Nova the Squirrel 2 (WIP)

[Individualised]

My main critique is that the walking animation looks a bit stiff. It's hard to even tell that there's a walking animation at all sometimes, I think especially when viewed from a smaller window.

[SNES AYE]

Could possibly show this via the player holding a smaller sprite of the block above their head, so it looks like they're actually carrying it.

I might, though that would double the number of player animation frames needed and I'm not sure that's something I'd want to do. Plus it might not look as good visually.

I'm working on a HUD but I'm doing a minimal look like the main game has. I think this works fine; I might put it in a little frame or something but it's nice to have more of the view unobstructed, even if it's just sky.
There's also an animation on the fans, so they actually look like fans now.

Yeah, all the extra background tile variations and the animation on the fans and stuff is really bringing everything to life.

[Nikku4211]

Ooh, the mode 7 levels are really coming together now.

I really like the grass and bushes, even if the bushes are flat due to hardware limitations.

[creaothceann]

I really like the grass and bushes, even if the bushes are flat due to hardware limitations.

Theoretically the bushes, flowers etc. could be pre-rendered at angles equivalent to the player's rotation (e.g. the player can rotate in 10° steps --> 360/10 = 36 tiles) and uploaded to VRAM every frame. (Sort of like Doom's 2D sprites rotating to always face the player, but on a Mode7 surface.) No idea if the end result would look good though...

[93143]

One could even render them rotated themselves, to approximate fake 3D instead of fake billboarding (PC Doom as opposed to SNES Doom). As you say, though, the resolution is low and it's not clear how good this would look.

[SNES AYE]

Some subtle but nice animation frames on the water tiles would be lovely too and really bring the scene to life.

[omonim2007]

Can anyone compile and post the current version of the game?

I've been struggling with this issue for two days now; I just can't compile the game in Windows 10 from source code.

NovaSquirrel, I opened a ticket at github, I hope you'll check what's the problem.

[NovaSquirrel]

Sure, here's a build of how it is right this very moment, including some changes I haven't committed yet.

For everyone else, the issue omonim2007 ran into was that I forgot to specify that in addition to Make you also needed a C compiler and GNU Coreutils. I think most of the people who've tried to build it run Linux so they already had those things.

[SNES AYE]

Hi, Nova.

If you allow me to be very honest with your for a moment and provide some constructive feedback, I would like to say that I've tried your most recent demo and it's very good, but one thing I think needs some adjustment is the particular physics for the player's movement and jumping while moving. I can't quite pinpoint exactly what's not quite feeling right for me, possibly it takes too long for the player to come to a stop once they've gained momentum or something, but I can just feel there's some tightening up that could be done there, which I honestly believe would take your game to the next level once it's nailed.

Possibly, I would suggest removing all momentum on the player while just walking, so they come to an instant standstill if you stop pressing on the d-pad there. And I think also greatly reducing any momentum while running and the player stops pressing forward might help too. Even only having two digital speed states, either walking speed or running speed, with no acceleration and deceleration might be the key. Or maybe only have some deceleration if the player is running full speed and then tries to quickly change direction and run the other way, with basically no other deceleration or acceleration otherwise. Something like that. I'm not 100% sure if that would be the solution, as I'm just going by what I'm feeling as I play rather than what the code is specifically doing, so these are just some suggestions I'm putting out there.

Hopefully you've taken my feedback in the genuine way it is intended.

I'm not sure how/if I can help here ultimately, but if you want any further feedback or input, please feel free to give me a shout, and I'll do whatever I can to help there.

Anyway, other than that adjustment around the core control that I would recommend, the game is coming along great.

Edit: Also, unless there's some reason for not doing so, I recommend allowing the player to just fire using the run button like in the Mario platformers, as I'm noticing I often tend to accidently do the wrong actions while holding the run button, pressing jump, and the pressing the shoulder button to also fire for example. Now, that might just be me and my fiddly hands, but I've never had that issue with the Mario games, so I'll let you decide on that if it's worth considering or not.

[NovaSquirrel]

I really like the player physics (and love how smooth everything feels!) but I'll play around with it and see if it feels better to me with some tweaks. There have been some small changes from the first game already, I think regarding turning around?

Edit: Also, unless there's some reason for not doing so, I recommend allowing the player to just fire using the run button like in the Mario platformers, as I'm noticing I often tend to accidently do the wrong actions while holding the run button, pressing jump, and the pressing the shoulder button to also fire for example. Now, that might just be me and my fiddly hands, but I've never had that issue with the Mario games, so I'll let you decide on that if it's worth considering or not.

Some copy abilities stop the player from moving while they're in use, like Fishing and Rocket, which is mutually exclusive with running. There's also going to be circumstances where using a copy ability unintentionally could mess up a puzzle you're trying to solve. But I would like to have alternative input methods and it'd be nice to figure out a way to make that work. Kirby-style tap-to-run stuff would be one way to simplify it a bit and have the same benefits.

Related, I updated the fishing ability recently-ish to actually have a line on the fishing rod! It's a lot better than having the hook just kind of floating; here's a gif of that.

[tepples]

Would double tap to run make sense, as used in that other game with copy abilities?

[SNES AYE]

I really like the player physics (and love how smooth everything feels!) but I'll play around with it and see if it feels better to me with some tweaks. There have been some small changes from the first game already, I think regarding turning around?

Edit: Also, unless there's some reason for not doing so, I recommend allowing the player to just fire using the run button like in the Mario platformers, as I'm noticing I often tend to accidently do the wrong actions while holding the run button, pressing jump, and the pressing the shoulder button to also fire for example. Now, that might just be me and my fiddly hands, but I've never had that issue with the Mario games, so I'll let you decide on that if it's worth considering or not.

Some copy abilities stop the player from moving while they're in use, like Fishing and Rocket, which is mutually exclusive with running. There's also going to be circumstances where using a copy ability unintentionally could mess up a puzzle you're trying to solve. But I would like to have alternative input methods and it'd be nice to figure out a way to make that work. Kirby-style tap-to-run stuff would be one way to simplify it a bit and have the same benefits.

Related, I updated the fishing ability recently-ish to actually have a line on the fishing rod! It's a lot better than having the hook just kind of floating; here's a gif of that.

OK, I'll leave you to experiment and do whatever you consider good management of your own time and resources there.

Ha, that looks cool with the fishing rod. Nice touch there.

[Pokun]

The fishing line looks like a very thick chain. If it's possible to make the links smaller rings or dots it would look more like a thread I think.