Thanks for the feedback so far everyone!
OneCrudeDude wrote:
This looks pretty accurate, though I'd say that the caterpillar might pose an issue. It looks like it has four segmets, each of which being a 16*16 block. The Player character is also 16 pixels wide. The NES can display up to 8 sprites in a row without flicker, and sprite in this case means a graphical object that's either 8*8 or 8*16 in size. What you might think of as a sprite, in this case the entire character, is referred to as a meta sprite, which is a group of sprites. If the player and the caterpillar were on the same level, there would be flicker, but seeing that they're on different levels, there's little chance for flicker to be truly noticeable.
Also, it's been widely regarded as a good idea to design and flesh out your game in a higher level language while adhering to the NES limitations, and then converting your completed game for use on the NES. Whether you will port it or someone else is entirely on the wall.
Good to know about the way sprites work; do NES games use one or both? The caterpillar was meant to walk in segments, but that could be too complex.

This alone would have 16 8x8s or 8 8x16s, which would go up more to give the lower half of the sprites their second walking frame. Some fat would seriously have to be trimmed it seems.
Some of the engine has already been made, but it's in alpha stages.

We recently got feedback on it so far, and the general conclusion is that the controls are too loose, even looser than Super Mario World, so the controls are being tightened. I don't know if the gif shows it enough, but sprites coming on screen also have a deliberate delay before appearing. The gif also shows a more recent HUD, which dials back on the colors used.
Alp wrote:
Woah! This tile-work is gorgeous, guy!

Very reminiscent of Castlevania! Though, the level layouts, and presence of multiple characters, seem to suggest a Mario 2 style progression?
Aside from the mentioned hud colour issues, the only problem I could potentially see with this, is that the rope tiles seem to use the same colours as the wall high-lights, with an extra grey colour. Causing an entire palette to be used for practically the same colours.
Perhaps you could find a way to merge the rope index, and the wall index and save those colours for something else? (Assuming you would want to stick to the 4-BG palette per area limit.)
Nit-picks aside, great work so far!

Right now, the game is set to have most sprites at a greyscale, and then converts the greyscale to a set palette. Here's what the rope would look like with the player palette (but then the rope changes color when playing as a different character).
rainwarrior wrote:
Ah, I forgot to say that it looks pretty good!
Another tip: test things with an NTSC filter. Some patterns, especially when dithering, will manifest poorly on the NES' NTSC signal. A pixel isn't really a pixel anymore when you're dealing with the real output of the NES.
There is a program to try this available here:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11947Now this is a tool that will come in handy! Thanks for the recommendation. Here's some quick tests using the screens posted before:

