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joeybastard

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Posts posted by joeybastard

  1. Posted

    further messin' with the box

    I like your box images so far, but shouldn't there be some robots in there somewhere...? Without robots to indicate a man-versus-machine setting, the artwork gives the impression that the game is some kind of Metal Gear clone, which it definately isn't.

     

    Just my two cents. :)

     

    There will be robots, as I said, I'm just messing around for now. The robots are easy for me to do, but I'm not very good at making people. Since they are the hard part, I'm trying to get an idea of how I want them to look first. Once I do, I'll put some some robots in.

  4. Posted

    I dont think that the star voyager chip is an eprom. The chip on the back of demon attack is probably a 7404 Hex inverter, like the ones used on 4K pixels past PCBs. My best guess is that the chip on the star voyager is just like a regular chip used on production games, but I have never seen one like that on a cartrige.

     

    You're probably right, I'm not knowledgeable in the correct terms for this stuff so I'm probably using the wrong word.

  7. Posted · Edited by joeybastard

    Recently in a box of VCS stuff given to me by a friend of my in-laws, there was an envelope that had two boards in it. The games are Demon Attack and Star Voyager. The guy who gave them to me said his parents had friends at Atari and he got these boards before the games came out. It doesn't make sense obviously since they are Imagic games but I'm guessing he's using Atari as generic for old video game company. The games seem to play just like the regular release so I'm thinking they are probably just pirates or not even that. Here's some pics, let me know what you think.

    post-1401-1208092446_thumb.jpg

    post-1401-1208092454_thumb.jpg

  9. Posted

    Interesting points, Jess. My original thought was to do some kind of barred cell graphic for the captured prisoners but the problem is in the size. To do it so that it looks recognizable and could house the running prisoner graphic, I'd have to make them twice as big which just takes up too much screen real estate. We'll have pictures of the graphics in the manual screen explanation so I don't think it will be too much of leap of faith that those are the cells. I'll mess around and see if I can make something fit in the same space but I think making them twice the size will clutter up the screen too much.

     

    I'll see what the jury here says about the detail in the robots. I'm biased because I made them and to be perfectly honest, I love how they came out. I wish there was a simpler way to do multicolored sprites on the CV because I think I could make them more detailed :grin: If the majority say they are too busy, I'll simplify them but it'll be with a heavy heart :sad: ;)

  11. Posted · Edited by joeybastard

    Yeah there's one screen in particular where the cannon fires straight down into you when you appear. I guess we could move it over 1 or 2 spaces to make it more fair. PM me the screen locations where the player can appear and I'll go through the screens and move them.

  12. Posted

    Joe,

    I like those - they are very "final". Very abrupt. Sparse, but it works, but they look like a DVD cover for a horror movie. Some sort of creepy, scary thing. Some Stephen King movie.

     

    It's just a first swipe at it to get the juices flowing. My first versions are usually silhouette type old horror movie posters. I just dig that style. Which logo do you prefer the 3D one or the "cracked" one? I prefer the cracked one on the right but I might come up with something else based on the title screen version.

  15. Posted

    shannon,

    Well, when they respawn, they gradually take form... when that's happening, you can go through the robots. Once they take full shape, yea, you will die if you come into contact with them. Maybe the respawn process could be drawn out longer? I'll check into that.

     

    Good call! Dragging it out a second longer would help. I get killed from regeneration a lot too. :D

  16. Posted

    OK, I checked the player sprites and the only ones that don't match up to the Frenzy ones while running are when the player is standing still. I made his feet 1 pixel too long when he's facing left or right so Scott when you get a chance, lop off 1 pixel from his feet when he's standing still. I can send a new DAT if that is confusing.

  18. Posted

    Played this on my linux machine tonight and thought it was GREAT! Jboy sent me a PM to check this out. I'm VERY impressed. (Might have to drop a word on it on our ep 3 of th podcast too!) Keep up the good work and look forward to some of the tweaks on the next version.

     

    Glad you like it!

     

     

     

    On another note...

    I have to get to work on the box/manual/labels. I've been lazy about it.

  19. Posted

    I'm just curious being that you captured the animation from an avi. How do you handle "moving" objects. I've been trying to do something similar with various games where the animated character moves using a GIF animator program.

     

    I use a screen capture program at work(the name I can't think of at the moment) that lets me make a movie of anything happening on screen. I brought the movie into After Effects and just went frame by frame putting the pixels into the right spots in ICVGM303, a graphics editor for the CV that I think Daniel Bienvenu came up with. It wasn't captured as an AVI and put directly into the program, I just used the AVI as a reference. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the other post.

  20. Posted · Edited by joeybastard

    I forgot, they are named Killbots. You'd think I'd remember since I made it up :D

     

    I think what Kripto means with the Killbots is that he would prefer it if that a set number appear on screen all at once with no regeneration. So instead of 4 killbots that can regenerate, 8 Killbots right from the start that stay dead like in Berzerk/Frenzy. Personally I really like the regeneration way but let's see how other people feel about it. I think if we went with a set number of Killbots, Hank will have to make an appearance much sooner to keep things more interesting.

     

    Also, I have to agree with Scott on the Communicator skip. It's fine in the beginning to skip it but the message between levels(every 5 screens) is cool and a nice breather between levels.

     

    And thanks for the pat on the back but all of the stuff I did is just talk without a programmer to make it actually come into being so really: Scott's the man ;)

  21. Posted · Edited by joeybastard

    Interesting, I'll have to look at the sprites for the player again. I pretty much just took an AVI of Frenzy and went through it frame by frame to recreate the running. Maybe I made a mistake somewhere in it.

     

    The robot regeneration was added for a few reasons. We found that the game was little too easy when you could just kill all of the robots, destroy the canons and just grab the keys/prisoners with no threat in the room. Even though Heinous Hank will eventually come out after you, we thought it was a little slow with him being the only enemy on screen. Having the Robot Regen also gives this a little something different from Berzerk/Frenzy. For me the hardest screen on Frenzy is the Robot Factory when I can't get a clear shot to stop the machine from building them. I see your point though, let's see what Scott thinks.

     

    Being able to skip the communicator might be cool. I don't mind the wait for it but maybe I'm in the minority. I wonder how other folks feel about it? Good? Bad?

  23. Posted · Edited by joeybastard

    The door thing doesn't bother me either way and I think both ways could work but Scott's right, if it bugs people, we'll change it. My original thought on it was to keep the replay value as high as possible by keeping things as random as we could. That's why even though there are 25 rooms (5 to each level), they are chosen in random order for each level so it wouldn't just be a linear experience every time.

     

    Any other opinion/suggestions are deeply appreciated by both of us. That doesn't mean all of the suggestions will definitely be implemented but any help in improving the game is welcome. :)

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