Project: Knil

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never-obsolete
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Project: Knil

Post by never-obsolete »

I started working on this again after taking about 6 months off. It's a Legend of Zelda type game, as you can probably tell.

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I've got some scrolling issues to fix, otherwise I would have done a video. The game currently targets FME-7, but could probably work on an MMC3. Palette updates after the status bar (my graphics/palettes do a poor job of showing this) and the textboxes necessitate the use of a mapper with an IRQ.

The core of the engine is done. What's left is mostly just polishing things like collision, music/sfx driver, and whatever needs to be added for scripting specific events. The actual content of the game is sitting around 10%. Now I have to sit down and design a game. :D
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Bregalad
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by Bregalad »

Cool !
Since the game I'm making is also a Zelda style game, this makes us officially in competition :D

Although my game will probably still be very different from yours, as I only use a very simple mapper, no IRQs or whatever. It will also have fewer RPG elements than Zelda (in a good way of course - i.e. you wont be completely lost when you start your game).
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GradualGames
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by GradualGames »

Cool! This is exciting! Thanks for making a post about it. It's about time some Zelda derivative homebrews start coming out. I look forward to seeing this progress. *edit* The little blue guy reminds me of a blue strongbad.

*edit* Textboxes are an interesting topic. In my project, I use a bit of sleight of hand. I align the scrolling to an 8x8 pixel boundary, then draw the textbox. Sprites also get aligned to 8 pixel boundaries so that they appear to be clipped by the textbox. If you're careful, the farthest any sprite will have to move to become aligned to your text box is 4 pixels---not very noticeable. Crystalis allowed ugly gaps to show against their sprites for textboxes. So, while still not perfect, it's a good compromise. It is a nice way to display a textbox without any raster effects.
Last edited by GradualGames on Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Bregalad
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by Bregalad »

It's about time some Zelda derivative homebrews start coming out.
Technically my project Dragon Skill started in 2005, and most of the game engine was completed in 2007. Oh yeah.

The hard part is programming enemies and bosses. Also 2007 is the year I entered at university... no wonder why my project advanced so little since then :(

I hope I'll be able to create/port a 6502 C compiler* as a master project, that way when I'll be finished with my studies I could code NES games as fast as lightning and spam the world with cool games of all sorts...

However a 6502 C compiler is neither innovative or exciting in a research viewpoint, and is more a matter of computer science than electrical engineering, so I don't know if such a thing will be possible.

[*] Yes, I already know CC65, and I have nothing against it except the efficiency of the resulting code is simply terrible.
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GradualGames
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by GradualGames »

Bregalad wrote:
It's about time some Zelda derivative homebrews start coming out.
Technically my project Dragon Skill started in 2005, and most of the game engine was completed in 2007. Oh yeah.

The hard part is programming enemies and bosses. Also 2007 is the year I entered at university... no wonder why my project advanced so little since then :(
I'd love to see your game completed. Speaking for myself, I wouldn't feel competitive with anyone even if they were making something similar. Every game will be unique and have something worthwhile I think.

Also, I think there is perhaps a natural time of life when people start to get this urgent need to finish old dreams. My own games were things I tried and failed to complete when I was a teenager/early 20's, it is probably a matter of time before you go through the same "resolution." :)
80sFREAK
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by 80sFREAK »

Just curious, why FME-7?
3gengames
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by 3gengames »

Looks good, outside of the horrid 1 pixel font. :) Can't wait to see some video on it!
LocalH
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by LocalH »

3gengames wrote:Looks good, outside of the horrid 1 pixel font. :) Can't wait to see some video on it!
It's the exact font from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. "Horrid" is relative, as I like the font myself.
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tokumaru
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by tokumaru »

LocalH wrote:"Horrid" is relative, as I like the font myself.
It might not be ugly (but like you said, this is subjective) but it is hard to read, specially if you consider composite video artifacts.
tepples
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by tepples »

That's not my experience. White on a dark background and black on a light background are perfectly readable even with chroma artifacts.

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zzo38
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by zzo38 »

Would you intend to have optional Sunsoft 5B audio supported?
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
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Hamtaro126
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by Hamtaro126 »

The project looks great, I think the name Knil came from one of many Youtube playthroughs from the english fan translation of ''For the Frog the Bell Tolls'' which came before ''Link's Awakening'', which referenced the game, so the player wanted to name the player backwards...
AKA SmilyMZX/AtariHacker.
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never-obsolete
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by never-obsolete »

Bregalad wrote:Cool !
Since the game I'm making is also a Zelda style game, this makes us officially in competition :D
Maybe not competition per se, but seeing projects from others always motivates me to work on my own.
80sFREAK wrote:Just curious, why FME-7?
I like the 8x1K CHR paging it offers over the MMC3. Actually, I just don't much care for the MMC3. The scanline counter left a bad taste in my mouth years ago.
zzo38 wrote:Would you intend to have optional Sunsoft 5B audio supported?
I'll have support for the extra channels in the audio driver, but I probably won't use them myself. I have a hard enough time composing something that sounds good with just the stock hardware.


Thanks for all the comments, I'll keep you updated as the project progresses.
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Bregalad
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by Bregalad »

When I meant competition I mean it in a good way of course. You know, competition is not always bad, of course too much competition can leads to terrible things, but a little competition is nice to keep motivated and work harder, which is what I was talking about.

About the font I think it's ok even if it's definitely not my favourite ever.
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never-obsolete
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Re: Project: Knil

Post by never-obsolete »

Just a quick update on this:

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The game is coming along nicely. Most of the work I've been doing is on the overworld and fleshing out the weapons and upgrades. The overworld is actually quite large, I may need to scale it back.

Now, on to my question. The game allows for sequence breaking. If you get the fire weapon (a lighter for now) and head into the mountains, you can end up in the situation like this:

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Normally, you have two ways out of this. If you have the jump upgrade, you can jump the gap if its less then ~18 pixels. There is also an ice weapon (unnamed) that can refreeze the water. The game allows for saving at any time, but you will be sent to a "restart" point when you load up the file again (like LoZ:ALttP). This will prevent you from losing progress if you get stuck. The inventory screen also has a RESET option.

Personally, I don't like the idea of players getting "stuck" and forced to reset the game. It reminds me of those Mario hacks that force you to die if you go the wrong way. It seems like bad design. Am I being overly critical? Thoughts?
. That's just like, your opinion, man .
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