Family Picross

Edit: Demo #1 is now available!

For some reason, I thought working on a picross game for NES would be fun. Turns out I was right, as I've been enjoying developing it so far.


Title screen, nothing too special for now.


Main menu


Normal Mode menu (after beating the first level)


Random Mode menu


In-game screenshot (Random mode)

I dread making up to 256 puzzles for Normal mode, though... (among many other things.)

Graphics look nice, the layouts are maybe a little crowded, but still looking good. I like the anti-aliasing on the font.

Cool stuff! Every system needs a Picross game. Is white-on-black the most relaxing to the eyes, though? Maybe having pastels surrounding the play grid would be better on the eyes after long playing sessions.

You can always borrow some puzzles from my game here: http://www.chrismcovell.com/TMLogic.html
Though I'm not sure what data format you are using. Anyway, the puzzles I made up (or took from game icons) are not all "Picross-perfect", ie: solvable without random X-Y guesswork on the rare occasion, like Nintendo's creations are, but hey...

Maxim's Picross on the SMS had lots of puzzles that may be able to be borrowed: http://www.smspower.org/maxim/SMSSoftware/Picross

+1 for the font

Could you give specifics? I've been fighting myself on the title screen and main menu for a while now, as these pics of older versions should demonstrate:


(Excuse the scanlines in the second pic )


Thanks. I'm hoping it'll work well on TVs.
(I already know it's going to make various "2x" algorithms look like crap, which is intentional Comparison shots here for those interested.)
I'm still not sure on some of the letters, though. The "V" in particular feels off to me.


This is something else I was thinking about. Originally, I wanted to make the game similar to the earlier Famicom/NES games, but even some of those used colorful backgrounds. I'd also have to check how well the anti-aliased text works on non-black backgrounds.


Are you sure you're ok with that? I mean, I already stole "borrowed" the X Protection option from Tongueman's Logic...


This is new to me, time to check it out

Sorry, but it's mostly a "feel" thing (hard for me to pinpoint a solution, similar to how everybody can say that a song is good or bad even if they have no idea how it was made or how to fix it if it is indeed bad), and with the NES as platform with all its limitations maybe a solution doesn't even exist.

But it's not a big problem anyways, so...

This looks pimp! I like how there are increasing levels of difficulty. Do you intend on releasing a ROM?

Also, have you thought about randomly generating the level set?

I would consider writing a tool to verify that every puzzle is properly solvable. It could be used to help you make puzzles as well, and possibly rank their difficulty.

Yes, I plan on releasing a demo rom with 9 easy 5x5 puzzles and Random/Easy mode once I figure out some control issues I'm having.


The game randomly generates the levels for Random mode. (I have some issues to work out with the level generation at the moment, though.)


That's a very good idea, I will look into that.

Oh, and Family is written as "ファミリー" in Japanese, with the dash there.

Simon Tatham (of PuTTY) wrote a paint-by-numbers program with generator and solver. Might be useful reference?

Hey, is that LAN Master under the "Net" picture, two cells left of "Pattern"?

Another picross game? As if I didn't waste enough time on Mario no Super Picross already x_x; (went through all the Mario boards... yeah, I need a life)


Maybe you could take a look at Mario no Super Picross to get some ideas?

Which reminds me, that thing had pretty large boards (25×20 being the limit)... but the resolution is the same as for the NES. They used 8×8 squares, but you seem to be using 16×16 spaces for them? Wouldn't it be better to make them 8×8 too?

Going back and answering this... it's the simplest possible format you can think of. (using bitfields since I'm only doing binary puzzles; no coloring involved)


Thanks for that; fixed.


Very useful; I used the solver to determine that one of the random puzzles in the game isn't perfectly solvable... back to the drawing board.


I use the 16x16 tiles for puzzles from 5x5 to 8x8. Once you reach 9x9 and above, I start to use 8x8 tiles:


(Currently, I only plan on having up to 16x16 with this ROM. Maybe when I re-code the game to use MMC1, I'll add bigger puzzles.)

Is it at all desirable to make other intermediate grid sizes? I guess the easy one (12x12px) only gets you 9x9 and 10x10 puzzles.

Looing good!!!

Funny you should say that, as I had tried to make 4x4px tiles work in a much earlier version before I realized it would eat CHR space fast.

Hm. 3⁴ + 2·10² is 281, yeah. You could do something awful with timed code to display only the top 4 scanlines of each nametable row and reduce that to 3² + 10² + 10, but that's definitely extra bonus showing-off effort.

I know you said 16×16, but I guess that 15×15 may be a good max size - any larger and it starts getting troublesome (don't remind me of the 20×20 and 25×20 boards >_< good those were only at the end)

Also if this matters, Mario no Super Picross got away with the 8×8 tiles for the small 5×5 boards, so if you're in need of CHR space later you may as well just ditch the 16×16 tiles and try to get away with it. It did certainly look tiny though, but then again, 5×5 is already way too tiny for a picross game (so leave it only for the few earliest levels)...

EDIT: eh, the 16×16 tiles are being used in the title screen, so maybe it isn't a good idea...

EDIT 2: also what are you going to do with the music? OK, I know it's just a picross game, but if it's going to have that look you may as well want to give it awesome music that fits =P

I share your pain, having convinced myself to play some of the 20x20 levels in Picross DS recently.


I mainly chose the 16x16 tiles at the lower levels for better visibility. IMO, the 8x8 tiles are very small and would leave too much negative space on the playing field. (plus, too lazy to redraw the screen for each puzzle size right now )


Good question. For the demo, I plan on doing nothing.

I've got a friend who's pretty good with Famitracker, and he made this .nsf for me after playing an earlier demo. Hopefully the final version will have this and other tracks.

Demo #1 is now available!

There's a manual as well, but it needs to be fleshed out quite a bit.

Please report any bugs/oddities you find.

p.s. I realize that at least two of the puzzles in Normal mode aren't exactly "Easy" difficulty. You'll know which ones they are when you play them.

Two complaints I have:

1) When going back to the level select the cursor is back to the first level, so in order to go to the next one you need to smash the ↓ button several times, which gets annoying. It would be better if the cursor was placed back in the last level that was played.

2) Level 7 is ambiguous. Both of these solutions are valid (only the first one is acknowledged by the game):
There are other combinations by mixing the different quarters from those two (for a grand total of 16), but you get the idea.

Will be fixed in next release; already made the changes:
hg commit -m "Make cursor display on the last level played in Normal Mode's level list"


Congrats, that's one of the two levels that I figured would cause troubles (level 5 being the other one). I'll probably end up ditching puzzle #7, since it only makes sense when you complete it.

I just tried the demo, it looks nice! Congrats.

I was annoyed by the level select cursor too, nice to know this is fixed.

And I was troubled by puzzles 5 and 7 having multiple solutions too, and also some in random mode, which is even more of a problem, since you have a probability of loosing a life point. And I guess puzzles with multiple solution can be really annoying with bigger grids, even in normal mode.

I know the DS Picross game has a puzzle editor that can check if a puzzle has a unique solution or not, so you might want to look into that.

Anyway the random mode is a very nice idea, it's really fun, beating records makes you make mistakes, nice!

I guess the only thing I would add is a way to enter a name or initials at some point to claim bragging rights for records.

Wow, a very solid piece of game!
I, too, had problems with Levels 5 and 7.
Nevertheless, I like it.
Congratulations!

Just wanted to say it look very professional. I wish there was more cute stuff to look at on screen though!

Level up to CNROM!


I need to make a better logo, but I'm pretty happy with the title screen as a base.


Got bored with the old main menu, so I changed it up a little with some of the new tiles.

Yes, I will be looking into other issues (puzzle generation, etc) too

No idea on a release date.

edit: Converted the Random menu over to the new tileset as well:

Call me the outlier, I liked the old graphics more =/

I would love to see a finished product of this title, or at least the last demo you made. I love these types of games, I own them for Gameboy, SNES, and Neo Geo Pocket

coming eventually...


(this didn't convert to gif very well)

can't wait to see it.

I loved the demo and I can't wait to see a new demo or (even better) a release.
going back to replay a bit your old demo, however, I think that also puzzle 1 admits multiple solutions: isn't this valid too?



good luck with your work, anyway: I think that if you manage to avoid multi-solvable puzzles you'd really get a great product!

Welp, with the release of another Family Picross, I've decided to finally kill this project and upload the dev folders for both versions.

Old Version: http://ajworld.net/freemco/famipicr/fam ... 180723.zip
New Version: http://ajworld.net/freemco/famipicr/fpp_20180723.zip

The license is "I don't care", even though I know some countries don't believe in giving up copyrights. In those places, assume the materials provided are licensed under the Unlicense.