AuthorTopic: Feature 11 - Pharaohs Return (C64)  (Read 86945 times)

Offline Lazycow

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #80 on: December 02, 2012, 02:07:36 pm

@facet: Great, I like it! Your background adds a kind of mysterious mood to the picture. It's somewhat difficult for me to reproduce it, your structures feel more "organic". Still working on it... Will transplant the background over to the boss-picture at the end...

Yes, I also think that the color composition of sprites and backgrounds is not harmonic in every aspect. I will try to adjust the color combinations again when all animations are done. One thing to consider here: Single blue pixels are much dimmer on the C64 than concatenated clusters of blue pixels. (see screenshots of the C64 emulator in some previous post) I have failed to utilize that until now, though.

About the "green cave": I see what you mean here. Might have to address that, too. Not so easy.

@mrsid: Well ok, I only can remember that *I* had problems creating stable color splits back in the end of the 1980ies... (But I was very jung and refused using "useless" nop instructions, etc...)  :o

@PypeBros: Aww, that's right. Hmm... Ok, I might have to add whip- and gun-attack while in crouched stance. (That works in Castlevania) Still, the snake is too small, yup.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2012, 04:35:15 pm by Lazycow »
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Offline Lazycow

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #81 on: February 07, 2013, 06:59:17 am
Hi again... Yes, the project is still alive. I stumbled over some problems in the background again while creating the map with the tilemap editor.

---
old mockup / new screenshot
I have changed the brown background tiles, the bottom of the platforms and the fading area. But is it really better? Looks "fuzzier". Hm...

---
old mockup & Facet edit / new screenshot
The tiles are limited to 256 for one room, so I had to build the background with reusing tiles.

> Any inspiration for the nasty elevators and the randomly-triggering traps ?


Yup, came up with this...
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Offline PypeBros

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #82 on: February 07, 2013, 12:49:09 pm
small edit: (standalone green pixels not intended)

I really like the new background rocks. The green things in the bacground, with unique stripes, feel a bit awkward (Maybe they'll work better on a CRT display). To be hoset, I'd keep those "background vines" in their previous brown shade. If they're non-interactive, that will even make sense that they're "old and all dry now", so not safe for climbing action.

How about making those mushroom-things either brown as well, and using a sprite for the one on the level that you really want to stand out ?

As for the new blue background, it's imho a great idea, working better than the former one on the colossus scene. The "rays of light" work fine, too, but I keep thinking that they need something else than regular dithering pattern. The "painted over" version almost looks better (it'd definitely look better imho if you had use horizontal stripes to gradient the light)

PS: can't wait to see those vines jiggle as the hat-man climbs them, btw ^_^
« Last Edit: February 07, 2013, 12:56:14 pm by PypeBros »

Offline Facet

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #83 on: February 08, 2013, 12:12:12 am
The modular rock formations look pretty ace! very crisp though; you could mess 'em up a bit for texture, perhaps re-using dither blocks? I'm with Pype that the chunkier, more stylised beams (like on the right in the previous iteration) are nicer.

The green platforms look a lot more solid :y: To the fuzziness: maybe you could go the black for more substance, the bits of red are getting lost a bit. The wide pixel dither/faux scanline stuff I think are pretty sweet, toothsome unifying textures, and communicate non/interactive rather well imo; I like the vines there.

The new organic bark-y bg texture is great, but perhaps some of the chunkiness of the previous could be brought back for variety? I'm not keeping up well with the restrictions though :P.

Offline Lazycow

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #84 on: February 21, 2014, 01:24:28 pm
Hi again! Finally I have time to continue with this project! (sorry for the delay) Let's see if I can finish it this time...

Meanwhile I have created some PNG converters for testing the graphics on a real C64. While doing this, I have stumbled over some problems in my old mockups:

-
old mockup - new screenshot

If each 2x2 area has the same block color, then I can use a more efficient scrolling code. (I need all CPU time I can get for the game mechanics) Seems like I can rearrange most of the graphics without major loss of detail. In the title pictures, this means that the pyramids in the background lost a color and they had to be moved a bit. And some red blocks in the bottom have to be grey. Not that bad.

If you want to take a look at it on a C64 emulator, here's the converted picture: compare3.prg


In the green cave rooms, the vines cannot be build out of hires blocks, because the green cave uses a reverse mode.  (the background color is brown here, so all hires blocks have to be brown in reverse mode) So I have to build the vines out of wide pixels.


It's difficult to cut off sprites in the playfield if they move to the borders, because the status display uses 8 sprites and there can only be 8 sprites in a row. What about building a new status display that only uses 6 sprites? (Then there are 2 sprites left for game objects in that area, which works fine)
A: old status display (8 sprites)
B: new status display (6 sprites)... boring
C: new status display (3 x-zoomed sprites + 3 normal sprites on top)... meh... I don't know... Any hits for a status display?

All these workarounds could be avoided by tricky programming. (And some C64 games are avoiding these) But sometimes, you have to be a lazy cow to save some time, otherwise you will never finish a project!

to be continued...
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. Yes we can!

Offline ErekT

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #85 on: February 21, 2014, 08:07:56 pm
Nothing much to say really except that I just noticed this, I love it, and now I'm looking forward to when it's done :) About the HUD, I like the third design. The thing that might be a problem is readability in terms of the gun, whip, and whatever the third item is (dynamite?). Very good stuff anyhows!

Offline Mr. Fahrenheit

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #86 on: February 22, 2014, 01:51:34 am
Yay! I've been super excited for this for a long time. I do agree with the readability issues but there arent many ways you can get around some issues with the c64 palette. Just keep on trying I guess.

Offline PypeBros

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #87 on: February 22, 2014, 08:04:44 pm
It's difficult to cut off sprites in the playfield if they move to the borders, because the status display uses 8 sprites and there can only be 8 sprites in a row. What about building a new status display that only uses 6 sprites? (Then there are 2 sprites left for game objects in that area, which works fine)
A: old status display (8 sprites)
B: new status display (6 sprites)... boring
C: new status display (3 x-zoomed sprites + 3 normal sprites on top)... meh... I don't know... Any hits for a status display?
I've seen games where the status moves away as the player approach this region.That could be an option ?

keep it up ^_^
All these workarounds could be avoided by tricky programming. (And some C64 games are avoiding these) But sometimes, you have to be a lazy cow to save some time, otherwise you will never finish a project!

to be continued...
[/quote]

Offline Lazycow

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #88 on: March 01, 2014, 08:47:29 pm
@PypeBros: The status display moves away when sprites touch the border?  ::) Funny idea, that could work. But the 6-sprite-in-border works too. (already tested)
@ErekT: yes, right... status display "C" is not very readable, ok lets see:


(D) Tried something different. (that's a hat and a whip)
(E) 6 sprites, all multicolor. leftmost and rightmost sprite are horizontally streched.
(E2) variation of "E": using additional raster split to show the top half of the center sprites in hires. (that's why I had to remove the grey background there) Also, this uses a different color scheme. (brown looks better, but I think grey and yellow fit better to the different color schemes in the game map)

Finally... Intruducing: The sarcophagus, Prof. Schwefel, Sarah the Bellydancer. (draft)
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. Yes we can!