Jauntyman and the Three Pigs

[spadix]

For your entertainment and consideration, I present "Jauntyman and the Three Pigs" — a silly little "Qixlike" action-puzzler about a dorky dude who is tempted by treasure but terrified of pigs.

title.png

gameplay.gif

This is a pre-release for the NES — the game is complete, but there are a few corner case bugs and rough edges that still need polish (should not be anything game breaking).

Jat3P-0.16.zip

There is no manual yet. Some players enjoy puzzling out the controls and mechanics, but here are a few hints in case you get stuck:

• The highlighted jump target can be moved while holding against the fence.
• At some point, you must jump diagonally in order to progress.
• There is eventually a use for 'B'. Again, push against the fence…
• Scoring is unlocked after you finish the game!

Finally, a huge "thank you" to everyone here at NESdev! This project would not be feasible without the hard work of everyone that contributes to the wiki and these forums.

Have fun! Get rich! …and don't soil your trousers!

[nesrocks]

What a fun(ny) game! A lot more fun than regular Qix, for me.

I managed to get stuck on "rob" by building a little square on the corner. Now I can't connect the treasure. I think a restart option on the menu would be a solution for these cases.

But congrats, it's really well made!

[spadix]

What a fun(ny) game! A lot more fun than regular Qix, for me.

Hah, that's funny! Inspiration for this game came from a Steam game called "Fortix", where you play as a knight rescuing cities from dragons. I never even knew about the original Qix ancestry until this project was half finished (and still haven't played).

I managed to get stuck on "rob" by building a little square on the corner. Now I can't connect the treasure.

Wow, nice one – can't believe someone broke it on the first day (#BlameRob). I'll make sure that gets fixed for the next release (and see if the level validator can be enhanced to look for similar cases).

I think a restart option on the menu would be a solution for these cases.

I guess you probably found that if you "Quit" from the Pause menu, you can restart the level from the title. But yeah, an explicit restart option would be nicer, and straightforward enough if I can find a few bytes.

Thanks for playing and giving feedback!

[nesrocks]

It's a funny game and well made. The path finding for the pigs and calculating the closed areas are both crazy good programming.
No, I hadn't noticed that restarting from the title screen worked! I guess that's something for now ^^

Oh, one thing also: it was probably intentional but in case it isn't, I brought the apple from one stage to the next by having it in hand when grabbing the last treasure.

[spadix]

It's a funny game and well made. The path finding for the pigs and calculating the closed areas are both crazy good programming.

Hey, thanks! That's high praise indeed. I suspect this is one of the few places where the technical achievements would actually be appreciated.

I brought the apple from one stage to the next by having it in hand when grabbing the last treasure.

Yeah! And without too many spoilers, I'll add that there is a much higher chance to drop an apple when you capture more pigs together, which leads to a fun positive feedback loop…

[Joe]

Well, this is a fun little game.

But... why aren't you using OAM DMA?

[Fiskbit]

OAM is being written manually because of PCM playback. The game writes $4011 every 2 scanlines, and OAM DMA lasts about 4.5 scanlines. As I understand it, having this significant timing variance every frame would have an audible impact on the resulting playback.

Zeta on Discord has had to deal with this same sort of issue with Tactus, his rhythm roguelike game.

[spadix]

But... why aren't you using OAM DMA?

IKR! That is an excellent question:

OAM is being written manually because of PCM playback. The game writes $4011 every 2 scanlines, and OAM DMA lasts about 4.5 scanlines. As I understand it, having this significant timing variance every frame would have an audible impact on the resulting playback.

This. The regular hiccup at the same time every frame creates an awful 60Hz buzz. You can adjust the samples to minimize and even shape the noise, but I was never able to bring it even close to acceptable.

For reference, good details for writing OAM manually are documented here:

Warning: This has been tested and is known working, but is one of the crankier corners of the NES.

I'll eventually push my code in case that could be useful to anyone.

[Fiskbit]

Sometime in the next month, I should have a new sprite rendering page up on the wiki which will go into precise detail, and I intend to cover the specifics of how OAM corruption works and ways programmers can update OAM manually with either controlled corruption or no corruption at all. Might be too late to help you with this game, but hopefully it'll be illuminating, either way.

[nik_0_0]

Awesome game! Had the joy of being early in the loop. Will ensure #blamerob happens for insufficient level validation.