Okay, here is a question. Should I make Alisha smaller, or should I make the robots bigger? Or should I do both?
On my PowerPak, there was a constant ~2000 Hz whistling noise.
The dash (A) is so fast and far it might leave players with no chance to react.
Might a low kick (Down+Y) be warranted?
How tall is Alisha, so that I can get a feel for the scale of the game's architecture?
psycopathicteen wrote:
Or should I do both?
Yes. The robots are about the size of a Koopa from SMW, and Alisha is like two DKs from DKC stacked on top of each other. Alisha appears to be about 32x64 tall, when you could probably make her about 24x48 pixels tall. I know you aren't using 8x8 sized sprites, but it feels like I'm playing as Ryu in Super Mario World. Similarly, make the robots a little bigger. I'm getting the impression that Alisha's a monster.
Random, but did you ever implement the vram thing, because it look just like it did last time I saw it, and I just wanted to know how well it worked. I plan on actually DMAing tiles for the explotions because in what I am trying to make, soldiers won't explode, but whenever there is a vehicle on screen, it can, but there probably won't be more than 3 and the explosions will go off at the same time, so I can have 3 64x64 sized explosions and double buffer them to where I am using 4 1/2 out of 8 and only be DMAing 1 1/2 64x64 spaces instead of 3. Not too shabby. Also, psychopathicteen, what do you do when you run out of DMA time for animations? Do you just have a black bar come down?
In real-life proportions she would probably be about 5ft tall, or whatever height the average 14 year old girl is. In the game she is 64 pixels tall.
Is she exactly 64 pixels tall? Maybe you could set it to where a pixel is equal to an inch? 5 x 12 is 60.
The hairdo complicates measurement, as height measurement at the doctor's office usually pushes down the hair. If you want to go for 1 inch = 1 pixel, that's fine. I just asked because long ago I concluded that Super Mario Bros. series tries for 1 block = 1 m.
I'm not particularly bothered by the proportions here, only by Alisha's stumpy arms and fat ankles.
I can understand the artistic decision of not drawing fingers, but when the arms are this short it looks like she had her hands amputated, it's not cute. Arms often go as low as the thigh when a person is standing, but hers are barely reaching her waist. The arms look much better when she's running, because they're slightly longer and the fact that they are bent helps us see how long the forearms are, enhancing the illusion that hands are present.
The problem with the ankles isn't as bad, but when the upper half of her body has well defined breasts and waist, it's weird that her legs look like those of a rag doll.
Her standing animation could be a bit more subtle too... right now it looks like she's dancing.
Other than that, nice demo! The robots look good and their heads animate quite well. The physics feels good, and the collisions look fine.
Espozo wrote:
psycopathicteen wrote:
Or should I do both?
Yes. The robots are about the size of a Koopa from SMW, and Alisha is like two DKs from DKC stacked on top of each other. Alisha appears to be about 32x64 tall, when you could probably make her about 24x48 pixels tall. I know you aren't using 8x8 sized sprites, but it feels like I'm playing as Ryu in Super Mario World. Similarly, make the robots a little bigger. I'm getting the impression that Alisha's a monster.
Random, but did you ever implement the vram thing, because it look just like it did last time I saw it, and I just wanted to know how well it worked. I plan on actually DMAing tiles for the explotions because in what I am trying to make, soldiers won't explode, but whenever there is a vehicle on screen, it can, but there probably won't be more than 3 and the explosions will go off at the same time, so I can have 3 64x64 sized explosions and double buffer them to where I am using 4 1/2 out of 8 and only be DMAing 1 1/2 64x64 spaces instead of 3. Not too shabby. Also, psychopathicteen, what do you do when you run out of DMA time for animations? Do you just have a black bar come down?
It goes around in a circle, checking for objects needing animation updates. Whenever it reaches 5kB, it stops, and continues the next frame. In the case of a software rotated sprite that is animated at 60fps, it will automatically dip down to 20 or 30 fps, if there is a lot on screen.
Second the comment about the arms... It does look kinda awkward.
Oddly collisions with enemies stop working if you hit start to move past Level 1. Also I somehow managed to fall through the floor once after jumping and dashing around the little sloped bit to the left but then couldn't reproduce it. Also do you plan to have a ceiling, generally speaking? I'm able to get above the map and if you dash up there without a wall to stop you it seems to break the game.
I'm curious to see how you could design levels around your current model. The dash is FAST, and given how big Alisha is you'll be hard pressed to see what's coming, which would lead to a lot more map memorization than just approaching the challenge you see before you. Not to say you can't do it your way, it's just a challenge to make the gameplay not-frustrating.
I don't know what kind of direction you're looking to go in, but I'd personally be excited to see a variety of different attacks for different situations.
I was able to fall through the floor after kicking or dashing into some robots on 4 separate occasions. I would imagine that you've seen this bug already, given how frequently it seems to happen, but just in case I am mentioning it.
As for size, I dunno, I think there is a problem with speed, at least. With the dash attack, you move very fast, there's probably not going to be enough time to react to anything coming up ahead. With no actual gameplay, though, there is not much weight to this suggestion. Perhaps the game could be designed around this speed; I couldn't say until I see it.
Making the character smaller would with the speed issue only if the character also became slower too; a smaller character moving the same speed might seem even faster, relatively... Most games I can think of with large onscreen characters have them move rather slow, I think in part to compensate for the large hit-box so that there is time to manoeuvre.
I don't have any strong feelings about the art style. To me, the feel of it is that she's some kind of rubber children's toy, especially with the rounded-off hands. I dunno if that's what you're going for, but that's the vibe I'm getting from it.
...and I spent a week trying to figure out a working collision routine. I wonder if it has something to do with the speed of the dash, causing it to "miss" something, but I did make the dash 16 pixels per frame, so I don't know how it can miss a tile.
Now that it's pointed out, I drew her arms off-model in both the standing and running animations. If you pay attention to her arms while she's kicking, jumping and dashing, her arms are normal sized.
I got rid of all the glitches in the game so far. I reduced the explosion animation to 4 frames to make room for bigger robots. I'll post a ROM tommorrow.
Now how would the AI work?
- start enemy walking towards Alisha
- run when on the same elevation as Alisha, at a specific distance.
- punch if very close to Alisha.
- jump if on the edge of a platform.
- zap if comming down from a jump, moderately close to Alisha.
- shoot up when underneath Alisha, or down when above Alisha, or diagonally when diagonal to Alisha.
- shoot strait at pseudo-random times, while running.
- jump up if Alisha moved out of the way while shooting up, or jump down if Alisha moved out of the way while shooting down.