A NXT Platformer game, in 4 lvl grayscale- Need ideas please!

[nxtboy III]

So what other ideas does anybody have for it? What about other themes the game should be?
Here's what I need to know for it:
-What the theme should be
-What the goal of the game/levels is/are
-What the enemies are
-Who the player will be
-What the enemies do
-What the player can do

EDIT: Supermember!

EDIT2: My NXT counts to 1 million in about 39 seconds in assembly, without displaying anything.
It counts to 10,000 in a little less than 1 second.

[nxtboy III]

So now that you sort-of kind-of maybe know the processor speed from what I said before, what should I make this game like?

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well do you know approximately how many times slower your program ran on the NXT, assuming it's the exact same code?

If it's even slower, like twice slower, what I would recommend is either:

1) Ditching grayscale completely and going monochrome
or
2) Make character movement so you don't move smoothly, but rather tile by tile instantly, like how Tetris blocks move around.

I'm thinking of something like this:



Except with scrolling. That game was written in TI-BASIC with the help of some ASM libraries, which is much slower than 100% ASM, so I'm sure in NXT ASM it would be fast enough to have scrolling.

As for the game theme, I'm thinking of something involving having to go find shards on a random planet somewhere, to power up the last remnants of humanity spaceship again. It could be stage-based, where each of the 6 or 7 shards is guarded by a boss.

However just as an advice, as game creator you need to do a bit more effort in finding ideas yourself as well, because no matter how much idea I try to give, you still ask "what should I make the game like". I assume you don't want everyone else to do the entire work for you, but with the ideas we give it should normally help you finding more or working with them. I'M thinking this might explain partly the low amount of replies so far in the thread. It's also recommended to try some NES/SNES sci-fi games to gain more ideas and find out how in general those games work.

If it's the first time you are making a platformer, though, then I recommend making it small at first, such as having 8 stages to start with.

[nxtboy III]

Well actually right now it goes pretty well with about 15 "box" enemies at once. However, all the enemies do is follow the player.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Ok, well then add a routine that displays a sprite 96 times per frame and look at the game speed. This might give you some guide about how much it will slow down when you have tilemaps. (on the TI-84+, a tilemap generally displays 96 tiles on the screen at once). Of course however if you add scrolling and you can easily just move the LCD content around, then I guess you just need to draw the missing row/column of sprites.

[nxtboy III]

I have already added scrolling and 4-lvl grayscale tile-mapping. It runs fine at about 10-15 box enemies.

[nxtboy III]

So does anybody have specific ideas on what the enemies should do?
Please note I have already made the tilemapper and simple "enemies" that follow the player(Thats all they do).

EDIT: I am not doing this in NXT assembly...

[nxtboy III]

So does anybody have any ideas for what this should be about or what I should add?
I keep asking because I really need specific ideas for the enemies and what they should do.
I have already made the tile-mapping and block-things that follow the player(I'm not gonna keep the enemies like that, so i need ideas).

Oh, and the player does not move tile by tile. It has smooth scrolling. Each tile is 16x16 4-lvl grayscale.

[DJ Omnimaga]

There should at least be some enemies that shoots at you and of course those Metroid butterfly-like things that jumps back and forth from the top of the screen to the floor or vice-versa, diagonally. Also if you got vertical stages, enemies that moves back and forth from the left to the right of the screen, flying.

[nxtboy III]

Enemies that shoot? Wouldn't that hog up the processor if I added too many of those?
What should the player do and what should he and the enemies look like?


EDIT: Could you be specific about what each enemy can do, like movement and weapon-wise?

[nxtboy III]

So actually I can have about 25 enemies at once and it runs good, but only if they are somewhat spread apart because the enemies only move when they are a certain distance from the player, for  speed purposes.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Make sure enemies that shoot won't all shoot at once if you have many per map.

Anyway I won't help you any further about enemies idea because no offense, but it seems like you want us to do the entire work for you here. I've been desesperately giving ideas since the beginning, to no avail, so I'm beginning to think I'm wasting my time here... You also need to do an effort as well. (like the other forum members who announce projects)

From now on I'll just comment on game updates and stuff, like in your last post. In response to your last post it's a good idea I guess. Most games won't render more than 3 enemies at once in the screen and I even noticed that there are ones that disappear completely in older games like SMB3. After all, the enemies outside the screen don't really need to move anyway. What is the approximate framerate by the way?

[nxtboy III]

framerate? I have no idea....
But it depends on how many enemies. It runs smooth with about 25 enemies.
yeah, i should probably stop asking about enemies. You've commented a lot so far.
The map size is good at around 60x25, but I haven't really tested it bigger with the enemies update.
Is that a good map size?
Maybe you could tell me some cool tiles for the game.

EDIT: Should I make the enemies just follow the player (cannot jump) and when they are next to you they have a weapon animation? I think I'll go with that.

EDIT2: The tiles are 16x16, and the player moves 4 pixels at a time (smooth scrolling). And what should the player be? Maybe he should be a knight and the enemies are creatures... I like that idea. Do you think I should that?

[Jonius7]

I think the knight idea's great if it goes along with your game theme, and you can draw the sprites.
Hmm I never considered having onboard NXT games on my Mindstorms NXT 1.0

[nxtboy III]

You have a mindstorms NXT?