MSXdev’20: #10 – Raftoid | MSX Resource Center

Game story
The era and time of this story is mostly unknown. After contact was lost with the mother ship “Arkanoid”, a search and rescue ship “Raftoid” was sent.
It took many years to arrive at the place, only to be warped in space too, just a little different this time.

Here is a brick breaker like game, inspired in the classic Arkanoid. The mechanics are well know by anyone as we’ve played many times this kind of games: clear all the bricks from the screen to reach the next level.

We also know that in brick breaker games some capsules come out from broken bricks and they give us extra features in order to make our mission easier. In Raftoid there are three different power-up capsule that will double points, glue the ball to the paddle or make the ball pass through bricks after breaking them.

There are 5 levels to beat in this game. Will you beat all of them?

Name of the game: Raftoid
Game size: Working to be finally 16KB
RAM size requirements: 16KB
Genre: Brick Breaker (heavily inspired by Arkanoid)
Individuals involved: Raúl Portales (Platty Soft) with some help from bitsofbas

Relevant link: MSXdev homepage

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Comments (26)

By tfh

Prophet (2945)

19-07-2020, 09:38

Play online: https://www.file-hunter.com/MSXdev/index.php?id=raftoid

By philgood1351fr

Rookie (23)

19-07-2020, 12:45

great clone. unfortunatly, the 5th and last level has no end...
hope a level designer for this one or a random brick wall generator. and I vote for it

cheers

By Jipe

Paragon (1500)

19-07-2020, 13:31

good speed in BlueMSX

hi Raúl you can make a DSK2ROM
ASCII mapper or SCC mapper
the final size is 80K
i tested and the game work

By shalafi

Resident (40)

19-07-2020, 15:46

@Jipe, I did try dsk2rom just as concatenating the files, and it was 720K, I was trying to get it down to 32K, but 80K is probably good enough. Thanks! dsk2rom was a life saver to create a rom for a basic game.

@philgood1351fr there is no official game editor, but you can easily see the format of the levels on the source code and replace them with your own at line 900, 920, 940, 960 and 980 for each level

https://github.com/plattysoft/MSX/blob/master/raftoid/disk/r...

There are 14 rows of 11 bricks, you have to provide them all, even if there are no bricks.
0 is no brick, 1-6 is a color brick, single hit, 8 is 2-hit brick and 9 is undestructible,

By Jipe

Paragon (1500)

19-07-2020, 18:12

i making a DSK2ROM with just concat files ( not compress )
open the rom making with DSK2ROM in a HEX editor ( i use HexEdit )
cutting 14000h to the end and save the file

By shalafi

Resident (40)

19-07-2020, 18:42

Ah, yes, the dsk image is mostly empty. I did compile dsk2rom and I am trying some configurations with and without compression, so I think I'll go with that.

Thanks!

By mzoran

Master (131)

19-07-2020, 19:31

I like Arkanoid style of games and I like this one. Welcome to the msxdev'20 contestants club

By Pippo

Champion (505)

19-07-2020, 20:14

Very, very good Arkanoid clone!
We hope the Rom version will be completed soon.

By shalafi

Resident (40)

19-07-2020, 20:27

I just sent the rom to the msxdev email.

It is 512K, way too large, maybe I'll try Jipe's method later, but I wanted to give one initial rom for everyone to try.

By Pippo

Champion (505)

19-07-2020, 21:50

Many, many thanks for your quickness, Shalafi.

By ray2day

Hero (662)

20-07-2020, 09:58

I like the Arkanoid games. And this one is a very good clone.
Nice work. Good graphics. Good game play. I only miss the sound effects.

I almost played all 5 stages... with only 1 brick left, the ball got caught up in a loop between the ‘metal’bricks in stage 5.

About making the ROM-file; ever thought about ROMCreator (PC)?

By shalafi

Resident (40)

20-07-2020, 12:00

I thought I had solved all those :-( I got locked a few times when playtesting. You don't remember how the loop was, or even have a video, right?

Ok, level 5 is back to the drawing board. Thanks ray2day!

Keep in mind that it is MSX Basic + Basic KUN, I did run out of memory, sounds were the next thing on my list. I will try compiling it, then I can have a lot more free memory.

I made the ROM with sdk2rom, it is large, but it will do :-) I'll take a look at ROMCreator just in case.

By ray2day

Hero (662)

20-07-2020, 13:41

@shalafi I have a video. Where can I send it?

By shalafi

Resident (40)

20-07-2020, 16:27

ray2day wrote:

@shalafi I have a video. Where can I send it?

Can you can post a link here? Or mail to sla {dot} shalafi {at} gmail {dot} com

Thanks!

By mzoran

Master (131)

20-07-2020, 19:42

I also reached level 5 and destroyed everything that can be destroyed. However the last brick dropped a power-up but didn't finish the level. I was left only with indestructible bricks ! A bug ?
And some sort of sound is dearly needed

Good work, I much more enjoy games such as yours than mega-shooters.

By Gig71

Resident (60)

20-07-2020, 19:47

Dsk2rom auto enable turbo on turbo machines making game unplayable.
I think you should add a line in the loader to disable turbo.

By shalafi

Resident (40)

20-07-2020, 21:28

mzoran wrote:

Good work, I much more enjoy games such as yours than mega-shooters.

I'll double check, ~~I might have changed something, but I recall finishing the level and getting into level 6 (which is again level 1 anyway)~~ , Yep, I changed the tile id for the undestructible bricks, but forgot to update it on the reading of the level. I just fixed it. I'll provide a new ROM with this fix and the other fixes. I have to rework the level anyway...

I will look into compiling the Basic so I don't have to have MSX-Basic-Kun, the basic program AND the compiled program in memory. As it is today it did run out of memory.

By shalafi

Resident (40)

20-07-2020, 21:53

Gig71 wrote:

Dsk2rom auto enable turbo on turbo machines making game unplayable.
I think you should add a line in the loader to disable turbo.

I'll give it a try on some turbo machine on the emulator... I never thought that was going to be a problem. Thanks for the heads up!

Oh, I just tried a turbo emulator... it is crazy, double turbo is way too quick!

I did a quick check on how to disable turbo mode, but nothing came out of it. This is particularly confusing since MSX-Basic-Kun is also called turbo.

By ray2day

Hero (662)

20-07-2020, 21:41

@shalafi; You’ve got mail!

By shalafi

Resident (40)

21-07-2020, 00:33

Thanks for all the feedback.

I have a reworked stage 5 and verified that it can be completed.

I will look into the turbo problem tomorrow and upload a new ROM (hopefully with that one too)

By gdx

Enlighted (4642)

21-07-2020, 02:35

Format the DSK under DOS1 otherwise the game is run in R800 mode on MSX turbo R and it is unplayable.

By shalafi

Resident (40)

21-07-2020, 11:24

I have sent an updated ROM to msxdev, but in the meantime you can get it from here:
https://github.com/plattysoft/MSX/raw/master/raftoid/Raftoid...

It has a new Stage 5 that should have no loops anymore and it fixes the bug on brick counts that can not be finished (verified)

Somehow, the ROM fails to disable the turbo, but the disk image works fine (I added a small routine to do that and tested it on emulators), you can get the dsk image from here: https://github.com/plattysoft/MSX/raw/master/raftoid/Raftoid...

If I manage to keep the memory under control, I'll add some sound effects (I know it needs them, I keep playing the Arkanoid ones in my head).

By Grauw

Ascended (10026)

21-07-2020, 11:27

To disable the turbo most easily, do what gdx said . Just formatting the disk in the right way will do the trick.

By shalafi

Resident (40)

21-07-2020, 14:25

Grauw wrote:

To disable the turbo most easily, do what gdx said . Just formatting the disk in the right way will do the trick.

Well, I read it after I already had done it the other way :-/

By mzoran

Master (131)

22-07-2020, 09:09

I confirm stage 5 can be finished

By shalafi

Resident (40)

22-07-2020, 10:30

mzoran wrote:

I confirm stage 5 can be finished

Yeah! I verified that. I was more concerned that i missed some "infinite bounce loops", but I played it twice trying to get into loops and couldn't
I also think the latest design is slightly better than the previous one.

MSXdev’20: #10 – Raftoid

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