eGameZone and Beljogos

Xtreme Games launched eGameZone Networks in late 2002. Finally, our 6 games were published in eGameZone. It was very gratifying to see that this became a reality.

But when our games were published, Alberto Hoshino was already devoting himself entirely to the medicine course at university.

I continued to study game programming and then founded a local group called Beljogos, with the goal of encourage the development of games in the state of Pará, northern Brazil.

Beljogos became the main reference on game development in the state of Pará. It serves as an integration point between students, professionals, universities and companies. The group is responsible for organizing the events about game development in the city of Belém, capital of Pará.

I'm also dedicated to preserving the history of game development. In recent events of game development in the city of Belém, I have done a small exhibition of old game machines such as Atari 2600 videogame, ZX Spectrum compatible computer and Nintendo 8-bit (NES). I have the complete collection of Input Magazine in Portuguese, which explains programming in BASIC and Assembly.

The image below is of one of the exhibitions that I did in 2012 with my son Lucas Romero.

ROGUE and Tai Yang

In 2001, Xtreme Games announced it was developing an online digital game distribution system called eGamezone Networks. Our six games from RH Games Bundle were among the games that would be published in eGameZone.

This motivated us to continue the development of our games. I have started the implementation of an object-oriented 2D game engine in C++ that would be used in our next games.

The name of the engine was ROGUE (Romero Game Utility Engine). The engine would contain C++ classes to handle animation, backgrounds, tiles, sprites, game states and resource files for image and sound. ROGUE would also contain a generic 2D map editor to be used in the creation of the levels of the games.

I was developing the engine slowly while waiting for a real return on eGameZone. We defined a game that would be used as a pilot project to test ROGUE. The name of the game is Tai Yang Odyssey, which is based on Chinese martial arts movies.

ROGUE and the game remained in an early stage of development without any documentation, so I will not provide any source code. Below is a sketch of characters of the game Tai Yang Odyssey, made by Alberto Hoshino.

High Sphere

Every 5 years a mysterious green planet approaches becoming visible. During this period many strange things happen and it is possible to feel a more intense energy around. To this planet was given the name of High Sphere.

After a revolution that overthrew a great tyrant, a young woman stood out because of her strength, determination and leadership. Due to some incidents, an ancient prophecy was remembered and it seems that many things are going to happen before the next appearance of High Sphere.


High Sphere is a project of RH Games that involved the creation of a fantasy world that would be used in the development of our RPG games.

I had many ideas of adventures and characters for these RPG Games. These ideas about High Sphere were spread in my Development Diaries.

Alberto Hoshino drew and wrote about some characters from High Sphere. This material can be seen in this file: HighSphere.pdf

Xenorunners

Xenorunners is a racing game project. Every year there is an interplanetary event in which eight planets send their best pilot to compete in a amazing race, where the challenge is not only to complete the track, but also survive the dangers of the tracks and the attacks of the other drivers.

The race contains eight tracks, one on each planet. The planets have different features, for example, there is a volcanic planet where fire is the predominant element. In other planets there is a predominant presence of water, forests, ice...

We did a Game Design Document of this game for our internal use. This document is available in this file: Xenorunners.pdf

The eight cars have their own strengths and weaknesses. The table below shows the distribution of 12 attribute points for each car. The names of the drivers were provisional.

Beland

Beland City is being controlled by a criminal organization led by a great entrepreneur. However the authorities do nothing about it because of the high rate of corruption in the institutions.

Two fighters are determined to stop the entrepreneur at any cost, each has their own personal reasons.

One is a mysterious fighter known only as "Master" who always wears a jacket with a large "M" drawn on his back. The other is a capoeira fighter known as "Santos".


Beland is a game project in the Beat'em up genre, the same genre of games as Final Fight and Street of Rage.

The idea for this game came before the RH Race game. We have been slowly working on its Game Design. We defined the levels of the game and did the Storyboard of all levels. Alberto Hoshino drew several characters of the game.

The Storyboard of Beland with sketches of the characters and the game levels is available in this file: StoryboardBeland.pdf

Game Ideas

The first games of RH Games were developed with two main goals. The first goal was to gain experience in game development. The second goal was to try to publish through Xtreme Games. We would try to develop a more complex game only if we had the certainty that it would be published.

But as Xtreme Games suspended game publishing because of Hasbro Lawsuit, we were in a difficult situation. We had no idea when this lawsuit would end and whether Xtreme Games would publish new games again. Our only option was to wait.

We had many ideas about different types of games that we could develop after RH Games Bundle. We did a sketch containing all these ideas.

The images below are from the sketch. Each image file contains 3 games. On the left is the title of the game and on the right is a concept of the game screen.

We evolved the game design of some of these games as will be seen in the next posts.

Hasbro Lawsuit

In 2000, we signed a contract with Xtreme Games to publish the RH Games Bundle.

Unfortunately, something unexpected happened...

Hasbro Interactive acquired the rights of the classic Atari games and has filed lawsuits against companies that were shipping games that had some resemblance to the classic Atari games. This action of Hasbro generated outrage in the game development community as can be seen in this article of Diana Gruber.

The game development community started a Green Ribbon Campaign as a form of protest against this lawsuit of Hasbro. The participants of the Green Ribbon Campaign used the image below on their homepages:

 

Xtreme Games was one of the companies mentioned in the lawsuit of Hasbro. As Xtreme Games was a small company, it decided to suspend new game publishing until solve this problem with Hasbro.

While we waited for the unfolding of this story, we continue to work on the Game Design of other projects, simply because we loved doing it.

Cyborg Arena

Cyborg Arena is a shooter game where your skills will be challenged. The goal is to survive the ceaseless attacks of the enemy robots in an arena.

Century 30 A.H. (After the Holocaust), the human race extinguished itself. Taking advantage of this situation, the world was dominated by the latest creation of humans: Cyborgs.

But history repeats and a higher class of cyborgs controls the lower classes by force. To break this control, two cyborgs decided to fight. The only way to achieve their goals is winning in the Cyborg Arena.

The Dictator of Cyborgs observes the progress of the battle and communicates with the contestants through a monitor located in the center of the arena.

Be prepared to face dozens of robots programmed exclusively to destroy the contestants of the arena.

The monitor will keep you informed about the main events that occur during the battle.

To increase your chances of survival, many special items will appear giving you better weapons, force fields and devastating bombs.

At the end of each arena there are powerful cyborgs that you must defeat to advance to the next arena.

"I'll be waiting for you."
(The Dictator of Cyborgs)

The game can be downloaded with source code at this link: Cyb_Arena.zip 

This is the sixth game of RH Games. It completed the RH Games Bundle we had planned to publish through Xtreme Games.

Crazy Balls

The R and the H, which are part of RH Games' logo, were tired of just being assistants. So now they have earned a game made especially for them. That way appears "Crazy Balls: the logo's game".

What they want most is to make money, therefore help them collect the coins that are spread in the level.

However, nothing comes easy in life. To mess up the life of R and H, the game's creators put some Crazy Balls to knock them down.

During the game appear some surprise items. There are some that will help you and others that you will regret picking them.

Win in the game and find out what will happen to R and H when, finally, they get rich.

The game can be downloaded with source code at this link: C_Balls.zip


To edit the levels of Crazy Balls I programmed a simple editor that saves the information of levels in a file called "cb_stage.map". This file is read when you start the game and the information contained in the file are loaded into memory.

The editor with source code can be downloaded at this link: CB_edit.zip

RH Spacewar 2

After the battle in RH Spacewar, the aliens were scattered. After a while they managed to locate and attack the main research space station that discovered the portal. In an act of desperation, the crew threw themselves in space trying to escape from the alien fury.

Realizing that they could not fight the earth ships directly, the aliens decide to attack the crew members who were wandering in space. Do not let this happen. Rescue them.

The aliens began to combine their different types of attack to better fight the earth ships.

Who will be the first to get the astronaut: you or the alien? For the astronaut's sake we hope it's you.

The game can be downloaded with source code at this link: RHspace2.zip

It is common that I and Alberto Hoshino showed up at the endings of our games. As an example, the image below shows us in one ending of RH Spacewar 2.

No Way Out

No Way Out is a fast-paced arcade-style shoot-'em-up that combines traditional shooter elements with a frantic race against the clock. Blast your way through walls and obstacles, eliminate the creatures infestation and avoid the massive spiked roller that's always on your heels.

In this game, AMMO is worth more than GOLD! It is necessary to make way through the maze and to destroy the enemies that chase after you. There are ammo boxes scattered throughout the maze, but despite this, use it only when there is no other alternative, because it is quite scarce.

The Mazes are randomly generated allowing for different ways with each new game. Think twice before choosing a path because you can be NO WAY OUT!

In the maze there are many creatures that will threaten the player, such as wild animals, indestructible cyborgs, monsters that eat ammo boxes and even creatures that break down the walls to hunt you wherever you go.


The game can be downloaded with source code at this link: Nowayout.zip


No Way Out is the game of RH Games I like most. Once in a while I still play in Hard mode. Play it in cooperative mode with a friend is so much fun.

The end result of this game was much better than we expected. The gameplay is different and requires quick decision making in order to survive in the maze, which is built randomly.

Long ago, I had programmed a random maze generator that can be seen in the image below. I always wanted to create a game project using this random maze generator. This project took shape with the "No Way Out" game.

RH Spacewar

RH Spacewar was the second game of RH Games. Below are some of its features.

In the deep space, a strange energetic phenomenon was detected. To investigate this incident two ships were sent. But when they arrived at the site they found that this phenomenon was a kind of portal where were coming bizarre and hostile creatures.

There are ten alien species that attack in groups, each with a different attack strategy.

If the situation is difficult, you can count on the help of a partner to defeat the alien menace.

They are quick and ruthless, an oversight can be fatal!

The game can be downloaded with source code at this link: RHspace.zip.

The image below is an example of how art files were organized to be used in the RH Spacewar game.

RH Race

RH Race was the first game of RH Games. It is a racing game where the most important thing is not to arrive at first place, but stay alive. You can run alone or with the help of a friend. Your goal is to avoid colliding with other cars and pick the flags on the road.

Several types of cars will try to prevent you from reaching your goal, such as automobiles with blades, "kamikazes" vehicles that throw themselves against the player and bomb droppers.

You need great hand-eye coordination to be able to overcome all of these challenges.

At the end of each stage you'll have a warm welcome. There is also a panel with messages that will keep you motivated to continue the race.

The game can be downloaded at this link: RHrace.zip.

This zip file contains the executable for Windows. When you unzip the zip file you will find the folder structure shown in the image below. The folder "art" contains all the art used in the game. The folder "sound" contains all the sound files. The folder "src" contains the source code of the game in C/C++ language.

A warning for Windows 7 users. There is a problem of "Windows Explorer" with old Windows games that used 256-color palette. These games appear with several colors replaced messing the look of the game. Games like Command & Conquer, Starcraft and Age of Empires II suffer from this effect that also affects RH Games games.

One way around this problem is to kill the "explorer.exe" process. This can be done in the "Processes" tab of the Windows Task Manager, which is accessed from the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys. Then you can start the game you want in the "Applications" tab of the Task Manager, on the "New Task..." button.