nesdev.com

Thanks for the input. I will test some more palette options.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

I think this is what I'm going to stick with...

13 blue for levels 1,2,4
03 blue for levels 3,5



New demo will come soon.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

I was thinking about the Ninja to be black at all times. However, the shade would be brown during the day and blue during the night. I don't want to use any outlines for the Ninja during the dark, although that might help to make the player know where they are, but still, it looks too much MSPaintish when outlined.

Here's the final demo of levels 1-3.

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/2ipv ... 2-DEMO.nes

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

They're very good! The game has a fair challenge and will never disappoint the player. I don't have to watch out if I'm gonna run into an enemy, but I simply press down and B and slide through them. I can attack in air, below, upwards. It's so much fun. It's not like one hit you die, but here the game gives the player a chance. I like this feature to keep weapons too, but I played well without it. Couldn't beat the 3rd boss, though. Been on my last life and game over. Short, but sweet.

What does the difficulty selection change?

This is probably too late to be any good for feedback, but I feel that the game is balanced well enough that you could hae done with much fewer hitpoints for the ninja. As it is, I feel like I can plow through large portions of the game without caring much if I get hit.

Easy - injured by half.
Normal - injured regular, 6 hearts
Hard - Injured regular, 5 hearts 4 hearts

And the bosses HP and behavior increases with difficulty.

Level 4 and 5 bosses are a bit harder, not available in the demo. It's usually the level 4 boss that I struggle with, especially in hard mode.

Oh, and you start with fewer lives in harder modes.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

The "traditional ninja garb" of all-black suit is actually traditional Japanese stagehand garb. Kuroko (black) is the usual, but white (yukigo) and blue (namigo) variants* exist as well.

Of course, gameplay is not suited for when your character blends perfectly into the background, so…

*In case you wondered why Joe Musashi wearing all white, and Ryu Hayabusa in all blue…a likely explanation, though I'm not finding anything English actually calling this out, and my Japanese is rusty enough that I don't want to go looking too far.

Man, I haven't played this since it was a Batman-expy.

Since I can run through 'hard' difficulty in my game with no problem...I decided to make all difficulties harder (heart power-ups less frequent, 100 coins for a life now)...and I added a 4th difficulty 'Crazy'. That's 2 hits and you're dead, no heart power-ups. And, I'm making a few of the enemies a little more aggressive.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

Adding a new super-difficulty because you can breeze your hardest? Cool!
Increasing the minimum because you can breeze through it? Not so cool. Remember, you're literally the most-knowledgeable player of your game who exists. This is the sort of thinking that produces crazy-hard inaccessible ROM-hacks.

This is why you have testers. I agree that it's very difficult to actually perceive the difficulty of your own creations, and you need input on that stuff.
But as I already addressed above, from what I played of the demo, even normal difficulty allows you to pretty much run through everything tanking damage and picking up health powerups without thinking much about the enemies. I think it's completely fair to increase the lowest difficulties.
You should also always expect there's someone out there better at your game than yourself.

I managed to beat 'Crazy' Hard. It was grueling. Several Tries. But, it can be done.

I'm not worried about 'Easy' being too hard. In the options menu, you can cheat and get 10 lives, and you can skip to any level. A lot of the increased difficulty is in the behavior of the enemies, which are more aggressive. For consistency, all the difficulties will have the same enemy behaviors.

And I have a few people testing the game for me right now. They will let me know if 'Medium' is too hard.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

Soundtrack will be available to listen within the next week, ill update this post.

Soundtrack now avaliable https://youtu.be/WkinjUsG2fU

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NOPE.

This looked weird to me today, while doing final testing...

Although, he is exactly 32 pixels in length in both, the aspect ratio of the TV, he looks super stretched when sliding...about 25% longer. I think I will have to adjust.

According to my math, I should have made him 26 pixels long sliding (26 x 1.25 = 32) to compensate. But, it would probably look just as weird in an emulator.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

I think the size is less of an issue than the animation itself.

Firstly, the ratio of players playing on a CRT compared to say, an AVS on an HDTV is decreasing, especially when you consider the type of collector with the excess income to purchase a homebrew. Secondly, the squash and stretch principles of animation could be used to justify the difference in both height and width for that frame.

However, the stance itself is too stiff and static. Take Megaman's slide, for instance, which has a dramatic gesture to the position which is also seen in baseball slides.

V. Ninja's sliding position is like a mannequin, laid like a board on its back, looking straight up into space lifelessly and casually holding its sword, again-straight like a board, as if it were a toy stuck in the hand of an action figure.

It would be greatly improved if he were looking where he's going, in a dynamic stance, holding his blade in a position that shows intention (to telegraph to the player the offensive purpose of the slide because at the moment it looks like it's accidentally killing enemies due to the way the sword is held).

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