How fast are you people at programming?

[benjaminsantiago]

with regard to the original purpose of this post, It usually doesn't take me long to get something up and running, it's a matter of getting it working exactly as intended, or making sure it works on the hardware. I've also been programming SNES stuff in my "spare" time so it's hard to gauge exactly.

I've mostly been doing "demos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jouy-yiRNag for different effects I was trying to achieve but I'm at about the point where I can make something closer to a full game. Doing the stuff you guys are talking about like handling sprites and objects is something I can only really do if I can have a goal in mind.

I'm working on a pong clone that took me a few days to get going when I was on winter break. The main issue I had that actually took most of the time so far has been getting the collisions to work properly for all conditions. Most of it was honestly shoehorning existing snippets I had. I just need to make the ball "change directions" based on where it hits on the paddle, add sound effects/music and some color effects I've been thinking about. I've not been too hard on myself as I keep reading about how older commercial games took 6 months (pitfall, David Crane by himself) to 2 years (SMW, a "real" company) to complete. I'm not a programmer/engineer by trade (I went/am going to school for art/design) so I always assume someone has found a better way to do it, and just try to make my code super simple and clear.

Psychopathicteen that game looks great so far. I really like the amount of enemies on screen, there's really a sense of franticness. The segmented boss, the animation, everything looks great! I'm not sure if it is supposed to be "magical girl"-y but it reminds me of Valis on SNES and the like with some gunstar heroes. You were posting that segmented character on its own as a demo before right? It looks even cooler now that there is an implied narrative. Have you played Undercover Cops? The SNES port is rather underwhelming, but the animation in the arcade game is superb. I love that era of irem (I think you posted Gunforce earlier in this thread). Are you still working on "secret agent insane maniac"? You (collective you in this case) should update your youtube channel with this new stuff!

With what Khaz was talking about, I think there are so few people around that you are only going to help people by posting code. Think about SMW, people have almost reconstructed that game from scratch and the most that has really come from that are kaizo SMW hacks and TAS code injections. I think posting on YouTube can't hurt either.

[Drew Sebastino]

it's a matter of getting it working exactly as intended, or making sure it works on the hardware.

I actually don't have too much fuss getting stuff to work. (relatively) The problem is actually making it in the first place.

I'm working on a pong clone that took me a few days to get going when I was on winter break. The main issue I had that actually took most of the time so far has been getting the collisions to work properly for all conditions.

I have never tried, but I imagine that with pong, you would just flip the x velocity whenever the square ball is hit by a paddle, and then flip the y velocity for when it hits the ceiling. Whenever the ball gets past the paddle, the tilemap changes accordingly for points, and the game pretty much gets reset and it enters an endless loop that waits for the start button to exit it. You know, everyone is making these little demos to prepare them to make something. Maybe I should try? I can't imagine making pong would be harder than making an object handler code, a metasprite code, a palette finder code that I'm mostly done with, an animation engine and a vram finder code that I'm about halfway finished with, and some other things.

Have you played Undercover Cops?

I know the question was aimed at psychopathicteen, but I know I have... Irem FTW! (I do like NBB a lot more though.)

With what Khaz was talking about, I think there are so few people around that you are only going to help people by posting code. Think about SMW, people have almost reconstructed that game from scratch and the most that has really come from that are kaizo SMW hacks and TAS code injections. I think posting on YouTube can't hurt either.

I still don't see why some people hate sharing what code they've made. I plan on pretty much finishing my game engine around the end of the summer (which I can tell you know will unfortunately not happen) and I also plan on distributing it so others can use it if they want to. There really aren't enough people working on the SNES.

[benjaminsantiago]

I can't imagine making pong would be harder than making an object handler code, a metasprite code, a palette finder code that I'm mostly done with, an animation engine and a vram finder code that I'm about halfway finished with, and some other things.

You could do something simple like Pong/Columns/Breakout, but have more complex animations/graphics.

I know the question was aimed at psychopathicteen, but I know I have... Irem FTW! (I do like NBB a lot more though.)

Ahhhhh sorry, I thought psycopathicteen had posted the gunforce/metal slug screenshot. I was going to ask, have you looked at the sprite work in Earthworm Jim, Boogerman or Shaq-Fu? It's not quite Metal Slug but its pretty nice.

I have never tried, but I imagine that with pong, you would just flip the x velocity whenever the square ball is hit by a paddle, and then flip the y velocity for when it hits the ceiling. Whenever the ball gets past the paddle, the tilemap...

Yeah that wasn't too hard to implement, I remember the issues I had....vaguely...being determining when the "ball" hit on the side rather than the top and what appeared to be "normal", and I didn't fully understand the "high-xbit" component of the sprites so I encountered some unexpected behavior on the edges of the screen.

[Drew Sebastino]

You could do something simple like Pong/Columns/Breakout, but have more complex animations/graphics.

Do I really need 128 objects? (That's how much I am currently supporting, but if it ever does get there, there will be flicker, because of how some objects will use multiple sprites. I might lower it to 112 or something, above 96 at least though.) If I ever did do this, it would be like Pong on super steroids. I could leave a flame trail behind the ball or some crazy thing.

Ahhhhh sorry, I thought psycopathicteen had posted the gunforce/metal slug screenshot. I was going to ask, have you looked at the sprite work in Earthworm Jim, Boogerman or Shaq-Fu? It's not quite Metal Slug but its pretty nice.

The game is GunForce 2, and yes I've seen them all. I personally think GunForce 2 looks better than Metal Slug, due to the fact that they had seemed to have tried to make things look more "cartoony", making simple things like window frames non rectangular and greatly distorting body parts. I find the blood and generally what's going on to greatly clash with the art style they were going for. I feel they only amplified the problem in 2 and then 3, adding mummies and other dumb stuff. The first one was easily the best to me, but I would have much rather seen a Gun Force 3. (To anyone who thinks I'm bias, I played Metal Slug 2 before I played Metal Slug or Gun Force 2, with Gun Force 2 being the last one.)

This is what I mean about the structures being deformed to add to the "cartoony" look:



(Personally, I think the stupid stuff like soldiers getting split in half after being ran over more humourous, just because it's just so absurdly ridiculous. I couldn't find a picture of it, so here's something else.)

Yeah that wasn't too hard to implement, I remember the issues I had....vaguely...being determining when the "ball" hit on the side rather than the top and what appeared to be "normal", and I didn't fully understand the "high-xbit" component of the sprites so I encountered some unexpected behavior on the edges of the screen.

Do a simple bcc or bcs check on the top and bottom for just the x coordinate, and flip the high bit for the velocity to make it negative or positive. One problem I could see is seeing exactly where to pull it out of the floor to in checking for collisions, unless you want to check every pixel the ball moves. With the paddles, you'd probably do a more complicated approach; something that you'd actually use in a game, with both things having hit boxes (or rather hit lines?) because you wouldn't want to check the top and bottom of the paddle, would you? The whole game can definitely be hardcoded. Doesn't the trajectory of the ball actually depend on how the paddle was moving when it hit it? After doing a collision check, you can look at what the paddle that hit the ball's vertical velocity was and influence the ball using it. One last thing, you also need to check the sides of the screen, which you could do the same thing for the top and bottom, except x instead of y, and when a hit is detected, the game pretty much resets itself and increases the score counter for the appropriate player by one.

(About the 9th x bit, psychopathicteen seemed to have come up with an idea where you essentially have x be a 2 byte 16 bit number and before you upload the thing to oam, you translate it into the correct format.)

[psycopathicteen]

I have another youtube account as Aaendi.

[Sik]

I have another youtube account as Aaendi.

I just looked at that recent Alisha video there and that rotating guy has some severe case of Earnest Evans syndrome.

[FiveHundredSurvivors]

Before I started delving into the world of assembly and homebrewing, I used GameMaker for about 5 years (Yeah go ahead and laugh at me) but got really good at its built-in programming language. My proudest achievement was about a year ago when I wrote a working version of the DES encryption/decryption algorithm in GM in about a week.

As for assembly, I started trying to learn it around december, and with a few hiatuses in between finally managed to, in about a week, make a working version of pong with scoring, a title screen, and two players. Hopefully one day I'll be able to go back and add sound effects, better collision, and different directions that the ball can go besides just 45 degree angles (I had an idea, but it made the ball move either too fast or too slow. Sub-pixel movement, perhaps?)

[TOUKO]

I have another youtube account as Aaendi.

I just saw your gunstar demo, and it's very well done ..
thanks to prove that snes's CPU is not as slow as some guys want it to be

And how sprites rotation is done in alisha ??

[Drew Sebastino]

One random thing I did notice is that whenever the soldiers explode, the 32x32 explosions that make up the explosion are supposed to disperse in an arc, like a parabola. Some person could go crazy and say it takes a tiny bit more processing power to change the velocity for each explosion every frame, but I know you aren't actually working on it anymore.

[Khaz]

One random thing I did notice is that whenever the soldiers explode, the 32x32 explosions that make up the explosion are supposed to disperse in an arc, like a parabola. Some person could go crazy and say it takes a tiny bit more processing power to change the velocity for each explosion every frame, but I know you aren't actually working on it anymore.

A parabola is an easy shape to calculate. Generally speaking you just give your object a constant X-Velocity and constant Y-Acceleration (gravity), like any standard "jump" would behave. The amount it takes to process that should be negligible.

[Mod edit (koitsu): content removed due to multiple complaints of subject nature.]

Oh, okay. Hadn't realized this was that kind of forum. I'll remember not to get too attached to this place.

[psycopathicteen]

I have another youtube account as Aaendi.

I just saw your gunstar demo, and it's very well done ..
thanks to prove that snes's CPU is not as slow as some guys want it to be

And how sprites rotation is done in alisha ??

I used the "dynamic loading corridor" trick.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... micLoading

[TOUKO]

Clever