Feature 11 - Pharaohs Return (C64)

[PypeBros]

the guardian...


walking: stomp stomp stomp... There's not very much space for the guardian to walk around

Well, you'll need to think about how the player's going to dodge the golem and ultimately defeat him to figure out. Boss encounters need to be engaging in addition to scary.

idle: tried to "embrace" the limitations a bit more

somehow seeing a golem breath heavily looks weird, but I don't have anything more "golemish" to suggest right now, unfortunately...

attack: Should the fist show some motion blur? I have one sprite left: either for displaying the arm, or for some motion blur.

I think the attacking fist is close enough from the golem's body so that you can skip the arm here. It also allows you to decide that the golem can punch quite far away from his head, if needed. So I'd go for a (hires) motion blur/dust cloud sprite here. I'm unsure about the golem standing on only one foot when aiming/striking, though: that doesn't fit the "super-heavy" feel it gives.

[Elrinth]

I would like to see the golem bringing both his arms into the sky then doing a large swing onto the ground infron of him with both fists into the ground flattening the player. that way you'll know: oh he's about do to the ultra flatten fists of fury and you've got a brief 0.5 secs to dodge.

[Lazycow]

Don't worry. It's been awhile since I studied the ancient Egyptions, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have reanimated mummies or golems guarding their tombs, either. ;P

Wah wah wah wah wah... The fact that no one hasn't seen them, yet is no proof that they are not there. 

Needed a break from animating golems. The animations are indeed not very Golem-like. Not that we saw a real Golem doing better, but yes... He should probably move slowly, but with force.


More tests of inertia and friction of the hero... (a small dust animation on breaking?) On the right side, the hero stops when he slithers towards a gap. (using the fall animation frame for that)


Some egyptian backgrounds, like statues and columns... (reference on the right side)

Because both columns and statues are in the background, I only used 2 dark colors. Don't like the columns very much, but this is my very best try. I can do columns build out of small bricks, but the egyptian columns are pretty much solid, right?

[Lazycow]

Finally, it looks like I've finished all background graphics! Yeah!


I have placed some hires sprites over the multicolor blocks in the title logo. Initionally, I wanted to avoid that, but it looks so much better, doesn't it? A pity, there're only 8 sprites available in a row so that I cannot use these overlays in the standard playfield blocks. Also, I need all the sprites for the action of course.


Added some details like hieroglyphics and new blue background blocks. Also, there's the hidden treasure in there, finally. Don't try to translate the hieroglyphics, I have placed them randomly. (There're a kind of phonetic alphabet, aren't they?)
   
The treasures: All treasures are build out of 4 hires background blocks with a hires sprite overlay. Also, because of the hires blocks, this means that the treasures have to be placed in an area with black background.


New colors and new rocks... (tehwexxl0rz's rocks as reference - they cleverly use black as a 4th color and like this I do neither need any raster interrupts for the background, nor the pesky reverse mode for 4 color-rocks) The background is now black on blue (instead of blue on back). Does this even make any sense? (using PypeBros's edit as reference)


The 6th and last mockup. This needs raster interrupts again for changing multicolor colors. Looks a bit boring, but there are statues in there!

[PypeBros]

I like it very much. You did something really great with that guardian scene. I'd just try and avoid excessive horizontal alignment of the smaller (darker) stones, personnally. I'd dispatch them more randomly, I guess.

some ideas:
- how about a copperbar-like sunset (moving the individual colours up and down by a few pixels, or so)
- how about using blue as the colour for the most upper lines in the skyline of the title screen (instead of grey) ?
- how about some overlay-sprite-sparkles on top of the treasures so that one can immediately identify them as the target to reach when entering a room ?

The title is imho excellent, but I'm unsure about that blue tone... It looks somewhat futuristic. Is it possible to move it into shades of yellow/orange/brown instead and still have a nice look ?

[Lazycow]

Yeah, thanks for the comments, PypeBros!

- did you mean the blue stones in the background? I dispachted them a bit, good idea!
- the sunset: Yes, I think C64 can handle "copper-like" stripes, even in the borders, but this needs evil tricks to get them stable, so I might skip this one. But some flickering stars would pimp up the title, too. Maybe.
- highlighting treasures... Sparcles would be possible, because there's some room in the overlay-sprite. Nice idea, indeed. But it would be difficult to program, because the sprite data would have to be modified. And I am not doing this somewhere else, yet - I am just switching sprite data. So what about hilighting the treasures like this:


- the color of the title: Hm... I tried some variations... Selecting a color scheme here is kind of personal preference, I guess. The C64 palette is really nice for such things!


Some Updates:

- -
Rope actions: The rope itself is build out of background blocks. The climbing animation is not very realistic - I think you cannot use legs and arms simultanously. Also, when hanging on the rope and looking to the other side, he suddenly uses his other arm. But... probably... noone will ever notice that...

[Lazycow]

The enemy animations are still missing:


bat (2 versions), scorpion... (maybe too twitchy), snake, rat

edit: sinuous snake added
edit: running rat added

[Facet]

Maybe you've made the decision already but the blue/cyan titles text has my vote too  , It has the nicest contrast and feels more contiguous with the moonlit scene. The high-res detail does look miles better, really nice. I guess like a lot of folk, although I haven't actually commented thus far, I have been following the thread with much interest. Awesome project .

I know you said you'd finished the backgrounds already but... the Golem/cave area doesn't measure up to some of the niceness elsewhere imo; that blue in the background is really bright and swamps the sprites. I thought perhaps (because it is so bright) you could use it as 'distant moonlight' outside the cave; you could also gain a lot of depth/drama that way. Tried a bit of a vignette in the corner there 'cos there was so much of the similarly bright brown that it was pulling focus a bit, it's probably overstated. 



Also noticed some little tiling weirdness in places; in the first, verdant stage, the thinner platform's 'furry' edges abut the regular hard borders. I'd be tempted to keep the hard border on all sides if possible; perhaps punctuated on the undersides with the occasional soft edge, to evoke moss or whatnot for variety.

[mrsid]

- the sunset: Yes, I think C64 can handle "copper-like" stripes, even in the borders, but this needs evil tricks to get them stable, so I might skip this one. But some flickering stars would pimp up the title, too. Maybe.

No, that's quite simple.

[PypeBros]

The enemy animations are still missing:


bat (2 versions), scorpion... (maybe too twitchy), snake, rat

Although these are all interesting sprites, they will be hard to aim with the weapons you mentioned (iirc). At least, I expect the bullets to miss them a lot.