Ok, now I know, what the BL would have looked with GFX9000

the ZIP didn't work for me, 2 bad.

I fixed the zips, they should work now.

Quote:

About the storyline, well, maybe I'll look up what's left sometime. But it was fairly intricate and I cannot remember all the details I had in my. Mind you, it was a fairly dark storyline, turning the humans into the 'evil' force.

Sounds cool already Many thanx in advance!

The Flash version of BL is a lot of fun, even tho I really suck at playing

Just wondering, were did you get your information from when you started your hobby?

For me it was quit hard to obtain specific MSX info, especially on the VDP, until some diskmags started some articles with tech information. I loaned a Z80 assembly book at the local library, though that was purely focussed on z80 arithmetic etc, no graphical thingies etc.

Well, at first it was also looked into the code of other games, to see how things were done. It turns out each company had a pretty distinct coding style. But pretty soon I got hold of the big official tech documents of the VDP. I don't know where they came from exactly, but I simply got a big copy in a binder. I also started on reverse-engineering the FM-PAC protocol but was very happy when official documents arrived

So really it was just experimenting / reading / reverse-engineering at first. Once we got to know more people in the MSX scene, many documents turned up. I did have a copy of the purple MSX-assembly book by Klopper and Le Belle, in Dutch.

Next: Which techniques did you use for the copy protections?

I'm aware of the cartridge with ARC (not that I ever saw that game, (different subject though))
And the codes printed in orange on red paper with Black Cyclon (iirc): Did you use some cyclic codes for that?

What do you mean by cyclic codes? Well, of course, there is a relation between the input and the output of the code, so the game could check correctness. It was not a random table, if that's what you mean.

Oei, I types 'cyclic codes' without thinking really hard what that means, naah, What I meant was if there was some sort of system behind it, that calcalutes if the code was correct, and not a big loop-up table. (ok, pretty evident)

But back to the point, what type of calculation did you use (if you remember). Maybe some modulo , shifting , polynomials, ala CRCs or something else? ( modulo polynomials etc (haha, never used that after I got my grade for that subject)). I hope this is clear.

It involves shifting, modulo, exclusive-or, and some constants. It doesn't need anything more fancy because if you hack it (as was done) you would cripple the detection mechanism. I can't imagine anybody trying to reverse-engineer the code function, it wouldn't make sense.

I bought a second-hand Akin some years ago, to me it is THE best european game for MSX2. However, I found the ending was very strange. Was it by design, or did you lack time/resources to make more stages?

Thanks
It was by design (the way the story went) but there was definitely time pressure, so the ending should have been more elaborate. Furthermore, I sometimes spent too much time trying to make things perfect at some point, leaving less time for the other points (e.g. the ending). You can explain this as perfectionism or simply bad planning... I would approach things slightly different now.

ricbit - did you see the Core Dump promo then?

Thanks for the explanation parallax. I remember thinking, when I saw Metroid Fusion for the GBA, "oh my god, this metroid game is almost as fun as akin" (I had never played any metroid before Akin, so I was biased)

Manuel, I don't count promos when choosing a best game. But Core Dump would surely surpass Akin if it was finished.

I always wondered if in Akin the one-color areas are drawn using one big fill, or just doing filled 8x8 cells instead of the 8x8 copy. Also, are (small) sprites copied with one big copy, or are they also plotted as cells?