Zelda resumed and almost done...a bit of help needed

[ACagliano]

I have resumed my Legend of Zelda project. And, I have it mostly done, although the most daunting parts lie ahead. Any coders who have expertise in the areas I will list below and want to help me out with coding this...I would be happy.

1.  Greyscale texture sprite rendering system. Tiles are 8x8.
2.  Animated sprite rendering system (for the player and enemies). Tiles are 8x8, but should move 1 pixel at a time, and support all directions of movement, even diagonal.
3.  AI system.


Other than that, the rest of the game is fully coded

Although I do want to do one more thing...RLE encode the maps. I need, thus, a compression utility that I can use on computer to compress a string of bytes, as well as a z80 routine that will decompress it. I'm sure the later is lying around on these forums somewhere.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Almost done?

Glad to see you still worked on it and are still around the community. I can't help personally, but I wish you good luck.

To me for a calc RPG, as long as it is under 18 pages I am fine (above that I get connectivity problems often). It's Zelda, after all, so large size is to be expected if anyone wants a good Zelda clone.

[Hot_Dog]

I have resumed my Legend of Zelda project. And, I have it mostly done, although the most daunting parts lie ahead. Any coders who have expertise in the areas I will list below and want to help me out with coding this...I would be happy.

1.  Greyscale texture sprite rendering system. Tiles are 8x8.
2.  Animated sprite rendering system (for the player and enemies). Tiles are 8x8, but should move 1 pixel at a time, and support all directions of movement, even diagonal.
3.  AI system.


Other than that, the rest of the game is fully coded

Although I do want to do one more thing...RLE encode the maps. I need, thus, a compression utility that I can use on computer to compress a string of bytes, as well as a z80 routine that will decompress it. I'm sure the later is lying around on these forums somewhere.

A couple of questions:

1. You're talking about greyscale for the background, right?  Is it smooth-scrolling, or one-screen-at-a-time like in the very first zelda game?

2. Are you absolutely sure you want RLE?  Iambian and many other programmers recommend pucrunch.  I can give you his on-computer compressor and on-calc decompressor--I use these with great success.

[ACagliano]

I have resumed my Legend of Zelda project. And, I have it mostly done, although the most daunting parts lie ahead. Any coders who have expertise in the areas I will list below and want to help me out with coding this...I would be happy.

1.  Greyscale texture sprite rendering system. Tiles are 8x8.
2.  Animated sprite rendering system (for the player and enemies). Tiles are 8x8, but should move 1 pixel at a time, and support all directions of movement, even diagonal.
3.  AI system.


Other than that, the rest of the game is fully coded

Although I do want to do one more thing...RLE encode the maps. I need, thus, a compression utility that I can use on computer to compress a string of bytes, as well as a z80 routine that will decompress it. I'm sure the later is lying around on these forums somewhere.

A couple of questions:

1. You're talking about greyscale for the background, right?  Is it smooth-scrolling, or one-screen-at-a-time like in the very first zelda game?

2. Are you absolutely sure you want RLE?  Iambian and many other programmers recommend pucrunch.  I can give you his on-computer compressor and on-calc decompressor--I use these with great success.

1. I'm going with Screen by screen rendering. You move off screen, the next screen over is rendered.

2. I can go with Pucrunch just as well. As long as I can get a good compression ratio.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Will you have the screen to screen scrolling animation like in all old Zelda games and the calc Dark Link Quest?

[ACagliano]

How hard would that be to implement? You would need to rotate the pixels? I don't have the foggiest how to do that.

[Deep Thought]

How hard would that be to implement? You would need to rotate the pixels? I don't have the foggiest how to do that.

I don't think anything rotates. As far as I know it's just that the next screen slides in smoothly instead of jumping in, when your character reaches the edge of the screen.

[ACagliano]

How hard would that be to implement? You would need to rotate the pixels? I don't have the foggiest how to do that.

I don't think anything rotates. As far as I know it's just that the next screen slides in smoothly instead of jumping in, when your character reaches the edge of the screen.

I meant shift. You would need to shift in the pixels one at a time.

[Runer112]

Actually, I believe Link's Awakening shifted 8 pixels at a time when transitioning between screens. You can shift 8 pixels easily, as the shifting works out to even bytes. Although technically, since you have half the screen size, you would want to only shift 4 pixels per frame. This is easily done vertically of course, and although horizontal shifting is more difficult, you can actually shift horizontally by 4 pixels quite well with the rld and rrd instructions.

[DJ Omnimaga]

It shifted one at a time, but the other calc Zelda clones that had shifting did it entire tiles at a time. If you play Zelda by Void Productions it shifts by 12 pixel chunks. Basically you shift a few pixels away, then draw the first column of tiles from the next map, then repeat with each other columns, or rows if it shifts vertically.

[Runer112]

I lied, Link's Awakening shifts 4 pixels at a time, not 8. But it doesn't really matter what amount he shifts by in the end as long as the transition isn't too fast or too slow.

[ACagliano]

Well, doing this is beyond my skill level. If another coder offers to help, then sure.

[Hot_Dog]

I'd be happy to do a background engine of this type.  I just need to figure out how to do grayscale without crystal timers.  (Normally it's straight forward, but it would be nice to alow calibration if possible)

EDIT: Later today, if I get the chance, I'll give you the pucrunch stuff and see what you think.

[ACagliano]

I'd be happy to do a background engine of this type.  I just need to figure out how to do grayscale without crystal timers.  (Normally it's straight forward, but it would be nice to alow calibration if possible)

EDIT: Later today, if I get the chance, I'll give you the pucrunch stuff and see what you think.

Thanks and thanks.

Note: I'm not trying to just not do this myself. I know from experience that I learn better from seeing how others do things, especially of this nature, rather than keep failing myself (at which point I just give up). Not to mention that I want to expedite the release process, since I've been promising this for months.

[Xeda112358]

hehe, just wanted to link here:
http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=1598.msg236718#msg236718
That is the shifting code in question

EDIT: For horizontal shifting by 4 pixels, anyways. I feel rather proud of myself for that >.>