#130470 - Thanatos-Drive - Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:34 pm
I realize that this is my first post on the gbadev forums, and as such, would make me untrusted, or largely ignored.
But. I have to give this a try anyway.
I'm sure many of you talented programmers (and non-talented alike) will remember a childhood playing Lode Runner: The Legend Returns. It was the updated version of the old stick-figure Lode Runner, with more stages, more gold, more traps to use, etc. It also significantly included a level editor. I spent countless hours playing the game and making my own levels.
(For you poor fellows who never enjoyed the game, here it is on wikipedia.)
So, why not for the DS? I'm hoping to find a few programmers who would be willing to work on this game, and, with luck, complete it. I would attempt this project myself, but I unfortunately
have no programming experience for the DS (although I am attempting to learn.)
Here's a few points I list for this being a good project:
1. It's a classic game. People KNOW this game, and would gladly play it.
2. The controls are well suited for the DS.*
3. The game is easily obtained FOR FREE.
Notable obstacles:
1. Reverse engineering the game code: I don't know how difficult this will be, but I hope it won't be a headache.
2. Legal issues: Although the game is free, Sierra Online has not released the source code. I don't know how legal or illegal reverse engineering the code might be.
3. This is my first post.
*Control Scheme: As there are only 9 required buttons to play the game, and the DS has 10 buttons, this is not a case of 'How would we have the player control the character intuitively?'
Controls: (subject to change as per programmer's preference.)
Up: Up
Down: Down
Left: Left
Right: Right
Fire Left: L trigger
Fire Right: R trigger
Pick up item: X
Use held item: Y
Use bomb: B
Now. I recognize that there already IS a Lode Runner game out for the DS. It's playable and officially made. However, it's NOT The Legend Returns. Playing it only made me wish someone had done what I am trying to do now.
Discuss?
EDIT: Grammar issues.
EDIT: Control scheme.
Last edited by Thanatos-Drive on Mon Jun 04, 2007 3:17 am; edited 1 time in total
#130477 - tepples - Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:23 pm
If you write a description of the gameplay, and then you implement this description without reference to the original source code or object code, you should be free of any copyright issue with respect to the computer program. Just please don't use graphics borrowed from Bomberman.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#130492 - Thanatos-Drive - Mon Jun 04, 2007 3:15 am
Thanks tepples! I'll give it a try.
Here goes:
The game revolves around 1 or 2 PCs (player character) collecting treasure on various stages. The PC, once moving, also triggers the movement of red-robed figures, which serve as the enemy They are out to prevent you from taking treasure, and do so by following you (albeit at a slower pace), and devouring you when you get there. The PC's only weapon against these monks is to blast holes on the ground, if the ground is deemed blastable. The monks fall in (one monk per hole), and take a while to get out. They cannot get out if the PC is standing on top, of course. Every hole eventually heals over, and crushes whatever there might be in it. Monks will regenerate from set points. Additional weapons can be acquired, but the blaster is the only weapon the PC will have at all times.
Levels are navigated via teleportation devices, ladders, and holes (the ones you make in the stage.)
Additional weapons include:
buckets of ooze
bombs
large bombs which create permanent, non-closeable holes.
spray canisters
traps
To adance to the next level, yu must collect all pieces of treasure (which monks are able to hold. But they are dropped once they fall into a PC-made hole), and a door appears, which the player must go to in order to pass. Some doors require keys.
Up to 4 bombs may be held, and only one item (of any other kind, INCLUDING keys) may be held at a time.
#130497 - tepples - Mon Jun 04, 2007 4:49 am
You forgot to state whether the ground is made of a tile map, or even if it's side view vs. overhead.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#130548 - Thanatos-Drive - Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:12 am
It's a side view, like a classic platformer.
There doesn't seem to be much interest in this =/
#130552 - keldon - Tue Jun 05, 2007 7:51 am
Well imagine yourself to be a freelance special effects coordinator and walk past a guy asking for help in a new film. You know that films are complicated tasks and require dedicated producers, actors, and so on. But this guy asking for help in his film has not even stated what his role in the film is but says he is not a writer, and also states to also want a camera man, writer, and director.
No matter how interesting the story is, would you in your right mind volunteer to be the special effects coordinator of this random guy?
#130648 - Thanatos-Drive - Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:41 am
I suppose not.
I guess I could always take up a job like Project Manager, or something else that doesn't require programming knowledge. I'm still learning.
#130649 - tepples - Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:54 am
To be promoted to manager, you'll have to have at least some other skill. For instance, it might lie in drawing the sprite cels.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#130652 - sgeos - Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:47 am
Anyone with money can be an executive producer.
-Brendan
#130683 - Lynx - Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:37 pm
| Thanatos-Drive wrote: |
| There doesn't seem to be much interest in this =/ |
The fact that it is only a 3 day old post, and you're already starting to "give up" makes me wounder if it would ever release anyway.
_________________
NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews
#130730 - Thanatos-Drive - Thu Jun 07, 2007 4:18 am
I'm certainly not giving up. I'm just saying that, well, this game doesn't seem to be as popular among the programmers as I had hoped it would be. A pity, but it's not going to cause me to just end this idea.
And yeah, I realize the fact that I know just about nil in the programming sense is not looking good. But heck, I'm learning, and I think it'd be a great project to work on, so once summer vacation begins for me (8 more days!), I'll try to start something on my own (if nobody else picks this up by that time.)
Although, IF nobody's willing to take on a project like this...would anyone be willing to teach me the more intricate aspects of DS programming? (Probably a harder task than this game, now that I think about it...)
#130946 - ThomasS - Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:12 pm
I started a Lode Runner: The Legend Returns remake for the DS some moths ago (because I like this game very much and it was the first game I played through completely), and it's already in a playable state.
A short list of (more or less) completed features:
- Level editing on the DS works fine
- Saving / Loading the levels with DLDI
- Level sizes from the size of the DS screen over the original size up to the size 32x32
- *Almost* original graphics
- The first 3 backgrounds are implemented (Jungle, Fungus, Ruins)
- You can move, climb ladders, bars, collect gold, dig holes
- All 4 kinds of goal doors are working (normal, red, green, orange door + keys)
- Monks are working, can fall into holes and get trapped, appear again, can kill the player (However, I didn't try to imitate the original AI, but implemented a pathfinding solution that always leads the monks to the player if they can reach him - but I don't know if that was a good decision because they always form a boring row after a while)
- I programmed a converter program for the original levels that works fine (this was rather hard, because the levels have a strange compression and I had to find out which values are stored where first - the tool "Lode Runner Hacker's Editor" helped me a lot with this)
What doesn't work:
- Playing with a friend over WIFI in cooperative mode (I wanted to complete the singleplayer part first)
- I couldn't get the original music to play on the DS (they are .mid files, but almost all music players for the DS use .mod, conversion to .mod is impossible without a significant quality loss (it hurts to listen to it afterwards), and libmikmod has too much bugs), but I could try to convert them to mp3 and playing them using the Helix mp3 decoder on the arm7 (*could* work)
- the items and bombs don't work yet, only the keys
- there are some bugs left in the game
- ...
I called the game "Lode Runner: The mad monk's remake" in the style of "Lode Runner: The mad monk's revenge", and it will also contain some elements from "The mad monk's revenge" (I like the endless bombs!) and some more.
It is made using PALib (but I'm working on my own lib for DS programming, "dslib", right now, and did a break with Lode Runner - however, if you are interested in helping me, I'll continue with Lode Runner).
A problem in the developement is that Fraps (a program to film video games) doesn't work with Lode Runner, I had to use "Screenshot Pilot" and it's a hassle to get all those screenshots into GIMP. Then, the original tile size used for the backgrounds is 22x22, but I'm using two regular tiled backgrounds on the DS for them, which have 8x8 tiles, so I had to resize all tiles to 16x16 to fit them into the grid. This is a minor problem with the background graphics, but it's a real problem with the player and the monks, because simple resizing with GIMP looks absolutely bad and so I had to re-draw them (my drawing skills are ... hmm ... moderate ...), so the animations look somewhat choppy.
So I suggest that I upload it, you can try it (respect the fact that it's a work-in-progress version with bugs) and if you like it, maybe we could complete it together (or redo it completely without PALib and cleaner code). What do you think about it?
Here's the download link, please read the ReadMe first: *click* (sorry for the upload site ;-), I hope it works! Try it multiple times if "Access to this file is currently not possible" is displayed)
#130992 - Thanatos-Drive - Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:25 pm
The game worked fine. Animations were pretty good too. All-in-all, almost exactly what I envisioned it to be.
And I'm highly interested in providing any help I can. Unfortunately...that's not a lot =/. As you might see from the posts above, I'm not exactly the most experienced...anything. We could talk via e-mail/IRC/AIM/PM if you'd like. Like I said, I'm very interested, I just wouldn't know what to do.
AIM: Thanatos Drive
e-mail: PM me for it
#131040 - ThomasS - Sun Jun 10, 2007 12:41 pm
Ok - check your PMs!
#132265 - Katamari - Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:56 am
The link doesn't work for me :(
#132280 - ThomasS - Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:15 pm
Try it again, it worked for me right now.
Or send me a PM with your E-Mail address, then I can send it directly.
The current state is not much more progressed than this one because I've been busy, but I just figured out how to play mp3's on the arm7, so background music will work soon.
Are you interested in helping the game? We could still use help with the graphics ;-)
_________________
<dsFont> <Game Collection>
#132398 - Katamari - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:01 pm
That's the exact reason why I want to see it :) I will PM you
#132979 - Thanatos-Drive - Mon Jul 02, 2007 10:49 am
Hey Katamari! Thanks for joining the project! I'm helping ThomasS out with the sound effects, debugging, and Mad Monk AI. Glad to have you on the team!
#133329 - Katamari - Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:48 am
Heh...I haven't joined quite yet as there are a few things I still need to sort out of my own.