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

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This is a Sega Master System game "inspired" by the Atari 2600 game Solar Fox.
"Raposa do Sol" means Sun Fox in pt-br.
Coded by tibonev using devkitSMS, tiled and Furnace.

Instructions:
- Move the ship with the D-Pad
- Hold Button 1 to use the speed boost.

Your mission, choose you accept it is to recover all the satellites without getting shot by the turrets, good luck.
Oh yeah, there's a time limit also. oops.

I played this today and it took me a while to figure out what was I supposed to do (I confess I didn't read the description before playing). I guess the satellites are not conspicuous enough, they didn't seem something that I should collect at first, maybe changing them a bit to make them more attractive would be nice?

I kind of like this game, it's pretty simple in concept and somehow both the designed levels and the random ones are only just solvable given the time allowed, so the difficulty seems pretty well balanced.

I didn't realise about the speed boost until I read it in the instructions, I must admit I've not felt the need for it.

The one complaint I have is the way the game handles failure - if you lose a life with 1 second left on the clock you respawn still with 1 second remaining, almost guaranteeing you'll lose another life.
Running out of time, on the other hand, resets the clock.
My suggestion would be that if you either die or run out of time the level resets completely, forcing the player to try it again from scratch.

willbritton wrote

I kind of like this game, it's pretty simple in concept and somehow both the designed levels and the random ones are only just solvable given the time allowed, so the difficulty seems pretty well balanced.

I feel the same. Besides, the remake is pretty fun. It's already my favorite among the games you've programmed, tibone.

It’s kind of addictive. Took me a while to figure out what to and get accustomed to the controls, though.

thanks everyone for the comments. :)

chirinea: will take a look, as you can clearly see, graphic design is not my forté. but i will try to redesign them, as long as i keep it a single 8x8 sprite, updating the design is easy.

willbriton: that's a good idea indeed, or maybe reset the clock if the timer is under 3s? i'll take a look and test your suggestion.

mateusbond: thanks! hopefully i can keep going and make some more impressive/better games in the future. :)

kagesan: is there anything i can do to make the objective more clear, maybe add the objective description in the menu screen?

Game updated to v0.17.

Changes:
V0.17 (01/04/24)

- Updated to lastest version of PSGLib, fixed the ringing tone on Square Channel 2, after an sfx has played.
- Altered death-loop situation, now the level always fully reset (all sattelites and time resets) at each death.
- Fixed bug 'not loading "TIME:" tiles upon screen-reload after a death.

Source code also updated at https://github.com/jflores82/raposadosol

thanks to sverx for helping me with the pickup sfx bug and updating PSGlib so quickly. :)
now you have an audio feedback when you pickup a satellite.

willbritton: applied your suggestions and now the level fully resets regardless of how the player dies (shot or timeout), it really works better, thanks for the suggestion. :)

raposadosol_v017.zip (14.54 KB)

Raposa do Sol V0.17

Game updated to v0.18:

V0.18 (08/04/24)
- Added SDCC and SEGA Headers.
- First version of SRAM Support. (saves highscore) (issue #2 on github).
- Added function to clear SRAM by pressing pause on the title screen, it shows a screen to inform the player.
- Updated build.bat to pad the rom to 64kb to be able to use SRAM.
- Fixed issue #1 (player death not playing when gameover comes from a shot).

sources at: http://github.com/jflores82/raposadosol

raposadosol_v18.zip (16.91 KB)

Raposa do Sol V0.18

I see this is a work in progress, and I think there are a few aspects that can be improved.
First, in the background is not always clear what you can collide with and what not, for instance the stars looks like they could stop you, probably using a more dim color you can suggest they're part of a backdrop.
Then, the remaining time it's quite hard to read, dark red on dark gray. And the white border outside the background area doesn't really help our eyes. I would set the border to black, you might shortly flash it once when you die but I'm not sure this is a good idea either.
Finally, when you die because time is over, you should get that info - otherwise it simply looks like you've collided with something you didn't see.
I hope this doesn't come as too harsh, these are just my two cents and I'm pretty sure with some more work this could really become an interesting game :)
Good work!

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I hope this doesn't come as too harsh, these are just my two cents and I'm pretty sure with some more work this could really become an interesting game :)
Good work!

thanks, its not too harsh, i'm know i'm pretty new at this, so any honest feedback is appreciated. my main goal with this was to try and create something 'complete' (as in most of the basic aspects working correctly).

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Finally, when you die because time is over, you should get that info - otherwise it simply looks like you've collided with something you didn't see.

good tip, i just did a "time out" screen, easy to apply and indeed, provides better feedback to the player. :)

as you may have noticed, the graphics are my biggest challenge, regarding the timer: i'm not sure how i could set different colors to just those background tiles, because the different color schemes are just new pallete over the same tiles, which indeed created a couple of difficult to read combinations.

the alternative is to re-do the background tiles adding the word time and the numbers and having a fixed pallete for it, i suppose?

thanks for the feedback. :)

updated to v0.19.

V0.19 (04/24)
- Separated SRAM functions in its own file. (github issue #3).
- Made randomseed a global variable to avoid having a fixed level on the first random world level, if the user goes straight to it. (github issue #5).
- Added "time ran out" screen as suggest by sverx. (github issue #4).
- Added voice samples before title screen and to game over screen (github issue #6).

raposadosol_v19.zip (37.97 KB)

Raposa do Sol V0.19

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