I was wondering... the Vscreen engine is a very smooth scrolling Screen4 engine with a lot of capabilities. WIth several 'minor' changes to the game engine (no gravity, auto-scrolling, adjusted enemy patterns + collision detection) it should be possible to create an engine that comes awfully close to Space Manbow.

Think of it. A smooth scrolling (diagonal) shooter with awesome GFX and music (moonsound!) for MSX2 with only minor efforts.... Anyone interested in giving it a go?

Is Vscreen opensource or is magoo willing to release the code to someone who can adapt it to a shot'em up?

Now that you say it Snout... Vscreen would be very very suitable to shot'em ups style Space Mambow, with minor changes...

Don't give Maggoo any ideas, he might even try to make a Space Manbow And yeah, it should be(come) open source, according to his homepage: "The objective of the VScreen Engine is to develop a generic (and open source) game engine which can be used for creating platform games for MSX2/2+/Turbo-R. "

The sources are already included in the download so euhm.. it's opensource allright

I think the toughest part of adapting Vscreen -> Space Manbow-like would be writing 'boss monsters'....

S.M. == technically the best MSX-game, I think.. Just have a look at those big sprites on the screen.. the designer who made all the paths for those sprites did a splendid job.

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I was wondering... the Vscreen engine is a very smooth scrolling Screen4 engine with a lot of capabilities. WIth several 'minor' changes to the game engine (no gravity, auto-scrolling, adjusted enemy patterns + collision detection) it should be possible to create an engine that comes awfully close to Space Manbow. Think of it. A smooth scrolling (diagonal) shooter with awesome GFX and music (moonsound!) for MSX2 with only minor efforts.... Anyone interested in giving it a go?

Yup, Vscreen is Opensource, all the code is available (even for the editors), even if not fully documented (but if anyone needs help I'll be happy to answer any question).

Now I wouldn't dare to pretend that the engine comes even close to Space Manbow, I doubt it can handle as many sprites as Space Manbow does. On the other side, it would be possible to make a shooter with a path that is not pre-defined (think of it, it could be original, why always making exactly the same looking game...).

Tough issue is always making SC4 gfx (Konami did something wonderful concidering the restrictions of SC4).

The changes required in Vscreen for making a shooter are:

* Main sprite handling (no gravity, etc...)
* Collision detection (in a shooter u usually explode when touch the walls, and u don't kill enemies by jumping on them
* More complex enemies path, probably different enemies types too.
* Possibility to shoot / change weapons. Again, number of sprites could be an issue. I'd port the engine to V9990 before doing that.

For big boss I doubt you can use a generic engine for that, unless all big boss behave in the same way and only have different GFX/path, which usually isn't the case.

I agree with Wolf, Space Manbow is truly a technical masterpiece, I still don't get how they did THAT. Even GFX are designed in a very smart way.

In the meantime I'll keep improving Vscreen to make it what it was originally meant to be, a platform game, and hope someday someone will make GFX an music for it (HINT HINT)

There are also some other game types that could be developped with minor changes. I'm thinking about:

* Racing games, top view. Main issue is the IA of the opponents, for the rest it's fairly easy.
* Kuru kuru kururin type of game (got a semi working prototype already). Don't know all the features of the game but the basics are easy to cover.

Can you savely say Space Manbow is the result of years of MSX software developing practice?

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Can you savely say Space Manbow is the result of years of MSX programming practice?

It's way more than this, it's pure genius

Don't respond so quickly, I editted a bit Cheers anyway

BTW, does anyone know who are the programmers of Space Manbow and what other (MSX) games they worked on ?

Just curious...

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Quote: Can you savely say Space Manbow is the result of years of MSX programming practice? It's way more than this, it's pure genius

Hmm, and what about Solid Snake and SD-Snatcher... They're noit pure genius?

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BTW, does anyone know who are the programmers of Space Manbow and what other (MSX) games they worked on ? Just curious...

If you open the rom image in a hex editor you might see a list of people who were involved in the game. IIRC these were in normal readable ASCII, unlike most games which use an offset.

The programmers are -I guess- listed in that end-scroll .. (you know: press [F4] [F4] [F4] etc. )

It's mainly design-stuff I think.. you can offer all your available sprites for one big sprite, but a designer has to say: 'I want one big sprite on the screen, and nothing else' .. In Nemesis etc. there were tons of 1-sprite enemies.. that's really a different concept.
So, the question is not whether you can code all that Space Manbow stuff, but more if you are able to design an interesting game based on only a few -detailed- enemies at one time. So, it's about quality, not about quantity..

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Quote: Quote: Can you savely say Space Manbow is the result of years of MSX programming practice? It's way more than this, it's pure genius Hmm, and what about Solid Snake and SD-Snatcher... They're noit pure genius?

For game design/ storyline maybe... not as good technically IMO

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The programmers are -I guess- listed in that end-scroll .. (you know: press [F4] [F4] [F4] etc. )

Playing the original unmodified ROM(-image) doesn't have the [F4] key activated to skip stages.