Sidekick/Hiptop Game Dump

[AdamAtomic]

yeah i just found out about the one-button-at-a-time thing on another demo i was doing...that was a bit of a shocker.  I was pretty familiar with most of the art limitations, but I wanted to do a little like rhythm game where one thumb rode the 1-4-7 and the other was on the 3-6-9...yeah didn't happen   I've worked on some games where you can't even FLIP sprites OR swap their palettes without hammering memory or the framerate.  It's insane!

These phones have like 50x the processing power of a GBA, and some of them have screens that are on par with them, but for whatever reason the hardware paths just aren't there, it's a real shame.  Circular too - the phones are messed up so its hard to make good games for them, and since all the games suck adoption rates for mobile games are incredibly low, and since no one buys mobile games they're rarely properly funded and manufacturers don't outfit the phones with decent graphics capabilities (or at least let java have access to some of that stuff!!)...eerrggh

The trade we made on this game was sparse backgrounds.  Instead of bogging java down with a bunch of tiles and stuff, we're just setting the game in deep space, and randomly populating the background with a few sprites here and there   it's cheap but it should let us keep the action at a higher pace than we would be able to otherwise.  I was inspired by the NES shooters that would just kick out the background when you got to a huge boss; they did it for different technical reasons but to accomplish the same goal I think.  With enough action the background tends to become just that, the background!  Anyways, we'll see if it works...

Thanks to everybody by the way, and as I said before, feel free to edit - I see all kinds of problems with this stuff naturally, but I'm always curious what parts really stand out to other people as "ooo you know an extra five minutes could have really fixed that one up".  Maybe I'll have to go through and get some of the crappier sprites posted here so people can really rip them up!

[Rynen10K]

yeah i just found out about the one-button-at-a-time thing on another demo i was doing...that was a bit of a shocker.  I was pretty familiar with most of the art limitations, but I wanted to do a little like rhythm game where one thumb rode the 1-4-7 and the other was on the 3-6-9...yeah didn't happen   I've worked on some games where you can't even FLIP sprites OR swap their palettes without hammering memory or the framerate.  It's insane!

These phones have like 50x the processing power of a GBA, and some of them have screens that are on par with them, but for whatever reason the hardware paths just aren't there, it's a real shame.  Circular too - the phones are messed up so its hard to make good games for them, and since all the games suck adoption rates for mobile games are incredibly low, and since no one buys mobile games they're rarely properly funded and manufacturers don't outfit the phones with decent graphics capabilities (or at least let java have access to some of that stuff!!)...eerrggh
...

Is using scaling and rotation for sprites unheard of or unfeasible for Mobile games? Or does it depend on the phone, etc...
Just wondering, as I've been experimenting with some squash/stretch and rotation ideas for some sprites...I see it alot on GBA games (Wario Land 4 and Pokemon come to mind...), but I don't know if it's ever used for cell phone stuff.

[AdamAtomic]

it can be used in special cases, but it has to be done in software.  i.e., its super, super-slow and as far as I understand it pretty much not feasible if you want to also have backgrounds, other sprites, and decent AI and music.  The GBA and other similar platforms do it so effectively because it is performed by the hardware.

[philipptr]

great work. I really like the overall style you have achieved with the pretty low colourcount.
the stuff I like most:

I think its the minimalistic animation that makes me like it so much. I love how you create this effect with only 2 different frames.

looks very smooth and I can imagine that it will work great in a space themed game.

I really like the effect which makes such a simple animation very intresting and detailed.

Just like the design and execution.

Smooth animation again

Some critism (I dont expect anything to be changed, and can completly understand that a project with time-pressure doesn't turn out perfect in every way):

Lacks depth a bit.. maybe a bit more shading (darker/brighter) on the sides would have helped.

The segments look a bit like 45degree rectangles, which makes them a bit repetitive.
Only my personal opinion

[AdamAtomic]

yeah i think you're 100% right, that stack boss is waaay low contrast, and good eye on the 45 degree problem there, that makes for nasty repetition...probably a clipped pixel on the left edge would make for a much more solid piece, thanks!