nesdev.org

The game is pretty fun and challenging. Kinda like Dangerous Dave. I feel like I'll be playing it for a long time until I beat it. This is a good game for a long-term gameplay. I was daydreaming how awesome it would have been if this game had been on my NES clone from childhood. I'd play it all day besides Super Mario Bros 1.

I was thinking of changing the special weapons. I seem to use the throwing star 90% of the time.

The one tool shoots upward, but that's rarely useful. The spinning fire doesn't fully stop injury, which is annoying.

Any thoughts?

I don't like losing all weapons upon death. I'd like to save all weapons on checkpoint. Or maybe, put a sprite of the dead player from previous life so that when the player collects it, they regain all weapons. But that would be a nice challenge. Say, you have 5 coins. You'll lose them in the dead body too, but if you collect it, you regain them. Then, if you fall into a pit, you can't recover, lol, muhahahahaha.

I mean like...I was thinking of turning the fire circle into a Kirby style flame thrower, and replacing the 'Jacobs Ladder' electric tool (the one that goes up) with a boomerang.

https://youtu.be/P_41616M1zk

Here's the Let's Play.

Here's a slight update on the graphics. I really haven't had much time to work on this, but I did hand (pen and paper) sketches of the entire Level 3.

Hey guys,

I may seem like I've been slacking, but I've been working on other things. Here's level 3, with about 25 tiny changes and a few important changes...
-Ninja runs a little smoother and a little slower, and it's easier to get high jumps
-Fire circle replaced with Fire Sword
-Electric weapon replaced with boomerang

(EDIT, REMOVED LINK, OLD VERSION)

Please let me know if you catch any bugs (and not just the spiders ), or have any useful comments. Thanks

Here's some screen shots.

Some more.

Made one correction already. Changed the boss color. I just played it on a real NES, and the boss looked like a blurry pile of poop. Apparently there is no contrast between $06 and $07. I changed the main color to $16. Hopefully it looks better now.

Also, I wanted to thank darryl.revok for his contribution in making the Boss graphics. Sorry I screwed up his color.

dougeff wrote:I just played it on a real NES, and the boss looked like a blurry pile of poop. Apparently there is no contrast between $06 and $07.

I wish I could have convinced the artists for Haunted: Halloween '85 of this lack of contrast.

Here's a test for a possible redo of the Title...

https://youtu.be/_iHCUtGVaus

Does anybody like this, because it's not entirely finished, and I don't know if it's worthwhile to do it "right". I used Famitracker and recorded a .wav from it and overlayed it over a FCEUX video recording. My game engine is completely incompatible with Famitracker, so I would have to do some work to put the song in...plus the DPCM samples take up $f00 bytes of space, which I'm not too happy about. Also, I'm using a very inefficient way to update nametables here, that takes way too much time to fit in a V-blank, so I'm just turning rendering off every 8 frames to update the nametable. I could come up with a '2 nametables that switch' method, to make it not flicker...if I decide to go with this idea.

Comments requested.

dougeff wrote:Here's a test for a possible redo of the Title...

https://youtu.be/_iHCUtGVaus
[...]
Comments requested.

1. The animation is pretty slow.

• If this was in a game, I might watch it the first time to see what it is, but every other time I'd probably grumble it's so slow and mash START to try to bypass it.

2. The black parts of the Ninja can look like the background.

• The first time I watched it, I saw a sideways A pushing a flame and pulling another flame behind it. Once the animation completed, it took me a second to realize the blackness wasn't the background, but the Vigilante Ninja. Now when I watch it, I see him every time. Maybe if the Ninja moved more quickly it'd be more obvious the black stuff is the Ninja the first time you see it.

3. It looks blocky.

• I guess you're going for a blocky look on purpose? I thought your previous title screen might be replaced with a more detailed one in the future.

4. The music sounds sample heavy.

• I can't decide if:
  a. that's cool ("yeah! badass guitar sound on NES!"), or
  b. that's cheesy (like the Action 52 intro). Maybe I'd prefer more "retro" sound in an NES game (more audible use of the NES's other sound channels) along with a few sample sounds.

If you go with this title screen, the slowness seems worthwhile to fix. The other three comments are less strong opinions that I'd be okay with if you didn't change.

Thanks for sharing your work.

Bavi_H wrote:If this was in a game, I might watch it the first time to see what it is, but every other time I'd probably grumble it's so slow and mash START to try to bypass it.

Is this abnormal? Contra has a quick sliding intro and I always press start to jump into the action. I don't care how good, quick or fast an intro is, if I've seen it once, I don't need to see it again. I'd only be irked if you COULDN'T press start to bypass it.

I don't mind the pace. It highlights the over-the-top quality to the intro scene and I feel fits a light-hearted and slightly humorous game.

It reminds me of this but nowhere near as slow:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/73449

What does bother me is this:

3. It looks blocky.

I understand that it's a blown up sprite of the character, but I don't think that works for the aesthetic. It's kind of funny, and maybe if the fire behind him was detailed, the joke would work. But currently, I feel the low resolution belies the graphical style, and makes it appear as if it's going to be an Atari styled game. It's not. That style also clashes with the logo.

I'm not crazy about the logo. The monochromatic halftones make the text look messy, especially on the word Ninja. I'd prefer to see at least one more color in the logo, and I think solid shading would look better for a logo, where clarity and crispness are paramount.

a. that's cool ("yeah! badass guitar sound on NES!"), or
b. that's cheesy (like the Action 52 intro).

Personally, I'd say that a. and b. are both true and I'd also say that I like it. I'm under the impression that the intro is supposed to be humorous, like an over-the-top action movie, contrasted with the simplicity of the protagonist. I think the heavy guitar fits perfectly, if I'm perceiving the intro correctly.

I do see why it would be fitting to have the character be blocky, so personally I'd like to see detailed fire. That's my two cents.

I see the flickering, but the fact that there's a fire in the background actually made that visually acceptable to me. I'd understand if you wanted to change it, but I wouldn't prioritize that personally.

1. The black frames in between frames of fire kind of disturb me. You've got 2 nametables to use here, so I'd recommend double buffering and flipping back and forth.

2. Because the ninja is the same colour as the background, I didn't know what I was looking at until the ninja was most of the way into the picture. It's basically because the fire itself has a bit of a natural line that's at the same position as the top of his head, except in the middle where the flames are a littler higher. If you moved him down like 4 or 5 pixels I think you would avoid the cutoff.

3. The sword appears in a single frame. Would be cool if it slid out progressively, maybe a "shinggg" sound on top. (If someone presses a button to skip to the end immediately, you could also play the shing SFX there as a reaction.)

4. Keep animating the fire when we reach the end! (See suggestion 1.)