Dark Souls GBC Demake

[Ryumaru]

Decroded: The good thing is I can bend things however I wish as long as it fits the restrictions so I think I will make the north wall more traditionally 3/4ths so that the door can be more impressive, as I think that will do a lot to get the feel of the original game.
Probo: thanks
Kazuya Mochu: Thats one of the "problems" as the character wouldn't change. I'm fine with a little bit of perspective bending, but the boss room will be receiving a bit of a make over.
rikifuzz: Thanks! Yep I like where that example is going; getting the best of both worlds.

In other news, I made this cutscene image of Oscar all with sprite palettes, forgtting about the 40 sprites on screen at a time, heh. I've zeroed in on the ones that " have" to be tiles ( the light rays could potentially be tiles that swap for animation, but would lose their transparency which is most of the point) and counted 34. Just enough to also show the character sprite. Will have do some work to make it fit. It's a fun challenge 

[hawken]

However, if I get what Ai is saying, I can have 8 palettes per area as opposed to 8 palettes in the entire game, so that certainly allows me to play a a bit more with stuff like the torchlight areas.

On the GBC you get 8 palettes of 4 colours for the tile layer, and another set of 8 for the sprite layer. These palettes can be changed freely during run time, for fades, effects etc. from the 32k colours it can display. (15 bit)

Can transparency be turned off of sprites to allow full coverage and 4 colors like in my menu?

Transparency is part of the PPU on the sprite layer so can't be turned off AFAIK. On the upside, the tile layer has no forced shared colour so you may use 4 individual colours per palette.

Also been wondering about movement, is it all purely tile based? I'm planning on building the boss in parts,and was wondering if animation could be done by moving those parts pixels at a time, or if it has to be "baked" so to speak into the individual sprites themselves.

Tile slots can only change tile data. Of course this can be animated tiles to give the illusion of smooth movement. Anything on the sprite layer can be moved freely.

[Ryumaru]

Thanks for the wisdom hawken! 8 palettes at any time frees me up quite a bit.
 
Can you think of any way that my current item set up would work with 4 colors? Or if i wanted to overlay with that diamond shape would each have to be sprites of 3 colors only? I assume windowed mode couldn't show a shape like that?

Anybody got any inspirational/ inventive low color UI stuff or is it all necessarily pretty boring given restrictions?

[Ryumaru]

Man this sprite limit is a lot more restrictive than I thought it would be. 40 sounds like a lot, but it adds up quick. The character with sword and shield is 6 already, and I was planning on some of the hud stuff being sprites too. My first take at the asylum demon ran in at 32 sprites- without wings or a hammer. I slightly more anorexic take brought me down to 24, but suffers a lot for it. I would imagine the hammer alone would have to be at least 6-10 to look impressive enough.

Perhaps I could make the boss smaller, and the environment smaller too so that he still feels large. Either that or I would have to craft some sort of set up where part of him is stationary tiles ( torso/ head) with only his arms and feet moving. hmm...

In the mean time I also completed the oscar cutscene mock up. I'm sure the application of the palettes are a mess, but right now it's just a thought experiment more than the perfect execution.
24:

32:

32 mockup with a hammer that would send me way over the limit

[rikfuzz]

Wow - Really really looks great! 

Usually (I think) neighbouring palettes share a colour, so the boundary is a bit hidden?  (I'm not sure, just guessing).  But I think having very apparent palette blocks here has given it a really interesting look somehow. 

I haven't played too many GBC games, so this may all be old news to everyone else, I dunno. 

[Helm]

The yellow bright shine blocks on the closeup of Oscar are great, yes. Why hide attribute clash?

I do think you'd need to make game elements smaller, though, if not the character sprite (16x16 sadly should be enough) certainly the bosses. The core gameplay of circling boss entities would best be de-made in a zeldaesque fashion (that's dark souls' inspiration anyway). So I would expect bosses made out of repeated tile elements with sprite arms that attack around them more than I'd expect a boss SPRITE that rotates fully and attacks around themselves. There's just not enough memory to do huge sprites on a gbc cart.

[Kazuya Mochu]

this is so good its making me uncomfortable. I feel self-conscious of my skills

[ptoing]

Btw, there also is a 10 sprites per line limit. And also, even if a sprite is only partly filled the empty space still counts towards which lines the sprite occupies.

[||||]

Nice border design on that "Here, take this." screen and I LOVE the tiled knight.. I've never played Dark Souls so I don't know what this is but visually I really like it.
I don't know much about GBC specs... so I will certainly be paying attention here.

[Ryumaru]

rikfuzz: Thanks! yep, it's definitely a more modern sensibility( or at least, not something that was done too often on gbc from what I can tell) which I like, and what makes this stuff fun with me: looking at old things through new lenses.
Helm: Definitely thought about you when I decided to be gutsy enough to try it!
I want it all, heheh. But you're right, some major downsizing and a different approach was in order. I analyzed our boy ganon to realize some things:
- A more top down perspective can " hide" the scale of the demon in a way where we can more easily assume he's big, rather than having to show it through verticality.
- Really utilizing the sprites to their fullest, going as close to the border as possible makes him feel cramped in his space.  This might be getting falsely meta, but even when he's put in the environment, it gives off the feeling that it's too small for him.
Do you have any opinion on the perspectives btw? Would be interested in hearing your take.

Kazuya Mochu: haha I don't know about all that, but thanks for the encouraging words! 

ptoing: Yep, I had that in the back of my head. rationalizing some of it with the idea that the player would want to be as far away from the boss as possible in most cases. I think I remember that it ditches sprites when it exceeds the maximum; I wonder if that priority could be set in favor of anything in particular. If the weapon selection were to be sprites ( which I don't think I can afford it to be) it would be way too easy to go past that limit.

 Speaking of which, alongside a new asylum demon that I'm very happy with and doesn't break the (sprite) bank, I've been testing out new huds, none of which I think are overly succesful. Would be interested to see if anybody else has any ideas


I wonder how the horns would have to be handled, due to their position the worst cast scenario they would be considered 4 sprites, 2 at best.


Tested to see how Ganon would look in here inspired me to ditch the previous method.


Don't know if the staggered overhang of the items could be done without sprites


Cramps up a lot of the vertical space, which is already limited


A lot of games do this, notably metal gear solid. Works for them, seems to tactical for this.


an image from Mario Tennis that has me perplexed as to how this text box is done. Can't be windowed mode, as it would have to be anchored to a side. May be tiles if nothing else scrolls during the cutscene ( most probable) yet it only uses 3 colors which makes me think it could be sprites. Also wondering how the text was done as it doesn't seem to be tile based.

l l l l: Thanks! although I can't take much credit for the design, It's mostly just referenced from menus in the game itself! Biggest roadblock so far has been the 40 sprite limit, but the challenge is fun!