Next Hexagon

>>> NEXT HEXAGON

A frantic one-button reflex game for ZX Spectrum Next. Stay alive in the rotating hexagonal maze, dodge incoming wave-rings synced to PT3 chiptune music, and push the global leaderboard from a real Spectrum over Wi-Fi.

"Strongly inspired by Micro Hexagon for the Commodore 64 — re-imagined for the Next with full Layer 2 graphics, a rotating bitmap background, beat-synced visuals and online high scores uploaded directly from your Spectrum."

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WHAT IT IS

You are the small triangle orbiting the center hexagon. The whole world rotates around you. Concentric rings of pulses close in from outside — each ring has one or more safe gaps. Rotate yourself into a gap, survive, repeat. The game speeds up, switches direction, doubles up the rings, and eventually fires three at once with single-gap nightmare patterns. How long can you last?

Nine difficulty phases, two game modes, and a single life. That's the whole loop.

FEATURES

• Two hardware variants in one .NEX — runs on 1 MB/2MB ZX Spectrum Next.
• Two game modes — EASY (smooth direction changes, you ride the rotation, gentler ring tempo) and HARD (instant direction flips, manual rotation tracking, tighter timing). Switch with H on the title screen.
• Nine progressive phases — START, LEVEL 2, TWO RINGS, LEVEL 4, TRIPLE, WARP, HYPER, CHAOS, NIGHTMARE. Each phase changes shrink speed, respawn delay and the active ring-pattern sequence.
• Keyboard and Kempston joystick — O/P or arrow keys, or Kempston left/right + fire. Switch with K on the title screen.
• PT3 chiptune soundtrack by Jamie Mallender.
• Beat-synced hexagon — the central hexagon pulses to scripted beat events embedded in the soundtrack.
• Online leaderboard via built-in Wi-Fi — upload your score, best phase, total games played and difficulty straight from the game over the ESP modem in the Spectrum Next. Press U after a run.
• Manual leaderboard upload — no Wi-Fi? No problem. Drop your NEXTHEX.CFG file into the upload form on the leaderboard page. Link to the editor: https://mb-maniax.cz/nhexagon/editor.html
• Persistent CFG on SD card — high score, best phase, control mode, difficulty, games played and an optional separate custom-pattern hi-score slot are saved to NEXTHEX.CFG via the NextZXOS esxDOS API.
• Optional custom patterns — drop a PATTERN.BIN next to the game and you can override phase timings, ring shrink limits and all four ring-gap sequences (early, mid, hard, nightmare). Custom-pattern scores are saved in a separate slot and never uploaded online.
• Attract-mode demo — leave the title screen alone for a few seconds and the game plays itself. The demo AI runs about three minutes, then loops.
• Credits screen — press C on the title screen for the full credits roll over a static loading background.
• Layer 2 graphics, smooth rotation — double-buffered Layer 2 at 256x192, eight-directional rotation, DMA-driven background restore on the 2 MB variant.

CONTROLS

Keyboard	O / P or arrow keys — rotate
Kempston joystick	Left / Right — rotate · Fire — start
SPACE	Start a run (or restart from Game Over)
ENTER	Pause / resume
H	Switch EASY / HARD on title
K	Switch keyboard / Kempston on title
C (title)	Show credits screen
C (game over)	Delete saved Wi-Fi login (NEXTHEX.USR)
U	Upload high score over Wi-Fi (after game over)
BREAK	Return to title screen / cancel upload

HOW THE LEADERBOARD WORKS

There are two ways to land on the global leaderboard:

1. Direct from the Spectrum Next — after a game over, press U. The game asks for a nick (3-20 chars) and password (4-20 chars) the first time, then they live in NEXTHEX.USR. The game connects through the internal ESP Wi-Fi modem and posts your run to the server. Your score, best phase, total games played and difficulty are all submitted. Only NORMAL (non-custom-pattern) scores can be uploaded.
2. Manual CFG upload — if you have no Wi-Fi connectivity on your Next, just grab the NEXTHEX.CFG file from the SD card and drop it into the upload form on the leaderboard page. Same data, same place on the board.

REQUIREMENTS

• ZX Spectrum Next (1 MB or 2 MB) — or compatible emulator like CSpect / ZEsarUX with Next core 3.x.
• SD card with NextZXOS — needed for saving high scores, control settings, login credentials and (optionally) loading the background.
• For online upload: a configured Wi-Fi connection on the Next's ESP module.
• For the rotating bitmap background: 2 MB RAM and the NEXTHEX.BGD data file in the same folder as the .nex (or in the SD root).

FILES IN THE BUILD

• NEXTHEX.NEX — the game itself, with menu/loading/game-over graphics and PT3 music bundled in. Runs on both 1 MB and 2 MB Nexts.
• NEXTHEX.BGD — optional background bitmap data. Place it next to the .nex on the SD card. On a 1 MB Next the file is simply ignored.
• NEXTHEX.CFG — created automatically on first run. Holds high score, best phase, difficulty, control mode, games played and a separate custom-pattern hi-score slot. Upload-friendly format (NHX5, 20 bytes).
• NEXTHEX.USR — created on first online upload. Holds your nick and password.
• PATTERN.BIN — optional. 92-byte custom pattern file (magic NHP1) that lets you override phase timings, ring radii and gap sequences. Game falls back to the built-in defaults if missing or invalid.

CREDITS

Code, graphics, design — Shrek / MB Maniax.
Music — Jamie Mallender.
Tester — Sillicon / Unreal.
Help — MBorik, Ped7g, Baze.
Inspired by Micro Hexagon (C64) and Super Hexagon by Terry Cavanagh.

VERSION HISTORY

v1.0 — initial release. Nine phases, two modes, PT3 soundtrack with beat sync, online + manual leaderboard, optional custom patterns, attract-mode demo, credits screen, 1 MB and 2 MB variants in a single .nex.

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Stay alive. Push the leaderboard. The hexagon never stops turning.