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Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:10 am
by Broke Studio
And here's more on the first boss !

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Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 5:49 pm
by Punch
Wow, your game is looking great! Looks like it's fun, too. :beer:

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2017 11:50 am
by Broke Studio
And here's the first power-up in action !
You can now freeze enemies by pressing UP+B after picking up an ice cream.

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Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 10:16 am
by Broke Studio
Finally, the second power-up will help you to kill tougher enemies by pressing UP+B, after picking up a red pepper !

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Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 7:59 pm
by zzo38
What does 376 designate?

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 8:15 pm
by JRoatch
zzo38 wrote:What does 376 designate?
The fceux widget telling how many frames the controller was not polled since power-on.

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:56 am
by Broke Studio
Hey folks ! Will you be able to defeat Cactus Clay, the first boss of the game ?

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Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 2:52 am
by rainwarrior
That looks really nice.

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 2:07 am
by Broke Studio
Hi everyone,

the NESdev Compo deadline is tomorrow and I just sent my entry today.
I attached the final ROM in the first post (Twin-Dragons-20170131-0.074.nes).
I really had a blast coding it and I hope you guys will enjoy this short game.
Please give me your feedback as I'm planning to expand the game with more levels / features and release a cartridge for it later.

Have fun !

Antoine

Code: Select all


Description:    The infamous Cater Killar has kidnapped one of the twin dragons. Pick up your favorite
                character and go through a journey to help your twin, crushing the various dangers in
                different worlds.

Controls:       D-pad: Movement
                Select: Move between options in menus
                Start: Starts the game, pauses while in game.
                B: Shoot
                A: Jump
                UP+B : Shoot using power up (iceball when picking up icecream / mega-fireball when picking up red pepper)
                DOWN+A : Lets you go down from platforms / moving platforms

                Collect green peppers for extra lives

Credits:        Antoine GOHIN   - code (https://twitter.com/pixels_kitchen)
                JSR             - famitracker music engine (http://www.famitracker.com)
                Shiru           - SFX engine (shiru.untergrund.net)
                Matt PLB        - music and SFX (http://www.please-lose-battle.com)
                Surt            - art (http://opengameart.org/content/twin-dragons)
                MadMarcel       - additional art (dragon's jump pose - http://gamejolt.com/@madmarcel)
                MLB             - additional art (flame effect - http://mleborgne8.wixsite.com/portfolio)
                Aurélien 'Auré' Buisson - tests
                Guillaume 'Boc' Buisson - tests
                Loodish                 - tests

Other:          The game is fully PAL/NTSC/DENDY compatible.
                If the game is too hard for you, a well known easter egg may help ...

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 2:15 am
by rainwarrior
I'm a little confused about what to do at this wall. Is there a manual or instructions that might explain?
Twin-Dragons-20170130-0.072-0.png
Twin-Dragons-20170130-0.072-0.png (3.31 KiB) Viewed 12924 times

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 2:19 am
by Broke Studio
Sorry I forgot some information ...

Code: Select all

Controls:       D-pad: Movement
                Select: Move between options in menus
                Start: Starts the game, pauses while in game.
                B: Shoot
                A: Jump
                UP+B : Shoot using power up (iceball when picking up icecream / mega-fireball when picking up red pepper)
                DOWN+A : Lets you go down from platforms / moving platforms

                Collect green peppers for extra lives

Other:          The game is fully PAL/NTSC/DENDY compatible.
                If the game is too hard for you, a well known easter egg may help ...

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 4:19 am
by FrankenGraphics
This is highly polished!

A few notes to consider:
The wall rainwarrior had trouble with is a "sharp" tutorial element. It is there to teach you that you can drop through certain floor types, which comes in handy later on. A sharp tutorial is however having the characteristic that in order to pass, you must succeed. I think it is generally good practice to provide the player with a "soft" tutorial element before a sharp one. Think of how SMB1 world 1-1 teaches the player to jump over obstacles in a safe environment, then jump over deadly pits. A soft tutorial in this case could be something like this (excuse the sloppy ms paint work):
softtutorial.png
softtutorial.png (3.04 KiB) Viewed 12921 times
Notice that nothing else is there, just the few collectables, so you won't misdirect focus towards a wall or other obstructing structure of interest. Enemies or hills or other decor would be fine, of course. This helps ease the reliance on manuals, readmes, etc, so the game can be played the first time without the risk of interruption or necessity of preparation.

EDIT: Alternatively or additionally, you could place a jalapeno at the bottom of rainwarriors' screen to direct attention of the player away from walking to the right.

There's another place which could benefit from a softening, too. In the (spoiler) underground passage where you find your first 1up, it is hard to calculate how the low ceiling affects the jump the first time(s). The first pit could be narrower, or there could be some jumping excercise prior to that, or something.

The castle music was a good fit for the scenes and pretty cool sounding! The graphics are about the cutest thing in a while.
I think everything in the game felt very good, from jumping mechanics to enemy placement to progression of difficulty to change of scenes. Except for the moving platforms. It's always a personal grief when moving platforms don't ease in and out of their turning points in platformer games. Somewhere between SMB1 and a sharp turn could be just right, maybe?

The castle could *maybe* benefit from the first narrow platform jump to be one 16x16 tile wider, also to ease in the difficulty of the narrower ones.

Otherwise, this feels very well produced. Congratulations!

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 4:48 am
by rainwarrior
FrankenGraphics wrote:The wall rainwarrior had trouble with is a "sharp" tutorial element. It is there to teach you that you can drop through certain floor types, which comes in handy later on.
It doesn't really come up after this, though. There's one "big heart" that you need it to get (slightly past this point), but other than that, for the rest of the game it doesn't seem to be important?


I notice very often a single line of pixels disappears from sprites, and it seems that it's because when the head bobs down you now overlap by one pixel, putting 4 sprites on a scanline. I realize it conserves CHR, but since so much stuff happens on the plane of action with the dragon, it might be worth dedicating a few tiles to the head-down sprite?

Hmm, seems like the problem is compounded by the fireball sprite also overlapping the lower half by one pixel too, guess that'd be harder to deal with.

Actually, if you moved the "tail" part of the lower half of the sprite as high as it can go within the CHR tile (and then lower its sprite tile position) you could move one tile out of this critical line of overlap, at least?


Anyhow, very nice game. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:03 am
by FrankenGraphics
I'd say that depends on what boss fight strategy you develop. It also sees some use in the castle.

On sprite priority, i wonder whether the status bar objects should have the current priority (high) - this is mainly a cosmetic problem in one specific area in the castle.

Re: Progress Thread - Twin Dragons

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:08 am
by rainwarrior
If it is intended to be a tutorial, I was thinking if there was just a little sign with a down arrow (and maybe an A), I would think of it as a tutorial; without something to explain it, it's more of just a test to see if you already know what to do.

...or can figure it out (but that's not a very fun puzzle)-- I mean, down+jump is a common control, I just didn't think of it this time. I figured out up+fire without help... though it could probably benefit from a similar tutorial. Maybe a sign with an up arrow+B next to a red pepper and a tough enemy blocking your path?


I liked the boss name "Cactus Clay", though I dunno how many people remember the name Cassius Clay these days.