Witch n' Wiz - Puzzle Platformer

[lidnariq]

No bus conflicts.

Might be better to leave the prevention table present if you're targeting something that's just UNROM, though, and not using any other features.

[Goose2k]

First off, here's a little preview of the new Title Screen for the game (by Zolionline).

Second, thanks to some amazing help from norill, the game has been ported to Mapper 28! It's still using 128 PRG, but should be able to easily trim down to 64kb (there is lots of padding right now).

[Goose2k]

Progress is still coming along.

I've updated the game description in the original post to properly reflect the current technical details of the game:

Development Details:

• Targets Mapper 28 (Action 53) directly, rather than one of the supported discrete mappers.
• 64KB PRG-ROM + 32 KB CHR-ROM (CHR bank swapping for background animation, currently no plans to write CHR-RAM at runtime).

...
The full game is currently targeting Mapper 1 (MMC1) with 256KB of Memory (16 x 8KB PRG-ROM + 16 x 8KB CHR-ROM), so this compo build is a bit of a stripped down version of that long term target.

I have done an initial rough pass at getting all memory into the 64KB of PRG-ROM, and everything is working, with lots of room to spare actually.

The title screen I teased in the previous post is now in game along with credits.

nes2_boot_flow.gif (82.78 KiB) Viewed 541 times

(or watch the whole thing running on real hardware: video)


My current todo list to get this to a shippable state (I hope to do more beyond this) is:

• Polish "level complete" sequence.
• Ending (cutscene or something).
• Music and Sound.
• Remove SRAM usage (and rework rewind system to not depend on it, as well as come up with a design for the game if there is no "best time" to work towards.

[lidnariq]

current technical details of the game:
[...]
64KB PRG-ROM + 32 KB CHR-ROM

Just to be paranoid, because this isn't the fun kind of thing to find out later: you're eventually planning on compressing the CHR data so that you only use 64KB total, right?

[Goose2k]

current technical details of the game:
[...]
64KB PRG-ROM + 32 KB CHR-ROM

Just to be paranoid, because this isn't the fun kind of thing to find out later: you're eventually planning on compressing the CHR data so that you only use 64KB total, right?

No. From what I have read, that isn't needed, but maybe I misunderstood.

From tepples via discord:

norill01/09/2021
@PinoBatch question regarding compo, does the menu program handle decompressing and uploading CHR into RAM?

PinoBatch01/09/2021
Yes, if your game has CHR ROM.

mhughson01/09/2021
Oh, so the games don't need to be made using CHR RAM?

PinoBatch01/09/2021
Thwaite was in volume 1 and was NROM-128.
Quite a few of volume 1 and 2 were NROM. Official support for CNROM landed in volume 3.

Am I misunderstanding what this means?

[lidnariq]

I believe you have a budget of 64KB total (after any CHR compression). Obviously, consult with someone who's actually in charge instead of going on my memory.

[Goose2k]

I believe you have a budget of 64KB total (after any CHR compression). Obviously, consult with someone who's actually in charge instead of going on my memory.

Confirmed that you are correct. Thanks for catching that!

PinoBatchToday at 3:45 PM
If your PRG ROM plus CHR ROM exceed 64 KiB, then you need to do your own compression on the CHR data to fit it in PRG ROM.