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Tänzer, a "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 9:20 am
by mix256
Hi all!

Thought I'd start a small dev diary of my "small" game, if that's alright.
Will have loads of questions so I'll use this thread asking those as well.

Short story, really short: Got a MD for christmas and is absolutely loving it.
Wish I could have gotten one of these as a kid instead of the SNES, seeing that I'm more of an arcadey kind of guy.
The game I'm making need to be finished by the 26th of May (the day of retrospelsmassan.se here in Sweden).

And by finished I actually mean this:
* Game playable demo
* Cover artwork
* About 5 cartridges
* 3 Boxes
* Some kind of manual, in 3 copies

So, 3 boxed cartridges with manual and artwork ready, is the main goal, I guess.

The game is going to be a, more or less, standard hack and slash platformer. Which there a dozens of on the MD already, but anyway... :)
I've drawn some inspiration from Hagane and Osman

Using SGDK, which is really slick I must say. Didn't actually think that running C on the MD would be as effective as it is. C and SGDK is handling this way over expectations.
Super awesome work Stef!

Progress this far:
- First test stage is kind of in place with a few (~6 wip) enemies
- Scroll to right
- You can jump, triple-jump, slash in almost all directions, crouch and run.
- Made my own map editor (yeah, I know...but I always do that) which exports directly to the format needed
- Got a few VGMs from a friend that sound really cool.
- Gold pickup sound, the explosion sound is currently from Sonic...or rather SGDK :)

Planned for the demo:
- Aiming at 4 different stage backgrounds
- ~12 stages
- ~30 enemies
- 4 bosses
- 15 SFXes
- Elemental special abilities
- Some nice parallax on the back layer

Also, the gameplay details aren't exactly set in stone either. You can pickup gold now, but there's no actual use for it yet. Not even on paper.
Anyway, I'm having loads of fun with this!

Video (butchered by youtube, but anyway):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2R-amy1tJ0

Image Image

Image Image

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:00 am
by ob1
Really nice work. Especially if you didn't have a MD before X-mas. Impressive !!

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:40 am
by mix256
ob1 wrote:
Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:00 am
Really nice work. Especially if you didn't have a MD before X-mas. Impressive !!
Thanks! Yeah, wish I had it years ago.
Although it's probably good I didn't, because now I'm stuck looking at Teddy Rubskin youtube channel. Hilarious. :)

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 11:50 am
by haroldoop
Pretty awesome looking!

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:28 pm
by mix256
haroldoop wrote:
Sun Feb 04, 2018 11:50 am
Pretty awesome looking!
Thanks! :)

I'm trying to get the HUD up and running now. Going to be handling this with sprites, I thought. But turns out I have no idea how to go about doing that.
I guess I need to create a sprite that is the size of the score width and then manually get the sprite definition (which is the actual font) to add relevant frames into it? Needs some research on my part, for sure.

Quite happy with the actual font itself, though. Was easy to create and suits the rest of the style, I think.

Image

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 7:37 pm
by SegaTim
Very cool demo!

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 12:45 pm
by mix256
SegaTim wrote:
Sun Feb 04, 2018 7:37 pm
Very cool demo!
Thanks!

Now, where do I get PCBs and eproms then?
Found retroelectronik.com which seems to have exactly what I want, but they refuse to answer my emails and the contact form isn't working.
So my next option is krikzz.com, I guess?

Any suggestions?

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:18 pm
by cero
Retrostage.net is a great supplier. edit: Krikzz FlashKit works too of course, for that one you don't need to solder anything.

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:58 pm
by Miquel
mix256 wrote:
Sun Feb 04, 2018 9:20 am
* About 5 cartridges
Are you saying that the game is going to take 5 cartridges? How? One in top of another, like "Sonic & Knuckles"?

The time limit is very short hope you don't have any other thing to do.

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 2:08 pm
by mix256
cero wrote:
Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:18 pm
Retrostage.net is a great supplier. edit: Krikzz FlashKit works too of course, for that one you don't need to solder anything.
Yeah, want to go the "non-soldering" route, if I can. Because I really suck at it and is close to blind...or something.
Is running through the internet for PCB suppliers now, so far I've got these:
krikzz.com
Retrostage.net
www.mortoffgames.com
db-electronics.ca
onslaughtreproductions.com

They all have their pros and cons. :)
Miquel wrote:
Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:58 pm
Are you saying that the game is going to take 5 cartridges? How? One in top of another, like "Sonic & Knuckles"?

The time limit is very short hope you don't have any other thing to do.
Haha, no, 5 "identical" cartridges with the game made. Three for having in the boxes and 1 or 2 for the actual demo at the show.

Yeah, will be long nights and early mornings. But, as I said, the game content on the 26th of May is going to be "just" a demo. So the more the better, but there is no "now I'm done" for that part.

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:01 pm
by notaz
mix256 wrote:
Mon Feb 05, 2018 2:08 pm
Yeah, want to go the "non-soldering" route, if I can. Because I really suck at it and is close to blind...or something.
Is running through the internet for PCB suppliers now, so far I've got these:
*shameless plug*
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2635

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:45 pm
by Stef
Wow, it's already quite impressive and almost ready to make a game ! Well done !
And thanks for your kind comments about SGDK, glad to that you like it :)

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:21 am
by mix256
notaz wrote:
Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:01 pm
*shameless plug*
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2635
Ey, that sounds great. I'll be in touch. :)
Stef wrote:
Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:45 pm
Wow, it's already quite impressive and almost ready to make a game ! Well done !
And thanks for your kind comments about SGDK, glad to that you like it :)
Thanks! As I said, it wouldn't have been much at this point without SGDK.
Again, super nice work! :)

Got a more or less complete stage-1 VGM from Johan Agurén yesterday. Sounds super awesome!

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:23 pm
by SegaTim
FlashKit programmer MD by krikzz.com or stuffpoint.ru - made in Ukraine.

Re: Unnamed "ninja" game (Dev Diary thread)

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:07 pm
by Sik
mix256 wrote:
Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:28 pm
I'm trying to get the HUD up and running now. Going to be handling this with sprites, I thought. But turns out I have no idea how to go about doing that.
I guess I need to create a sprite that is the size of the score width and then manually get the sprite definition (which is the actual font) to add relevant frames into it? Needs some research on my part, for sure.
Pulseman gets away with just using a sprite per digit.

That can get you started since it's easier, though it also eats more into the sprite limits, so you go see if it's too bad. The alternative is checking how many digits you have to show, then stream that many digits into VRAM (just load tiles as usual) and use sprites accordingly. Note that knowing the maximum possible digit count helps, e.g. if score is capped at 99999999 (8 digits) then you won't need more than two sprites ever. In fact, you can probably just keep the mappings for every possible digit count in a table.

And all the above assuming the amount of digits to show is variable. If you always show trailing zeroes both cases above become easier too, since you can just always assume the max digit count.