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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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 Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2024 12:06 am
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Had to take a break from programming today.
Added a guy to the title screen, not sure if I'll do anymore with it yet, I might animate the laser.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 8:03 pm
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Started doing boss stuff.
I had considered vertical scrolling/moving boss but quickly gave up on that idea, plus I think horizontal only is fine for this game.
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- Joined: 15 Dec 2015
- Posts: 17
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Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2024 7:42 am
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Wow, it looks really great now!
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- Joined: 15 Jul 2022
- Posts: 29
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Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2024 8:23 am
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it's so cool !
Can't wait to see the rest.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2024 11:04 pm
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Thanks!
Another work in progress boss.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2024 8:54 pm
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Small bump with the jungle stage preview. This might be the last stage background I show before the game is finished I think.
Lots of enemy sprites and enemy events to do next.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2024 6:46 pm
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Freed up some tiles on the volcano stage so added some more lava to give it some movement.
Added 3 new enemy sprites today too, a lot left to do...
Sound and music is complete and in the game though.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 7:04 pm
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Small bump. Starting to design enemy and stage patterns now.
There seems to be plenty of CPU time left for more bullets but this enemy will probably do something more interesting.
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- Joined: 02 Mar 2011
- Posts: 168
- Location: Valencia,Spain.
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 7:56 pm
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Great job! I follow your progress via X, and your game seems to me to have nothing to envy compared to commercial games for the SMS in the 90s.
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- Joined: 01 Apr 2005
- Posts: 252
- Location: Almere, The Netherlands
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2024 10:10 pm
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Looks great. Can't wait to play it.
Please go easy with the color purple. It's a dead give away that the game is not designed by graphic designers. Me personally, I really hate the color purple in video games. But if it's just me then ignore the rant. lol.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 8:03 am
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Aranya wrote Great job! I follow your progress via X, and your game seems to me to have nothing to envy compared to commercial games for the SMS in the 90s.
Thanks Aranya!
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 8:56 am
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D wrote Looks great. Can't wait to play it.
Please go easy with the color purple. It's a dead give away that the game is not designed by graphic designers. Me personally, I really hate the color purple in video games. But if it's just me then ignore the rant. lol.
Thanks! I'm sorry you don't like purple but I probably won't change much, particularly on the backgrounds. It's a good compliment to yellow, which I'm sure you understand if you're a graphic designer.
I recently added a darker red to the sprite palette so that will replace purple in a lot of places though.
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- Joined: 01 Feb 2014
- Posts: 882
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:20 am
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Speaking of graphic designers, I am one and I have no problems whatsoever with the color purple. I think your graphics are excellent and your choice of color in particular is outstanding.
What I’m not too sure about is that the origin of the player's shots is off-center of the player sprite. I understand it from a graphical point of view, but I think it might feel weird and require much getting used to in regards to the gameplay.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:59 am
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[quote="Kagesan"]Speaking of graphic designers, I am one and I have no problems whatsoever with the color purple. I think your graphics are excellent and your choice of color in particular is outstanding.[quote]
Thanks!
Quote What I’m not too sure about is that the origin of the player's shots is off-center of the player sprite. I understand it from a graphical point of view, but I think it might feel weird and require much getting used to in regards to the gameplay.
That's a good point, the player is more visible than the player gun so it makes sense. I'll try it centred for a while and see how it feels.
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- Joined: 03 Dec 2021
- Posts: 55
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 1:27 pm
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Hello and first of all congratulations for the development made so far, it looks stellar!
badcomputer wrote Kagesan wrote What I’m not too sure about is that the origin of the player's shots is off-center of the player sprite. I understand it from a graphical point of view, but I think it might feel weird and require much getting used to in regards to the gameplay.
That's a good point, the player is more visible than the player gun so it makes sense. I'll try it centred for a while and see how it feels.
This reminds me of some games which happened to have the shots off-centered: Time Soldiers and Rambo-first-blood-part-2 (although technically they might not qualify as "fixed screen shoot-em-up" though).
Just wanted to throw in this :)
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 7:57 pm
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umbe1987 wrote Hello and first of all congratulations for the development made so far, it looks stellar!
Thanks!
umbe1987 wrote badcomputer wrote Kagesan wrote What I’m not too sure about is that the origin of the player's shots is off-center of the player sprite. I understand it from a graphical point of view, but I think it might feel weird and require much getting used to in regards to the gameplay.
That's a good point, the player is more visible than the player gun so it makes sense. I'll try it centred for a while and see how it feels.
This reminds me of some games which happened to have the shots off-centered: Time Soldiers and Rambo-first-blood-part-2 (although technically they might not qualify as "fixed screen shoot-em-up" though).
Just wanted to throw in this :)
I like Time Soldiers but wasn't a big fan of the guns to the side, it seems to work less well with 8 directions.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 8:02 pm
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Continuing work on this mid boss.
Starting work on enemies with the mid boss turned out to be a good idea, as a mid boss like this has allowd me to work on simple movement and shooting functions and also branching patterns that big bosses have.
I have a lot of the underlying code in place for small enemies and bosses now, but building good/fun enemy patterns is gonna take a lot of time...
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 8:52 am
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Some WIP screenshots/marketing. These stages will likely be the "back of the box" shots. There are two other stages that won't be revealed until some time after release.
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- Joined: 18 Jul 2020
- Posts: 386
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 10:23 am
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Gorgeous looking game, much like your last game. The palette really pops. Very nice job on all your designs.
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- Joined: 15 Aug 2005
- Posts: 25
- Location: Odivelas, Portugal
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:46 am
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badcomputer wrote Some WIP screenshots/marketing. These stages will likely be the "back of the box" shots. There are two other stages that won't be revealed until some time after release.
Have been following you on Twitter!!! Awesome game...crossing my fingers for a physical release. Keep up the good work!!!
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 1:09 pm
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Thanks guys!
Dezanuebe wrote Have been following you on Twitter!!! Awesome game...crossing my fingers for a physical release. Keep up the good work!!!
I'm hoping for a physical release too, but just focussing on finishing the game for now.
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- Joined: 02 Mar 2011
- Posts: 168
- Location: Valencia,Spain.
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 7:53 pm
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I believe your game definitely deserves a physical release.
"There are two other stages that won't be revealed until some time after the release."
I like this kind of secrets/surprises.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2024 7:12 pm
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Aranya wrote I believe your game definitely deserves a physical release.
"There are two other stages that won't be revealed until some time after the release."
I like this kind of secrets/surprises.
Thanks, yes plenty of surprises still left to show!
And the soundtrack by Crisps, which takes about half the ROM!
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Today at 12:28 pm
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I'm currently adding little animations and bits that might drain the CPU. I decided it might be best to add these before building the stage events (enemy spawning), so I know how many enemies and bullets I can get on screen.
Spawning aimed enemy bullets is probably the biggest single-frame CPU hit, even with a lookup table for atan2, so I'm spacing those out appropriately.
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- Joined: 01 Feb 2014
- Posts: 882
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Posted: Today at 3:13 pm
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badcomputer wrote Spawning aimed enemy bullets is probably the biggest single-frame CPU hit, even with a lookup table for atan2, so I'm spacing those out appropriately.
Why do you want to actually calculate the trajectory?
For Flight of Pigarus I used four lookup tables with hardcoded x/y speed values for 16 directions. I only had to check the player's position relative to the enemy bullet source to assign the correct values to the bullet entity. The tables didn’t get more granular than 8x8 pixel cells and the accuracy of the aim was still more than sufficient. In your case, things could even be simpler, since your player's y position is fixed. That way you get aimed bullets with a minimum of cpu time wasted.
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Today at 4:39 pm
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Kagesan wrote badcomputer wrote Spawning aimed enemy bullets is probably the biggest single-frame CPU hit, even with a lookup table for atan2, so I'm spacing those out appropriately.
Why do you want to actually calculate the trajectory?
For Flight of Pigarus I used four lookup tables with hardcoded x/y speed values for 16 directions. I only had to check the player's position relative to the enemy bullet source to assign the correct values to the bullet entity. The tables didn’t get more granular than 8x8 pixel cells and the accuracy of the aim was still more than sufficient. In your case, things could even be simpler, since your player's y position is fixed. That way you get aimed bullets with a minimum of cpu time wasted.
Hmm maths is not my strong point (to put it mildly) so I could be over-engineering the problem.
I have an atan2 LUT (2d array) 32x24 which holds a value for each 8x8 pixel cell. I calculate the enemy-player offset and round to 8x8 pixel coord, and use those coords to get the atan2 value, and then use that to fetch the velocity from the SIN/COS LUT.
This is the function:
(create_next_* are globals for the next "creation" event normally set/used elsewhere)
bool enemy_bullet_aimed_create(void) {
if (num_enemy_shots >= MAX_ENEMY_SHOTS) {
return false;
}
static signed int dx, dy;
static unsigned char atan_two;
dx = (FIXED_TO_INT(player_x) + 8) - (create_next_at_x + 4);
dy = (FIXED_TO_INT(player_y) + 8) - (create_next_at_y + 4);
atan_two = atan2_get((dy + 4) >> 3, (dx + 4) >> 3);
SMS_mapROMBank(CODE_BANK_1_NUM); // SIN_LUT
create_next_vx = SIN_LUT[atan_two + 64] << 2;
create_next_vy = SIN_LUT[atan_two] << 2;
static EnemyShot *s;
s = &enemy_shots[num_enemy_shots++];
enemy_shot_set_new(s);
s->update_func = enemy_bullet_update;
return true;
}
One thing is I still need to be able to adjust velocity of aimed bullets based on 3 difficulty levels, but that's not included in the function yet.
Open to any suggestions for changes/improvements!
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- Joined: 19 Oct 2023
- Posts: 147
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Posted: Today at 5:21 pm
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As an addition to the above, I'm using only 16 directions for enemy movement events to keep it simple to construct paths, but I felt it didn't offer enough accuracy for aimed bullets. Some shot were missing and the player didn't have to move.
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