(MSX Game Series, part 2. Original in Spanish HERE)
The “game” has turned into an “Engine”!
Instead of hardcoding the levels and scenes of the game, I made it adaptable where the game is written in an easy and interpretative language, and the game engine will execute the trans-coded game in bitcode (machine code). Here’s some infographics I did for the game then:
(I was going to make something simple, but instead I accidentally made A R T . . . chef’s kiss Beautiful! This is going to the back-cover of the future cartridge box ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
The next step was to add the Start Screen. Something provisional, but allowing the game to start the sequence of scenarios, also check the VRAM status. Also, I improved text printing, adding line-breaks between words and not between characters.
Next is to implement the functionality to run sequences (game levels) one after the other, and let automatic level succession.
Aside, the “game compiler” (to encode descriptive language to bitcode) now includes an optimizer for bitcode placement in ROM, packing level’s code in fewer pages, reducing ROM size. Next step is optimize assets placement (images).
And last for today, I made a first attempt of splash image, using the mini-tile encoding used for backgrounds, creating a 500 Bytes image from a 12 KBytes of the original. now I’m trying to compress it even more.
And up to here today’s updates on the game development. More in the next weeks.
Farewell!