The Road Traveled Again -- Amendments and Details

Akake on 2009/08/21 14:23 of Raster Blaster

I've decided to make some amendments to my design. This is mostly refinement, and little of it is adding or removing.

First, I'm taking some liberties with the 2-bit color palette I'd decided on.

Because of my... Sub-par spriting skills, I need to use a different palette for the terrain to get contrast.

That said, I've decided to use a dimmed Aqua/Magenta/White/Black palette for the terrain.

This means a roughly Teal/Violet/Gray/Black palette.

It's technically one of the IBM/PC 2-bit palettes, but a second one. But hey, it's not running on an 8-bit chip, and certainly not in 2-bit mode!

Also, I've decided that the characters will have different sprites for when they are facing right or left.

This is so that characters' weapons are always on the same side of their bodies (IE: Suzy's bazooka is always in her left hand, etc.)

This does double the size of my character sprite sheet, but I would probably have held sprites for left-facing characters in memory separately anyway.

Character sprites are 20 pixels wide and 25 pixels high. I decided this how I usually do: Make the first one, round the size off to a multiple of 5, and it's there.

Board tiles will be 30 pixels square. This is to give a good ratio to the character sprites, and give spaces a spatially balanced feel. (IE: Tiles are evenly sized, and don't give the odd feel that oddly dimensioned tiles do)

I haven't yet decided on the dimensions of the item sprites, but I'm thinking something like 20 pixels square.

On the gameplay side of things, I've also made some decisions.

The player can carry half as many super rockets as normal ones.
Normal rockets move twice as fast as super rockets.

That's all I've got to add right now, but you can expect more as the day goes on. :-)

Oh, and before I forget, once I've got a demo going, I'll be making a GoogleCode project page for this game, and will be making additions every now and then. (For example, extra levels, possibly with extra mechanics)

But that's for another day. Today, I just want to get some spriting done, and maybe get something on my screen. :-)

---Akake

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Comments

nitrofurano on 2009/08/21 16:27:

Very curious the sizes you defined for sprites... - most of the 8bit and 16bit games has sprites with sizes multiples of 8 (and some hardware focused on 16x16 sprites, like NES and MSX) - i think even some 8086-CGA lo-res (320x200, 4 colours, those colours you said) games uses multiple of 8 sprites - is there some special reason you're avoiding this?

nitrofurano on 2009/08/21 16:40:

more info about CGA from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter

I can't remember many of the CGA games from 80's and early 90's - no much more than those from Accolade or SierraOnLine, or even that good old Prince of Persia - maybe Karateka also existed for CGA, but i'm not sure...

nitrofurano on 2009/08/21 17:04:

some online-emulated games (in a Java applet) - http://www.classicdosgames.com/video/cga.html

Akake on 2009/08/21 17:10:

I didn't specifically avoid it, it just happened that my character sprites wound up being 20x25, and 30x30 seemed like a good grid tile size to work with that size.

I admit, I'm just learning about these devices. I appreciate the information! :-)

The odd tile sizes are mainly due to the fact that I don't tend to plan my sprite sizes until I've made the first one.

---Akake

cyhawk on 2009/08/21 23:40:

Be sure to post screenshots too once in a while! Not everyone has enough time to download and run the code, but I would surely have time to glimpse at a screenshot.

Akake on 2009/08/22 01:09:

I haven't posted a screenshot because there isn't one.

I've been writing background code, and have nothing more than a blank window. ^^;

I'll post a screenshot once I have a character and some terrain to run through. :-)

I have most of the framework for displaying entities done, and other things should only require minimal modification. I'm working on my data loader. Then the factory can fall into place. Then I can get a quick camera rigged up. Then the fun begins. :-)

I know I don't yet have anything to show for my efforts (Though I've been designing/planning/lazy the past few days). I'm feeling good here, though. If I can get my data loader loading data today, then the rest is child's play.

I've written all the header code I need for the data loader right now, so my next task is to actually implement the ugly thing.

That should be easy, because I'm loading my sprites by chopping up sheets again, and I can easily dimension my sprite sheets for all of the sprites I'll need. (A benefit of having planned out the whole thing :-D)

I'm not going to make any promises, because I had a lazy day today, and I don't know that it won't happen tomorrow. I can say that I'll be working harder, because I was so ill yesterday that I couldn't actually work, and today only saw the completion of the sprites for the main character, and a bunch of header code. Both of those are important, but I need to actually implement things, or I just have buckets of specifications with no working parts.

I'm going to remain optimistic, though. I still have a while (I officially started last Wednesday, and my deadline got moved up to this coming Thursday because I was sick yesterday), and I think I can get it done. :-)

Onward, Upward, and Beyond. Only we can decide our limits.

---Akake