New game - Alter Ego

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Shiru
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New game - Alter Ego

Post by Shiru » Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:52 pm

I'm glad to finally present to you my new NES game.

Image

Download the game (392K) or watch a video (spoilers alert, it shows solution for few levels!).

The game is a logic platformer. You control a hero and his alter ego. You have to switch between them to clear a level. It is a bit similar to Binary Land.

This game is a port, or maybe a remake, of recent ZX Spectrum game of the same name. The original version created by Denis Grachev from RetroSouls, you can see video of it here and get it here. NES version got new graphics, original music by Kulor (composed for the game), and some other changes.

Interesting technical feature of this game is that it is written in C, with cc65 compiler. You can get source code here. More details about this and development process in general are available in notes.txt file provided with the game.
Last edited by Shiru on Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers » Sat Jul 23, 2011 6:23 pm

Well, that's pretty cool. I liked Binary Land and thought that game mechanic was fun, I think it's even a little better in this game. I haven't made it too far yet (just to where the music changes), I have a feeling I'll have to use savestates or replay the first levels a bunch of times, heheh.

Pretty interesting to see the source code in C too.
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noattack
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Post by noattack » Sat Jul 23, 2011 7:56 pm

Absolutely love the graphic style and music. Looking forward to playing this.
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koitsu
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Post by koitsu » Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:17 am

Another awesome homebrew NES game! Damn you guys are kiling me! :-) Yay puzzle games!
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thefox
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Post by thefox » Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:44 am

Outstanding work! I love the polished feel your games have (right down to including a label and a manual). It's surprising how well the "drop every 6th frame" frame rate conversion works to unify the frame rate between NTSC/PAL.

About notes.txt: "in case of the problems when C code does not work as expected, you need to figure out what to do by examining of the generated assembly code". That is true, but I'd like to remind everyone that NintendulatorDX (and NESICIDE, I think) can do source level debugging for C sources as well, which makes debugging somewhat easier. It's not yet perfect, because "Step" steps assembly instructions and not actual C code lines. Also C identifiers need to be prefixed with "_" in the watch window.
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infiniteneslives
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Post by infiniteneslives » Sun Jul 24, 2011 4:23 am

good work, I really like the idea and look of it!
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cpow
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Re: New game - Alter Ego

Post by cpow » Sun Jul 24, 2011 6:10 am

Shiru wrote:I'm glad to finally present to you my new NES game.
Absolutely awesome! Great job!!
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku » Sun Jul 24, 2011 6:16 am

I'm not a fan of puzzle game but the polish and the fact that it was made it C it quite interesting. Good work so far.
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad » Sun Jul 24, 2011 6:48 am

Great work.
The fact it was written in C is well surprising ! So NES games CAN be written in C.
Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.
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B00daW
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Post by B00daW » Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:11 am

I haven't asked Kulor yet, but you going to release the NSF with it as well?
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Shiru
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Post by Shiru » Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:22 am

There is the original FTM of the music in source code, so you can easily get it by yourself (i.e. just load it into FamiTracker and export as NSF).
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B00daW
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Post by B00daW » Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:43 am

Oh duh, kulor pointed that out to me too. :P

Edit: kulor and I both share the same complaint that the Level 2 song shouldn't have been cut. It's very out of place to have a strange waltz song around a level filled with skulls and moss. xD

Doesn't sound entirely finished, but at least it's in the FTM for me to enjoy.
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Post by Roth » Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:05 am

I already said it on NA, but I figured I'd post here too... great job! I've made it to the third set of worlds, but I can't seem to get by Made In Heaven :' ( That's a tough one. My son and I have been staring at the screen for some time now haha Lovin' this release Shiru.
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cpow
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Post by cpow » Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:07 am

thefox wrote:About notes.txt: "in case of the problems when C code does not work as expected, you need to figure out what to do by examining of the generated assembly code". That is true, but I'd like to remind everyone that NintendulatorDX (and NESICIDE, I think) can do source level debugging for C sources as well, which makes debugging somewhat easier. It's not yet perfect, because "Step" steps assembly instructions and not actual C code lines. Also C identifiers need to be prefixed with "_" in the watch window.
I'm already on it. I had some issues with C stepping but hope to release an update today or tomorrow that supports it.
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Shiru
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Post by Shiru » Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:41 am

B00daW, I like the mood of the first version of level 2 theme and think it works with the second graphics set better, but we weren't able to agree on how to change it to sound nice to my ear (in second half), and there wasn't much time to discuss or work on it more. Well, actually we agreed I'd fix the song as I like, but then Kulor rolled out second version, and I decided to just go with that. Besides of the second part, there were other problems with the first version, like DPCM attenuate of triangle channel which didn't worked properly at the time, and noise channel had to be changed, because it was too loud and introduced more 'detune' feel.
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