Searching For The Unknown
MADMIX GAME by Enrique
Huerta, 2000
Written by Lachie Dazdarian
Introduction
Since MADMIX GAME is a pacman game allow me to say few things about QBasic pacman games first.
Pacman games were relatively popular in the QBasic game design scene but for most game designers pacman games were a part of their "learning" stage so majority of those games are not very interesting. I must mention the popular Hack-Man 2&3 by WisdomDude as two excellent QBasic pacman games and while I appreciate the effort and quality of those games they simply didn't appeal to me much. I should also mention Pac-Classic by Phillip Jay Cohen. While it featured scrolling and excellent retro design it came only with one level map. There is a whole bunch of other QBasic pacman games but none of them comes close to Hack-Man 2 or 3(the ones I've played, mind you). The only other QBasic pacman game that really caught my interest was MADMIX GAME and while it can't be compared with Hack-Man 2 or 3 in many aspects it has few interesting and original features that Hack-Man games don't.
About MADMIX GAME
MADMIX GAME is a very cool Pacman game featuring scrolling and EGA(16 colors) graphics. While you may think that EGA graphics are a very limiting factor for the quality of the game's graphics you will notice from the screenshots that the designer managed himself quite well in 16 colors mode. The animations in the game are quite nice and vibrant and Enrique Huerta displays a very good sense for graphical design. I'm not saying that EGA graphics are the best choice for a Pacman game but this game suffers very little because of that.
What you can also notice from the screenshots is that MADMIX GAME features a very small game screen which is about one third of the entire screen(320*200 screen resolution). I find such choice hard to understand since the game was released in 2000. But I don't know. MADMIX GAME is a pure QBasic game and it's possible that the designer had a slow PC when developing it. Anyway, it's a shame but not a huge flaw.
Like in any other Pacman game your goal in MADMIX GAME is to eat all the balls within a specific stage and avoid the enemies(phantoms). Most stages feature few special "red face balls" which turn you into the angry Pac when you eat them and while being the angry Pac you can eat the phantoms.
MADMIX GAME comes with quite few original features that make it
different for the hordes of other pacman games. The most important
is the "circular scrolling". I don't know how else to name
it. Basically, the stages don't have a visible vertical edge so if
you travel in right or left direction as much it's possible you will
end up on the same place. Just imagine that the stages are wrapped
around a cylinder and you move around it.
This is a really cool feature and I have never seen anything similar
in another QBasic game. This is executed perfectly and you never
know where the real vertical edge of a stage is. Not any kind of
position jump or jerking is visible when you move horizontally and
pass over the invisible edge. Not that this thing is very difficult
to code but Enrique Huerta took the trouble to implement it in a
game and with a purpose in the gameplay. My compliments. Another
original feature are "pac lane" balls, a set of balls you
need to eat but with arrows which force you to follow them. So if
you are approaching from the left to a pac lane ball with an left
arrow by it you can't eat it. And if you get caught into a string of
Pac lane balls you better be sure than an enemy isn't around. Then
there are these trap doors which can be passed only from one
direction and every time you pass it in flips(toggle system). Trap
doors a very nicely animated and only with 3 frames! There is also
this bug enemy which replaces the balls you already ate. You can
destroy the bug but only as the angry pac. All these features result
in a quite different Pacman game experience. The circular scrolling,
the directional balls(pac lane) and the other features mentioned
before are all very original and add depth in the classic Pacman
gameplay. I don't know how much I should praise Enrique Huerta for
originality since I can't be sure if he copied the game concept from
somewhere else. Still, nothing is said in the documentation.
MADMIX GAME features 15 very challenging stages(I've reached stage 7 or 8 barely after several tries), 3 tilesets and quite good enemy AI. The package also includes the level editor but it doesn't work on my PC(Window XP; mouse cursor won't appear). The game doesn't feature any sound or music. Actually, I've noticed looking in the source code that several SOUND statements were REMed. Probably for a good reason.
I should mention that the game probably has a serious bug. I can't be sure since I used cheating to discover it. Anyway, if I cheat and use stage skipping to reach stage 14 the game interrupts with an error. Huge minus!
Anyway, MADMIX GAME is a very addictive and challenging pacman game, the most entertaining QBasic pacman game I've played. But due the EGA graphics, small game screen, lack of sound and music and that bug it is far from the best QBasic pacman game ever made. Pity, because the game concept and the original features could have been exploited much better.
I will wrap this up now. A bit short article for me but nothing more needs to be said about this game. I know I've said this before for some other QBasic games too but MADMIX GAME is really a perfect game to remake in FreeBASIC. The entire gameplay is here. All you need is to redo the graphics, add some nice sound effects and music using FMOD and add a lot of polish if you want to release something above average. I'll refer to what Pete Berg wrote in the poll from QB Express issue #4 and Deleter in his "Game Apathy: Another Symptom Analyzed". If you most likely are not in the opportunity or on skill/experience level to work on an "epic" project what can help you to gain experience and fill you up with positive energy is a smaller or some medium project. Some project that will take about a month of hard work and if you get side-tracked at least you will be able to see that the completion is near and very reachable. But I have a strange feeling I'll be remaking MADMIX GAME sometime in the 2007. If George W. Bush doesn't destroy the world till then. :P
Final score
5/10
Get MADMIX GAME
To download MADMIX GAME click here: madmix.zip
I realized few weeks ago that I've concluded all the previous
editions of the column with "that was it for this issue"
or something similar so I won't do that this time. :P
I'm
planning to feature Robot Plague in the next issue. It is probably
the most weakest game in the gameplay department featured so far in
the column but it's enough original and interesting in other aspects
for me to write about it.