Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: Zera on March 19, 2010, 04:53:22 pm
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(http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6303/image1vr.png)
"Dr. Venom, leader of the evil Bacterion Empire, has opened a rift in space-time, and sent the planet-core Zelos Force to the year 6640. Destination: The Nemesis system. Using Zelos Force to conquer and terraform the planets of the Nemesis system, Dr. Venom hopes to expand the Bacterion Empire and prevent its own future destruction at the hands of the Gradius Union. Unprepared for a conflict against Bacterion, the Gradius Union desperately unveils an early model Vixen fighter ship - its only hope of fending off Bacterion's forces and preventing disruption to the future's timeline."
(http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/2082/nemesisfinalboss.png)
The player assumes the role of a fighter-pilot, and either model of the fighter-ship "Vixen." Each model has a slightly different selection of available weapons and features.
By defeating specific enemies and collecting power-cells, the ship progresses along a power-up meter. (bottom-center of the above screenshot) When a selection is highlighted, you can choose to activate (or upgrade) the item, or continue progressing toward more expensive power-ups.
Vixen Type-1:
SPEEDUP | MISSILE | LASER | OPTION | FORCE F.
SPEEDUP | SPREAD B.| LASER | OPTION |[F.SHIELD]
SPEEDUP | |[V.LASER]|
SPEEDUP | |[SCREW.L]|
SPEEDUP |
SPEEDUP - increases ship speed (upgradable)
MISSLE - fires a single missile downward
SPREAD B. - unleashes a missile that explodes upon impact, damaging multiple, adjacent targets
LASER - fires a laser blast in a straight line, which moves with the ship's own trajectory
LASER (2) - standard laser with extended range and damage
OPTION - creates a ball of energy, which follows the ship and mimics its shot patterns
FORCE F. - surrounds the player with a force-field, protecting the entire ship from damage
Vixen Type-2:
SPEEDUP | MISSILE | DOUBLE | OPTION | FORCE F.
SPEEDUP | HAWKWIND | DOUBLE | OPTION |[F.SHIELD]
SPEEDUP | |[V.LASER]|
SPEEDUP | |[SCREW.L]|
SPEEDUP |
DOUBLE - fires an additional shot along a diagonal pattern
HAWKWIND - fires two missiles top to bottom
Temporary / Special upgrade units:
V.LASER - fires a vertical laser beam, which destroys targets above the ship
SCREW.L - fires a wide-dispersal laser which covers more area than the standard laser
F.SHIELD - a space-fighter shield which makes the ship completely invulnerable for a short amount of time
Example level designs: (with enemy and item data)
Stages 4 - 5: Macro-Organism Zone / Bacterion Base
(http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/8796/stage45eventlayer.png)
Stage 1: Floating Continent
(http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/5880/stage1eventlayer.png)
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Wow.
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WOW................ Your graphic style and your designs are flawless.........
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O.O Amazing. I don't even know what to say other than pure awesomeness
Edit: by the way, will this be done in ASM? Or will it possibly be done in Axe
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darn this is amazing, especially these level designs. I would love to see this in ASM or Axe. I wonder how fast tilemap display is in Axe? If a tilemap can be rendered extremly fast, it could allow both grayscale and scrolling at once, since all the programmer does is cycle through 3 tilesets drawn with Nitacku's grayscale dithering program then converted to hex
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if this was written in axe, i would bow down to you... but asm would still be an accomplishment.
this looks amazing :D
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Looks great Zera, cant wait to see what comes of this!
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I'm actually not that familiar with Axe's features. I'm not very technically-oriented when it comes to development. :-[
The scrolling is done 4px at a time, but sprite movement is smooth. The scrolling idea came from MSX1, as I don't think smooth-scrolling was a technical possibility on the platform. Since this game is modeled after the Nemesis / Gradius series on this platform, I wanted to preserve the classic feel as much as possible.
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I don't know if you've seen Builderboy's smooth scrolling program with Axe, but it is quite possible, and it's only the early stages of Axe. I believe when Axe becomes more developed, it will not only be able to handle scrolling, but also even support it as a command/function
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oh that might be easier to pull off then. I guess people could maybe tolerate 8 px scrolling, though. The issue with other types of scrolling is mostly that you need to display 13 columns of tiles at once instead of 12, for the right edge of the screen, so you won't see a black bar moving forward then tiles suddently appearing once it scrolled enough, like NES games, so it can slow things down a bit, but otherwise, it's possible.
Btw that game seems to have friggin nice music ^^
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Actually, you could do 4px scrolling with axe. It would be like Builderboy's smooth scrolling routine, except 4px at a time instead of 1
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yeah I know. I was just mentionneing about dealing with the issue of having to show an additional column of tiles to the right (and sprites), causing a slow down
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yeah I know. I was just mentionneing about dealing with the issue of having to show an additional column of tiles to the right (and sprites), causing a slow down
Ah gotcha.
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well since my method of smoothscrolling uses screenshifting, it would actualy be faster than redrawing the entire screen tilemap each frame. I'm not sure 4 shade greyscale could be supported with only 2 buffers though :/ 3 might be if you did some clever coding.
EDIT: lol forgot to mention, looks AWESOME!!! very good level/graphic design :)
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GLORY...awesome!
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oh right I forgot about the grayscale when talking about scrolling x.x
For grayscale, the entire tilemap would have to be redrawn every frame, only allowing 8 pixel scrolling (unless you display the tilemapper 4 pixels to the right, then next time it scrolls 0 pixels, then moves one tile into the tilemapper, repeating the 4 pixels to the right then 0 over and over. In this case, you would need to display a 4x56 black bar both to the left and right sides of the screen after updating the screen with the tilemapper everytime, to hide the weird display issues it would cause. And then, would it be fast enough to achieve 4 lv grayscale?)
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*sigh* looking at this program's graphics makes me wish i knew how to do grayscale
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wow looks amazing XD
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That looks truly amazing!
I like how it looks and sounds. I wish I knew Asm, because I know axe can't handle 4 level grayscale tilemaps and smooth scrolling. (At least right now... ;D)
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A couple of other mock-ups...
(http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/9379/mockup2.png)
The insidious Bone Graveyard (Stage 2)
(http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/1932/mockup1v.png)
Fully-powered Vixen blasting through Stage 6 (Blazing Suns)
There are six normal stages divided into "blocks". A block might be two entire stages in a single map. The stages are arranged this way for the appearance of cut-scenes. (which occur after clearing each block) Generally, multiple stages appearing within a single block are fairly short, so that the total block length isn't overwhelming.
Some stages will have a bonus objective. If that objective is cleared, the player will enter the bonus stage immediately after that block. In the bonus stage sequence, the player has the opportunity to collect many power-cells, and a few 1-ups scattered throughout the stage. Each power-cell has the additional effect of granting the player accumulating bonus points. (100, 200, 400, 800~) If the player crashes-out in this stage, they don't actually lose any ships. (or power-ups) On the other hand, any bonuses collected in the stage are lost.
If the player clears the normal game mode without losing any ships, then they'll unlock four additional, more difficult stages: Stages A - D. Clearing either mode is necessary to unlock specific game features.
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Very nice mock ups. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm almost looking forward to this more than any of your other projects. I love RPG's but I love arcade games like this even more (only when they're as in depth as you this one will be).
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I'm glad everyone likes the concept and design. Gradius / Nemesis is one of my favorite series. I've played most of the games to death - including the more obscure versions; such as the MSX games.
Of course, I don't intend to infringe on what Konami has put forth, and have in fact presented the story from the perspective of an alternate timeline in the series canon. I hope I can inspire other people to take-up an interest in the series, which I'm sure is a modest goal toward helping Konami's own fanbase along.
I should note the game is really just a rehash of features and designs already found in the series. Nothing really original here. You're merely getting a glimpse of the classic series.
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Well I find it cool to see some commercial games converted to ti calcs, because it shows how far a calculator (or a calc programming language in particular and its libs) can be pushed. Of course it isn't really ethical but it seems companies doesn't care that much about calc games. There are many Mario/Tetris/etc clones on ticalc.org. On top of that, people always credit the original authors, else, people alerady know, so it gives the old games more publicity.
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The design is great and I played a bit Nemesis for GB. I don't know but the smooth scrolling can affect badly the grayscale? I guess there is always some changes to the grayscale engine to reduce some flicker but it has side effects in more still graphics.
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The issue is that Axe Parser only supports two buffers, and 4 level grayscale, the way it is done by BASIC programmers, requires three sets of tiles to cycle through, meaning 3 buffers.
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Wow, those mock ups are Amazing! Zera, you come up with the coolest things! ;D
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Theoretically, you can append buffers to the end of your executable so that they use their own self modifying code as extra buffers. This is fairly easy and straightforward to do. Hmm... I don't have an "empty data" command yet... I should add that, it would make this kind of thing easier and it gives another alternative to if you run out of free ram.
This looks like a pretty cool game!
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Mhmm if it is easy, you should prbly post how, cuz I have no clue how XD
It might be useful for many people
For 3 level grayscale with no scrolling I would probably store two tilemaps with different tiles in both buffers and quickly swap between them, though.
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I like the idea of using buffers at the end of the program to have more free RAM. That's an awesome idea, provided it's fast enough. :)
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It should be fast enough, after all it is just like any other RAM. For scrolling greyscale i see a potential problem though, when the map scrolls (every frame presumably?) then the checker pattern used for grey would also be offset, and possible not clash with the previous checker patter on the alternait buffer the right way to achieve greyscale? Maybe it would need to have scrolling by 2 pixels, or maybe 2 frames per scroll? o.O
* Builderboy will have to run some tests *
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When you finished testing, if any success, could you post how would we do that? x.x