#22316 - Kojote - Thu Jun 17, 2004 5:21 pm
Another coding compo organized by PDRoms...here comes the information:
Your goal is to greate a "Game & Watch" style game, in fact a LCD style game, with leading intro! (An intro contains (scroll)text and a (moving) logo. Deadline is Sunday, 4th July, 2004 at 23:59 GMT +1. 1st prize is a NGPC with 7 games. Allowed systems are: Gameboy Classic, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, GP32, Neo Geo Pocket, Neo Geo Pocket Color, NES & Dreamcast! Click on the link below the get more information.
http://www.pdroms.de/pdrc2_5.php
_________________
Kojote
PDRoms - Retroguru - Giana's Return - Speckdrumm
#22400 - Mr. Ploppy - Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:46 am
| PDRoms.de wrote: |
| There is no animation & smooth scrolling allowed after the intro, only static movement. (Remember the old Game&Watch games, or various LCD games). |
Can these "static" elements overlap during the game? (i.e. collision) Or would a character be limited to one pose per location on the screen?
Also, If I understand the article correctly, a hypothetical GBA entry that used two colours as allowed by the rules, say black & white, would also be allowed a shade or two of grey to AA out rough edges and whatnot?
| PDRoms.de wrote: |
| Antialiasing is allowed, as long as its used to soften edges only! |
Correct?
_________________
I'm just off to Hartleypool to buy some exploding trousers. Cluck, cluck, gibber, gibber, "my old man's a mushroom", et cetera.
#22421 - Torlus - Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:06 pm
Well I think that characters shouldn't overlap in any case.... remember, it's G&W. Maybe one additional rule could be that the game should show up every character/sprite it will use at its beginning, for one second (like what you can see when your G&W is somewhat broken, or if you play with battery placement :))
_________________
GBA,GC,NGPC,GP32,FPGA,DS stuff at http://torlus.com/
#22425 - tepples - Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:10 pm
Do G&W games have more than 255 different odd-shaped "pixels" on the LCD? If not, one could just load the entire scene into mode 4 and then run the whole display off palette modifications.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#22429 - Lord Graga - Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:34 am
| tepples wrote: |
| Do G&W games have more than 255 different odd-shaped "pixels" on the LCD? If not, one could just load the entire scene into mode 4 and then run the whole display off palette modifications. |
That's just what I thought about! :)
You could also arrange the display like this:
| Code: |
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X |
Where "X" marks a character. In that way you could write a game using only "half" of the screen, and do any animation you want! ;)
#22432 - Abscissa - Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:25 am
What I've been doing is setting up each LCD "element/pixel" as a hardware sprite, and instead of changing x,y coordinates or doing palette changes, I just use the sizedouble flag trick to turn different ones on and off. Seems to work pretty well.
#22434 - sajiimori - Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:51 am
Since these sorts of games are ridiculously easy to implement, I guess the challenge is in making something that really stands out.
Then again, the "intro" part of the goal might get all the attention, making the compo pretty much the same as all the others.
#22443 - sgeos - Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:42 pm
| tepples wrote: |
| Do G&W games have more than 255 different odd-shaped "pixels" on the LCD? |
The official rules say that it is an LCD game. G&W screens are not big enough to display more than 255 "pixels". If you have a larger screen, and a component you use over and over, then it becomes very easy to inflate the number of "odd-shaped 'pixels'" on the screen. I have a design that uses 607 odd shaped pixels:
Component A: 18 parts x 30 on screen = 540
Component B: 8 parts x 8 on sceen = 64
Misc: 3
The number counter on microwaves and digital clocks has 7 "pixels". Have a field of four of those and you get 28 pixels. Have more than one field, and...
-Brendan
#22448 - sgeos - Mon Jun 21, 2004 3:06 pm
| Mr. Ploppy wrote: |
| Can these "static" elements overlap during the game? (i.e. collision) Or would a character be limited to one pose per location on the screen? |
I would say one pose per location. Keep in mind that you can always split your dude/object into parts and activate those parts individually. I could have an enemy and a sword "pixel" with one half to the right of the enemy, and one half to the left. There is no collision. I could also have a body a left foot and a right foot. Always keep the body on, and switch the foot to display a different movement direction.
| tepples wrote: |
| Do G&W games have more than 255 different odd-shaped "pixels" on the LCD? |
I just counted the number of "pixels" on my grandma's LCD tetris game:
200 for the board
8 for next piece (maybe only 7)
5 misc ("LEVEL", "HIGH-", "SCORE", "LINES", and 2 colons)
91 in "pixels" numbers (7 x 13 numberals)
Total: 304 (maybe 303)
I'd love to hear the LCD component count if anybody has an LCD poker or anything like that.
-Brendan
#22449 - keldon - Mon Jun 21, 2004 3:18 pm
Although I would expect it, are we allowed to have full colour backgrounds like real LCD games?
#22451 - sgeos - Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:26 pm
| keldon wrote: |
| Although I would expect it, are we allowed to have full colour backgrounds like real LCD games? |
According to the official rules, no. "Only 2 colors are allowed at once on the screen... Black and white do count as colors!"
The way I read the rules, I could make a game that uses the entire LCD screen, and as long as I only have 2 colors on the screen at one time it is valid. There is a vague "no animation & smoothing scrolling allowed after the intro, only static movement". I'm sure they would use that to disqualify the entry, even though the movement *is* static. Each pixel
is either "on" or "off".
I'd like to see a limit put on the number of discrete LCD cells. A discrete LCD cell can either be on or off. 1024 and 2500 both sound like good numbers to me. Either one should be enough to implement a complex LCD game, and if somebody really wants to use those discrete LCD cells to implement a mini screen, I think they should be allowed to go for it. Was it the pocket pikachu that operated using a mini screen?
-Brendan
#22475 - keldon - Tue Jun 22, 2004 12:32 pm
NEW NEWS
we can now use full colour backgrounds!!!
#22477 - keldon - Tue Jun 22, 2004 1:23 pm
#22518 - Mr. Ploppy - Wed Jun 23, 2004 11:00 am
The rules are still ambiguous. Can the coloured BG be used during the intro as well, or just the game? Also, what does 2 foreground colours mean? Could I use black and red sprites plus transparency? Just red and transparency? What?
_________________
I'm just off to Hartleypool to buy some exploding trousers. Cluck, cluck, gibber, gibber, "my old man's a mushroom", et cetera.