Video demos of my game

Celius · Post by **Celius** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:55 pm

I remember my RLE decoding took almost an entire frame for the RPG map. But it really doesn't matter for an RPG map, because it scrolls 16 pixels in one direction per button press, and there's almost no game logic when on the map. This is only an issue when dealing with scrolling like 8 pixels per frame or something if you're on some super fast airship.

There's always partial decompression. For example, my game handles collision on the 16x16 pixel metatile level. I don't have enough room to fully decompress each room in RAM(it would take 8k, each room being 128x64 metatiles), so I decompress to 32x32 pixel metatiles, decreasing the decompression size to 2k. Each 32x32 pixel metatile is composed of 4 16x16 pixel metatiles. It is a good compromise between time and space consumption, though it does require the use of WRAM (it's okay since I use SRAM for saving games).

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:53 am

After all, unlike us, he's a professional, let him do whathever he wants he should know what he's doing by definition.

In my game I have a status bar with fast scrolling technique and RLE compressed maps, if sivak don't want to do it or is unable to do it that's his problem, not anyone else's.

A nice trait of the NES is how all games had nice n' smooth scrolling for free, while on many other platforms it was a luxury that cost lots of software cycles.

This could make the game easier ported to such other platforms tough. Yes you're probably refering to the C64 here where you have to move all the screen characters manually when you want to do coarse scrolling (only fine scrolling is done by hardware).

BMF54123 · Post by **BMF54123** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:16 am

Bregalad wrote:After all, unlike us, he's a professional, let him do whathever he wants he should know what he's doing by definition.

In my game I have a status bar with fast scrolling technique and RLE compressed maps, if sivak don't want to do it or is unable to do it that's his problem, not anyone else's.

Hey, we get the point, you don't like the fact that he's selling his games. Drop the attitude already.

Jeroen · Post by **Jeroen** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 6:51 am

^^I agree you're being a douche.

Ok back on topic. I dont think this game really needs scrolling. Gimmick! didnt scroll up. Only left and right. However it didnt feel weird jumping to a screen above you even though there was no scroll. So I dont think it'll matter in this case either.

Bananmos · Post by **Bananmos** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:30 am

Bregalad:
Like others have been saying: drop your childish attitude. You're getting close to deserving a ban if you continue your bitter campaign every time Sivak's game is mentioned.

Going on to the subject, I still think scrolling would make the game cooler, but I can see at least one good aesthetic motivation for leaving it out altogether: When you want to have distant scenery in your BG, you have to choose between keeping it really simplified so you can use some taylor-made parallax scrolling trick, or just accept that scrolling will break the illusion of distant scenery. :)

smkd · Post by **smkd** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:58 am

yeah i don't think a lack of scrolling is all that bad, while i can't play the game personally the transitions are fast enough that i can't imagine my gameplay experience being affected really.

it's likely i won't ever be playing this game although of the homebrew games i've seen put exclusively on cart i think this one stands out from the rest. it really does approach commercial quality in it's presentation although none of us (outside maybe a select few?) can really judge the gameplay ourselves. will you be releasing a playable demo?

Sivak · Post by **Sivak** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:17 am

smkd wrote:Will you be releasing a playable demo?

Yes. I plan to do this, but only when things are more or less EXACTLY finalized. i.e. I want all physics/level design for the first area and all that good stuff done.

I'm currently expanding the first area by about 8 screens as I felt it was too short, especially after seeing myself playing it in the video. I also added a new enemy last night.

tomaitheous · Post by **tomaitheous** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:26 am

I watched the video a few times. Looks pretty cool. The music is catchy too. I wouldn't worry about the scrolling too much. Not scrolling gives it character and some charm. It does remind me of legacy of the wizard.

Which mapper are you using? (I didn't see it skimming over the past few pages). Also, do you plan to produce a specific cart for this or are you going to use the powerpak? The powerpak just seems overkill to sell a game on.

Edit: Never mind. I see that they have non dev carts too.

MetalSlime · Post by **MetalSlime** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 5:20 am

I'm also curious what mapper you are using.

CartCollector · Post by **CartCollector** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:02 pm

The mapper's UOROM, 256k PRG-ROM with 8k CHR-RAM. It's in the comments of the second Youtube video. Sivak should put this in the first post in this thread and on the grey boxes to the right of his videos, as this is a fairly common question.

Sivak · Post by **Sivak** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:27 pm

CartCollector wrote:The mapper's UOROM, 256k PRG-ROM with 8k CHR-RAM. It's in the comments of the second Youtube video. Sivak should put this in the first post in this thread and on the grey boxes to the right of his videos, as this is a fairly common question.

Yeah, and it's actually quite weird why people really want to know. I don't mind saying it, but why are people so curious?

Celius · Post by **Celius** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:35 pm

People probably just want to know what makes your game capable of doing what it does in terms of hardware. It's cool to see how someone's game works, too, and what mapper someone uses can reveal a lot of that information.

Probably the most valuable piece of information in learning the mapper/specs of this game is that the game uses CHR-RAM. Lots of people have trouble deciding between CHR-ROM and CHR-RAM, so looking at this game and seeing that it uses CHR-RAM can help people decide better on which to choose.

Zepper · Post by **Zepper** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:40 pm

Mapper 2, if you translate it to iNES.

tomaitheous · Post by **tomaitheous** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:07 pm

Sivak wrote:
CartCollector wrote:The mapper's UOROM, 256k PRG-ROM with 8k CHR-RAM. It's in the comments of the second Youtube video. Sivak should put this in the first post in this thread and on the grey boxes to the right of his videos, as this is a fairly common question.
Yeah, and it's actually quite weird why people really want to know. I don't mind saying it, but why are people so curious?

I was curious to know because if you could or plan on building the mapper yourself with discrete logic. A UxROM type mapper would be quite easy to make yourself. It would be cool to design and fab your own boards/mapper.

MetalSlime · Post by **MetalSlime** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 9:11 pm

Celius wrote:People probably just want to know what makes your game capable of doing what it does in terms of hardware. It's cool to see how someone's game works, too, and what mapper someone uses can reveal a lot of that information.

Probably the most valuable piece of information in learning the mapper/specs of this game is that the game uses CHR-RAM. Lots of people have trouble deciding between CHR-ROM and CHR-RAM, so looking at this game and seeing that it uses CHR-RAM can help people decide better on which to choose.

This is exactly the reason I wanted to know. I was (and still am) just about to make a thread in the newbie section asking for advice on choosing a mapper for my little game. And one of the issues that I wanted advice on was CHR-ROM vs. CHR-RAM

.

Also, you (you being Sivak, not Celius) tend to put your games on real carts, so I'd assume that any mapper you choose would be easy to get a hold of. I want my game to go on a cart too, so that's useful info for me.