Short: Project of a game open to developers Author: Simone Bevilacqua Uploader: bevilacq@cli.di.unipi.it (Simone Bevilacqua) Type: game/misc Urgh! What a difficult task to explain in few words what Suppa is... so I prefer pasting here an excerpt from the documentation: ***************************************************************************** Suppa is an old-style game, i.e.: no 3d, tmap, and all the other effects that today people fancy having in their games (I should say: it hasn't been designed to do that kinda stuff, but... well, keep reading...). I squeezed my brain in order to create something original and simple at the same time, which is the hardest thing to do, I believe. I don't know whether I succedeed or not, just hope that as many people as possible will enjoy my work - as for me, I enjoyed enough myself while co- ding... Coming back to the main question: what does Suppa consist in? The main mechanism is so simple that it could seem ridiculous, given the high standards of complexity and techniques in today's games: there's something moving on the screen and what you have to do is basically to shift the rows and columns of blocks the "thing" moves on by pressing a few buttons at the bottom and at the left of the screen... THAT'S ALL!!! Now, I wanna you to know that I'm an ESP dude, and I'm proving it to you by guessing your questions (and answering to them): 1. hey! I can't get anything here!!! 2. hey! this game does nothing!!! 3. what's this "thing"? 4. what does "shifting rows and columns of blocks" mean? 5. are you kidding? 6. ... (powers exhausted) You're right... nothing is clear and all seems to lead to nothing. The fact is that this is *not* a game... it comes close to it... but not enough to belong to the genre. It is something between a game and Amos, Blitz, etc... or maybe it's even closer to a mini-OS. I know it isn't clear yet, but it ain't simple at all to explain everything in few words. The general idea is the "a thing moves and the player has to shift rows/columns" above, and I can't hardly find a better explanation, so keep that in mind. Anything else (the graphics, the music, the target, the controls, etc.) can change from blockset to blockset... blockset? What? Well, as I said above, Suppa isn't exactly a game, so it doesn't come with gfx, msx, missions, etc. of its own. It just loads external "blocksets" - large files made up of all those data, contained in the "scen" (from "sce- nario") directory - and "runs" them... yes, "runs" because those blocksets include a part of code, which dictates the behaviour of the "thing" (a glass ball by default, but it can be changed anytime) and the target of the game. In practice, Suppa is just a pure "support", since any "game" is implemented directly in a blockset, indipentently from Suppa itself. So you can have se- veral kind of games... for sure puzzles are the most favourite genre (and my fave too), but also exotic RPGs and arcades can be done, that depends exclu- sively on the skills and fantasy of the maker(s) of the external modules. The only part in common the games will have in 99% of the cases is the usual "a things moves and the player has to shifts rows/columns". Why all this? Simple: - to stretch the longevity of the game as much as possible; - to suit the tastes of as many gameplayers as possible. You can have 2 different approaches to Suppa: - as a mere player - as a coder... you can make your own blocksets! ***************************************************************************** Now the bad news: it's about 5 months that I haven't put my hands on this program... I still firmly believe that it's based on a quite valid idea, but I don't see any chance of producing a finished version (although there are only few features still missing) because probably not many people would get interested in this project... that's why I decided to go for the upload: I'd like to listen to what *you* users/coders/graphicians/musicians have to say. Please, send your opinion to me, it's unpleasant to know there's a lot of work wa- sted on my HD... If I get many positive responses (where "positive" means also con- structive criticism), I could restart coding, even if I'm currently busy with a couple of other projects and my uni studies. The archive comes with 2 (uncomplete) example blocksets : one is ready to be played; the other, instead, is provided with all its data, code, gfx, etc. and ready to be compiled (to give a vague idea of how things work). The doc included is partly outdated and uncomplete, but it's well worth a good look. Final note: Suppa is 100% asm coded, so this is the best choice also for external blocksets. Enjoy and let me know!!! .