given this witness, I went ahead and I uploaded the new version, as promised. However, I stripped all the ancillary files from the archive, keeping only the ROM and the readme.

Incidentally, I've done that with my phone because I'm not at home right now, so I hope I didn't break anything.

Tom wrote

Given this witness, I went ahead and I uploaded the new version, as promised. However, I stripped all the ancillary files from the archive, keeping only the ROM and the readme.

Incidentally, I've done that with my phone because I'm not at home right now, so I hope I didn't break anything.

That's brilliant thanks. Glad to know I'm not going insane and it seems to be an actual (if not well known) issue. I recently gave FM treatment to an older project and with the slightly lower volume it sounds perfectly fine as well so at least I know what works going forward :)

I've added SRAM support so that high scores are still retained after swtiching the power off :)
Scores can be reset to default by pressing the pause button on the title screen.

I've also changed the default sound mode to FM + PSG on compatible systems instead of FM only by default.

Monaco Master V2.9.2.zip (34.75 KB)

Forums

View topic - [Coding Competition 2023] Monaco Master by Louis The SEGA Nerd

Rate this entry!