would that work? Mortal Kombat on the Lynx

[Der Luchs]

[108 Stars]

I edited the last post with 80% and 70% size versions, I'm looking forward to hear what people think.

[woolfman]

Well, imo I think the bigger ones are better for the looks. To be honest I always favour better graphics...

Edited April 16, 2013 by woolfman

[Der Luchs]

Si senor, same here

[108 Stars]

Well, it's your call, I'm surprised but maybe graphics really are more important than gameplay.

[Gregory DG]

BTW, the graphics from the Lynx mockup are from the Genesis version. I just reduced the colors, shrank the resolution and fixed a few glaring graphic glitches.

[LordKraken]

The good point with the sprites from the NES version is that they are big but not huge, use 6 colors only, and last but not least are already available.

Which means that the graphist could concentrate on the backgrounds only (du 108 stars vielleicht? du siehst sehr motiviert aus für dieses Projekt ).

 

IMO it's better for us developpers, to start working with some animated assets, as this is pretty important for a fighting game (colision boxes etc. I don't think that the lynx's collision buffer is a good idea here).

Edited April 16, 2013 by LordKraken

[108 Stars]

I will take two of the NES sprites and color edit them to look a little nicer; it's true that this way we would at least have full animation sets instantly.

 

Then GadgetUK can pick them up whenever he feels like it.

 

(I will probably still work on my smaller 80% sprites on the side though; when GadgetUK gets around to play around and try his luck on MK he can make two versions maybe, and we can all try both )

 

Sure, a background could be made too, but I have lots of other stuff going atm, so I'll wait with that a while since GadgetUK has other projects before MK as well.

 

@LordKraken Du sprichst sogar Deutsch? Ich würde gerne in Französisch antworten, aber ich habe fast alles vergessen was ich in der Schule gelernt habe.

[GadgetUK]

Actually we could use the sprites from the NES version. They have 6 colors per character and beeing 70 pixels height, rescaling is not needed.

I can imagine that black and at least 1 "flesh" color are common to all of them, which made 16-6-6+2 = 6 colors free for BG.

 

It's not much but it makes the conversion process much easier.

 

All sprites are available are http://spriters-resource.com/

 

GadgetUK, I recognize that you code well and fast (I really liked your lynx ops project) but I'm pretty sure you would need more time than "no time" to code a mortal kombat clone

 

Yes, it would be a few weeks probably.

[108 Stars]

So, I color edited two sprites from that NES pirate. I also retouched Sub Zero a bit, added the white highlights that were missing on NES. Rayden is straight color swap.

 

Looks like ass imo, there would be a lot of refinement needed to make it look good.

 

bigsprites2.bmp

Edited April 16, 2013 by 108 Stars

[woolfman]

Wow...looks promising!

[nonner242]

PHere is the thing, yes it will look like crap on the size side but what makes it look like real crap is using minimal frames of animation. Things can look awesome small but don't take away frames from them unless its the last resort. I'd rather have a missing character or two than a small spirited choppy animated game. Fluid animation is the key here, it will make crap look great if it flows.

Look at games that have smallish well animated sprites to understand this more.

If these games went down in frames the start to look like crap and cheap.

Lemmings

Beach Head 2

Astro boy GBA

Any of the castlevania SOTN type games.

Gunstar heroes GBA

Fashback genesis.... perfect example of good animation.

 

Now the other thing is when things are animated well and move at a high speed they tend to look a lot smoother even tho they may be flawed. I don't have a example of this for you right now but in many years of doing animation back in the day with old PC digitizers you had alot of blury lorez pics and on many attempts to clean up stuff it seemed to become too clean, looked like cartoon cut outs and having the artifacts in the animation rather than cleaning all them up looked better a lot of the time. Even tho it might have more of a blurred out face say on on a character when the animation came into play it looked good and fluid.

But the cleaner versions looked to jaggy and jumpy animated.

Hell I would even take out the background or reduce the amount of color drastically out of stuff just to be able to add more to the player sprites.

Its all about capturing the movement and flow of the characters while still keeping the fun.

Large or small choppy animation kills games..lol

So maybe all im saying is "Please no 2 frames for stance animations" it looks like poooooeey

Edited April 16, 2013 by nonner242

[108 Stars]

I'd agree with you, nonner. That's another reason why maybe smaller sprites based on the GB version may work well; more room for animation, and with fewer colors it will be easier to have the animation look fluid without jumping pixels etc.

 

Mind you, I did NOT pick the animation frames for the bitmap I posted; this is a straight rip out of the pirate version of MK for the NES. I just downloaded two of the sprite sheets and adjusted them both to 6 colors, I did not cut or add a single frame. It won't be pretty, but if people really want to try it with big sprites then they can start with that. There's just no way that they will look anywhere near MK quality without major reworking, but so far the opinion is clear that the users want big sprites.

 

For the small sprites I prefer I'll definetly take more care when I do them.

[nonner242]

I knew I liked you Stars!

MK would be nice but a new game would be cooler to me.

Something that would work with the lynx and you could mold arouln the hardware and screen limitations.

Samurai Shodown or Art of fighting would be cool with the zooming, but characters would not make the trasition good. Esp Samurai Showdowns would be pretty horrid.

I almost say have no jumping, just evading..dashes and rolls. Then you dont have to worry about alot of screen scrolling shrinking characters and such.

Or they can jump like real ppl only say waist high to dodge a leg swipe or high enough for a jump kick. But no need to jump over their head.

Or just do a river city ransom or International Karate....oh a karateka fighting game...yeah that would be cool. Just fight a bunch of different karatekaish guys with all new moves..with better control of course.

Edited April 17, 2013 by nonner242

[108 Stars]

Or just do a river city ransom or International Karate....

 

Already being worked on, to be released later this year.

 

And that will serve as leaning experience for a real modern style fighting game. And actually zooming in and out depending on the distance between fighters is planned if matashen can make that work well.

 

The whole MK thing is probably just a wish dating back to the Lynx original lifespan, when people were hoping for it. I'm not an MK fan to begin with, more of a Street Fighter or SNK-guy, but I still find the MK idea interesting as a testing ground of sorts.

Edited April 17, 2013 by 108 Stars

[GadgetUK]

_{Love those sprites btw. I think the time consuming part is going to be getting correct pixel alignment on sprites. But looking at that sprite sheet makes me want to get on with it.}

[LordKraken]

To nonner242 > smoother animation means more sprites means more memory, and the lynx ist not a real beast on this point. This is probably why pit fighter looks like a stop-motion combat

 

I will do the math tomorrow with a given sprite size (the NES one) to see how much frames we could load in memory.

[GadgetUK]

Memory is the killer tbh. I've very nearly finished Alien and ran out of RAM (even after segmenting images)... I've managed to claw enough back to complete it I think but it's going to be very very close, and sound might end up sparse in game. I can possibly segment some code, that's something I need to try anyway.

Edited April 17, 2013 by GadgetUK

[Der Luchs]

Yeah, I'm out at the Alien Theme Can't copy a WahWah-Effect

 

BUT: Test your might

http://www.atari-lynx.de/mp3s/Der_Luchs_-_MK2.mp3

[108 Stars]

To nonner242 > smoother animation means more sprites means more memory, and the lynx ist not a real beast on this point. This is probably why pit fighter looks like a stop-motion combat

 

I will do the math tomorrow with a given sprite size (the NES one) to see how much frames we could load in memory.

 

That's why smaller sprites could be beneficial in that regard... the smaller the spite, the less memory it takes, so more room for animation frames. Not to mention the better playability when you can actually jump higher and get more distance than is possible with bigger sprites, my original reason for wanting small sprites.

 

By the way, all the best fighting games on old handhelds went that way; MK were pretty cheap ports, look at Street Fighter Alpha on GBC, or the SNK fighting gmes from Game Gear to Neo Geo Pocket.

 

 

 

 

All sacrificed sprite size so that the playing area would remain intact and gameplay was good. Eventually they resorted to super deformed characters to make them look cute at least, but the main purpose was definitely gameplay imo.

 

MK went prioritized graphics in the handheld versions (look at the huge Game Gear sprites), but then again MK was always more about graphics than in-depth gameplay. I just personally would not want to repeat that mistake...

 

Looks like ass imo, there would be a lot of refinement needed to make it look good.

Wow...looks promising!

_{Love those sprites btw. I think the time consuming part is going to be getting correct pixel alignment on sprites. But looking at that sprite sheet makes me want to get on with it.}

 

I love it when we all disagree. XD

Edited April 17, 2013 by 108 Stars

[Der Luchs]

Let's say it that way: Use that one that works best for the game!

[LordKraken]

look at the huge Game Gear sprites

 

Well the GG port is pretty decent, isn't it?

MKII was a killer on the 8bit sega handheld, but OK I was 10

[woolfman]

By the way, all the best fighting games on old handhelds went that way; MK were pretty cheap ports, look at Street Fighter Alpha on GBC, or the SNK fighting gmes from Game Gear to Neo Geo Pocket.

 

 

What you forgot to mention is that those other systems support WAAAAAAAAAAAY more colour than the Lynx. Which makes up for the difference in appearance - more colour will give you more contrast, e.g. more shades of colours to choose from. You have more options to make them stand out from the background - that´s what the Lynx is lacking, where you start missing detail sooner with less colours available. That´s a simple truth.

Edited April 18, 2013 by woolfman

[LordKraken]

Let's do the math: the NES's sprites sheets is made of 50 liu kang's sprites. All of them are (more or less) 30*60 pixels. So if one single sprite requires 1800 bytes, a full set requires 1800*50 = +-90 KB. And we need a second character and a background. And some RAM left for the code.

 

With a maximum of 48 KB available...

 

On the other hand, the GameGear version has huge sprites but even less RAM... So I'm missing something I guess!

[woolfman]

Let's do the math: the NES's sprites sheets is made of 50 liu kang's sprites. All of them are (more or less) 30*60 pixels. So if one single sprite requires 1800 bytes, a full set requires 1800*50 = +-90 KB. And we need a second character and a background. And some RAM left for the code.

 

With a maximum of 48 KB available...

 

On the other hand, the GameGear version has huge sprites but even less RAM... So I'm missing something I guess!

 

Hehe, that´s the reason why so many Lynx Games have great appearance but arelacking sound...simply a RAM problem? Why the hell didn´t the critics back then think of that, instead of killing the platform???

Edited April 18, 2013 by woolfman