SMB 1 sprites

[Arne]

Whoa, forum layout changed when I clicked reply. A style update, I'm guessing. It's all mystery meat, and also ineffective since it doesn't make much use of colors, just silhouettes.

The flat brickwalls doesn't bother me. actually. I think highlights would be damaging, even.

The darker BG gfx confused me. I didn't know where to stand and what to dodge. I've thought a little about having two fog distances, but I dunno. I'll know later once once the environments are coming together in the game.

The pipes are a bit sloppy. Also problematic since Mario might stand on pipes which aren't as thick as they should be (a full tile.) Might be able to cheat with that in the engine though. Or I could use thicker parts where Mario Will be able to stand, and thinner parts where the pipe is embedded in terrain. I added the 'ears' early on because I was aware of this problem.

Lightened the yellow-orange a bit.

I think the SMB 2 root fruits are great for spinkling meaningful ecology around the map.

I think once a power has been acquired, it should be permanently available. However, unlike animé, enemies can attack during transformation scenes, so Mario must be in a safe place and can't abuse transformation mid air (to throw a single hammer or whatever). Transformation could require that Mario have stood still for 3 seconds or so, then transformation takes another second or two to complete (poof cloud). During this time Mario is vulnerable.

Alternatively:
Mario transform a bit like Psycho fox, using up charges each time.
Not being normal Mario drains some kind of transformation energy meter.



I'll scan some concept art when I get back from voting.

[Arne]

Here are some ideas for the map.

[Conzeit]

I agree with you about organic looking wrong on mario, But I disagree about the tear. To me it works better when you stop trying to make things like they really look, and just have fun with patterns.


Dr.Slump's island

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLiku1IcPnM to me is a part of mushroom kingdom...it's the kinda world where a mountain smiles at you, you know? no need to make it plausible.

What I mean is, dont try to break the patterns but instead make many many kinds of patterns and makethem look really good, like these games

Fat Princess
Animal Crossing
rocket slime

I know none of this is sidescroller (barely any pixelart :p)...but my point was more about the mood and aproach to detail

[Arne]

In my case I do explain the face-mountain though. I plan to make a large version of it where you can see that it's just blocks I'll also try to put some ecology into the game. That aside, I want it to stay inside the confines of SMB as I imagined it as a kid. It wasn't just a bunch of linear levels and simple sliding enemies, it was a whole world to explore, populated by interesting things.

I've done some photoshoppery with the map. These blocks should be 25*18 pixel screens if I've done the numbers correctly. That's 400*288.
400*300 is my fav retro rez. 320 * 256 feels a bit claustrophobic, look-ahead-wise, especially with larger faster characters. Also, it will 2x nicely on my eeePC (1024*600).



28*10 screens. 700*180 blocks total. Not that large, but I''d like to keep it small and well populated to begin with. Hopefully most screens will have some meaning or feature, and won't be just filler.

Metroid 1 map was 32*32 screens (but those screens were smaller).
 

[Conzeit]

Ok, I hope you still get what I meant as an aproach to tiling. Instead of a tile and variations of it teared, as an aproach to variation...there's alot of different patterns that look really good.

that map looks great, seems ike it's smaller than average mario? makes me wonder how much screens mario3 would take if it was represented that way.

it's kinda weird but fun to think of a mario map in that metroidesque way, the overworld maps are kinda ingrained in me :p

[Panz]

Initially, I posted in this thread saying something basically like, "Oh heck yes!" but it was quickly removed by a moderator.     I'm posting again in this thread, though, in the hopes that I can offer some thoughts that are a bit more substantial, as well as better explain what is it about your work here that has me so enthused.

Not sure if I should have background rocks like this or not. I'm tempted to Fade the BG colors into the sky a bit more, anyways. Probably turn them more blue so there's no question that they belong to the sky. Bit of a mess now, too with the noisy gritty BG blocks I threw together.

I absolutely love the background rocks, the background pipes, and the statues.  You've suddenly added a dimension to the Mario universe through the simple use of sensible world construction.  Instead of blocks just floating in the air (not that you won't have plenty of that), we can now begin to imagine a structure to this world.  Things seem connected to each other.  We can imagine a network of pipes interconnecting different parts of the world.  Dare I say it, we can even imagine something like a culture for the koopas and creatures of this strange place, seeing walls and statues all over the place.  It's a small touch, conceptually, these rock and pipe backgrounds, but man, I'll tell you, when I saw that, I got such a thrill from this project.  Prior to that, I hadn't thought much more about it than: Neat Mario sprites.  After that, I could imagine an entire game world and a strong contribution to the whole Mario concept.  I really feel like this game you're mocking up (hopefully making, for real) might have the capacity to engage the imagination in that wonderful way that games did when we were kids.

I think once a power has been acquired, it should be permanently available. However, unlike animé, enemies can attack during transformation scenes, so Mario must be in a safe place and can't abuse transformation mid air (to throw a single hammer or whatever). Transformation could require that Mario have stood still for 3 seconds or so, then transformation takes another second or two to complete (poof cloud). During this time Mario is vulnerable.

Alternatively:
Mario transform a bit like Psycho fox, using up charges each time.
Not being normal Mario drains some kind of transformation energy meter.

This is probably obvious, but you'd have to do that with great balance.  I think it could be very cool.  I wouldn't suggest a full-on Metroid-style Mario, as absolutely weird and fun as that might be -- but I would urge you to make the abilities difficult to acquire, after boss battles and big challenges, if the idea is to have them be permanently available.

Additional thoughts:
I really like your concept for the world map.  I like how everything feels connected, and how well that ties in with your network of pipes and connected rocks backgrounds.  I love the idea of employing the "warp" concept where you have that pipe that can drop Marne from Pipe Mania to the Lost City.

I really dig Mario flying the plane.

I'm sorry to be so positive.  I'd be more critical, perhaps, if I had more expertise about sprite-work and pixel-art.  On that front, I'm mostly here to learn, observe, take inspiration, and pipe up here and there when I think I have something to offer.  In this case, I don't have much to offer except for enthusiasm.  But at the same time, I am learning just by reading some of the other comments and suggestions in this thread.

[Arne]

Thanks!

Yeah, I understand what you mean about using tiles to do architecture. I'll have to be careful and avoid obstacle course level design, since I don't like that much. Some atmospheric background graphics could probably help to make a location seem less artificial even if the foreground blocks are clearly a 'gamedesigny' puzzle of some sort.

This might give a better feel for how large/small my map is. I don't know how big the SMB 1 one is. Hmm, I just noticed that I had a few pages open in tabs:
http://ian-albert.com/misc/smb.php
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Metroid/Walkthrough



First I was going to put warp points or something in the pipes - entry and exit. Then I got the idea that the pipes could very well be physical. If Mario enters a pipe, I could step through the segments and find the exit point easily, I think. Castles will have to warp the player to the castle area.

When working on this map I'm taking my planned scroll restrictions into account, so some areas won't be revealed unless the player enters from a certain angle or so. I've also hinted at some level design puzzles, artifacts an other stuff. Most of the map is unfinished though. I think I might have to go above 256*2 tiles eventually.

Edit: Oh, another thing. I wrote a simple tile based boulder dash type lava routine once, so I drew a lava puzzle into my map. The routine works poorly with water since it's more fluid. Lava can get away with being chunky.

I might have to do all of the BG gfx, or most, in differently colored sets. Sky, Dark Cave / Space, and Water. Maybe I can solve it programatically though. Edit: before I forget, here's how I could do it. Store the light and shadow if the BG stuff in separate images. Each map cell gets an extra byte for BG color. Before I draw the BG images, I check the BG color, and colorize the light and shadow images on the fly (basically just a Case Select/Switch and SetColor R,G,B which I already do for many images. In BlitzMax / OpenGL, scaling, rotating, multiplying, 'screen'ing and tinting images is extremely fast. I already tint all images pure white.

Yeah, this approach is good because it also makes map editing easier. If I do choose to do water, I could flood an area with a blue water color and all drowned BG thingies would automatically adapt.

[Helm]

In my case I do explain the face-mountain though. I plan to make a large version of it where you can see that it's just blocks Smiley I'll also try to put some ecology into the game.

Whereas this is fascinating and I'm looking forward to see what a SMB with more verisimilitude could achieve, I have to say I find it psychologically worrying that you seek to inject positivist linearity in a game that most took as childlike few-rules fantasy. I don't necessarily think you're doing anything wrong, in fact I enjoy reading your game analysis stuff as much (or more!) as most users. I just worry about you, Arne. If a smile needs to be explained with architecture, you know...

[Infinite Segment]

Edit: Oh, another thing. I wrote a simple tile based boulder dash type lava routine once, so I drew a lava puzzle into my map. The routine works poorly with water since it's more fluid. Lava can get away with being chunky.

I can't say for sure without knowing the algorithm, but I'm pretty sure it should be quite easy to program more "watery" water physics.
I haven't tested it, but I think this should set you up:

Code: [Select]

Pseudo Code:
for (x = each row from bottom to top)   //go over the entire grid. start at the bottom so all particles can fall in the same iteration and not block each other
 for (y = each column from left to right)
  if (there is a water particle here) //try and see if there's a place below to move it to
   i<-0
   while (searching)
    if (can search left)
     if ( there is a free spot in [x-i,y-1] )
      move the current water particle there
      stop searching
     if ( there is an obstacle in [x-i,y] ) //if there's some obstruction that should prevent this particle from going further left or right
      can search left <- false
    if (can search right)
     the same but with x+i
    i<-i+1
    if (cant search left and cant search right)
     searching<-false


[Arne]

Haha, well, I'm not the first one to try and 'explain' SMB. However, when I was a kid I never saw the game as an abstract "oh it's just a game" game. My imagination always fleshed out the worlds that I visited in games.


I'll try and port that pseudocode to see what happens. As I understand it the blocks will pretty much teleport to the first lower position found sideways, rather than forming a pile like in BD or scatter out randomly like my lava. I see a problem with a 50% filled reservoir though. And, water is more likely to even out in U tunnels, so that might look a bit off. Not really a big problem though.

I believe that just having a primitive fun feature in there at all is more important than polishing it to the point of very diminishing returns. Having destructible terrain even at just a block based level in SMB or say, minecraft, is worth a lot. It might even be better to keep it simple in some cases.

With my lava I planned to explain the chunkyness in a very SMB way. I'd use an onscreen on the fly effect to soften the corners of the lava (finding islands and protuders). Then I could draw cute little eyes on some, like the platform/toothpaste ghost platforms in SMB3, or was it SMW? I drew that effect on one of the earlier concept art sheets.

Here are some doodles from the night. I spent some time cleaning them up in PS.