Lizard

A place where you can keep others updated about your NES-related projects through screenshots, videos or information in general.

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koitsu
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Re: Lizard

Post by koitsu »

rainwarrior wrote:Oh right. Heh. Woah, I didn't even see Tepples' comment.
I should make this my signature here. This got me laughing hysterically, even though you were serious. :D
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DragonDePlatino
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Re: Lizard

Post by DragonDePlatino »

Well...after 3 days of playing, 27 coins, 3 endings and a humongous map I drew in MS Paint to show for it, it seems my Lizard adventure has come to a close. I know there might be some secrets I have left to found, but I'd like to hold off until the full release to 100% the game.

Ah...and I figured you wouldn't be able to remove some tiles because of engine limitations. Oh well...either way, here are 4 more graphical suggestions in case you ever find yourself hard-pressed for space:

1) It seems that you've dedicated an entire 16x16 tile to the seaweed in the underwater area? If you looped the first 8x16 seaweed tile, you could free up a little bit more space for your tileset...And there's also a 16x16 white dot to the left of that? Huh?

2) In the void zone, there are 4 tiles dedicated to creating 8x8 blocks and 8px thin platforms. If you wanted to, you could remove these tiles and redesign your maps, replacing the 8x8 blocks with 16x16 ones and the thin platforms with 16px-tall ones. Having thin platforms like these seem reaaally unecessary when the background of the area is already so bleak.

3) In addition, there is a 2x8 space to the right of that in the CHR-ROM that doesn't seem to be used at all. Huh?

4) Spoiler alert! Not really a space-related suggestion, but I was a bit confused when I saw the vulnerable sprite for the cheshire cat boss...I know the cat's head is supposed to be facing up, but the way you drew it makes it look really odd, like the cat's head transformed or something.

And with those parting tips, I wish you good luck in finishing your game! Everything in the demo was fantastic, and the entire game had a really great feel to it. Even though I had to retry both bosses at least a dozen times, they never really felt cheap or unfair. The game had an excellent difficulty throughout and you've really found that sweet spot for lengthening the gameplay via death without making it feel padded. In addition, the game just felt fun to play in that weird Fez sorta way. Like, even if I'm not making any progress and I'm going back through areas I've seen a million times, wandering around the game and taking in the scenery is just a joy.

But with that being said, the game does have one or two issues. Every time I reached one of the endings, the game would just stop. I would then reset, realize I have the knowledge lizard again and think "Oh no, I've lost all of my progress!" I would then go in the door, touch a save totem and overwrite my password. And it wasn't until many playthroughs later that I realized I could just continue by going left a screen and using the already filled-in password...overall, continuing felt really unintuitive...It might be best to just respawn the character in the password room if they already have a filled-in password.

In addition, there's a problem with the randomness-based enemies like the leaping cats or poisonous hermit crabs. Every time I encounter one of those enemies, a lot of my time is wasted just standing there and waiting for them to move. There really needs to be more on those screens to engage the player in the meantime, because waiting is not fun.

And to end on a light-hearted note...SKILLLLLZZZZZZZZZZ! :mrgreen:

Image

I can also send you my "completed" map, if you're interested. It might help tell you something is a little too-obscurely hidden to not be found after 3 days of searching.
Last edited by DragonDePlatino on Fri Oct 31, 2014 12:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Lizard

Post by rainwarrior »

:) Thanks for the comments. I do think the tone of this game is a little like Fez. I appreciate the comparison.

I'd love to see your map.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Lizard

Post by rainwarrior »

By the way, WhatULive4, if you're looking for an easy way to try all the rooms, if you put a breakpoint on the bankswitch to page 0 (the mapper is BxROM), I believe the X register contains the target room. You could change X to get other rooms (rooms in the demo go from $00 to $9C).

Alternatively you can force passwords by holding SELECT + A when you press UP to enter the password door. Here's two that will get you to inaccessible rooms:
JLMNN - river test
IJINK - disco
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koitsu
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Re: Lizard

Post by koitsu »

Just a random trivia question (hope nobody with OCD latches on to this): do those passwords have meaning (like does "IJINK" mean something special to you) -- and if so, what's the history behind those? If not, no biggie.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Lizard

Post by rainwarrior »

No, there are far too many states to make passwords by hand. I build them from GHIJKLMN because I couldn't think of any bad words that could be spelled with those letters.
tepples
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Re: Lizard

Post by tepples »

"MILKING"?

Here's the set I use that encodes 5 bits per character. Not having vowels or S avoids both near-homoglyph confusion (O vs. 0, S vs. 5, I vs. 1, etc.) and profanity (unless a parent can read l33t). The "sometimes Y" is there, but most of the words in that infamous The 7th Guest soup can puzzle ("Shy gypsy, slyly, spryly, tryst by my crypt") also have S. The biggest flaw I can see is B vs. 8.

Code: Select all

1 2 3 B C D F G
4 5 6 H J K L M
7 8 9 N P Q R T
* 0 # V W X Y Z
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tokumaru
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Re: Lizard

Post by tokumaru »

Having profanity in passwords is a really cool bonus, IMO! =)
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rainwarrior
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Re: Lizard

Post by rainwarrior »

I'm going to get in enough trouble when people find the lizard who smokes.
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DragonDePlatino
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Re: Lizard

Post by DragonDePlatino »

I'm gonna have to admit, when I saw the smoking lizard my first impression was "Ohh! Air puffs! If I go underwater I can shoot bubbles!!!"

Oh, how embarrassed I was when I worked my way to an underwater area and discovered this was not the case... :oops:
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OneCrudeDude
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Re: Lizard

Post by OneCrudeDude »

I noticed that this game is made with BNROM, which until recently, was only used by one game: Deadly Towers. Did you choose BNROM because of this distinction, or did you actually need what this board does? Or do you wish to gut every copy of Deadly Towers so that they could be turned into something better, a contrast from that one Shaq-Fu thing?
lidnariq
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Re: Lizard

Post by lidnariq »

BNROM is a very simple board, and (inadventantly) by choosing it, he more-or-less requires people to use new parts rather than reuse old boards.

edit: fixed link
Last edited by lidnariq on Fri Oct 31, 2014 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tepples
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Re: Lizard

Post by tepples »

Every A*ROM can be turned into BNROM by lifting the '161 pin that goes to CIRAM A10 and wiring the trace to PA10 or PA11 depending on the game's mirroring bit. So yes, you could build a small Action 53 compilation (which also uses BNROM if mapper 28 is not available) and have it work on a Jeopardy board.

lidnariq: Your link is broken because of Referer protection on NesCartDB.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Lizard

Post by rainwarrior »

I chose BNROM because:

1. I like 32k paging. It makes it very easy to organize the data by having the maximum page size.
2. The hardware is incredibly simple, just a single 4-bit latch.
3. 256k BNROM is widely supported, including implementations on PowerPak and Everdrive N8.

You could more easily put this game on an AxROM board than a BNROM board, since Deadly Towers was only 128k. Someone looking to make a Repro would be better off dismantling a Rare game, probably... but, as I said, the hardware is so simple, this is one of the easiest boards to build from scratch.

The main disadvantage is that DPCM sound isn't really feasible (unless you want to duplicate samples in every bank, or not have samples playing when banking). Cross-bank code jumps are a little more complicated than with other mappers, but the banking code only needs to be written once, so I don't consider this a significant issue. Since it's CHR-RAM, you can't do CHR banking animations, but you can do some limited CHR animation through vblank uploads. I don't think any AxROM boards had WRAM, so that might be tricky to add if you need it (I don't).
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NESHomebrew
Formerly WhatULive4
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Re: Lizard

Post by NESHomebrew »

rainwarrior wrote:By the way, WhatULive4, if you're looking for an easy way to try all the rooms, if you put a breakpoint on the bankswitch to page 0 (the mapper is BxROM), I believe the X register contains the target room. You could change X to get other rooms (rooms in the demo go from $00 to $9C).

Alternatively you can force passwords by holding SELECT + A when you press UP to enter the password door. Here's two that will get you to inaccessible rooms:
JLMNN - river test
IJINK - disco
Thanks!
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