LASEReyes

[Jedi QuestMaster]

The black text on white gives me GameBoy vibes. I wanted to do something unique with the HUD, but at the end of the day, I'm going to go with what looks natural.

Also, here's one with bricks and a black bg HUD:

lasereyes_field_a_exit5.png (6.07 KiB) Viewed 2106 times

...but now I'm just copying Bomberman II's style.

Also I don't like how the left bricks look like they're a level below the border,

Edit: This may look a little jarring, but here's another solution:

lasereyes_field_a_exit6.png (6.99 KiB) Viewed 2044 times

I might need to make "straight" blocks to go in the middle.

Edit: In this setup, any blocks that fall within the center 3 columns will appear unslanted.

lasereyes_field_a_exit6.png (7.87 KiB) Viewed 2019 times

I know we can't flip background tiles, so this would triple the amount of tiles needed for blocks.

Also I'm testing out how exits would appear at different column locations.

Edit: This is how wrap-around stages might look like.

lasereyes_field_a_exit7.png (7.26 KiB) Viewed 1980 times

Yet another update:

lasereyes_field_a_exit7.png (7.12 KiB) Viewed 1960 times

I've allocated five columns for the center and 4 for on the left and right for perspective blocks. I also made the brick patterns match when they're stacked next to eachother no matter where on the screen they are (I hope this saves on bg tile space).

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Long time no post!

Anyway, I made 3 new characters!

Ray

ray_down.png (306 Bytes) Viewed 1904 times

Sun

sun_down.png (271 Bytes) Viewed 1904 times

Rion

rion_down.png (291 Bytes) Viewed 1904 times

Okay, more like one new character and two palette swaps. They're not exact palette swaps, but some tiles are shared.

sprite_palette_battle.png (273 Bytes) Viewed 1904 times

Also, I set us up some bombs:

bomb0.png (235 Bytes) Viewed 1904 times

Unlike Bomberman, bombs must be ignited first (via LASER) before the fuse starts.

[Drag]

This is all pretty neat so far, but you may want to consider making a new post (instead of editing) each time you have new content, because I completely missed the really neat-looking perspective graphics you did.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I would've, but I didn't think anyone was that interested. I could do that from now on.

Anyway, I want to do something different than what Bomberman does with explosions. Seeing as I would like to have dynamic stage layouts without pillars pegged on every other 16x16 space (and some movable pillars), I'd need an explosion that also expands diagonally.

I drew out the bomb's max range if no unbreakable objects are in the way:

lasereyes_field_bomb_explosion_vectors.png (8.1 KiB) Viewed 1800 times

Here's an animation (I'm not quite satisfied with it yet):

explosion.gif (3.08 KiB) Viewed 1800 times

This all uses bg tiles, so next thing to do is recount all my tiles and hope I'm not going over.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Having pushable pillars adds another issue:

Here's my sprite palettes:
Here's my bg palettes:

bg_palette_w_laser.png (221 Bytes) Viewed 1736 times

(first two are used for blocks, second two are used for lasers)

I think while the pillars are moving, they should use sprite tiles, and once snapped into grid, go back to being bg tiles. However, there are no sprite subpalettes that match the pillar's bg subpalettes. So I either need to recolor the pillars or do something glitchy like this:

pillar_move.gif (1.39 KiB) Viewed 1736 times

The sprite uses the last subpalette of black and white, while the background tiles shift grey and tan colors during movement.

Or I can just make the pillar monochrome while it's being pushed:

pillar_right_move.png (175 Bytes) Viewed 1736 times

(not all pillars will be able to be pushed, so maybe I could use this as an excuse to differentiate them?)

Either way, I don't think this is as a big deal as what's going to be coming up. Any suggestions are welcome.

[calima]

Monochrome pillar would be ok to me. It's very NESy, many games have such where moving things are temporarily slightly different-colored.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

This color scheme works great!

pillar_right_move.png (193 Bytes) Viewed 1655 times

What do you think? It's the first subpalette, and it gives the block a pinkish tint. Here's how it would look:

pillar_move.gif (2.05 KiB) Viewed 1655 times

(I guess it could "shine" while a player is next to it.)

[calima]

I think it looks good.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I really hate making these small updates, but I didn't like how the center pillars seemed wider than the angled ones.

I found a fix which also helps make them appear taller:

pillar_compare.png (281 Bytes) Viewed 1543 times

All 3 perspectives:

pillars1.png (357 Bytes) Viewed 1543 times

Edit: Or I could just do this:

pillars3.png (360 Bytes) Viewed 1506 times

Edit: another small update, I changed the explosion:

explosion.gif (2.9 KiB) Viewed 1500 times

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I counted all the tiles I'm using so far:

HUD / 'EXIT' text: 24
Lasers: 53
Stage Elements (bricks, pillars, boundary, bombs): 144! (the bomb explosion alone takes 48)

This totals 221 and only leaves me with 35 tiles for the cracked/breaking brick walls. I suppose the laser tiles could be loaded only when needed, but since they're changing all the time, would that be feasible?

Now for something a little complicated: how the player and laser will overlap:

laser_up.png (309 Bytes) Viewed 1496 times

Fortunately, since the player is a sprite and the laser is bg, the player sits atop the laser tiles, which is perfect when facing up or laterally.

laser_right.png (287 Bytes) Viewed 1496 times

Unfortunately, when the player is looking down, some work will need to be done:

laser_down.png (346 Bytes) Viewed 1496 times

On the plus side, if the laser were over the player, it would align right under the players' eyes (all players will have the same eye height) when snapped to the grid:

laser_down_ideal.png (334 Bytes) Viewed 1496 times

But if the player were to move down, the laser starting point would be janky (moving 8 pixels at a time).

Once I'm done with the rest of the brick tiles, I'll start coming up with solutions for the laser, but any suggestions now are welcome.

[calima]

No, I don't think the laser tiles could be switched out. Especially with four players running around, every combination could be on screen at once.

For the bottom-facing player sprite, since the laser is always on, draw that sprite with a hole?

[Jedi QuestMaster]

For the bottom-facing player sprite, since the laser is always on, draw that sprite with a hole?

Seems like the best idea.

By the way, I've been implementing all these assets into GameMaker Studio 2, so I haven't been working on graphics... until now.

So I decided to allow the player to walk and turn the character's head independently:

(this is still incomplete) ['B'=turn head counterclockwise] ['A'=turn head clockwise]

While animating the player walking, I wanted to have separate backwards walking sprites from forward:

reyes_walk_left.gif (384 Bytes) Viewed 1035 times

So I made less exaggerated movements:

reyes_walk_right_reverse.gif (379 Bytes) Viewed 1035 times

...unintentionally creating a smoother walking animation overall:

reyes_walk_left_smooth.gif (720 Bytes) Viewed 1035 times

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Since the head now moves independently of the body, I think it'd be better to have overlapping sprites?

reyes_head.gif (406 Bytes) Viewed 904 times

reyes_body.gif (1.63 KiB) Viewed 904 times

This would save on tiles, but does this mean I'm using four sprites already on a single scanline?

[tokumaru]

This would save on tiles, but does this mean I'm using four sprites already on a single scanline?

Yes, on those 3 or so scanlines where the bottom of the head overlap the top of the body.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Darn. Then maybe I should just not overlap them and make more tiles.

But for GameMaker, I'm going with the overlapping (2 objects) method.

Edit: If I were to not overlap sprites in GameMaker, I'd have over 120 images! At least for NES, I can reuse some tiles.

Edit: Chart's done!

Edit: Even though players won't have the ability to walk diagonally, I made some diagonal walking animations to be used while turning and walking.

reyes_walk_down_left.gif (371 Bytes) Viewed 714 times

reyes_walk_up_left.gif (353 Bytes) Viewed 714 times