nesdev.org

Hello Everybody,

I'm working on a new game about a girl named Clarine and her versatile mech which she is able to ride.

I just began working on it, and I thought that maybe having a thread to post progress to, would be an incentive to keep it going.

Rom for the project so far:

http://www.zlashstudios.com/files/clarine_test.7z

I'm also developing at the same time an small tool for the sprites' animations. I want to release it as soon as its a little bit more mature.

Looks like a good start! I like the walking look of the robot, very cool!

Really nice animation!
But as the robot uses all 8 sprites at certain lines, I wonder how severe the flickering may become if there are to be other objects such as enemies (unless it's a space invader style game where you only shoot enemies that are hovering above you). Maybe the game will switch to a smaller character in "battle stages"?

Very nice. Two things that I noticed:

1) I like how you built Clarine's meta-sprite. By using disjoint PPU sprites, you increased her palette.

2) Your moving mech has really nice motion. But I noticed that you use more than 50% of the PPU sprites to draw it (at least, it seems that way in FCEUX's hex viewer on CPU page $02). That seems like a lot of sprites, given that the hardware only gives us 64.

I can imagine in my head a neat "thud" sound as the mech's foot touches the ground while walking.

Excellent work! I look forward to watching your game evolve.

Do you have a plot yet? Why does Clarine need a mech? What is she going to accomplish?

2. It actually uses only 21 sprites (still a lot though), as shown in the VRAM viewer of No$Nes:

The sprites crossed-out by a red diagonal lines are actually not shown (with large y-coordinates) so they could be used for something else in the real product.
(I know that No$ is not accurate (and I know how inaccurate it can be), but I find many of its debugging features very handy, especially the sprite viewer. It helped me a lot in fixing say, animation glitches like erratically reading from beyond a LUT for the animation frames.)

The game is mainly an excuse to test and put to use the animation tool and library I'm making, so it will probably end as an small and short demo (And not necessarily fun).

Also, I'm not thinking about adding enemies, it will be focused mainly on exploration of the world by Clarine (maybe also to find different things scattered around the place?) , and discovering the different forms the mech can take to reach diferent parts of the world (i.e: Flying mode, submarine, drill, etc)

I know that the 8 sprites per scanline limit will become soon a PITA™, but I'm consciously ignoring it until it becomes a real problem in my game, so I can focus on going on.

clueless wrote:(at least, it seems that way in FCEUX's hex viewer on CPU page $02).

I'm building the sprites' data at $500

Cool to see another homebrew in progress

Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but why do so many people post their projects in a 7zip format? Why not use the more universal/common .zip? (Isn't it more common?) I haven't bothered to install some of these games because of that. I know it wouldn't be hard for me to install 7zip, but I'm lazy like that.

cartlemmy wrote:Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but why do so many people post their projects in a 7zip format?

I guess, it is because 7zip is better, free, and the format also supported by other popular modern compression tools (WinZip, WinRar).

Shiru wrote:...it is because 7zip is better.

But sometimes 'better' doesn't matter when it doesn't have the most reach. If more people can access a .zip file than a .7z without downloading a new extraction tool then why not use .zip? Is using the 'best' compression tool worth alienating potential users of your software? Perhaps 7zip is more common that I think, in that case I my point is moot. Sorry for the rant, it is just something that befuddles me.

I just think that the techy community at large knows of 7zip so its a bit expected that someone would have it on a forum like this. I was actually wondering the same thing a few days ago and thats about all I could come up with.

Shiru wrote:

cartlemmy wrote:Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but why do so many people post their projects in a 7zip format?

I guess, it is because 7zip is better, free, and the format also supported by other popular modern compression tools (WinZip, WinRar).

Better than what? It surely packs better but that hardly matters for NES ROMs. Windows and OS X (I guess most Linux distros too?) handle ZIP by default, not so with 7zip. I downloaded op's previous game, Nanaca Crash for OS X some time ago, but I couldn't bother finding a tool to extract it, so I simply deleted it.

Long story short, I agree with cartlemmy, ZIP is the better choice in most cases.

Is 'better' was the only word in my post?

Yes, if you want to release something for really wide and not very techy auditory, you'd better to use zip to avoid questions 'what is 7zip' etc. Don't see any major problem for other cases, 7zip is around here since 1999, and now it is supported widely enough and available in many OSes. Even some modern emulators has built-in support, like FCEUX. I don't know for other countries and people, but for me and most of my fellows it is the only installed compression tool.

Since I didn't have WinRar on my new laptop yet, and didn't know it supported this, I had to find a tool to do it. Three failed to work, and one finally did but I had to find the right app of the 3 it gave me. It compressed nicely, at only 2K, but it still isn't that big and was a HUGE hassle without having winrar on my system. ZIP is good enough and more common, I'd suggest using it, but do however you wish.

Thanks for the input, I was just making sure there wasn't anything I was missing. I feel informed now

A few years ago I made 7-Zip my default archive program, and considering that it's free, while WinRar and WinZip are not, I'd say that was a good choice. It doesn't compress to RAR, but it does compress to both ZIP and 7Z, and decompresses anything I've tried so far.