SMB 1 sprites

[Conzeit]

Arne, that is indeed one neat Mushroom kingdom ya got there, I think I recognize everybody but the dudes of the up-left corner (up-right is Mario Bros 1 screen game) and that guy who shoots lightning.

Now, for crits....first of all I want to reccomend to all of you if you want to see the best Nintendo has done with mario 8 bit, to check out the game and watch gallery Gameboy Color games, they're adorable.

http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy/gnwgal3/index.html
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy/gnwgal2/index.html
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy/gnwgal/index.html

Second, if you're gonna break the outlines make it look like they're the darkest shade, try to make it look as a lighting effect so that it isnt so awkward, KOF does this without any buffer shades and without any awkwardness if you want to check that out.


Here's an edit with cut black outlines as if they were an effect of lighting, also I removed the outlines from the stem to better diferentiate the shoes, and I made him tiptioe sideways like in Yoshi's Island walk...aside from the DK.Jr game in G&W gallery that was the goomba's best moment
EDIT: quirkier goomba
fagfslflasdfiofsho =O it's just fun to do something like this...I've been animating some really complicated stuff lately O_O

[L___E___T]

Wow, Helm's genius is always spot on.  I'm not being sarcastic, no.  I took another look at the black outlines and changed my tune completely, I also think the fully lined Goomba looks better.

Question on the teal blocks though - how will they tile in the underground stages?  Or are they gone?


Lastly, I saw your notes on the gameplay changes - I think these are massively significant, it would be great to see the start of some of these and how they fit in with/affect the world as a whole.  Especially interested to see dust effects, vehicle smoke, flying animations et al.  Everything as a whole so far reminds me of the 'bob n float' style of the new SMB games on DS and Wii to some extent.

# Goomba's shoe - Walk on spikes. A vehicle? The SML vehicles were cute and fun too.
# Stone statue - I dunno, this one wasn't very fun to use. Maybe it could be used to sink to the bottom of a very salty (floaty) lake?
- The tanooki suit WAS the most fun!  It's invincible, so you can jump over a thwomp, turn it on and kill it by stomping as you fall!  This works for fireballs, ghosts and all sorts!

# Air jump (aka double jump). Wing-boots?
# Wall grab/slide
# Wall jump
- Smash Bros style?

Sorry if I'm digressing too much from the pixels and towards gameplay, but if you can agree that the pixels shout communicate all this anyway pretty much, then I  would hope that it remains relevant to discussion

[big brother]

This is very nice -- bursting at the seams with personality!

A few quick nitpicks:

- It might look nice if the bottom-most floor blocks and the blue blocks under them tiled better. That might not stay true to the source, but this is about improvement, right? There are plenty of blocks that don't tile (the "staircase" and some of the floating platforms) to maintain the Mario spirit.

-On the star icon, I would remove the bottom part of the mouth where it bleeds into the "leg" on our right. This would keep the open mouth without interfering with the clarity of the star shape.

Keep up the good work!

[Cure]

love the style, goombas and airplanes are my favorite sprites. i agree with what someone said earlier though, that tree looks just like a guy with a bush on top of his head.

[Conzeit]

I just read your page about the changes....you say the statue wasnt fun? I take it you never used it while in midair, it was like a Thwomper mario suit! it's almost as powerful as the eskimo mario...I think it even out-stomped the thowmps I would run out of time because I got too distracted stomping stuff all the time :p  

[Arne]

I have a dark green which I use on the pipe, but I didn't use it on the trees even though I could. I think my rationalization was to keep things flat if possible. The pipe really begs for some roundness though, so I broke two rules, highlight and slight dither and shadow. Uh, three.

I tried to keep it flat and undithered as far as I could though. And some of the shells have speculars so I didn't really break that rule too much.

I tried softening the speculars, but it looked like... the star skies I tried to pixel on my Amiga back in the day.


Top left guys are Snapjaw and a plain bird from DK.Jr. Yellow bot is from the Nintendo Power comic based on SML.

I played a lot of Game & Watch games as a kid. It's why I included the Snapjaws. The arcade and NES version of DK.Jr. is pretty cute too.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy/gnwgal3/sheet/8965
I wasn't too impressed by the Game & Watch ports to be honest. And the Snapjaws in Mario vs DK looked very bad.
http://www.mariowiki.com/Snapjaw

I thought about punching up the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaroscuro effect (make some of the lines into more defined shadows), but decided against it (I don't want a Mignola look). I'm doing it mildly here and there though.

I still can't see the tree-man

I don't know how I used the statue power. I guess it could be fun to use if Mario kept is momentum. Maybe turned into a stone ball which could crash blocks, enemies etc. Like a wrecking ball.

Animations: I was thinking of giving each character the same set of animations, whether they use them or not. They can be blank frames, copied, or whatever. It's easier layout the sheets and code stuff this way. Having the engine alternating two idle frames for example is good if you feel like adding a simple animation later.

Stand idle 2
Duck idle 2

Walk 4
Run 4

Slide 2 (turn/skid when attempting to move in opposite direction of movement)
Duck slide 2

Jump up 2
Hit top of head/hand 1 ? (brief overriding strain frame)
Fall down 2
Hard landing 1 ? (brief overriding strain frame)

Throw 2

Float idle 2
Swim 4

Wall idle/hug 2
Wall climb 4
Wall kickoff 1 ? (not sure if a transition to the regular jump frame is needed)

Take hit 2 (pain / flash, Megaman style ? Alternatively, Mario could emit shock particle without being interrupted.)
Die 2
Crushed 2

(flipped frames excluded, engine does that)


Ingame editor with a BG and FG layer. Mario is the little dots. Edit: Oh, it's 16px based for now. My 8px alignments are artificial. This is a quick test with just 16+16 block types.

[Cure]

the top portion of the trunk is his head, the bottom portion is his body. the black cluster at the top of the top portion is his hair, the black line in the center is his eye. the two lines in the lower portion separate his arms from his torso, and the black pixel at the bottom separates his feet.

I can't see anything else now!

[L___E___T]

Arne, just to add on something - the Tanuki suit is not a statue power.  What it is a mythical raccoon-dog native to Japan.  To the Japanese these were seen to have powers of transformation and magic, including disguise.  The suit is a magical raccoon-dog and has the added power of transforming into a statue.

If you took the statue thing too literally, it would be a digression and lose the character of the suit.  A better idea would be to elaborate on the transformations I'd say.  
Watch Pom-Poko and you'll see what I mean, just look on youtube or read below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pom_Poko

To add something more on-topic (to pixels), I can't help thinking that the smaller brick blocks and corners need a change of highlight.  The current highlighted layer looks too seperated imo, plus I really think the little bricks could benefit from a pixel or two of highlight on each.

What do you think?  Oh, just another note - the Eskimo suit someone referred to is a Hammer Bros. suit, it's just only found on the ice level is all.  It would be great to see your ideas/approaches on new suits - or using older suits from other SMB games, like the cape or bunny ears etc.  You've got the vehicles so that could be really nice I reckon

[PypeBros]

fagfslflasdfiofsho =O it's just fun to do something like this...I've been animating some really complicated stuff lately O_O

I love that "flappy feet feel". Very inspiring ^_^

[Arne]

I think I can actually unsee that tree man.

I spent the day programming. Now blocks will bump (in any of 4 directions). I solved it by not doing a regular map array. Instead my map array links to instances of blocks. It requires a bit more memory (or not, since empty map cells are just NULL), but it also means that I can give blocks lots of properties and do cool OOP stuff. I temporarily put them in a bump list when bumped, so they animate for a while.

I'm thinking of overlaying a screen sized camera-locking array over the map, so I can restrict the scroll like in Zelda, Metroid or the newer Metroid games where you can find a secret which unlocks the camera so you can see what's below your feet for example. Centering the camera on the player often shows lots of ground or stuff below the ground which perhaps is irrelevant.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/hudsonmario/hudsonmario.htm
I can see some DK and MB enemies :O