Opry99er Posted February 21, 2010 Author Share Posted February 21, 2010 Thanks Codex. I was hoping to kind of find a nice balance between "getting to work" and "hold back til you've planned properly". Once the plans are in place, you better believe I'll be taking off with it. I've started work on a map screen which will be the central navigation tool between game phases.... So far I have drawn the mountains, the village, and have a moving working representation of the party as it travels across the map. Just as in "Mystic Quest", the map navigation will only have the main character visible as a representation of the "party"--- when battle occurs, however, all the members of the party will (obviously) be visible and movable-- on a turn by turn basis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 21, 2010 Author Share Posted February 21, 2010 Thinking of adding a "Training Mode" to the game-- on the map, there will be a place you can visit that is simply a "battleground" where you can take your party and engage in as many smallscale battles as you wish. The battles will serve 2 purposes: 1) teach the user how to engage enemies and become familiar with the battle engine 2) allow the user to "level up" their party with EP. The battles will be against enemies of varying difficulty, but no high level enemies. EP will be increased, just as in regular battles during standard gameplay, but it will not increase as much (per enemy bested). This will be good for a beginner, but once your party is farther along, it would be a waste of time to go spend 45 minutes or an hour fighting spiders and sand trolls. You get the idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Strange problem here... I wrote the custom ToD game using John Behnke's ToD editor, and defined all my characters therein. I can't find my dot matrix printouts of the character hex, but I tried to recreate the "Reptoslicer" graphic and I can't seem to get the proper resolution required for the character. I thought at first that the ToD characters were maybe larger (3x3) but that's not the case. They are 2x2 just like my template. So, I wonder why the resolution is different--- I can't seem to get all the angles on "Reptoslicer" that I was able to get in the ToD version... I'll post a comparirive pic here in a minute so you can see what I mean.... Maybe Codex or Sometimes can give me a hand with this-- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 The resolution might not be that great in these pix, but these are two classic99 windows side by side... one running the ToD game, the other in an XB program with the character drawn. Here's the hex for the new XB one... Maybe I'm just not doing this properly. 000107070D07F711FF11F1010302020E60C0801030E0CF88FF888F81C17B4E70 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Codex Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 Curious, that. It looks like one of the figures is more anti-aliased, resulting in different looking curves. Can you run both programs in Classic99 with the Video -> Filter Mode set to "None" and then compare the results? That mode gives you the most accurate pixel renderings. If you do, post screenshots of both again and I'll take another look. But yes, ToD shouldn't be doing anything out of the ordinary graphics-wise, so they should make if the templates are the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Hehehe... you were spot on with that one. =) Video filter mode "off". That's what I wanted. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Well here's the final battle scene for now... I had to go through and go pixel by pixel on my characters from the old ToD game to get it to look like I wanted. From left to right.. *Beryl Reichardt---*Reptoslicer---*Skylar Twilight---*Markus the Valiant Hope you enjoy--- this is pretty much what the battle sequences will look like inside the dungeon area... Of course the terrain and screen color will change if you're battling, say, in the sand dunes or in the forest--- in a cave or wherever. =) You're battling 3 cave spiders here trying to acquire a door key and a magical pendant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willsy Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 Well here's the final battle scene for now... I had to go through and go pixel by pixel on my characters from the old ToD game to get it to look like I wanted. From left to right.. *Beryl Reichardt---*Reptoslicer---*Skylar Twilight---*Markus the Valiant Woah! Looking very cool already! One of these days I'll finish one of my games! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 I love that many of "us" have "game" written in our hearts. We might do other foolish stuff, like wanting/creating an IDE, the ultimate programming language, different utilities, but at the end of the day, it’s "all for the game" ... Even though we do not spend that much time playing ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Yea, that's my bag, man... I don't really play these games very much anymore--- I like watching my nephews and nieces play on my TI when they come over to visit. I got my little nephew William hooked on Buck Rogers and Invaders. For me, I try to attach myself to my childhood when I'm working on a game--- I try to remember what it was like playing Parsec as a kid, Tunnels of Doom... I start to think about the younger generation one day playing "Honeycomb" or "Lemonade Stand." My son.... You know? I want him to have the same crazy experiences I had--- only playing one of my games. I know it's a funny thing, but for me, looking at the battle screenshot above makes me feel a sense of resolve. I've been staring at that screenie for almost a day now, as I made it my desktop background on my computer... This is the one--- this is the game I wanted to write from the second I started programming... A tribute to my two favorite games. Hell, This might be my last programming effort, you never know. Unless there's a sequel to this one. Hehe--- in any case, I want this one to be special. I'm going to take my time, not get distracted, and craft this sucker like it's a victorian mansion. What the hell am I talking about?? I'm going to keep programming. Once it's in your blood, it's always in your blood, eh Codex? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Codex Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 (edited) That looks like some serious fun Owen! And I have to agree with Karsten, I think I spend more time writing games than playing them. Certainly looking forward to playing this one though. And yes Owen, the passion never really leaves you. You may wander away from it for a while, but it draws you back inevitably. There is something sublime about programming a game, it puts you a little closer to godhood, creating a world and populating it with autonomous beings. I'm here still doing it my mid-40s, so I think it's safe to say it's a habit for life. One day I'll finish my own "this is why I started writing games" project, Paramodo. It started as an Amiga game over 20 years ago and I still pull it out to tinker with. I'm just waiting for the last piece of inspiration to make it gel. Edited February 22, 2010 by The Codex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Thanks--- it will be a while before it's playable though.... Unlike Honeycomb, this game will have dozens of screens to draw and probably 20 or 30 variables to keep track of. Honeycomb had 2 gameplay screens and about 6 major variables. Honeycomb was an arcade game with fast moving SPRITEs and coincidence detection was my major hurdle--- that and music implementation. Ended up finding that my real hurdles were in my head though. . With this game, assembly will be much more active. There will be significant DSK access for variable value passing and level differentiation. There's alot I've been thinking about in planning this game, and the clearer it gets to me, the more excited I become. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Codex... Paramodo? Id love to hear about it!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Codex Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 There's a bit about Paramodo on my web site, but it's rather out of date and the play mechanics and graphics have changed some since then. Right now there's a bit more Jumpman-style puzzling in it than the site indicates. The hardest part I'm having is working out exactly how the evolution powers work. Back on the Amiga it was clearcut, but my gaming aesthetics have matured some since then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 (edited) Love it!!! I've been to your DreamCodex site hundreds of times, but never saw this.... It doesn't look like you're that far from done, really..... You should finish it, and turn immediately around and do a retro-remake of it. Edited February 22, 2010 by Opry99er Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Hey Willsy--- I have some pretty radical ideas about how to implement all this stuff in.... I am thinking about including a "FILE" file on the game disk... This will be opened whenever a new "world" or section of the game is reached.... I would like to pass the necessary values to that file for a READ later on-- this could be a very organized way to handle all the numerous variables and could work for essentially every game stage... Since I will be loading different XB programs from other XB programs, a filing system for passing variables seems to be the most logical way to do it. Just gotta figure out how to do it efficiently. . Wonder what the XB manual will teach me today?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 23, 2010 Author Share Posted February 23, 2010 I've been playing the crap out of as many retro RPGs as I can today, looking for implementation ideas. Unbeknownst to me until today, there is an 8 bit RPG for the iPhone!!!! Very "Zelda" which is not my style, but certainly interesting. I played it for about 3 hours overall and beat the main quest. Very cool, and actually much more simplistic in substance than Beryl is shaping up to be. No magic, only "Attack" or "run". The amount of damage per attack inflicted is always "1" with the ability for a "double strike" with higher level swords. This is interesting because what makes the difficulty rise is the number of times you have to hit a higher level enemy. No "ranged" weapons, just attack. It struck me that they could have done so much more with this RPG until I read their mission statement on their facebook fan page. This was actually a Commodore 64 game that was remade with minor graphic modifications!!!! The same guys who wrote the original wrote the iPhone app!!! I was blown away at the strict attention to the minute details of the conversion. They said on their page that the goal was not to do a retro-remake, but to actually re-release the same game on a modern format! I thought this was very cool. Needless to say, I wrote the guys and commended them for their efforts. Just goes to show that pixils are STILL relevant today... Look their company up on google... "P1xl"--- great stuff! If you have a C64 emulator, you can DL the original version.... Is this the future of our TI perhaps? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Codex Posted February 23, 2010 Share Posted February 23, 2010 The actual TI resolution is admirably suited to many handheld small-screen formats and compares favorably with gaming units like the Lynx and GameGear. I've seen people rip the motherboards out of Atari 2600s and turn them into homemade handhelds, and while I wouldn't want any intact TIs to suffer a similar fate, I'd love a portable TI with all the classic games on it. Failing that, you could certainly port an emulator like Classic99 to various phones and such, and have the next best thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted February 23, 2010 Share Posted February 23, 2010 (edited) I'd love a portable TI with all the classic games on it. The GP2X has MESS and TI-99/4A running. The PSP has TI99Sim running. I think Classic99 was ported once - without permission. Many other systems like C64 and Megadrive have been remade with a handful of games and original chips emulated on a new single chip. Would be nice if we could have a TI-99/4A on a chip. I did a mockup once (can’t find it). A very little black and metal box with 4 USB connections and Video Out. I'll do some TI remakes (1:1) for J2ME and Flash. Don’t know when, but they're on the list. Edited February 23, 2010 by sometimes99er Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 23, 2010 Author Share Posted February 23, 2010 Great stuff! Hopefully these formats will become more readily available. . I'd love to see "Beryl Reichardt" on a handheld sometime!!! . I have some questions about my filing system, I've started a new thread on it--- please come check it out!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Codex Posted February 23, 2010 Share Posted February 23, 2010 Ah yes, had nearly forgotten about the GP2X. It's very popular over on the retro remakes board as well for running old systems portably. I kept meaning to get one and then kept putting it off. Maybe now's the time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 23, 2010 Author Share Posted February 23, 2010 (edited) Here's a little taste of a battle sequence in the desert area. Tried my hand at drawing a treasure chest... not too pleased. BTW Karsten, I used your "double" feature on these sand sentinels. Edited February 23, 2010 by Opry99er Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Codex Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 Dude, that's a fine treasure chest! Nice perspective aspect particularly. And the sentinels are cool, they look like some tough customers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 24, 2010 Author Share Posted February 24, 2010 Hey thanks a ton Codex!! I thought the "top" of the chest (the lid) needed some work--- it doesn't look "deep" enough.... But anyway, I'm workin' on it. My "graphic hex" document is getting really long for this game now--- over 45 SPRITEs, tiles, and background graphics in hex. . I love this job Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 (edited) Here's a little taste of a battle sequence in the desert area. Tried my hand at drawing a treasure chest... not too pleased. BTW Karsten, I used your "double" feature on these sand sentinels. Looks cool ! The "double" feature switches on and off, but I guess you already knew that ? Edited February 24, 2010 by sometimes99er Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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