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A little late to the party, but last week I finally started my compo entry!



Filthy Kitchen is a side-scrolling platformer about killing flies in your kitchen, while collecting unspoiled food that has been left out. The main mechanic revolves around the fly swatter projectile, which gets thrown forward, then returns back to the player (inspired by Ninja Gaiden's shuriken boomerang). If you can dodge the fly swatter (and enemies and obstacles) you can use its orbital path to kill multiple enemies and rack up combos.

Having already made a top-down shooter, and 4-way scrolling puzzler, I wanted to finally take a stab at an action / platformer. This is also the first time I'm using 8x16 sprites and sprite zero for the HUD.

So far I've got the scrolling engine working with off-screen nametable / attribute updates and collision detection. Up next is the fly swatter weapon and enemies.

Here's a spritesheet!

Looks good, I like the main character. His hair reminds me of Kid Niki.

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

Cool. Interesting perspective for the platforms; will the player be able to move along a z-axis?

Kid Niki was definitely on my mind while I was drawing him!



Nope, 2D only. It's my half attempt to imitate Ninja Gaiden's pseudo 2.5D looking levels. I've gotten some feedback that it can look confusing, so I'm attempting to reduce that issue while still keeping it stylized.

Update time!

Current build has a working HUD (using sprite 0), flies that spawn every so often, collision detection between flies and the swatter, and ducking. ROM is attached.

Next up:
Scoring / Combos
Player damage
Fly movement

Known problems:
The sink should damage the player (it's so dirty), but instead they fall through it
End of the level has no floor, the plan is to make it a vertical wall

Very nice! The physics/motion of the flyswatter seemed right on.

For some reason I really enjoyed running off the world and watching the infinite acceleration kick in....

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My games: http://www.bitethechili.com

I really like the swatter mechanic

Good job!

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tempus edax rerum

Thanks very much!



It's kinda mesmerising, isn't it? It has made me put off implementing vertical walls.

New build!

Features include:
Scoring & combos, points per fly doubles up to 25,600 as long as a combo is maintained.
Full player animation, though I wouldn't call it finalized just yet.
Flies move around, mostly randomly.
Vertical wall collision.

Next steps:
Take damage from colliding with flies.
Change random, continuous fly spawning into something more reasonable.
Other obstacles to get hurt by.
Food pick-ups for bonus points.

What's the goal? To collect all the spoiled food, and not get killed? Or, just high score (by killing flies, collecting things?)

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

Great question! Still just working on the engine, but I think the final version will have two modes. One, survival, where you play as long as you can in one environment and try to get a high score. And another, campaign, where you play through eight levels (kitchens), and complete each level by getting the unspoiled food at the end, like a typical platformer. My level engine is pretty flexible, imports them through png, and is currently using less than 16k; so as long as the compression works ok, it should be able to support 8 levels within the 64k limit.

New rom!

Recent additions:
Damage from flies, utensils, dirty sink
Health meter, and death when it runs out
Food pick-ups to gain health and points
Tweaked the palette

I think the game engine is mostly finished by this point, though I'll likely add better fly AI and slick floors at some point. Next I plan on making levels that are actually interesting, intro screens, menus, game over, and art improvements.

Good work!

The game is already very playable and it reminds me our recents fights with flies in our own office kitchen

Submitted!



Attached below is the mapper 28 ROM, plus an MMC3 build for compatibility's sake.

Played this to judge it, really fun.

Noticed two bugs: select does weird things to the colors, and on the second level I fell through the broom 6 times, only on the 7th try it managed to pick it up.