GemVenture

[Tom]

Could you do a border with a vertical column of sprites, like Super Mario Bros. 3 does?

Hmm, possibly, something I didn't think of. Although it'd take up 32 sprites, and it's pretty easy to get a lot of sprites on the screen when breaking gems, so it'd increase flicker a lot.

[Cthulhu32]

I ended up putting in a simple frame. Unfortunately there's not a lot of space for it, and I couldn't put anything directly around the playfield due to the attribute tables. I might have been able to shuffle stuff around for it, but I didn't want to make such a large change at the last minute.

I like it! Since the compo ends tonight, you shouldn't probably try anything too crazy, but a post-compo version of the game would be awesome with cool moving gems down the sides and everything.

Great work!

[tepples]

There are two kinds of block matching games:

• In some games, the playfield is always full of blocks, and it is not useful to move the player sprite away from blocks. Thus the absence of blocks defines the playfield walls. These include mahjong solitaire, SameGame, Yoshi's Cookie (vs. mode, and to a lesser extent single-player), Russian Square (part of Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP), GemVenture, and every other Bejeweled clone.
• Other games have a more empty playfield within which the player may move a shape. There needs to be some way to distinguish in-bounds from out-of-bounds: either a frame or at least a contrasting color. These include Tetris, Klax, Columns, Dr. Mario, Pipe Dream, Zoop, and numerous others.

That's why I didn't remove the border around the playfield in my doctored screenshots: they're the only thing that delimits the playfield.

Could you do a border with a vertical column of sprites, like Super Mario Bros. 3 does?

Hmm, possibly, something I didn't think of. Although it'd take up 32 sprites

Only 16 if you use 8x16s like SMB3's map screen. Or you could make it the background and turn other things near it into sprites.

and it's pretty easy to get a lot of sprites on the screen when breaking gems, so it'd increase flicker a lot.

When you break stuff, there's supposed to be flicker.

[Tom]

Since the compo ends tonight

It actually ended last night, so it's done and submitted. If I work on it some more, I'll probably make a lot of changes (my original vision was a lot more ambitious). But I'm feeling pretty burnt out on the project now so I won't do that for a while (see how I never finished my other contest nes game, from what, 4 years ago?)

[Cthulhu32]

Since the compo ends tonight

It actually ended last night, so it's done and submitted. If I work on it some more, I'll probably make a lot of changes (my original vision was a lot more ambitious). But I'm feeling pretty burnt out on the project now so I won't do that for a while (see how I never finished my other contest nes game, from what, 4 years ago?)

Ahh I thought it ended at midnight tonight, I've been so wonky on time since I bought my new house and moved in. Well good luck on the judging, I am really excited to try your entry once they get the judging underway.

Tepples: yeah I totally agree with you, and I think the way Tom did it was very good for a quick and dirty background hack. Also Pipe Dreams is awesome

[Tom]

Well pdroms has posted GemVenture (contest results are going to be next week), so everyone can check it out now if they want.

http://pdroms.de/files/2172/

[CartCollector]

I have a suggestion for you for when you get back to working on this.

If you keep the pattern you used for the border in the final, you should use the same color phase (bits D0-D3) for the two colors that make up the dithered pattern on the top, bottom and sides of the screen. If you don't, you'll get nasty-looking diagonals that will show up on NESes with RF/composite video. It's because the chroma (color signal) is switching too fast, and when that happens, it interferes with the luma (brightness signal), which creates an alternating light/dark pattern on each scanline of the pattern. From what I can tell, you're not using the second background palette in the game play screen, so you could use that for an entirely new border palette that has the same color phase for each palette entry. But if you do decide to use it for something else, there are other options if you want to minimize or get rid of the diagonals. You could use horizontal stripes of the two colors you're using now, or you could use a dither that's 2 pixels wide and 1 pixel tall.

But yeah, switching between two different color phases every pixel is generally a bad idea.

[Jago74]

Is there anyway that I can purchase this game today? I have been looking everywhere for almost a year now and can't find it
Thank you for your time

[Dwedit]

Don't know about purchasing it, but you can always download the ROM and play it on a suitable flash cartridge or emulator.