Micro Mages

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miau
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Micro Mages

Post by miau »

The ROM and PC versions have been released at https://morphcatgames.itch.io/micromages
UPDATE: Cartridges are available again at https://www.brokestudio.fr/en/front-page-en/

Hey, y'all!

It's been a while. I teamed up with an artist and we've been working on a new game for the past 3-ish years.

Well, it's finished and we are now raising funds for cartridge production via Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mo ... or-the-nes

Features:
- vertically scrolling platformer
- wall jumps!
- 1-4 players, cooperate or compete for score
- boss battles
- secrets/replay value
- carefully optimized for NROM (32KB code, 8KB graphics)
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Last edited by miau on Tue Sep 10, 2019 7:30 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Sumez
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by Sumez »

This looks great! Hoping your Kickstarter succeeds. I think you are asking for very little. :)

I assume cartridges are shipped from Germany (or somewhere in EU at least), right?
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miau
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by miau »

Thank you, Sumez!

Yes, we are lucky. Europe seems to be great for print and the artist has a lot of knowledge in that area, which allows us to offer a very reasonably priced CIB.

Indeed, all rewards are going to be shipped from Germany.
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Sumez
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by Sumez »

I absolutely love your vide on storage management! I especially found it interesting how you use shifted symetric designs for your maps. It feels like a pretty severe limitation "just" to save 50%, but I bet it had an interesting effect on how stages are perceived as well.
The first part about sprite design is really useful if I ever want to introduce a pixel artist to NES graphics, though.
The only "problem" is that I think you're very fast at glancing over what's so unique about an NROM cartridge, and why it's cool that this game is going for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM

Shared the Kickstarter with a bunch of guys and I think it got you at least a few more backers. :P I think you'll have no trouble meeting the goal.
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Banshaku
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by Banshaku »

Long time no see!

It's great to see something new after all this time. And there are bats too ;)

Hope it succeed, looks good!
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rainwarrior
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by rainwarrior »

It's finally here! :) Best of luck with the campaign!
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tokumaru
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by tokumaru »

This looks AWESOME, specially considering the limitations of NROM! I don't know how you managed to fit so many *good* graphics on such a small space! Congratulations!
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koitsu
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by koitsu »

This is awesome -- and a wonderful example of good and clever engineering. "Every bit counts". Be proud! :-)
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tokumaru
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by tokumaru »

I feel like this video is meant for the general public, seeing as most of us developers already know about these tricks. The only real revelation in the video was the technique used to break the symmetry of the background while still using half the bytes to represent each screen. That was pretty cool. I'm still very impressed that this game fits in 40KB... knowing that it uses only 512 tiles and still looks this good and animates this well is the most amazing part.
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Banshaku
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by Banshaku »

oh, you already reached your goal! Congratulation ;)
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tokumaru
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by tokumaru »

The symmetrical background thing made me think of the Atari 2600, where the playfield is always symmetrical unless you modify the playfield pattern mid-scanline (which is very heavy on CPU and memory!), but you can still create more interesting backgrounds by changing the symmetry mode between repeated and reflected on different sections of the screen, and also using the ball object to draw extra walls. It's not the exact same thing that Micro Mages does, but the end result is similar, an environment that doesn't look or feel boring, but conserves hardware resources.
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thefox
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by thefox »

Seriously impressive!

What software did you use to make that tech video?
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Could be something else, but all those video animations can be done with adobe afterEffects, which is pretty much the industry standard for video animation and infographics.

--

Congrats on the successful campaign!! The game looks even greater than i dared hope. :)
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Banshaku
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by Banshaku »

Is there a demo? Would love to see it in action.
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miau
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Re: Micro Mages (on Kickstarter)

Post by miau »

Thanks for all your feedback and sorry for the late response. We've been overwhelmed by the response the Kickstarter has been getting the last couple of days.
Sumez wrote:I absolutely love your vide on storage management! I especially found it interesting how you use shifted symetric designs for your maps. It feels like a pretty severe limitation "just" to save 50%, but I bet it had an interesting effect on how stages are perceived as well.
The first part about sprite design is really useful if I ever want to introduce a pixel artist to NES graphics, though.
The only "problem" is that I think you're very fast at glancing over what's so unique about an NROM cartridge, and why it's cool that this game is going for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM

Shared the Kickstarter with a bunch of guys and I think it got you at least a few more backers. :P I think you'll have no trouble meeting the goal.
The funny thing about the mirroring limitation is that we felt it gave the levels a much stronger identity and we could even improve level design in many locations despite it, mainly because of redesigning/going over all levels a second and third time.

We cited Super Mario Bros. as an example for NROM, which still seems to be regarded as the holy grail of game development achievements by many. If that does not sell the coolness factor of NROM, then I don't know what does. :-)

Thanks for your support!
thefox wrote:Seriously impressive!

What software did you use to make that tech video?
Nicolas, the artist, used After Effects. Took him many months and he completely wrecked his PC in the process. :-)

Makes me wonder if something like AviSynth/VapourSynth could be used to create videos like this programmatically, at a much faster pace and without losing your sanity. After you spent half of your life writing a code base for it, that is.
Banshaku wrote:Is there a demo? Would love to see it in action.
Sorry, no demo. We think the game gets really fun once you familiarized yourself with the controls. From world 2 onward or so. We assume people who paid money are more likely to give the game a thorough play.

Also, we did not want to spoil the fun of getting a new game CIB, unboxing and playing it for the first time. Although that would be up to the individual person, of course.
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