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Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2016 4:05 pm
by dullahan
EDIT 6/3/2017

Created a new thread for tracking progress.

EDIT 2/15/2017 More bug fixes:

* Levels 2 and 3 should no longer contain visual artifacts and camera jitterriness.
* Fixed issue where dash counters would sometimes get out of sync with Deb's actual dash-ability.
nebs-n-debs-2-15-2017.nes
(40.02 KiB) Downloaded 988 times
EDIT: 2/3/2017 -2 Added newest build with a fix:

* No more mysteriously dying Debs! There was a bug where the Z65 enemy could clear Deb's sprites upon be destroyed.
nebs-n-debs-2-3-2017-2.nes
(40.02 KiB) Downloaded 886 times
EDIT: 2/3/2017 Added newest build with a couple fixes:

* Debs can no longer dash into and climb walls.
* Debs can no longer dash past the screen boundary and into the unknown.

I am currently working on a NROM platformer called Nebs & Debs. To help motivate me to get it done I am joining the competition with the goal of submitting a prequel using the same engine.

A sample animation of the protagonist Debs is attached.

Will post again soon.

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2016 8:57 pm
by darryl.revok
Looks cute. I like how his ears bounce and how his eyes bug out when he jumps. :)

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 12:36 am
by Jedi QuestMaster
Is that two people? Which one's Nebs?

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 1:06 am
by na_th_an
Animation looks awesome - plus I love platformers. Good luck!

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 4:28 am
by Lazycow
Doing a prequel for the compo is a good idea! Is this a squid-hat?

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:59 am
by dullahan
Debs is a humanoid. Nebs an Nebular Octopus.

Nebs was fleeing the fortress. Debs was charging the fortress. Debs turned the corner. Nebs turned the corner.

SMACK! WHAT!?! GERROFF! EWWWWW.....

Lucky for Debs, the fused octopus grants her the power to warp through walls and enemies; an ability she'll need to finish her quest to free the four the sages. Unlucky for Nebs, every freed sage moves them closer and closer to the creature he fears the most.

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 3:35 pm
by mikejmoffitt
Looks good. I would make the octopus bounce one frame out of phase with the body movement. When the player's body begins to move up is when the edges of the hat should show their dip. That way, the octopus's tentacles will appear to have inertia.

Looks more like a quadpus though!

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:17 pm
by rainwarrior
mikejmoffitt wrote:Looks more like a quadpus though!
This happened to the octopus in my game too; it seemed like in 2 dimensions it should only require 2^2 legs. ;)

Then again, Octodad only has four legs too. Maybe this is a video game thing...?

This sprite looks real nice, though, dullahan. Looking forward to whatever you come up with.

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 9:59 pm
by tokumaru
rainwarrior wrote:Then again, Octodad only has four legs too. Maybe this is a video game thing...?
It's not limited to video games... Octopus from Pocoyo also has only 4 legs.

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 11:29 am
by Jarhmander
And Octocat has... five?

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 1:47 pm
by Punch
Looking good. Incidentally I'm stuck in my project because I'm trying to program a tool to generate animation code easily... you seem to have that already figured out so props to you :) :beer:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 3:24 pm
by Alp
Punch wrote:Looking good. Incidentally I'm stuck in my project because I'm trying to program a tool to generate animation code easily... you seem to have that already figured out so props to you :) :beer:
Why not just hand-code them? Once you have the metasprites defined (there's a handful of tools for that) animating them, using a timer and a defined frame count is trivial.

For example, my Dragon Quest clone uses this format:

Code: Select all

((object_direction * 2), + object_frame)
After this, the result is used to read from an offset table, and the sprite routine handles the rest.

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 4:00 pm
by Punch
For the moment I have an Object table that points to an Animation table that points to several Metasprite table entries. Maybe I should simplify this a little bit but it's the most flexible system I could think of. I need at least to have an object table since I have a linked list to spawn/destroy objects, each represented by a byte.

Anyway this isn't about my game, sorry for doing a light derail of your thread. :lol:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:24 am
by mikejmoffitt
If you'd like, I would not mind sharing my metasprite animation format, which allows for variable frame lengths and arbitrary loop points.

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2016 1:19 pm
by Punch
mikejmoffitt wrote:If you'd like, I would not mind sharing my metasprite animation format, which allows for variable frame lengths and arbitrary loop points.
I don't want to cheat on this and implement everything by myself but yours could be a good reference so I don't do a dead-end design that's going to be completely replaced once I find out it's not viable. So yeah, you can show me your format, thanks a lot.