Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Discontinued => Major Community Projects => Elimination => Topic started by: Hot_Dog on September 27, 2011, 03:46:19 pm

Title: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on September 27, 2011, 03:46:19 pm
To start this topic off: I'll have a better screenshot for Level 3 later, but since I have a few more bugs to fix before Level 3 is finished, I didn't want to keep people waiting.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on September 28, 2011, 08:43:31 pm
When you play this game, make sure you move around.  As you might expect, enemies will have a hard time hitting you if you don't stand still.

Isn't it satisfying as well to see a robot explode?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 01, 2011, 01:36:05 am
Another screenshot of Level 3.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Stefan Bauwens on October 01, 2011, 04:54:03 am
This looks realy cool. Well done!
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Yeong on October 01, 2011, 10:23:27 am
how how do we aim?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Deep Toaster on October 01, 2011, 11:02:39 am
Looks amazing. And the grays will be more consistent on a real calc, right (instead of jumping between three shades in the screenshot)?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 01, 2011, 11:43:03 am
how how do we aim?

You can toggle on/off the aiming device :)

Looks amazing. And the grays will be more consistent on a real calc, right (instead of jumping between three shades in the screenshot)?

I don't understand what you mean.  Grayscale in this game is 3-level
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Deep Toaster on October 01, 2011, 11:46:43 am
I mean some pixels in the screenshot seem to jump from gray to black periodically.

EDIT: Might be from moving around. Never mind!
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: boot2490 on October 01, 2011, 04:58:28 pm
I think it looks better on the green screen than the b/w screen.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Darl181 on October 01, 2011, 09:14:36 pm
The greenish screen is like the real calc :P
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: calc84maniac on October 01, 2011, 10:01:18 pm
I'm not sure if there's anything you can do about this, but the sprites are really blocky and I can't tell that enemies are enemies. They're just... blobs of pixels. Is this for performance reasons?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: boot2490 on October 01, 2011, 11:15:14 pm
I noticed that too. Maybe they should be more generic.
Also, the gun looks fake. Either have it look like it is coming from the corner of your eye or do it doom style.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Deep Toaster on October 01, 2011, 11:25:59 pm
Also, the gun looks fake. Either have it look like it is coming from the corner of your eye or do it doom style.
I second that suggestion. DOOM guns were great IMHO.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 01, 2011, 11:35:29 pm
I'm not sure if there's anything you can do about this, but the sprites are really blocky and I can't tell that enemies are enemies. They're just... blobs of pixels. Is this for performance reasons?

Ah yes, blocky sprites.  There are many reasons for this:

1. This is based on the gemini engine, which did the same thing
2. To make objects and enemies easier to notice, I double-thickened or quadruple-thickened most of the lines
3. With raycasting on such a small screen, it's easy for the calculator to overlook certain pixels
4. Yes, performance :)
5. As long as I have fun working on this game, it will get done.  If I work hard and do research to try and fix this issue, it's going to kill me and make me get bored.  I'm hoping, though, that it won't turn you guys off 0_0

EDIT: I did try making distant objects bigger, but it didn't work out    ENDEDIT

As for enemies being enemies, you can tell what an enemy is by looking for a circular "fireball."  I also added the fireball to make it easy to tell an enemy that's too far away

Quote
Also, the gun looks fake. Either have it look like it is coming from the corner of your eye or do it doom style.

I'm always open to criticism or suggestions, negative or positive, but please don't order me to do something with my game.  Even if you didn't mean it that way, it sure sounded like it.  With that said, even though I respect your opinion, I like the guns the way they are.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: calc84maniac on October 01, 2011, 11:44:53 pm
1. Fair enough, though I thought they didn't look as blocky in Gemini.
2. So this explains the extra blockiness? I kind of think it makes them harder to notice because you can't tell what they are. I think higher detail is good even if some pixels are left out when the sprite is farther away.
3. I'm not talking about the raycasting, that pretty much looks fine.
4. As far as performance goes, I might be interested in writing an optimized scaled sprite routine for you :)
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 02, 2011, 12:02:15 am
1. Fair enough, though I thought they didn't look as blocky in Gemini.
2. So this explains the extra blockiness? I kind of think it makes them harder to notice because you can't tell what they are. I think higher detail is good even if some pixels are left out when the sprite is farther away.
3. I'm not talking about the raycasting, that pretty much looks fine.
4. As far as performance goes, I might be interested in writing an optimized scaled sprite routine for you :)

1.  Oh, you're right about that.  
2.  True...I'll have to think about that one.  Part of the problem is sprites need to be 64 x 64...rather than using loads of memory that I can't afford, I wanted to used doubled 32x32 sprites, which end up being blocky anyways.  A 64 x 64 sprite, with its mask, costs 1 KB of memory, and a series of levels can have 7 objects and 4 enemies.  I'm open to suggestions :D
4.  That would be awesome.  It would need to be a masked one, and of course I'd need to look through the engine to figure out how to smoothly incorporate the routine

EDIT: What if I make enemies gray?  Would that help in telling one from the other?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Eeems on October 02, 2011, 12:18:54 am
Is data compressed at all?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: calc84maniac on October 02, 2011, 12:24:42 am
64x64 sprites? O_o That does seems overkill, since most of the time you won't be seeing 3/4 of those pixels. Is that what Gemini used?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 02, 2011, 12:35:07 am
Is data compressed at all?

It is, but it decompresses to RAM, and it stays decompressed as the game runs.  It costs a lot to decompress data every frame :)

Quote
64x64 sprites? O_o That does seems overkill, since most of the time you won't be seeing 3/4 of those pixels. Is that what Gemini used?

Gemini used 32x32 because the game wasn't fullscreen.  To make the game full screen I made everything bigger

So calc84, what do you think of gray pixels for enemies instead of black pixels?  Would that help?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: calc84maniac on October 02, 2011, 12:39:15 am
I think making it so enemies don't look like scaled-up 8x8 sprites will be a good start. But if I do make a scaled sprite routine, I would probably make it support black, white, gray, and transparent selected by the two bits for each pixel.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 02, 2011, 12:42:55 am
I think making it so enemies don't look like scaled-up 8x8 sprites will be a good start. But if I do make a scaled sprite routine, I would probably make it support black, white, gray, and transparent selected by the two bits for each pixel.

Gotcha.  So I think I will make the enemies more detailed, although like I said, unless I switch to 64x64, there will be some blockage.  Meanwhile, I'll have enemies gray-and-white instead of black-and-white so that if you see gray you realize "Ah!!  An enemy!!"

No pressure on the sprite routine 8) 
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 05, 2011, 03:15:37 pm
I personally like the look of the game so far. Hopefully you can find a solution to make the enemies look more detailled, assuming it won't have too much of an impact on performance. 32x32 sprite size maximum seems ok to me. 64 might be too much because when they're far away we won,t even distinguish what they are anyway.

I think textures should be gray, except wall outlines or the texture sides and enemies should be black.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: boot2490 on October 05, 2011, 07:01:20 pm
I think scenery should be gray and enemies should be black. That way they stand out. And also, when there are gray enemies there is a surprise factor.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on October 24, 2011, 07:14:35 pm
Some of level 4!  New features:

* Herm Injection!
* Better map revealing: more is revealed from exploring, and doors have a symbol different from walls
* Health Bars!  (I did my best to make some health bars higher on the screen than others to help with distinguishing them, but it's not perfect)  By the way, these health bars have been extremely helpful in distinguishing enemies from other objects.
* Armor now reduces, rather than eliminates, damage taken, except for really weak enemies.  Armor will take 1/2 of the damage rounded up, and health will take the other half rounded down.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: parserp on October 24, 2011, 07:16:46 pm
I like that... O.O
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Deep Toaster on October 24, 2011, 11:03:35 pm
That is awesome. Love the way you did those health bars! And those enemies actually have faces O.O
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: LincolnB on October 25, 2011, 06:26:28 pm
pretty freaking awesome, my friend. Keep up the good work!
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 07, 2011, 05:47:08 pm
Nice Hot Dog. I like that texture a lot at the beginning. :D
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Darl181 on November 08, 2011, 02:56:52 pm
What exactly is a "herm injection", btw?  I googled it and it returns this board as a result so ???
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on November 08, 2011, 03:10:19 pm
What exactly is a "herm injection", btw?  I googled it and it returns this board as a result so ???

I made it up.  It's Health Armor Injection.
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on November 25, 2011, 11:39:52 am
I'm still working on saving and loading games because I didn't have a spare moment last week to work on this.  However, to show that this hasn't been dormant, here's a new screenshot, where you calibrate your grayscale if you haven't played before.  You can even fine-tune the grayscale using the right and left keys :D

Note: Omnimaga doesn't seem to want to play the whole file, so you should click on "Calibration.gif" to view the whole thing
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: turiqwalrus on November 25, 2011, 11:41:40 am
this is shaping up really well...
can't wait for a release :D
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on January 08, 2012, 07:21:50 pm
I'm not yet ready to release my next legitimate screenshot, but here's a few snapshots.  I was really worried about how the ice textures would turn out--but I've got to tell you, even though I haven't finished the sky, I felt really chilly doing a test of this level  ;D
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Stefan Bauwens on January 10, 2012, 05:36:21 am
Looks nice. :D
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 10, 2012, 07:08:15 am
Looking good! :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: boot2490 on February 23, 2012, 06:12:28 pm
Hey, sorry I totally dropped out while promising wall textures. Do you still need art to be drawn?
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: nxtboy III on February 23, 2012, 06:18:44 pm
Wow, this is looking real nice!
Title: Re: Elimination Screenshots
Post by: Hot_Dog on February 23, 2012, 06:49:02 pm
Hey, sorry I totally dropped out while promising wall textures. Do you still need art to be drawn?

Not at the moment.  I'm trying to decide the future of it.  Thank you so much anyways!