Super Bat Puncher

[miau]

ccovell, it was very helpful. You mentioned the two issues that are bothering me the most.

I may be able to improve the graphics, but I'm not sure how to combat "dead space", as somebody put it. Ideally, I'm hoping that more different types of enemies will make the problem solve itself eventually, but with the amount of backtracking you may be tempted to do in the full game, this...

I'm exceptionally impressed by how well the game memorises defeated enemies (so those damn bats won't respawn immediately like Rockman hell) and destroyed blocks.

is actually going to pose a problem.
Other games never feel empty because of the respawn. There is always something looking to kill you, I like to call that the "Arcade Spirit".

Again, thanks for everyone's feedback! Very inspiring. :)

[TmEE]

Perhaps have soem enemies respawn and others disappear completely ? That way you won't be overwhelmed by enemies all times, and you would also never feel boredom as there's always something trying to get you.... ?

[NESHomebrew]

Perhaps have soem enemies respawn and others disappear completely ? That way you won't be overwhelmed by enemies all times, and you would also never feel boredom as there's always something trying to get you.... ?

Make some of them "sparkly" like the second bat in the game.

[Wave]

Perhaps have soem enemies respawn and others disappear completely ? That way you won't be overwhelmed by enemies all times, and you would also never feel boredom as there's always something trying to get you.... ?

Make some of them "sparkly" like the second bat in the game.

Or make them respawn on locations where you can use enemies to advance.

[Bregalad]

teh grammarz, teh picshur no haz dem... i fix:

s/HEY,/Hey!/
s/are not/aren't/
s/get/be/

Otherwise "Hey! How'd you get in here?!" (or if it's in some high-up place, replace the word "in" with "up") would be better.

NO !!! DON'T FIX THIS. Good NES games MUST use incorrect english !!

Other than that, no I didn't watch the video. But if I should watch it to play this is the equivalent to vatch a video on youtube to beat a part of a game you can't beat (I do that quite often in fact) and this normally shouldn't be needed, at least not in level 1. Don't take it wrong, the game is great, it's just that a walkthrough shouldn't be needed to beat level 1.

OK I know some NES games (Castlevania II, Zelda I/II, Metroid etc...) which are impossible without using a walkthrough.

EDIT : It's the trick at 4:21 that I couldn't find on my own. Oh well...

[tepples]

I see you're using the Faxanadu trick for your text boxes: rendering them to CHR RAM tiles. How hard would it be to make them use a proportional font?

[Banshaku]

Did you have problems finding out how the level 2 ability works? I guess not, because it is obvious what you have to do.

I knew what it was doing but I didn't know at first how to enter that "mode". After some practice I figured it out.

As for the secret level, I'm almost done but that level of hard kill the fun. It should only be as an extra for people that want to test their skills. If something similar ends up as a normal level, you will lose your audience.

Even thought the enemies were sparse I didn't mind much at first about that detail. The game is so fluid that I didn't focus on that since I was having fun playing it. If there is a way to put more then yes, that would make it less empty.

[hap]

looks and plays very nice, I'm looking forward to the end result! =)
It has a bit of a Cave Story feel to it, intentional I guess?

[ccovell]

Of course, we could all list the perceived influences: Cave Story, Hebereke/Ufouria, Gimmick, Trip World, Rockin' Kats, Blaster Master, Metroid, Esper Boukentai (?), but I don't think Miau is trying to hide the fact (he couldn't even if he wanted to.)

I finished the extra level (no cheating but with savestates, of course) and even found the 3rd-stage lady hanging around there. That level was quite the mind & reflex-twister, so good job! I also liked the various messages that you get from exploring the levels and newly-reachable areas on the second time through.

I did spot two block-elimination bugs while playing... One when I destroyed a bat and he flew towards the right edge of the screen and destroyed a block that was on the right edge, or maybe halfway off the screen. The block hadn't been erased when I then jumped over to the right, even though it was now physically gone and I fell through this visible but incorporeal block.

The other was in the extra stage in the final part. One of the archers at the bottom of the screen was destroyed by me and so he destroyed the spikes to his left but also the floor under the spike directly to his left got a black 16x8 chunk erased from it.

Good luck fixing those...

[Bregalad]

I finished the extra level (no cheating but with savestates, of course)

The ones with spikes everywhere ? Congratulatoin on that. I saved it for later.

I see you're using the Faxanadu trick for your text boxes: rendering them to CHR RAM tiles. How hard would it be to make them use a proportional font?

I saw this too and I wonder what's the advantage of this method. I guess he can squeeze 3 lines of text plus top and bottom border in 4 lines of nametables, which is smart (you could only fit 2 lines of text the standard way).
I guess for tiny boxes like this it takes the same VRAM as the whole alphabet, but if you want larger boxes then you're pretty much forced to go the standard way or else you're going to need way too much VRAM.

In the case of Faxanadu, it'd be hard to see why they used that technique if you don't investigate the original Faxanadu (J). Most FC games used simple 8x8 hiragana character while Faxanadu (J) used this technique to allow a mix of large 16x16 hiragana, katakana and kanji (I guess...) characters.

Small boxes looks very good for this game in fact. But in the case of a RPG for example it would probably be inappropriate.

Personally I think Ufouria is probably the main source of inspiration of this game. I might be wrong, but if I had to name a similar NES game I'd name it.

[tepples]

From top to bottom: Screenshot of game (from previous page), mock-up of the same font drawn proportionally, mock-up of a narrower font drawn proportionally.

And would it be a balance killer to center the view a couple tiles in front of the character, as Yoshi's Island does? Or to let the player move the view up and down by holding up or down on the Control Pad?

[Bregalad]

I guess that if the 3rd option would be used, it would become REALLY distored by the coposite "dot crawl" therefore hard to read when played on real hardware.
Therefore 1st and 2nd options are best.

[tepples]

I ran the 3rd option through blargg's NTSC filter, and I didn't think it was so bad. The colors are $0C (dark cyan) and $20/$30 (white), and there's enough contrast between the light phase of $0C (which is the voltage for color $00; the dark phase is $0D) and color white to keep the text readable.

[qbradq]

Eh, that looks about like the text on most Playstation games that used a thin font. Those were kinda hard to read though

[Kojote]

I normaly just read things here and hardly speak up, but this is the most freaking great piece of work for NES I have seen in ages!