Sliding Blaster 2

[NovaSquirrel]

I started on a small SNES game I intend to be able to finish within a few months, since I haven't released any finished homebrew games within the past several years (aside from Squirrel Domino I guess? That's just Dr.Mario though) and I really would like to finish something again. Plus https://itch.io/jam/snesdev-2025 is going on, so it's an opportunity to make a small SNES game alongside other people doing the same (though I probably won't actually enter into the jam, unless you can opt out of having it on the resulting multicart.)

It's a SNES sequel to Sliding Blaster for NES, which was for a previous compo. Both games are inspired by an old shareware PC game named Ballmaster 2, though I intend on having a lot of my own creativity in here, like in the very silly enemy ideas, and with level elements you'll be able to interact with. It involves one or two critters (Ichugo, Alex and Rocket) piloting remote control hovercraft toys with cannons, and shooting at different enemies. Very simple gameplay that doesn't require me to make a ton of tricky choices like some of my other projects. I'm going for a "toy box" aesthetic with walls that resemble wood blocks, and eventually the background will look like that one city rug.

You can control it with the SNES mouse, or use a regular controller. Hopefully more people will actually be able to play it as intended with a mouse because they can actually just directly plug one in on this console without using an adapter.

Source code: https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/SlidingBlaster2/

[Nikku4211]

Hopefully more people will actually be able to play it as intended with a mouse because they can actually just directly plug one in on this console without using an adapter.

On real hardware, your options for mice are either finding official Nintendo ball mice, which you'd have to clean more frequently and make sure the ball is in good condition; or Hyperkin's Hyper Click, an aftermarket optical mouse for the SNES with compatibility issues with some SNES games(though hopefully not your game).

On emulators, though, more people should be able to play the mouse just fine, as long as they remember how to change out the controller settings to emulate the mouse on their emulator of choice(which is hopefully Mesen or Ares).

[NovaSquirrel]

Since I have the Hyperkin mouse and can test with it, I have this game set up to specifically detect it, which will cause the game to insert a bunch of delays when reading the mouse. I also confirmed that those delays are actually necessary and that the mouse doesn't read correctly when read it as fast as possible.

[Nikku4211]

Since I have the Hyperkin mouse and can test with it, I have this game set up to specifically detect it, which will cause the game to insert a bunch of delays when reading the mouse. I also confirmed that those delays are actually necessary and that the mouse doesn't read correctly when read it as fast as possible.

That is a Hyperkin bruh moment.

[SNES AYE]

I started on a small SNES game I intend to be able to finish within a few months, since I haven't released any finished homebrew games within the past several years (aside from Squirrel Domino I guess? That's just Dr.Mario though) and I really would like to finish something again. Plus https://itch.io/jam/snesdev-2025 is going on, so it's an opportunity to make a small SNES game alongside other people doing the same (though I probably won't actually enter into the jam, unless you can opt out of having it on the resulting multicart.)

It's a SNES sequel to Sliding Blaster for NES, which was for a previous compo. Both games are inspired by an old shareware PC game named Ballmaster 2, though I intend on having a lot of my own creativity in here, like in the very silly enemy ideas, and with level elements you'll be able to interact with. It involves one or two critters (Ichugo, Alex and Rocket) piloting remote control hovercraft toys with cannons, and shooting at different enemies. Very simple gameplay that doesn't require me to make a ton of tricky choices like some of my other projects. I'm going for a "toy box" aesthetic with walls that resemble wood blocks, and eventually the background will look like that one city rug.

You can control it with the SNES mouse, or use a regular controller. Hopefully more people will actually be able to play it as intended with a mouse because they can actually just directly plug one in on this console without using an adapter.

Source code: https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/SlidingBlaster2/

Do you have a version that can be easily run in an emulator like Messen? I'm not sure what to do with the various files on GitHub, so a simple, self-contained .smc or .sfc file would be great to try out.

[NovaSquirrel]

I haven't released a build because I'm not looking for feedback from testing yet, but sure here's a build anyway

[SNES AYE]

I haven't released a build because I'm not looking for feedback from testing yet, but sure here's a build anyway

Cool, thanks! I’ll just play it and keep shtum.

[NovaSquirrel]

Most recently I've been working on more advanced pathfinding, because I wanted to have enemies that pursued the player and weren't stopped by obstacles. I'm using Dijkstra maps, where I fill a 2D array with increasing distances starting from one or more target positions, in this case the players.

Turns out that for a level this small, you can create the map very quickly, and then you can reuse the map across everything that wants to pathfind to the same place. Here I've got a bunch of different enemies all trying to go to player.



This does bring up the problem that the pathfinding is grid based, and that doesn't look especially natural, so with the snowmen here I have them set up to default to atan2 based player seeking, and then switch to Dijkstra maps when they bump into a wall, and then they switch back to atan2 when they don't detect any solid blocks near them. This approach definitely seems to have some problems and it can take a bit of time for them to properly switch "modes" and start properly using the Dijkstra maps, but I think the improvement in looking natural is worth it.

Aside from that, I redid how the hovercraft looks to have multiple angles, and hopefully look more like a hovercraft and less like a frog. I have enemies dropping pickups you can grab for ammo or health or speed. I still don't really have levels but we'll see. I think it's very unlikely this is getting finished by September but I wasn't aiming for that anyway. I had a lot going on in July with Art Fight and several other events and it's taken some time to get back into it. I want to finish this this year if nothing else.

[NovaSquirrel]

Okay, here's a build that's actually polished up enough that I think it's ready for people to try it. There's multiple levels, some with multiple enemy waves to fight through, and you can play with one or two players. There's a character select but characters don't do anything except sit in the corner and look cute.

One big thing that's missing in this build is the ability to run out of health; I'm not sure how I want to handle that in a multiplayer context. For a single player game I would have the player retry the level, but that makes less sense when there's two people. I could have the level need to be restarted when both are out of health, but it's not very fun to just sit and watch the other player after you lose. Maybe the player who ran out of health could join back in using half of the other player's health? Then again I've had fun playing arcade games with people where we just press the coin button when we run out and join back in, and treat it as a thing to just force through to experience the whole thing rather than as a challenge.

I'm also not 100% sure on the game balancing with damage and such. I think as-is it's too easy, and I'd probably want to have some controls for difficulty, though I'm not sure how that should work yet. I think a lot of the fun of the game comes from having to carefully maneuver around enemies and bullets while aiming your own shots and I want to emphasize that, and make it so that you do actually have to feel like you have to avoid getting hit.

There's also no music yet; I don't know what I want to do for that. I'm using Terrific Audio Driver and I could try and maybe port the previous game's song to it so there's at least something. The sound effects are also placeholders, and a lot of stuff is rough (like the background is blockier than I'd like) but all of that stuff doesn't get in the way of being able to try out the gameplay!

[spadix]

Nice work, this is great! Love the cute and crazy aesthetic.

Not sure if you're looking for feedback yet, so feel free to skip the rest

Had fun playing multiplayer with my partner and didn't run into any problems. We don't have hardware, so this is in Mesen-S (via RetroArch on a Steam Deck). The analog sticks on the controllers worked really well, actually much better than trying to use the trackpad on my laptop.

• Even after "getting used to" the controls, something feels a little off… although, we have trouble articulating exactly how. Possibly the physics could use more detail? Random ideas:
  • Using the input as acceleration, rather than a speed select would give better control over speed and even allow "breaking".
  • A bit of damping when bouncing off the walls would make the "maze" stages easier to navigate.
• Picked up a bomb and a driver's license, but not sure what they did, maybe nothing yet?
• Speeding around at full throttle is too much fun, but not very effective; good thing there is no dying yet or I would be in trouble
• Glitched into a wall once (while coasting?), but was able to just drive back out again.
• I started out trying to aim carefully and conserve ammo until I realized that it was always full. Then I just spam bullets and still rarely ran out.
• We start each stage with 0 ammo, but eventually get 1 "pity ammo"? …all that ammo I hoarded from the last stage
• The transitions between stages seemed a bit abrupt. Maybe if a door or portal opened it would give players a brief respite or time to snag some health before zooming through?

One big thing that's missing in this build is the ability to run out of health;

Have you considered a "revival" mechanic for the multiplayer out-of-health scenarior? I'm thinking of the Castle Crashers / Full Metal Furies approach, but there are many variations. Basically, the first dead player enters a "downed" state and the surviving player needs to "do something" to revive them, such as hanging out by their corpse for some time and maybe holding a button. Other notes:

• They typically only revive with partial health (although that's usually "free")
• Some incentive might encourage the surviving player to perform the rite sooner… maybe a bit of free health or ammo?
• As you mentioned, there should be something for them to *do* while down:
  • at least make an annoying noise/emote so their buddy can't forget them?
  • crawl around slowly to find better cover for the revive? or to collect the pieces of their broken hovercraft?

I would be careful with any "shared health" approach, which would make it harder for one player to carry the other when there is a large skill gap (eg, consider playing with a younger kid)

[NovaSquirrel]

Yeah I am looking for feedback, and this is all really helpful, thank you!

Using the input as acceleration, rather than a speed select would give better control over speed and even allow "breaking".
A bit of damping when bouncing off the walls would make the "maze" stages easier to navigate.

These are good ideas! Having acceleration/deceleration of some sort would probably help to differentiate the game from its inspiration a bit, and the damping sounds helpful. I'll play with it and see what feels nice. Right now right clicking is a short boost in the picked direction rather than a speed change, in case that was unclear.

Picked up a bomb and a driver's license, but not sure what they did, maybe nothing yet?

The bombs are supposed to be "bad" powerups you watch out for and avoid picking up; in the previous game they visually explode on you, but that wasn't implemented yet. By drivers license I assume you mean the extra speed powerup, which has a smiley face and speed lines on it to try and indicate that they're going fast. That allows you to go fast temporarily.

Speeding around at full throttle is too much fun, but not very effective; good thing there is no dying yet or I would be in trouble
Glitched into a wall once (while coasting?), but was able to just drive back out again.
I started out trying to aim carefully and conserve ammo until I realized that it was always full. Then I just spam bullets and still rarely ran out.
We start each stage with 0 ammo, but eventually get 1 "pity ammo"? …all that ammo I hoarded from the last stage

The speeding around was because you picked up the speed powerup. I'm unsure about how I want extra speed to work; in the previous game it just meant that right clicking did longer, faster boosts, which seems like it could be setting you up for accidentally boosting into something you didn't intend to. And yeah I might have balanced the game to be too friendly with ammo; in BallMaster 2 there are lots of different characters to pick from with different weapons, so you can actually choose between high ammo + low damage, low ammo + high damage, and lots of weapons with special behaviors. I think it'd be nice to do something like that. I think having an option where it's friendly to spamming is good for players who aren't great at aiming yet, while having a way to reward people who conserve ammo and are good at lining up the shot.

And yeah the collision detection/response is not fully solid yet, oops. It's actually pretty difficult to implement a ball bouncing off of walls, since you need to detect if you need to reflect horizontally or vertically or both. I'll see if maybe there's a better approach I can take, or if I can put in a check to notice that it's going wrong and fix it. I have to be careful here there may be a bunch of different bouncing objects and I don't want to make the checks for that too heavy since I may be doing it like 20 times each frame.

The transitions between stages seemed a bit abrupt. Maybe if a door or portal opened it would give players a brief respite or time to snag some health before zooming through?

Oh yeah, especially since the enemies come through portals themselves. That's a good idea.

Have you considered a "revival" mechanic for the multiplayer out-of-health scenario?

Oh yeah! I've played so much Salmon Run in Splatoon 3 that I'm surprised I didn't think of that. Yeah, that's probably the right way to go, especially since trying to carefully navigate over to your teammate in a dangerous situation sounds fun.

[spadix]

The bombs are supposed to be "bad" powerups you watch out for and avoid picking up; in the previous game they visually explode on you, but that wasn't implemented yet.

Oh! I see the health decreasing now – I thought something changed down there, but was looking for bombs to drop or throw. Is the player character meant to flash when they take damage in this case? Combined with the explosion, that would have helped me figure out what was happening (also dying ).

The representation of the bomb in a box is a bit inconsistent for me: I thought the game was building a visual language where these "icons in boxes" or "cards" are items to collect and basically everything else should be avoided. For instance, compare the bombs to the razor blades or the wreaths which are also dropped by enemies…

And OMG, I finally figured out where all the cookies are coming from! The chef is dropping a box, which I assumed I had picked up, but was actually cookie mix‽ So many times I've killed everyone else and ended up with a screen full of cookies. I love this and the way it drives the player to prioritize targets. Although, if the visual language includes "enemies come through portals", it might be more readable if the cookie box was a portal?

… lots of different characters to pick from with different weapons, so you can actually choose between high ammo + low damage, low ammo + high damage, and lots of weapons with special behaviors. I think it'd be nice to do something like that. I think having an option where it's friendly to spamming is good for players who aren't great at aiming yet, while having a way to reward people who conserve ammo and are good at lining up the shot.

This collection of characters with different attributes to support different play styles sounds really cool! Especially if they're unlockable/collectable (maybe by playing other characters?), which would encourage different play styles and improve replayability…

And yeah the collision detection/response is not fully solid yet, oops. It's actually pretty difficult to implement a ball bouncing off of walls, since you need to detect if you need to reflect horizontally or vertically or both. I'll see if maybe there's a better approach I can take, or if I can put in a check to notice that it's going wrong and fix it. I have to be careful here there may be a bunch of different bouncing objects and I don't want to make the checks for that too heavy since I may be doing it like 20 times each frame.

I know, right! I have a similar situation with my game on the NES, compounded by 1/12 the clock rate, 8 bit ops and ofc I want different behavior for "glancing bounce" vs "full faceplant". Luckily, there are only 3 objects with that behavior, so there is some time to mess around – if only there was some memory to make use of it.

[NovaSquirrel]

The representation of the bomb in a box is a bit inconsistent for me: I thought the game was building a visual language where these "icons in boxes" or "cards" are items to collect and basically everything else should be avoided. For instance, compare the bombs to the razor blades or the wreaths which are also dropped by enemies…

The intention was to have it like Bomberman, which has the skull and sandals items (among others) which have negative effects, and part of the gameplay is that you do actually have to be careful what items you pick up. But I could probably do something similar while still having it more obvious it's harmful (like Bomberman using a skull is pretty clear, but I guess sandals don't inherently read as harmful to me?)

And OMG, I finally figured out where all the cookies are coming from! The chef is dropping a box, which I assumed I had picked up, but was actually cookie mix‽ So many times I've killed everyone else and ended up with a screen full of cookies. I love this and the way it drives the player to prioritize targets. Although, if the visual language includes "enemies come through portals", it might be more readable if the cookie box was a portal?

Yeah the intention is that that's an intentionally vague version of the Cookie Crisp mascot creating boxes of his own cereal haha. And yeah there's a few different enemy types that you want to take care of first before they become more of a problem - it could be fun to expand on that.

I know, right! I have a similar situation with my game on the NES, compounded by 1/12 the clock rate, 8 bit ops and ofc I want different behavior for "glancing bounce" vs "full faceplant". Luckily, there are only 3 objects with that behavior, so there is some time to mess around – if only there was some memory to make use of it.

Haha I wish it was 12 times the clock rate; it's just doubled (kind of, there's some cycles lost every scanline due to RAM refresh, and cycles that access RAM are only 1.5x NES cycle speed) - though in practice yeah I need significantly fewer instructions to do anything, and don't need to spend cycles on an audio engine, so performance is definitely more complicated than just the clock rate.

[spadix]

Haha I wish it was 12 times the clock rate; it's just doubled … performance is definitely more complicated than just the clock rate.

Whoops, I apologize! That was not an intentional exaggeration (just plain wrong), and I was shooting for "encouragement", certainly not trying to trivialize the work involved. Sorry, my bad

You have made a lot of progress already; I'm sure you can find an approach or compromise that makes you happy! I am looking forward to trying out future releases

[NovaSquirrel]

Whoops, I apologize! That was not an intentional exaggeration (just plain wrong), and I was shooting for "encouragement", certainly not trying to trivialize the work involved. Sorry, my bad

No worries, I didn't interpret it to be trivializing; I'm just eager to talk about the SNES and SNES development details. I'm showcasing the game at Sonic Amateur Games Expo and I'll see what other feedback I get, and then I can try and plan out what a full version of this game will look like.