GR#004 Valkyrie no Bouken - NES Sprites & Tiles

[Arne]

I struggled with the mountains before realizing the following:

If I repeat some of the tiles of the slope it gives a more consistent look. Perhaps because it makes the mountains look as if they are made out of 'atoms'. I intentionally made some square edges to keep hte tiles look.

The corners gave me trouble because had to put nonsense filling there. So, I shaped them like a + and that makes it possible to lodge the mountains into each other.

Colors can be used as a height indicator, as well as breaking up monotony. I kept the base brown, as a bridge.



They're still a little rough. I'm not sure how they'll work in action yet. I'm a bit blind to them now.

[tocky]

i got this feeling it should be more like:

but i'm not sure why - maybe just because the hills go to a depth of two tiles.

edit: or maybe like

[Arne]

I was thinking about the latter solution, but decided that a grey tip would make them look too much like miniature mountains. They're too small and low to have that kind of color detail.

I really like the first solution though, it gives them more perspective while retaining the blocky feel. And yeah, the depth of the brown inconsistency bothered me too. A depth of 2 can make the shadow side appear a little brown as well, reinforcing the of symmetry.

[Helm]

The couple of green pixels inside the hills really look like holes and not like patches of vegetation, I'd lose them, personally.

[Xkeeper]

I couldn't find the script online, so I made my own.

you could've just asked... :p Also, in the newest release of FCEUX, it's actually included (vnb.lua in the luaScripts folder)

as for actually getting this into the game, well... yeah. here's a quick rundown of the NES limitations for you:

- 64 sprites total
- 4 foreground palettes
- Tiles have a 2x2 resolution of palette choice, e.g. you can only pick different colors for 16x16 blocks. That mountain screenshot (with brown bases) wouldn't work.
- Sprites have 3 colors, + transparency

It can be done, probably, but it won't be easy by any measure. I do like how it looks regardless, though, especially considering the game's... poor visuals before this.

[Arne]

Helm> I agree. I wanted a lighter color in there though. Anyways, it bothered me so I made a test without.

Xkeeper> It's you! I've been enjoying your LUA projects. I do have the latest-ish release, but I guess I missed the vnb file in my excitement of getting my hands dirty with LUA...

I'm somewhat familiar with the NES restrictions. At first I was thinking of just replacing some tiles and palettes, but then the project quickly went into feature creep mode and I decided to just have fun instead. I'll probably just aim for a retro feel and write my own engine (got a rudimentary tile map scroller done). Of course, this is just talk, I never actually finish anything.


I was thinking NDS, 256*196 with map on top and inventory manipulation and stats on bottom. As for the story: the goal is to find and wake up the sleeping Valkyrie so she can save the land from evil, but it turns out the player actually is, or becomes the Valkyrie. Maybe there's a repository for the Valkyrie's memory and armour. It feels silly with special Valkyrie armour bits laying around, being generally available, so with this plot the player would go through different levels of regular armour before finally finding the Valkyrie armour for the endgame.

It would be fun to throw in Tower of Druaga stuff too, at least a little mini tower (more feature creep).

I'm trying with a dark purple for the rock stuff. I might also use 4+1 colors per character, using the final fantasy 1 technique where possible. Overall, I rely on black for shadow and volume.

The Demon and Fire guys are new. The Demon is based on other artwork than the sprite. It uses some extra colors, because I wanted it to be close to the later artwork and not collide with the Sandra types (knuckle head lizards). The fire guy was kinda boring, so I made it into a little robot thing.

Maybe most of the underground stuff is robotic. I also made a big Dadatta but I'm not sure if I should keep that because I already have a Dadatta armour. I also tried making the Eastern Demon Bear Trap thing (Kaox) but I had trouble making something of it. I suppose it could be like a Cocodemon. I wanted to use many colors on it because Eastern demon masks usually have that. Maybe it needs more white though.

I'm pondering if I should give the Tatta some colored cloth, so it's color coded Blue. I gave the Jester an extra color and repixeled it a bit.

I want to see color ranks for the items, like in Diablo, so I tried that on the treasure chests and money bags to start with. Random stats and effects on the weapons is fun.



It would be fun to have friendly NPC monsters. It works with the story in the games where everyone became corrupted long ago but a few remained friendly, like the Kurino (A desert lizard) and maybe Sabine (Jester).

[xenobond]

You could pretend to use the MMC5 mapper. Could then have each 8x8 background tile have a separate color assignment from the palettes instead of one for every 2x2 group. With this you also get 16,384 different 8x8 tiles as opposed to the previous 256 (64 if counting them as 2x2 groups).

Reading all this is very inspiring, along with all the other information on the games in this series. Very neat!

[bengo]

Just a little nitpicking, the tree just feels..... off, it looks weird to me. Other than that beautiful work as usual Arne.

[Xkeeper]

Just a little nitpicking, the tree just feels..... off, it looks weird to me. Other than that beautiful work as usual Arne.

Probably because it's a cross-section.

I never liked it either. In fact, I didn't like most of that game's graphics >_>

[Arne]

I think I'm just gonna stick with the following (loose) rules:

+ Stick to my 24'ish color palette.
+ About 3 to 4 (+alpha) colors for most things.
+ Use black for shadow (and not color). Stay graphical.
+ Terrain doesn't use black unless it's important stuff which needs to pop. Also using shadow colors here. No drop shadows though.
+ Chrome and reflective stuff may get extra colors though (speculars or colored reflections).
+ Minimal AA.
+ Lost edges, instead of a black line I use a colored line or no line. Skip lines where ground contact occurs, and at the top of some shapes
+ 14, 16, 20px big enemies. It's just feel good numbers and has nothing to do with hardware restrictions.
+ Heroine gets extra colors.

Playing around with the idea of a Tower of Druaga. The walls are 16*16 and not thin like in Druaga, so I made the sloped walls (like in Valkyrie, Zelda) colored like the floor, it makes the grey bit seem thinner. Druaga-Zouna came out really messy. The idea was to combine the 2 bad guys into one, but it might not work. Skipped a lot of the lines on the slimes to make them feel transparent. Not sure about the knights, they need to walk horizontally and vertically, which is inconsistent with the 45 degree thing I have going on. I might give them full 8 way rotation, like the player. They also need some sensible frames for sword drawn / shield up.