Anyone thirsty for some PoP?

[mos6507]

Wow, if you manage to get this game done, I would assume Rastan would be doable using the same engine, since I think the games are similar genres.

 

I always wanted to see Rastan on an Atari platform.

 

I'd really love to see this game get finished.

[salstadt]

Hey guys,

 

Looking over the last few screens I really think iconic art style is the way to go. Gradients and too much cloth detail sort of dilutes the power of the image (in my opinion) and unfortunately I had to cut off his feet as the run animation just had too much overlap for little fleshy pixels. So here's something to play with, a character design that I personally think is the best of everything we've come up with so far (and in regards to practicality for animation). I'm including an idle/stand, a duck/land and a jump frame, as well as a 10-frame run cycle. Post feedback and comments below, or feel free to start popping the art in. Also, let me know which animations you'd like next.

 

 

- Adam

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Good work. And no problem with the

 

But the IMO the character is not tall enough. He should be about 15 or 16 pixel tall when standing. As tiny as he is now everything will go out of proportion.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Good work. And no problem with the missing feet. I supposed that would have would happen anyway.

 

But the IMO the character is not tall enough. He should be about 15 or 16 pixel tall when standing. As tiny as he is now everything will go out of proportion.

[salstadt]

Okay, he's 11-12 tall now so I'll add a little height onto him tomorrow and see how it looks.

 

- Adam

[Tom]

I'm not as far with the level import / statistics stuff as I intended, but I'm still working on it. I got a new job which required me to read quit a lot to actually get started, which used much of my time.

 

The PoP level format doesn't make things simple neither: for instance, the only way to really tell wether a screen in a level is used is by trying to find a way from the start screen to the screen in question (the screens basically form a directed graph. just looking at the screen data won't help, because the screen data apparently often contains leftovers from level-editing)

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I'm not as far with the level import / statistics stuff as I intended, but I'm still working on it. I got a new job which required me to read quit a lot to actually get started, which used much of my time.

Take your time, no need to hurry. I suppose this project will take quite long anyway.

 

BTW: Since you seem to have the tools, do you know how many animations of the prince and his opponents there are?

 

I can put ~11 animation or color frames into one 256 bytes page. Assuming I need 2 pages for the kernel, we have 154 frames/4K bank. I suppose we could use at least 4-5 banks with the kernel repeated and different animations, so that would result into about 600-750 frames. Probably one third would be needed for color frames, so we have space for 400-500 animation frames (though some would have to be repeated in more than one bank)

[Tom]

I haven't looked at the animations yet. PR from the princed project might help here. This is a resource (graphics, music etc) editor.

 

kid.dat (the prince) alone contains over 200 resources, most of them being animation frames. The enemies use less resources, after all all they do is standing around, advance, retreat, block and occasionally die

 

I can look closer at this later, I'm working on some level reading code now.

 

http://www.princed.com.ar/sfiles/pr1.0b.win.bin.zip

[Tom]

Here are the numbers of screens:

 

Level 1 : 21

Level 2 : 24

Level 3 : 22

Level 4 : 24

Level 5 : 19

Level 6 : 14

Level 7 : 24

Level 8 : 21

Level 9 : 24

Level 10 : 19

Level 11 : 23

Level 12 : 24

Level 13 : 11

Level 14 : 6

Total : 276

 

The # of rooms *really* needed might be slightly smaller. For instance, level 14 has 6 rooms, but the last room is never shown, because as soon as you enter it, the endgame sequence is shown. The actual sixth room is never used, but it's there.

 

That's quite a lot of space needed. The original data files use 60 bytes per screen + additional data for guard positions, room and door linking.

(triggers are linked to doors using separate data structures. a trigger can open or close several doors)

 

A lot of the screen data is eyecandy only, though. Things like cracked or darkened stones.

 

I'll look at the other stats Thomas has requested and update the results as I get them.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Cool tool!

 

The maximum values I found for the prince are 51 (width) and 57 (height). With the factor of 2.67 this would result into ~19x21 (double width) pixel.

 

For the width we would need both sprites and missiles (=18 pixel). This works nice as long as there is no guard in the same floor.

 

When fighting a guard the maximum width is 51 pixel too (though all except one frame require only 42 or less pixel).

 

The guard needs up to 49 pixel (again all but one frame require 42 or less pixel).

 

So a problem would occur when fighting a guard. Either we double the pixel width again, we cheat by moving the sprites horizontally during display or we simply flicker the graphics.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The # of rooms *really* needed might be slightly smaller. For instance, level 14 has 6 rooms, but the last room is never shown, because as soon as you enter it, the endgame sequence is shown. The actual sixth room is never used, but it's there.

Have you counted how many rooms are identical? Except for the eye candy maybe?

 

That's quite a lot of space needed. The original data files use 60 bytes per screen

That doesn't sound too bad. Probably we can reduce the bytes needed and probably there are some redundant rooms. So maybe 10K for the map should be enough.

[vb_master]

Yet another must-get game.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Here is a shot using a converted graphic from the original game.

[Tom]

Have you counted how many rooms are identical? Except for the eye candy maybe?

 

No, not yet. It's on the todo list.

[salstadt]

BTW: Since you seem to have the tools, do you know how many animations of the prince and his opponents there are?

 

If you give me a maximum count of how many fullsize frames we can have, I can come up with an estimate of the actiosn we can get in there, framecount per, etc.

 

- Adam

[Thomas Jentzsch]

If you give me a maximum count of how many fullsize frames we can have, I can come up with an estimate of the actiosn we can get in there, framecount per, etc.

Actually I thought I did this a few mails above. :-)

 

Maybe ~400. That should be more than enough.

 

If you use the tool Tom meantioned, you can look at all animation sequences in detail. Or I can post you all those animations.

[salstadt]

Maybe ~400. That should be more than enough.

 

If you use the tool Tom meantioned, you can look at all animation sequences in detail. Or I can post you all those animations.

 

I have a set of all the images on my PC. And yeah, that's more than enough. This is a busy week for me but I'll get them done as I can. Beyond run, stand, land and jump, what would you guys like next?

 

- Adam

[salstadt]

We should also pin down artstyle at this time. I prefer a cute & iconic look, but if the coders are all leaning toward a more accurate recreation of the original rotoscoping (ala Thomas' last screenshot) I can do that, too. Let me know.

 

- Adam

[vdub_bobby]

We should also pin down artstyle at this time. I prefer a cute & iconic look, but if the coders are all leaning toward a more accurate recreation of the original rotoscoping (ala Thomas' last screenshot) I can do that, too. Let me know.

 

- Adam

I like the "cute & iconic" look.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I like the "cute & iconic" look.

And I prefer a more realistic look.

 

But maybe we can use both, and create two different carts or one big cart), each using a different look.

 

You can start with whatever look you prefer.

[StanJr]

I like the sprites in this screenshot the best.

[MikeMika]

I've been following this thread with extreme excitement. I'm a huge PoP fan and I always felt the 2600 could do it justice.

 

One of the main reasons I'm such a huge fan is because the animation was so incredible. Moreso than any still frame of the animation, it was the movement itself that was so distinct and really was characteristic of the game.

 

Also, the fact that the Prince is actually Jordan mechner's brother, rotoscoped, would be lost entirely if we re-do the animation. No big deal, really, but retaining more of the character of the original sprite preserves the soul of the game a bit more.

 

So, in the end, I would have to say that the more "realistic" look has my vote. The other style looks great, but seems low-res compared to the more realistic one.

 

But where I work, stylized often wins because, in the end, it seems to be more expressive (GBA, Plug and Play). I don't know if that applies here.

 

Mike

[Dones]

I want to express lots of praise to all the devs involved in this homebrew. I am still amazed at all that has been achieved, and on such a short amount of time! My two cents on the look issue: my vote goes for the iconic, pitfall harriesque look. This is PoP with the atari charm after all.

[killersquirel]

My vote also goes for the cute and iconic look. Although I really like Thomas's idea of possible 2 versions or one big cart with both sprite looks.

 

-mike

 

P.S. This is really very impressive and I really love the work that the homebrew dev's are doing.

[kisrael]

I guess people have to have an understanding of EVERY puzzle in the game to make sure that they "work".

 

I guess I like the rotoscoping idea though both are cool.