Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: dancingmad on September 06, 2007, 02:10:00 am

Title: Castlevania
Post by: dancingmad on September 06, 2007, 02:10:00 am

Hi!
I think those who like old-school platform/adventure game sould take a look at that:

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/142/142854.html

It'a project for TI82, 83 and 83+ I have just finished after two years of (non-intensive) work...

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 06, 2007, 02:24:00 am

Heya nice to see you again. I played the game yesterday for a while and it made me feel nostalgic :) Very well done and good job on it. I was pondering posting a news about it here and adding it to the RPG archives since the game is above the standards here but unfortunately I still haven't decided because idk if it's RPG enough :( sorry. But since the RPG archives were revived recently I may add the GBA lib :)

Are you planning to redo some of the other castlevania and maybe even mario btw?


And congrats for the feature btw, it deserved it! :king:

EDIT: well i finally managed to indirectly feature Castlevania even if it's not in archives now :D

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Delnar_Ersike on September 06, 2007, 03:50:00 am

If you want, I can tell you a full-scale review based on my experience yesterday... of course, I don't have the time to do it right now *cough*school*cough*, but maybe sometime in the afternoon...

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 06, 2007, 03:58:00 am

considering ticalc take ages to post reviews i would post it here as well ;) (providing it abide to forum rules)

welcome back delnar btw

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Liazon on September 06, 2007, 10:55:00 am

welcome back!  i think i might try castlevania today and see how it is :)

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Delnar_Ersike on September 06, 2007, 12:55:00 pm

QuoteBegin-DJ Omnimaga+6 Sep, 2007, 7:58-->

QUOTE (DJ Omnimaga @ 6 Sep, 2007, 7:58)

welcome back delnar btw

:???: I was here all the time, even if I didn't post...

OK, well here is the review:

Controls: 8/10
Even if the controls were pretty smooth and well mapped out, I still regularly mixed up Alpha to attack and 2nd to jump (I kept on wanting to press the Up arrow key to jump and 2nd to attack... probably because I am so used to Bubble Bobble... %) ). I know they fit well in Mario, but in this game you don't kill enemies by jumping on top of them. Also, I hated the way you have to frequently equip and unequip auxiliary weapons to be able to see the invisible blocks in the beginning part of the mansion and that you cannot use auxiliary weapons near a door (gee, I wonder why). I suggest you add a separate button for the auxiliary weapon in a future version.

Gameplay: 9/10
Mostly smooth, though it took me a while to find out how to talk to people. Also, the way enemies respawn is completely random, and to me very annoying as well. Oh, and did I say the directional jumping is horrible? To be able to jump in a direction, you have to be moving in that direction before you jump. Once you jump, you cannot change your direction in midair, unlike in most platformer games I've seen (Mario, Bubble Bobble, Double Dragon, etc.). The real plus side towards always missing your jumps is that you really have infinite lives, as long as you can put up with losing almost all of your hearts every 9 lives.

Story: 8/10
Though the story is somewhat payed attention to, this game rarely dives deep into different plots, unlike something similar to TVF or Desolate, but those aren't platformers: in platformers you don't need to pay that much attention to the story to have a good game. Still, it would be a nice addition to the game to have the storyline mean more than just the places you should go in order to complete the game: there should be something special about the game that urges the player to keep on playing (the different levels in Bubble Bobble and Mario, the intriguing story in Desolate, the different weapons, bosses, and spells in TVF, the different weapons and levels in Gemini, etc.).

Graphics: 9/10
This game is very good in the way of graphics, though the weapon, item, and auxiliary powers' icons could have been a little more descriptive. The only thing that I want to touch on is the way enemies go off the screen: instead of just disappearing once one column of pixels in their sprite is off the edge, I think the enemies' sprites should still be partially displayed if they go off the screen (like in Mario and Bubble Bobble).

Size: 7/10
This thing is all in one program and it's bigger than Gemini! I had delete all the other games I had on my calc plus some of my own programs (I backed them up, of course) in order to play this! Note: I am not talking about Archive memory, I am talking about RAM memory. And even if you do have enough RAM, you need about 50 B more so your game will be saved. IMO, you should either optimize the program heavily, split the program into two parts so that one can reside in the archive the entire time, or both.

Overall: 8.2/10
If it weren't for that horrible size (I am talking RAM, not Archive), untouched storyline, and some annoying gameplay aspects, this game would have scored much higher. For clarity, anything I didn't criticize is considered good and anything I said was good was actually very good. Please, if the author is reading this, keep in mind some of my suggestion for a future version (smaller/split size, deeper story, minor graphical improvements, key remapping, and the change-direction-in-midair thing).

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 06, 2007, 05:37:00 pm

nice review delnar. I was wondering if you were away because of the non posting for a few days x.x I guess i missed you visiting the forums :P

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 07, 2007, 11:09:00 am

I will definitely try this out and tell you what I think.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Halifax on September 07, 2007, 12:14:00 pm

I agree. This game looks sicknasT with a capital T. :):thumb:

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 09, 2007, 01:00:00 pm

Wtf, It is huge I can't even get enough free ram to run it. And that is with every thing archived. I'm sorry but 23993 is a little big don't you think?

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 09, 2007, 01:36:00 pm

well i got this pb with gemini too, its because castlevania was originally a TI-82 game and the TI-82 have 28 KB of RAM, not 24, like the 83+. he even had to cut down features to fit it on the 83+. Maybe he could cut down some others too or split the data in a separate program and archive it, like with desolate

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Madskillz on September 09, 2007, 01:36:00 pm

Yeah, it is huge. You are gonna have to delete some programs, archiving them wont do it.

Besides that though, it was well done, and really brought back the memories of the classic games!

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 09, 2007, 01:40:00 pm

now i wish someone ported Ys III or Zelda II to TI =)

Title: Castlevania
Post by: kalan_vod on September 09, 2007, 03:52:00 pm

QuoteBegin-DJ Omnimaga+9 Sep, 2007, 19:36-->

QUOTE (DJ Omnimaga @ 9 Sep, 2007, 19:36)

well i got this pb with gemini too, its because castlevania was originally a TI-82 game and the TI-82 have 28 KB of RAM, not 24, like the 83+. he even had to cut down features to fit it on the 83+. Maybe he could cut down some others too or split the data in a separate program and archive it, like with desolate

 Or make it into an app, with all the features ;)

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 09, 2007, 03:53:00 pm

oh yeah that, but idk if GBA supports them :(

Title: Castlevania
Post by: kalan_vod on September 09, 2007, 05:12:00 pm

Oh, SMC >.>...forgot, but the idea of like desolate would be great ;)

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 09, 2007, 05:15:00 pm

SMC?

Title: Castlevania
Post by: kalan_vod on September 09, 2007, 06:04:00 pm

Self Modifying Code, sorry :P

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 10, 2007, 12:16:00 am

ooh I see, yeah as an app that could pose quite a big problem :/

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 10, 2007, 12:21:00 am

And the other issue would be that app would be more than one app page so there would have to be page switching code.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 10, 2007, 12:25:00 am

yeah that too. I think the best solution is really to have a part of the game (most likely the data) archived

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 10, 2007, 12:33:00 am

Yeah Like level data or the like because that only needs to be read not written too.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: dancingmad on September 10, 2007, 02:12:00 am

Cutting the prog and archieve a part of it is a great idea... Maybe that's what I'll do for the next version... I agree that 23,000 bytes is very much!

Title: Castlevania
Post by: dancingmad on September 10, 2007, 02:15:00 am

QuoteBegin-DJ Omnimaga+10 Sep, 2007, 1:4-->

QUOTE (DJ Omnimaga @ 10 Sep, 2007, 1:40)

now i wish someone ported Ys III or Zelda II to TI =)

 Zelda II, that's a great game ! That's the game I wanted to port at the beginning... But finally I prefered doing Castvnia

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 10, 2007, 09:30:00 am

Yeah many people hate Zelda II, but I found it to be one of my favourite, despite the fact its too hard. But I prefer Ys III: Wanderers from Ys because its more RPG ish, and still keep the platform layout from mario/zelda II. All other Ys games of the series are top down view tho

Title: Castlevania
Post by: dinhotheone on September 10, 2007, 11:15:00 am

ill see what i can do in the way of playing this game, but it looks like a bit big... i have a bunch of trouble playing gemeni, i think this will be way worse. i think that if you split it up that i will surely play it though because castlevania is the shiz. anyway, ill see what i can do.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Halifax on September 10, 2007, 12:13:00 pm

Hmm yeah, you could go the way of the 68K games, and have external files. That is a great idea.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 10, 2007, 01:09:00 pm

i kinda wish there was folder support on the TI-z80 oses, would make prgm management much easier

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 10, 2007, 01:32:00 pm

It isn't needed their isn't enough memory on the calcs to make it worth it.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 10, 2007, 01:41:00 pm

well i thought it was useful on the 68k calcs so you dont have to search minutes in 200 sub routines when you have 10 basic games installed. But i guess people should just stop being lazy and search anyway :P

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 10, 2007, 01:57:00 pm

Well 68k calc have user definded functions wheer ther could be thousands where as on z80 calcs you don't have that so it isn't need as much.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 10, 2007, 02:05:00 pm

oh yeah i guess you have a good point

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 10, 2007, 02:20:00 pm

Well that and the fact that they are so much faster so that there isn't as much lag if you have a million subprograms.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: dinhotheone on September 10, 2007, 02:29:00 pm

i removed a bunch of stuff and grouped the rest and now it works, cool game but i find it tough. also is the aux weapon there in the beggining, because i cant use it (do you get it later)

Title: Castlevania
Post by: Jon on September 10, 2007, 03:38:00 pm

To the author: nice work, this game is crazy awesome!

Title: Castlevania
Post by: JonimusPrime on September 10, 2007, 03:55:00 pm

I was finnaly able to to play it but I didn't understand what to do but I will report back tomarrow when I have played a little longer if you can make it so I can have part of it archive that would be great. I had to delete like half of my program to get enough ram.

Title: Castlevania
Post by: dinhotheone on September 11, 2007, 07:53:00 am

i think the readme is backward in my game second jumps and alpha actions, not the other way around