Presenting... Blox

After a period of rest, Team Bomba is at it again! After the success (*ahem*) of Bombaman, the Team decided it was time for a change. Time to do something different. Time... to create a game for another video card!

Just after Bombaman was finished, we were approached by Marcel Delorme, who already did a lot of work on software for the Graphics9000 and the Moonsound. He asked us if we could use an extra coder. Considering that we wanted to make a game for the Gfx9k anyhow, we decided it might be a good idea.

Together with Marcel, who was already a Team Bomba member by then, we made the Underwater demo. Then, after a period of relative quiet, Arjan came along with a cool idea for a small game. He had seen a small Flash game called Blox Forever, and thought it would be a great game to port to the MSX with the Gfx9000. All of this was of course to get to know the Gfx9k a bit, so we could create even cooler games in the future!

After a while, everybody agreed it might be a good idea to make this small game, and then get on with our Really Secret Project (which will of course remain a secret a while longer). Eventually development was started about a month before the MSX fair in Bussum 2004. Back then, we were still optimistic about finishing this game real quick and be the surprise of the game. However, we were lazy busy, and therefore we didn't make it. Even at this point, we're not ready yet, so you will have to wait a while longer!

The game

Of course you already clicked the link to the original Flash game we mentioned earlier, but for the people that are still reading, it might be nice to know what the fuss is all about. Blox is a puzzle game, where you get to shove around blocks. The idea is to place similar colored blox together. To clear a level, you should remove all the colored blox from the screen.

Of course, life never is that easy, so there's lots of stuff in the game preventing you from doing just that! Think of stuff like elevators, magnets, lasers, fans, bombs, one way streets and more fancy stuff like that. Definitely enough to keep you busy!

Since we're nice guys (and since we have to edit the levels the game will feature anyhow), we, in all our wisdom, decided to include the level editor within the game. With the editor, you can make your own levels for the game! Especially for this level editor, Marcel wrote a cool file selector to be able to load and save levels.

Status

At this moment, the editor is as good as finished. All blox can be placed whereever you want, you can create levels (10 levels per file), and it's possible to load and save levels. Also, the file selector is as good as done. The only problem is the game itself :) Basically, all that's left is coding the gameplay code, coding the menu stuff, creating some missing graphics, composing the music and sound effect, and finally to create some levels for it. As you can see, we're nearly done ;)

Then... when will the game be finished? At this moment, we have no clear idea, and no deadline. It will be done with it's done. Don't expect it within the next 2 months, tho...

System requirements

Because we're a bit fed up with the MSX's limitations, we decided to make this game for the hi-spec MSX users amongst us. Therefore specs of the game are quite high, but seriously, who wants to play an MSX1 game when there's all this ultrakewl goodness to be had in stead? ;)

The requirements for Blox:

• MSX2 or higher
• 128kB RAM (256kB needed if you want music)
• Graphics9000

Optionally, you can use these extra things:

• Moonsound with 256kB SRAM for music/sfx
• 7MHz or R800
• Mouse

Screenies

Here you can see some work-in-progress screenshots. Note that these are subject to change :)

Our new logo

A possible candidate for the game logo

This is what the editor looks like. On the left, you can edit your levels, the small bar on the right contains the menu, the blox you can place, etc, etc.

The file selector, used to load and save levels