Kobashi (ColecoVision)

[joyrex]

Hey guys,

 

I ported a MSX production I made a few years ago; Kobashi. It's a small game where you have to survive as a fish by eating the food dropped from the surface. The original was ranked 2nd at the MRC Underwater Challenge and was released as a 8k rom, this version became 16k mostly due to removing the compression of data. Anyway, hope you like it.

 

kobashi.zip

[newcoleco]

The game is hard, the controls are not well responsive, but I really really like the intro.

 

If you adjust the game to not be so hard right at the beginning, and add a second game to fill up the 32K, I will probably ask you a cartridge of it.

 

Nice work!

 

Question : how much RAM the decompress routine did take for the msx version? and what is the compression algo used kin your original version.

[Pixelboy]

Very, very nice work! Love the intro and the music!

[Ikrananka]

Great work - fantastic to have another homebrew title for the CV.

 

I understand what newcoleco is saying about the controls but I'm assuming this is intentional to emulate the sluggish response of movement underwater plus to add additional challenge to the gameplay. My only criticism is that the level of difficulty is so high that the length of each game is very short (or maybe I'm just a bad player ). Would be a great enhancement to add a few levels of difficulty to the game with at least one level being easier than it is at the moment. In an "easy" level you could reduce the enemy fish to only one, make it stay out of action for longer when its energy is zero and/or make the food add more to your power bar - this should be relatively easy to implement. Just a suggestion.

 

My highscore so far is only 735. The key seems to be to survive longer than the other fish and then feast on the food while they are out of action and not competing with you. However, I find that as soon as they come back, with my power being so low, that I die almost immediately.

Edited November 2, 2008 by Ikrananka

[retroillucid]

Very nice work ... I like it

[joyrex]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

The controls are indeed intended to give a feeling of swimming under water. I aggree the difficulty is a bit high, making the games short. Although if it will be more easier, it might get too repetetive. I like the suggestions on improvements, I'll have a think about it. My personal highscore is around 2500 I think.

 

The original used rle compression on the graphics, music and intro data. It decompressed to ram (which is required for the intro and music). The biggest chunk was over 1.5k, so including compression as is wouldn't work. Since the original fitted 8k exactly, including the compression again would require some rewriting and I could end up just a bit over 8k again. That's why I removed the compression in its whole.

 

Btw, if you don't start a game, it will go into attraction mode a few moments later, wow

[newcoleco]

I have a suggestion to make the controls more easier... and you can put it as an option just for easy mode if you want to.

 

The idea is an automatic targeting help when getting close to the food. Establish a radius where the targeting help will be activated and help (not replacing the player movement but adding an attractive force) the fish going to the food rather than just pass by because of inertie of movements.

 

With a little tune up period, this targeting help may be just enough to be fun to play, and just not enough to cheat by moving randomly all around the screen to get each time closer to the food in a second.