Haunted Halloween 85

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darryl.revok
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by darryl.revok »

I think it was one of the most solid homebrew releases yet.

Failing to jump on slopes is the biggest complaint. It's not game breaking, but after I died to that I had to make sure I was at a stop before jumping on a slope again.

If I can say, the thing that frustrated me about the game's initial reception here was just that I felt there could be a bit more professional and personal courtesy to not post an overly critical review of a game that's already shipped right when it's released. Maybe I overestimated the affect that this board has on homebrew sales, I don't know. I did PM the person with whom I bickered and apologized for being a dick to them, because I was, but isn't there validity to wanting to see courtesy extended to other homebrew projects, especially when people have time and money invested in them?

I don't know. I got frustrated and I shouldn't have said anything.

I liked the game. It was a fun play with friends on Halloween. The movie theater scenes were my favorite part. I just hope the project's successful and more projects like this get to happen.
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dougeff
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by dougeff »

Maybe I overestimated the affect that this board has on homebrew sales
I'm always surprised that people who I know make NES homebrews (and go to other forums) seem to have no idea what's going on over here. Therefore, I think it probably had no impact on sales.
I just hope the project's successful and more projects like this get to happen.
More projects like this are going to happen.
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tepples
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by tepples »

On what other forums should one be announcing NES homebrew releases, both open source and cart?
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dougeff
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by dougeff »

Apparently, Reddit. ;)

I don't know, I live in a bubble. What other forums are there?
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Retrotainment Games
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by Retrotainment Games »

43110 wrote:Belated congratulations to the team on getting a NES game made from initial pitch to physical production in just a mere 7 months.
Thanks! It took some serious effort to bring it all together in that last few weeks leading up to release. Especially the bosses, cut scenes and some backgrounds that weren't working out. Again, Tepples deserves a lot of praise for his efforts and skills!
43110 wrote:When I got Haunted Halloween 85 back in November, I almost got the werewolf boss before running out of continues. Then other things occupied my time until now. Today I got through the whole game on normal difficulty, but I don't think I could of made it if I hadn't found that infinite 1up trick in the silo of level 4 ("Malaise Maize"). The remaining levels are a lot less frustrating when you've got 40 Serum Sodas. :)
Glad you figured this out. No one has brought this to my attention yet, it looks as if you're the first to make it public.
We kept this option in there because of the difficulty level evidenced in early play-testing. Rather than just do infinite continues (which just seemed too easy) we elected for the infinite serum soda option at the point of the game where you have to have already developed some skill and put in some time to have gotten there. Then, for those who realize it, you are rewarded with a way to guarantee beating the game. What we ultimately wanted was for people to see the entire game and hopefully want to play it again and be interested in a sequel..
43110 wrote:I must say the game has quite a bit of loose physics (which is actually expected for a beat 'em up game). Using a soft upward eject for the ground, like how SMB1 ejects horizontally through the walls, is an interesting choice. Makes slopes and landing on corners feel right. There was one moment where I did zipped upward though a solid ceiling in the descending part of the silo (probably won't save time in a speedrun).
The looseness was meant to give the game a more relaxed, fun feel rather than a Mega Man style where everything is super tight and mechanical feeling.

You've also discovered another feature of the game here. There are some key places in the game where exploiting this functionality can prove useful. Some speed runners may find it advantageous along with some extra Serum Soda seekers.
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Retrotainment Games
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by Retrotainment Games »

darryl.revok wrote:Failing to jump on slopes is the biggest complaint. It's not game breaking, but after I died to that I had to make sure I was at a stop before jumping on a slope again.
This has been brought to my attention several times, hopefully this is something we can work on or at least work with (i.e. not putting slopes right before pitfalls) as we move forward.

darryl.revok wrote: I just hope the project's successful and more projects like this get to happen.
So far all signs point to this being successful at least according to public feedback so far. It will take continued effort to reach its full potential but for our team it's well worth it doing since it's something that we love.
I hope others come here looking for programmers and more collaboration can happen that yields new games. The NES homebrew scene is definitely getting stronger with the release of games like Armed For Battle, The Incident, Swords and Runes, Lizard looks to be awesome, etc... Obviously this forum plays a pivotal role in the burgeoning scene!

dougeff wrote:I'm always surprised that people who I know make NES homebrews (and go to other forums) seem to have no idea what's going on over here. Therefore, I think it probably had no impact on sales.
I have posted on here, NintendoAge, DigitalPress and RetroCollect. So far each forum seems to have mostly unique users who are unaware of what the other forums are discussing. From what I can tell this is the most technical forum being an actual development forum by name and so it appears to have the least amount of carry over to other forums. As I stated a while ago, I'm new to all this forum stuff so I'm still learning but I'm trying to keep spreading the word on other forums one by one. I'll try Reddit next...
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by tepples »

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GradualGames
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by GradualGames »

Out of curiosity, is there a parallel codebase for the PC version or are you leveraging an emulator?
tepples
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by tepples »

I don't know. I did not create a parallel codebase, and if there is an emulator, I haven't been involved with it yet.
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tokumaru
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by tokumaru »

tepples wrote:I don't know. I did not create a parallel codebase, and if there is an emulator, I haven't been involved with it yet.
It's probably an emulator then, I doubt someone besides the original programmer would hand-convert the ASM code to something else. Personally, if I was going to release versions of an NES game on modern platforms, I'd go with emulation. It's not like you need a super accurate emulator anyway, since you're dealing with only one game and you can use emulation hacks if necessary.
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by Retrotainment Games »

The game is being built for PC in Unity from scratch by Two Coins Entertainment to match the NES version. We've had a lot of people telling us that they don't have an NES but want to play the game so hopefully this meets that need. Does this seem ridiculous? It's the only route I could think to take after talking with TCE.

Steam does not allow packaged software with your game so an emulator wasn't an option. I also don't know of any emulators that could be used freely. I do know that FCEUX is what I used while play testing (should that be a hyphenated word?) along with a Power Pack. I thought the FCEUX was fantastic but I don't know any of the legalities behind utilizing it beyond playing games.

So unless I'm missing something (and I don't doubt that I could be) there's no way to use an emulator on Steam and I can't see asking people to install one in order to play the game on their PC if it was sold to them outside of Steam. If there is a place where someone would know how to get around this I'm sure that place is here and I'd love to hear about it for future reference!

[quote][quote="tepples"]Vote for Haunted on Greenlight :D :beer:
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Retrotainment Games
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by Retrotainment Games »

Ahhh...ummm.... that Tepples quote didn't work as planned.

I guess it's beyond my skill set to quote a hyperlink properly.
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by Retrotainment Games »

:D :beer:

Blam!
tepples
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by tepples »

I don't know what rule it would break if the emulator is locked down to run one particular ROM. There have been plenty of games released with an embedded emulator; I'm pretty sure rereleases of the Sonic the Hedgehog games for Genesis on modern platforms work this way.

But in order to lock down an emulator like that, it can't be a copylefted emulator. And most popular existing emulators are copylefted: FCEUX, Nestopia, Nintendulator, and NESICIDE are all GPL. So the developers would have to commission an emulator. But Haunted doesn't use any tricky mapper or split-screen scroll effects apart from the title screen, which uses a sprite 0 split to use more than 256 unique tiles.
lidnariq
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Re: Haunted Halloween 85

Post by lidnariq »

Googling for "bsd licensed nes emulator" finds https://github.com/joeyloman/lamenes

No idea how accurate it is, but you can test if it's adequate.
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