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Zippy the Porcupine 4 Level Demo


Sprybug

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Do some enemies or items take precedence over others when loading them? For instance, if a bee is on-screen and a bonus item needs to be placed does the bee dissappear?

Good question. Hopefully with my level designs that never happens. In my levels I try to space things out enough so there is never an occurrence of that happening. Once the player1 sprite is on screen, it stays there until it's collected, killed, or scrolled off. The springboard and wall lift button do have ultimate precedence and will get rid of any other player1 sprite that happens to be on screen. But even then I try to space it out so that doesn't happen.

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Good question. Hopefully with my level designs that never happens. In my levels I try to space things out enough so there is never an occurrence of that happening. Once the player1 sprite is on screen, it stays there until it's collected, killed, or scrolled off. The springboard and wall lift button do have ultimate precedence and will get rid of any other player1 sprite that happens to be on screen. But even then I try to space it out so that doesn't happen.

It was kind of ironic playing Princess Rescue because certain enemies would not appear if another enemy was still present. Depending on how fast I moved through the level, enemies would occasionally not spawn. For instance, once I let a goomba follow me around in the castle instead of stomping it, and a pair of twin thwomps simply did not appear where they normally do. Same with piranas not showing up with bills around, etc. Sometimes if I could keep an enemy onscreen and use that to my advantage. Other times, like with the springboard, an enemy had to be defeated or leave the area. I can tell you borrowed but also improved on a lot of elements from Princess Rescue game engine in your Zippy homebrew.

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It was kind of ironic playing Princess Rescue because certain enemies would not appear if another enemy was still present. Depending on how fast I moved through the level, enemies would occasionally not spawn. For instance, once I let a goomba follow me around in the castle instead of stomping it, and a pair of twin thwomps simply did not appear where they normally do. Same with piranas not showing up with bills around, etc. Sometimes if I could keep an enemy onscreen and use that to my advantage. Other times, like with the springboard, an enemy had to be defeated or leave the area. I can tell you borrowed but also improved on a lot of elements from Princess Rescue game engine in your Zippy homebrew.

Heh. I never thought of trying that. You could definitely use that as a strategy, even though in 2-1 (or was it 2-2) you do need the turtle at the end of the first part of the level to get through it.

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Heh. I never thought of trying that. You could definitely use that as a strategy, even though in 2-1 (or was it 2-2) you do need the turtle at the end of the first part of the level to get through it.

Yeah, I've had to back up a bunch of times to make it respawn. Sometimes they respawn automatically if another enemy leaves.

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Yeah, I've had to back up a bunch of times to make it respawn. Sometimes they respawn automatically if another enemy leaves.

It's the way the levels are designed. The spawn points for the enemies are usually strung together in a series. So instead of just one spot where they show up, it's more of an "area". Because I can only have one enemy on the screen, I've got to get another enemy the best opportunity to get on the screen. There are a few exceptions like the Thwomps, which must show up in a certain spot.

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Not pickin on ya, but, have you noticed some digits in the score get bugged out and a column gets repeated on another digit? This happens mostly when the coin rotates in the score.

 

My workaround in the past has been to avoid the last column in a score font digit.

Yeah it is annoying and I always assumed it was a bug with Batari. I never asked about it and just dealt with it. There's no reason inside my code why it's happening. Maybe RevEng or someone can take a peak at that. I would shift it, but having SC2 as my sole ring counter makes it so much easier to get an accurate ring count than splitting it between SC1 and SC2, where SC1 would contain the first digit and SC2 would have the second.

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It's a known issue or limitation. To be fair to batari I wouldn't call it a bug, as it doesn't show up until you start modifying the bB score graphics file beyond its limitations.

 

The bB 6-digit score code also does an asymmetric playfield update to draw the pfscore bars, and the score kernel is a cycle short of a perfect score update. As a result one of the score digits has its left-most pixels repeat 2 digits later.

 

Usually the repeating isn't an issue, because bB score graphics have a spacing line in the left-most pixel (otherwise the digits would be jammed up against one another), but if a programmer changes the bB score graphics so the left-most pixel is no longer a spacing pixel, the glitch shows up.

 

It's worth mentioning that the above situation is also the reason why the bB score is slightly off-center. Normally being a whole cycle off on a 6-digit score update would have a greater visible impact, but the score is positioned so the effect only slightly impacts one of the digits.

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Yeah it is annoying and I always assumed it was a bug with Batari. I never asked about it and just dealt with it. There's no reason inside my code why it's happening. Maybe RevEng or someone can take a peak at that. I would shift it, but having SC2 as my sole ring counter makes it so much easier to get an accurate ring count than splitting it between SC1 and SC2, where SC1 would contain the first digit and SC2 would have the second.

Try the ring animation narrower?

The only other easy way would be space, ring, digit, digit, head, digit all together - no separation.

 

I finally seriously played with the wii remote + classic pad and saw to the Aqua Zone! All nice levels in the demo.

 

I would like to give feedback if you make builds with different sliding physics. Are you still considering tweaking that (from the observations of people you've seen playing it)?

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