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FInal Melee - LCD game inspired to classic Fantasy JRPG games


Nop90

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Two years ago when @Igor released Eggsavie's Cackberry Rescue, @karri proposed a coding competition with the theme of LCD games and created in few hours the alpha version of Find a way to my heart. Just after the proposal I sketched this game, but then @Igor, starting from Karri's idea, organized the first Atarigamer Coding competion and I decided to present another kind of game.


After all this time I found the sources of the first demo of the game on my PC and decided to complete it. At the moment the game is completed at 75%, has no sound/sfx but it is playable.


The story behind the game is about a war of all the races of a classical fantasy world against an evil wizard (yes I read all theTolkien books in my youth), but when all the armies of the world are going to destroy the wizard left without magick powers after a long fight, it uses a dark power to drain all the vital energy and magic powers from it's enemies. Only the three stronger kings of the world can resist to the attack, but they remain weak like young apprentices: a weak mage, an archer without his weapons, and a strong but slow warrior with only a sword. Could they suvive without their magic weapons and all the experience gained in years of adventures?


The wizard will use the drained energy to summon creatures and attack the three survivors, but he needs time to control the new power so it can use it just a little at the beginning, but his ability will increase with time. On the other hand killing the attacking creatures will make return some of the energy to the three fighters.


The combat style is inspired to the FF battle mode, killing an enemy makes gain experience and sometime a new weapon, or an items like potions or scrolls (in hard mode the characters can't recognize their kind at beginning and  have to try them to learn again their use - this is not implemented yet). When the experience bar is full the character gains one point of HP, or the max amount of MANA or SPEED (selected at random). There is a rare scroll that can increase the speed of a character and a healing potions. Other Scrolls and potions (black ones) are for attacking. Using magic will consume MANA that can be recovered passing the turn without an action (MANA can be recovered to the max value reached by a character). There are four magic spells, each one requiring a different amount of MANA, but only FIRE attack and CURE are implemented so far. CURE makes recover a character all the HP, reviving it if dead.


Here is screenshot of all the video elements in the game, all the enemies are implemented but the big dragon and the evil wizard (the last and most powerful enemy) will have magic powers that aren't implemented yet.

 

post-66453-0-79994000-1555763127.png.8f827d561d8fbf223e3b112428d89e74.png


I'll make simple beeping sfx and musics using ABC music, but this is not my priority at moment.


Here is a video of the game so far:

 

 

Edited by Nop90
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4 hours ago, LordKraken said:

I wish our LCD games had this depth in term of gameplay back in the days :)

I don't think that the Sharp SM5XX 4 bit microcontroller equipped with the limited amount of ROM and RAM usually available in the G&W could handle the complexity I'm putting in this game.   

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Nice one @Nop90! Really clever idea for a more involved lcd game. :thumbsup:

Just out of curiosity, if I may ask? What are the enemies that kind of look like penguins that look down? Are they zombies? Sorry I just had trouble visualizing them. Also why is there a back row of the player characters? Can you have a party of six at best?

final_melee_-_Copy_021221_095831_AM.jpg.a259f97dff7267377e9960c975a62b45.jpg

Edited by Turbo Laser Lynx
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Monsters are:

 - Dwarves

 - Jelly Blobs

 - Flying harpies

 - Red gragon

 - Evil wizard (The final boss)

 

I did my best drawing them witht that little space available. Probably could be done better, but after palying the game for a little time the overall looking isn't bat IMHO.

 

Every monster is shown for some frames on the second line when hit, to give a visual feedback of the damage. It creates some movement in avery static screen.

 

The second line of the main characters is because they can move on the front line of the battle or stay protected back as long as one of them is in the front line (in the video you can see I put the mage in the second line and use it to heal the other two when wounded). Only the characters in the front line can be phsically attacked and can phisically attach with a short distance weapon. In the back line the characters can be attacked only by the magic spells of the dragon and of the wizard, and can attack only with spells, scrolls ar throwing potions. If the archer finds a bow he can attack from the back (but the sprites for this need fixing). 

 

Now I'm fixing the code for using unknow items, the game needs a feedback system to show what is the used item once you leaned what it does. Next I'll add the othe weapons. The Warrior can find a shield to be better protected and a sword that gives him the ability to do a double attack (he can use only one of them at once, but can swap them using his turn). The archer chan find a bow and a sling. The sling can be used as a second attack when in the front line (the first weapon is supposed to be a knife, but it isn't show in the sprite), the bow needs two hands but can be used from the back line.

 

The only other element of the game to be added is "confusion" caused by a very effective hit. It's temporsary and can happens to the main characters, to the dragon and to the wizard. When confused one can't distiguish potions/scrolls, and when attacks the target can randomly change to another one (also one of the same party).

 

The other thing to implement is a save function to pause the game and continue it in a second moment. It will work as most roguelkes, if you pause the game you can continue the game or clear it and start a new one, but you can't reload the game if you lose or if you don't like how it's going. The game could be very long and I think it shold be played like a cofeebreak game. But I need the new kind of large eeproms to save all the data of this game.

 

Now you have a complete overview of the game as I planned it. Let me know if you like it and if you have hints to make it better.

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11 hours ago, Nop90 said:

I don't think that the Sharp SM5XX 4 bit microcontroller equipped with the limited amount of ROM and RAM usually available in the G&W could handle the complexity I'm putting in this game.   

Probably not, but Nintendo managed to create a fully working version of Mario, with multiple levels and a working scrolling (best LCD games imo).

 

 

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3 hours ago, Nop90 said:

Monsters are:

 - Dwarves

 - Jelly Blobs

 - Flying harpies

 - Red gragon

 - Evil wizard (The final boss)

 

I did my best drawing them witht that little space available. Probably could be done better, but after palying the game for a little time the overall looking isn't bat IMHO.

Nice! It was not meant as a critique (just in case you thought that) I just wanted to be sure what it was portraying. I really love simple graphics and your pixelwork is perfect for this game. ? Thanks for the in depth info on how the game works, it's a really great idea for a small game. It's really fascinating but hard trying to think of game ideas that are both small and fun. I guess it has to do with the mood of the player too (simple vs complex), but all in all there's something about simplifying things and removing excess stuff.

Edited by Turbo Laser Lynx
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Looking forward to the final result! I've been digging into LCD games a little more, also due to the Mario Game & Watch that was released last year.

I've been toying with the idea to make a few for the Lynx based on some of the classic ones just to get myself into Lynx dev again without doing something too ambitious.

 

If you want to stay faithful to the originals, you can add a single beep sound and call it a day :D I think most of them didn't have any music and barely sfx other than the mandatory beep.

 

Good luck with the final steps!

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I'm not fan of the LCD games (never really got into in the 80's).

So the look of the game tells me nothing, but everything else just tells me "This is a game you want to play" :D

The gameplay looks very good, with tactical options and choices (not just the press a button and see what happens), it seems you put a lot of reflexion into it, really impressive job to keep the game clear and understandable with LCD game limits.

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@Ninjabba Music and gfx are an open point at the moment. I'll fix some things in the weekend and release to a small group of people an alpha version, so they can play it and give me some feedbacks, but from next week I have to work hard to complete my RG release for Revision 2021.

 

@Fadest thank you, the basic idea was very quick, but spent some time polishing it and designing the workflow engine in a structured way

Edited by Nop90
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This is really cool! Maybe later in the year I will put on an LCD game jam ;)

 

Added to the game database - https://atarigamer.com/lynx/game/FinalMelee/181962297

I really like how you flash up the screen with all sprites visible...also you would not believe how hard it was to screenshot it!

Edited by Igor
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6 hours ago, Igor said:

I really like how you flash up the screen with all sprites visible...also you would not believe how hard it was to screenshot it!

At beginning I added it for thesting theposition ofthe sprites, that cover the screen without overlapping like in a real LCD game, but I liked the effect (I remember somethig similar happening on G&W games) so I left it.

 

Hint: when you press A or B to start a new game the sprites remain there till you release the button ?

 

EDIT: Ok, forgot you don't have the rom, you had to take the images from the video. Next time asl me ?

Edited by Nop90
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