#136262 - Thommas - Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:56 pm
Hi everyone !
I'm looking for some talented level designer for my school project.
As design and graphics have nothing to do with coding, I need someone who could spend some time on building tiles and maps.
You just need to know the Starcraft universe and be able to use Paint :p
To see the current versions of my ROM, check :
http://thommas.free.fr/scgba
Especially Version 0.4, where i coded map scrolling but as you can see, the tiles are ugly without transitions between them.
Comments & suggestions are welcomed !!!
Thx =)
See ya !
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#136263 - gauauu - Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:09 pm
Ha! I love the animation when you push start :)
#136267 - gauauu - Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:48 pm
One thing....why is the file so huge? There were some decent looking graphics for the sprites, but nothing that should take up 50 megs....
I don't even think the gba can do that much without special bankswitching....
#136268 - keldon - Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:52 pm
No$ is not playing, but I'll try it on my MiniSD if I can charge up the DS
#136278 - Thommas - Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:18 pm
"One thing....why is the file so huge?"
I'm sorry, i'm currently using a very bad pcx2sprite converter and the array of data for sprites takes 30 Mo ...
I'd like to find another way to import a pcx image and read it in my code, but for the moment, i code quick & dirty as long as visualboy advance plays it as I want.
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#136282 - gauauu - Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:51 pm
Fair enough, although it sounds like something is going wrong in the process.
I've always had the best luck using Cearn's Grit, Wingrit, and Usenti for my graphic manipulation and exporting. Of course, use whatever works for now, but you'll definitely need to find a better method of exporting if you're ending up with graphic dumps that are that huge.
#136739 - Thommas - Sat Aug 04, 2007 10:43 am
Thx !
I'll give it a try...
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#136743 - Thommas - Sat Aug 04, 2007 12:25 pm
"I've always had the best luck using Cearn's Grit, Wingrit, and Usenti for my graphic manipulation and exporting."
I don't see how I could create a compressed file with my sprites using this tool. Even with this tool, I end up with a 18 Mo file ... -_-'
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#136872 - gauauu - Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:56 am
Either you have metric TONS of sprite graphics that aren't in your demo, or you're doing something seriously wrong. Do you have the sprite images somewhere that we can take a look at?
#136877 - josath - Mon Aug 06, 2007 2:10 am
Awesome, this huuuge GBA file makes both of my GBA emulators crash (Mednafen, VisualBoyAdvance).
#136879 - tepples - Mon Aug 06, 2007 2:12 am
Is the GBA file larger than 32 MiB? I've run GSM Player compilations between 16 MiB and 32 MiB in VisualBoyAdvance without causing any problem, but currently, no GBA file can be bigger than 32 MiB.
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#136893 - josath - Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:56 am
yes, it's 51MB. Probably the emulators only allocate 32MB for ROM, and don't check that the file is less than that, and it causes a buffer overflow when loading.
#136925 - dantheman - Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:59 pm
The huge file size also makes it nearly impossible to run on real hardware as well. The Supercard/M3/G6 won't run it, as they only have 32 MB of RAM to run GBA binaries from. You would have to have a traditional NOR-based card that's 512 megabits (64 megabytes) in size or larger, and the bankswitching code for each specific flash cart would need to be added to the binary.
So far, the only homebrew program I know of that can be larger than 32 MB is the last official release of Pogoshell, which could use all 64 MB of space on an X-rom cart. However, its sources are unusable/unavailable/something so it would be difficult to duplicate the behavior.
#137040 - Thommas - Tue Aug 07, 2007 4:24 pm
"Either you have metric TONS of sprite graphics that aren't in your demo, or you're doing something seriously wrong. Do you have the sprite images somewhere that we can take a look at?"
>>> http://thommas.free.fr/scgba/Graphics/nova.pcx
This is for a single unit, I added 10 units and 12 effects ... that is to say,
there are horizontaly aligned all units and effects in a single pcx.
Then I use pcx2sprite.exe which creates a big array (about 50 Mo)
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#137053 - NeX - Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:57 pm
Try cutting down on the amount of frames in the walking animation. Not to mention that most of that sprite would probably fit in 8x16 and 16x16 cels.
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#137083 - ScottLininger - Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:47 pm
Your sprite guy could easily be turned into a 32x32 sprite with a bit of careful editing. That would drop your memory usage to 25% of its current usage right off the bat.
You could also go to a 16 color sprite for this guy without losing hardly any color quality. Even if you wanted to keep your engine in 256 colors, the data structure that you use to store the tiles could be 16-color, with an attached lookup table to connect, say, color #6 in your image palette to color #125 in your actual GBA palette.
The engine looks AWESOME so far. Good work.
What format are your levels designed in? Do you have tools, or would an artist be "hand coding" against some internal standard?
-Scott
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Some of my GBA projects
#137147 - Thommas - Wed Aug 08, 2007 12:09 pm
"Try cutting down on the amount of frames in the walking animation."
I won't do that. If the game is looking so nice that is because I kept the original sprite from Starcraft without decreasing quality or color.
I don't care if my Rom is 51 Mo big as it works fine in Visualboy advance.
Besides, I need to ask my gba dev teacher how to compress sprites in a ROM.
"What format are your levels designed in? Do you have tools, or would an artist be "hand coding" against some internal standard? "
Tiles are in bmp, extracted directly from Starcraft Map Editor.
Then I use >> GBA Graphics from Brunni (http://gbagraphics.palib.info/)
It allows easily to create Maps !
You want to help me to create some Mission Maps and nice Tiles ?
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#137154 - tepples - Wed Aug 08, 2007 1:12 pm
| Thommas wrote: |
| I don't care if my Rom is 51 Mo big as it works fine in Visualboy advance. |
A file bigger than 32 MiB will not work on a Game Boy Advance system without bank switching.
| Quote: |
| Besides, I need to ask my gba dev teacher how to compress sprites in a ROM. |
To learn the basic theory behind this, go to Google and look for run length encoding.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#137162 - keldon - Wed Aug 08, 2007 2:24 pm
And grey code; with reduced palettes you can probably squeeze out much higher rations.
#137171 - Thommas - Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:37 pm
"A file bigger than 32 MiB will not work on a Game Boy Advance system without bank switching."
This may explain why some of my sprites don't display well !
"To learn the basic theory behind this, go to Google and look for run length encoding."
I don't need basic theory, I need a solution to put compressed sprites in a ROM and access them.
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#137193 - tepples - Wed Aug 08, 2007 7:30 pm
| Thommas wrote: |
"A file bigger than 32 MiB will not work on a Game Boy Advance system without bank switching."
This may explain why some of my sprites don't display well ! |
Thank you.
| Quote: |
"To learn the basic theory behind this, go to Google and look for run length encoding."
I don't need basic theory |
I respectfully disagree. Knowing what compression can and cannot do will help you expect realistic results. For instance, run-length encoding is quick to decode and good for compressing graphics with horizontal lines or large flat areas, such as the transparent portion of a sprite cel.
| Quote: |
| I need a solution to put compressed sprites in a ROM and access them. |
One solution is to convert and compress each sprite cel on the PC, then write a "data" file containing all the compressed sprite cels, along with an "index" file containing offsets to the start of each cel. Then build this data and index into your ROM, either with bin2s or with an appended file system such as GBFS. On the GBA, read the index, find the compressed data, decompress it, and copy it to VRAM.
Or did you want a code library that implements the above?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#137224 - Thommas - Wed Aug 08, 2007 10:43 pm
"I respectfully disagree. Knowing what compression can and cannot do will help you expect realistic results. For instance, run-length encoding is quick to decode and good for compressing graphics with horizontal lines or large flat areas, such as the transparent portion of a sprite cel."
I already know the run-length encoding principle.
"Or did you want a code library that implements the above?"
You just read my mind.
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Be Quick ! Time is Mana...
#139642 - Thommas - Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:59 pm
V0.5 with collision & basic IA is out :
http://thommas.free.fr/scgba/
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#139906 - Thommas - Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:14 pm
Version 0.6
http://thommas.free.fr/scgba/
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#140559 - Thommas - Mon Sep 17, 2007 2:49 pm
V0.6 with sound :
http://thommas.free.fr/scgba/
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#140637 - Thommas - Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:04 pm
I'm looking for a scenarist/level designer.
I can't spend more time to imagine this part of my game.
If you want to help, if you want to see a starcraft story/fanfiction become true, I can adapt my game to fit your ideas.
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#141891 - silent_code - Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:06 am
<OFFTOPIC>
| ScottLininger wrote: |
| Your sprite guy... |
the guy is a gal - or didn't you play *STARCRAFT*??? ;^P
</OFFTOPIC>