#34883 - ScottLininger - Thu Jan 27, 2005 8:06 pm
I just posted our compo entry, Star Fortress Dendron, to my gameboy site. I welcome comments from folks! I'm trying to get a list of all the bugs and such so I can fix them up.
http://www.thingker.com
Cheers,
Scott
#34895 - OrR - Fri Jan 28, 2005 12:58 am
I got stuck in the plaza type area (the third you enter). It was on the right edge of the hotel in the upper left.
Other than that, very nice game! :)
#34900 - isildur - Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:08 am
Very pro looking game engine! Looks like there was a lot of work involved.
Did you use your own sound engine? And what music format did you use?
*One thing, I thought the text when the characters speak was a bit hard to read. The font could be a bit sharper.
Well done!
#34901 - OrR - Fri Jan 28, 2005 3:07 am
| isildur wrote: |
Very pro looking game engine! Looks like there was a lot of work involved.
Did you use your own sound engine? And what music format did you use?
*One thing, I thought the text when the characters speak was a bit hard to read. The font could be a bit sharper.
Well done! |
Did you play it on emulator or hardware? This needs to be played on hardware or the subpixel fonts will look like shit... ;)
#34904 - isildur - Fri Jan 28, 2005 3:45 am
Played it on vba. I will try it on my cart.
#34905 - DekuTree64 - Fri Jan 28, 2005 3:59 am
Yep, an option to switch the subpixel fonts on/off would be nice for those of us who don't have a GBA handy, but understandable that it would have bumped up the bin size for the compo.
Very nice game though, hope to see more done with the engine in the future. I have a bunch of nitpicks if you'd like to hear them Scott, but I'd rather point out the good parts here, like the great use of sprites and cool textbox design. One thing that surprised me is that the graphics are all 256 color. What kind of compression did you use on them, just straight LZ?
I wish it would have gotten on the cart, but then again it's nice not having to wait so long to see it :)
I died in the basement, but it said I saved the people and gave me a happy looking 'the end'. Are you supposed to be trapped down there until the camera bots kill you, or are there more possible endings?
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#34909 - ScottLininger - Fri Jan 28, 2005 5:03 am
| Quote: |
| Did you use your own sound engine? And what music format did you use? |
I used Krawall with .S3M. I think that Julien did an amazing job with the music, given that I only gave him ~74Kb to use.
| Quote: |
| Yep, an option to switch the subpixel fonts on/off would be nice for those of us who don't have a GBA handy, but understandable that it would have bumped up the bin size for the compo. |
This would be worth it (and easy to do) if the thing ran worth a darn in VBA. For some reason it's annoyingly slow on that emulator. If anyone has any ideas why that would be, I'd love to hear them. I've been told that VBA runs games too fast, but this is the first one I've seen where the opposite is true.
| DekuTree64 wrote: |
| I have a bunch of nitpicks if you'd like to hear them Scott |
Yes, please. I really appreciate your time.
| Quote: |
| One thing that surprised me is that the graphics are all 256 color. What kind of compression did you use on them, just straight LZ? |
Custom "LZish" compression and metatiles. The tile maps are stored as metatiles then decompressed to WRAM when a map loads. All of the sprites use custom compression that combines sequences of transparent pixels. I was surprised at how successful this was.
I played around with moving to 16-color with Quither, but I nixed the idea as the deadline came looming. I was worried it would be too big of a slowdown to my "just in time" art asset creation. ;)
| Quote: |
| I died in the basement, but it said I saved the people and gave me a happy looking 'the end'. Are you supposed to be trapped down there until the camera bots kill you, or are there more possible endings? |
There are two *slightly* different endings, but you die with both of them. Just today I figured out that there's a bug on that last level that requires you to destroy the generators in a certain order or you can't "win."
-Scott
#34918 - OrR - Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:02 am
The game runs ok on my VBA... (1.7.2)
#34921 - tepples - Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:38 am
| ScottLininger wrote: |
| [Optimization for CRT displays] would be worth it (and easy to do) if the thing ran worth a darn in VBA. For some reason it's annoyingly slow on that emulator. If anyone has any ideas why that would be, I'd love to hear them. |
How fast is your PC's CPU? Try turning up frame skip, disabling special effects, closing background apps such as P2P or distributed computing, or OCing your CPU. Or try no$gba freeware, which I'm told is faster than VBA on a given machine at the cost of some graphical accuracy. Or try writing your game to a flash card and running it in a Game Boy Player: guaranteed to run at full GBA speed but almost always displays on a CRT.
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#34934 - DekuTree64 - Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:10 am
| ScottLininger wrote: |
| This would be worth it (and easy to do) if the thing ran worth a darn in VBA. |
Hmm, seems to run fine on mine, although I do have a 2.1GHz athlon. My old 450MHz P3 couldn't even run simple things in VBA worth a darn, so it may just be your CPU.
| Quote: |
| DekuTree64 wrote: | | I have a bunch of nitpicks if you'd like to hear them Scott |
Yes, please. I really appreciate your time. |
Don't say you didn't ask for it :)
First thing is the collision detection, getting stuck on walls instead of sliding. Not bad for being in a hurry, but it would make the biggest improvement in the overall gameplay I think.
Second is sprite tearing. I checked it out in VBA and it doesn't look like there's any fancy sprite copying going on. Are you being sure to only copy your OAM data in during VBlank?
Other small bugs and opinions:
In the dream maze rooms, if you walk to the right corner, a tree pops in on the left.
There's a hole in the collision layer at the top corner of the gym (you can get in the walls).
If you start a new game after finishing, it's still in 'dream mode' (kinda cool, actually).
Moving the camera when a textbox pops up is distracting.
Needs louder sound effects for hitting things/getting hit, maybe flash the screen when you get hit (preferrably not too bright).
Camera bots are cool, but would be better if you couldn't talk to/get blocked by them. More abmient characters to add atmosphere. Maybe let you talk to them once, or pop up the description the first time you run into one.
| Quote: |
| I played around with moving to 16-color with Quither, but I nixed the idea as the deadline came looming. I was worried it would be too big of a slowdown to my "just in time" art asset creation. ;) |
Yeah, I don't think Quither would have been too nice on the graphics. Good for smooth color bitmaps, but not pixel art. Does sound like you were in more of a crunch for time than space, so 256 color works.
_________________
___________
The best optimization is to do nothing at all.
Therefore a fully optimized program doesn't exist.
-Deku
#34936 - Kojote - Fri Jan 28, 2005 11:21 am
Looks polished and nice :-) I hope the other coders of this compo will follow the spirit of releasing their non qualified games.
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#35016 - radjago - Sat Jan 29, 2005 11:50 am
| DekuTree64 wrote: |
There's a hole in the collision layer at the top corner of the gym (you can get in the walls).
|
I've experienced similar bugs. On the right side of William's office, just behind the filing cabinet, go up and you're dancing on the ceiling. I've gotten stuck by walking just to the right of the ramp leading to the ship, behind the stack of boxes, at the beginning.
Also, there's a small graphical bug in the ship at the beginning. There is some grey text on the ship and when you walk behind it, you can see yourself through the ship.
#35037 - MumblyJoe - Sat Jan 29, 2005 6:01 pm
That is some astounding work man. Really makes me glad that I didn't enter the compo, because everything down to the dialog reeks of a quality game waiting to be expanded, and I can't compete with that level of work
Without a doubt one of the best gba homebrew games I have ever seen (if not the best, then certainly has the potential to be the best).
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