Thank you all for feedback. I have a few things to which I can reply.
About emulation:
Denine wrote:Is it somehow emulated or something? If you cant say, its fine.
nesrocks wrote:I am deeply interested in seeing what you did here! So it's emulated? You have a "layer" running on top on an unrestricted screen simulation? Seems really cool.
I probably shouldn't write about it now, but maybe you can compare it somewhat to M2's ShotTriggers series?
About graphics:
Fisher wrote:That's awesome!
Is it me or there are still a little bit of details missing, like the fishes when Yumetaro (is that his name?) is crossing the underwater pipe?
Yes - the pipe scene is definitely the hastiest of them all. There was no more time for the fish!
FrankenGraphics wrote:This is a personal record in being a nitpicky pain, but i feel as though the rear cloud layer on level 1 has lost a bit of its definition by being just big bubbly forms. Low res pixels can be pretty abstract and leave room for interpretation, but i read the original clouds as a bit more defined in spots (allthough subtly so - the extra definition is placed with care), even for that darker shade. It's just a random theory but i think people are going to be the most comparative in the first couple of scenes, and then going to relax more and more.
FrankenGraphics wrote:Another thing about the clouds - i couldn't put my finger on it yesterday, but in addition to the remark on the cloud outline... The way i read the original, some of the more minute white fields in those clouds were not intended as being as much "in front of" the darker cloud formations, rather, they were either highlights on the same distance plane, or else distant enough to be somewhere in-between. Having them on the front parallax layer makes the perspectve a bit confused, at least to me.
Maybe, you could experiment with keeping these either at the same scrolling speed as the darker clouds or somewhere in-between.
The clouds were pretty tossed together, but even in this state maybe it was my mistake to interpret the small wisps as being in the foreground, rather than highlights in the background. However the clouds turn out, the paralax is definitely here to stay, even if it ends up reduced to one layer.
Sumez wrote:I'll be honest and say I'm deadly jealous of you getting this opportunity!
Gimmick is one of the best games on the NES platform, and just generally a really unique and timeless gem of a game.
I'd like to remind other people in this thread that the graphics shown so far, are temporary placeholder graphics.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how the final assets are going to look, and hopefully it's not just not just upscaled/smoothened versions of the original graphics. I'm hoping for some tasteful details added, in the spirit of the original. Honestly, I'd consider toning down the outlines, or at least keep them at a darker version of the fill color (
Don Bluth style), rather than a solid black. I feel like the game would have had that if the NES had allowed it.
(EDIT: Lol, the game does in fact do that! I never really noticed it - they are very dark as it is)
Thanks for this note especially - dealing with how to use outlines properly has been more troublesome than I had imagined. I was drawing over an onionskin of the original famicom sprites, scaled to the full size, and chose line widths that would respect roughly the size of one famicom pixel. I think a lack of line weight variation sucks a bit of life out of it. It is something I have to continue to play with.
Sumez wrote:I'm really hoping for a functional scoring system! There's a lot you could do with this game, and although the 10p you get for jumping on the head of enemies works great at controlling the "randomizer", there's also an issue with potentially rewarding the player for wasting time (ie. riding stars around in empty rooms). This is made worse in the original by the lack of a stage timer. I'm assuming the arcade version will have a timer so you can never just waste time indefinitely.
The game also has a bit of an issue with extra lives. This isn't a problem at home, but it won't work for an arcade game.
The score extend is way too low (you get a bunch of extra lives just for picking up the first treasure above the first room). And the infinite 1up machine on stage 5 obviously has to go, or at least have its usage limited somewhat. I'm sure you have already thought about these things, of course.
Yeah, the original scoring system really only serves as a way of milking extends and controlling the randomizer. The latter definitely needs to stay, as it is a big part of playing the game effectively.
As for extends, I found the routine that rewards extra lives, and it's endearingly primitive. Even in this demo build, the table for that routine has been modified, and a lot less extends are rewarded. You'll notice in the demo video that, after getting the secret, I'm not rewarded with an extend!
Almost certainly there will be a stage timer, or at least a segment timer. I would like the scoring system to reward fast progression and nuanced play over life hoarding.
As for difficulty, unskilled players get thrashed pretty quickly, while skilled players enjoy speeding through the game efficiently. That is already how an arcade game should play. I may have a broken sense of difficulty, because Gimmick has felt like second nature to me for a long time now.
I am very interested in reading about this shmups thread about making it arcade-ready; have you got a link handy?