Here 'tis...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A_1Fpef9j4
It's come along nicely now that I have a working sound engine. I need to write some more tunes though.
looks nice. the only thing that bothered me was when you changed tilesets and the screen flashed.
never-obsolete wrote:
looks nice. the only thing that bothered me was when you changed tilesets and the screen flashed.
That had to be done to write the tiles to CHR RAM quickly. I turned off the PPU and use the white palette. I didn't wanna write a few at a time.
looks great, keep up the nice work. i gave it a plug at pdr, maybe it will get some more attention.
Sivak wrote:
never-obsolete wrote:
looks nice. the only thing that bothered me was when you changed tilesets and the screen flashed.
That had to be done to write the tiles to CHR RAM quickly. I turned off the PPU and use the white palette. I didn't wanna write a few at a time.
For a while, I was working on a tile editor that runs on the NES. When switching between "pages" of ten 16x16 pixel patterns, the editor hides the preview in the nametable, copies 10 tiles at a time (using 10 iterations of a 16-byte unrolled copy loop), and then shows the preview again. I'm using the same technique for double buffering of big (32x48 pixel) sprite animations. I can put a demo of my editor on YouTube if you want.
Sivak wrote:
Here 'tis...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A_1Fpef9j4It's come along nicely now that I have a working sound engine. I need to write some more tunes though.
- I noticed you're a good designer. There's a NES pirate (?) collums-style game, but yours look really neat and superb! My congrats and keep up the good work.
Nice conversion!
Quote:
That had to be done to write the tiles to CHR RAM quickly. I turned off the PPU and use the white palette. I didn't wanna write a few at a time.
The white flash bothered me too. How about having 3 blocks tilesets in VRAM? Like this..
address i: tileset 1
address j: tileset 2
address k: tileset 3
* user presses NEXT:
- 1st NMI: current tileset is at address k, update nametable
- 2nd NMI: write PREV tileset to address j
- 3rd NMI: write NEXT tileset to address i
- allow user to press NEXT/PREV again
* user presses NEXT:
- 1st NMI: current tileset is at address i, update nametable
- 2nd NMI: write PREV tileset to address k
- 3rd NMI: write NEXT tileset to address j
- allow user to press NEXT/PREV again
etc
Of course, a smarter solution is to only write 1 tileset, since the PREV tileset is already in VRAM after pressing NEXT, but you get the idea.
Like I said elsewhere, it'd be fun to try this on a real NES, or even an emulator to see how far I could get it before it explodes or becomes impossible
I also think a Tetris-Attack styled combo/chain number popup would be neat to have as an option as an easier way to tell how long of a chain has been made...
Also, yeah, if you're going ot turn off PPU you could always just use the black palette (less intrusive), or even make it into an effect by writing the leftmost tiles to the rightmost tiles in order (2/frame), or backwards for previous ...
I don't mind the white palette when switching tilesets. It works, because it's accompanied by a "SHING!" sound effect.
Wow! This is really great Sivak! I'm quite impressed by how much progress you've made in such a short amount of time here on NESdev. This is really professional looking, and also the music/sound engine is good too. If you handed this game to me, I'd think that it was made by a team of developers. I'd also be quite addicted to it =). Good job!
I'll definitly wil be buying this if I have the cash.
Agreed- this looks like a pretty solid title. I don't mind the white flash- it's not as if it's going on in real gameplay- but if you're really picky you could just stuff each tileset in the same location in your CHR bank and use MMC3 or another mapper to just switch the appropriate quarter-bank.
I like the music you've come up with so far. I can generally arrange a tune to take full advantage of the pAPU, but coming up with an original is a bit harder.
Out of curiosity, is that all background, or are the jewels sprites as they come down?
LoneKiltedNinja wrote:
Out of curiosity, is that all background, or are the jewels sprites as they come down?
The jewels and the "Next jewel" are sprites and get rendered into BG. The points gained (that small, unlabeled box in the middle) are also sprites.
MMC3 isn't really an option for cart form as that'll add a lot more cash to make and it's not worth it. The white flash only lasts for 2 frames and I'm not going to worry about it.
I always thought CHR-RAM was more expensive than CHR-ROM.
Dwedit wrote:
I always thought CHR-RAM was more expensive than CHR-ROM.
Maybe, but the MMC3 chip can't beat discrete logic.
Another option would be to just fade out the tiles, replace them, then fade them back in.
A lot less intrusive that way, and a nice effect instead of a blindingly bright flash.
Xkeeper wrote:
Another option would be to just fade out the tiles, replace them, then fade them back in.
A lot less intrusive that way, and a nice effect instead of a blindingly bright flash.
That would look much better, but he said he doesn't want to break the updating process into smaller bits that will fit inside VBlank, so he has to blank the entire screen. Unless you meant he should fade the entire screen for a little while, which would actually look better than a white flash.
Even if it's just changed to a black flash, it'll be better. I'm just remembering how annoying it is in DKC when you have the spotlight parrot and every time you turn, the screen flashes as the light shines at you. x_x It's just a stupid little nitpicky problem that only happens in that area, but it's still a little aggrivating. :S
Oy... It's just one small screen. I suppose if the overwhelming desire for the flash to not be white is truly there, it can be black.
I kinda liked the white flash myself.
Dwedit wrote:
I always thought CHR-RAM was more expensive than CHR-ROM.
It might have been during the NES's commercial era. Right now, it's almost a wash.
RetroZone lists 128 KiB UV EPROMs for $2.50 each, compared to a RAM for $2.50 and a 256 KiB UV EPROM for $3.00. And I'd imagine that prices are a lot cheaper in production quantities.
That looks awesome Sivak. Not just the gameplay, but all the other extra effort you put in.
Al
Yeah it's nice, Sivak.
Me not liking the white flash is just me being nitpicky.
Sivak wrote:
MMC3 isn't really an option for cart form as that'll add a lot more cash to make and it's not worth it. The white flash only lasts for 2 frames and I'm not going to worry about it.
Ah. I suppose I'm still new here. Didn't realize this was going to be a real cart. Keep up the good work!
I think your game looks fantastic. I like the white flash with the sound effect. Until it was mentioned I didn't even think CHR-RAM was why it did that. I wouldn't worry about that. I think you've put together a very nice game. So I take it you're using something like UxROM?
MottZilla wrote:
I think you've put together a very nice game. So I take it you're using something like UxROM?
UNROM, 64KB.
Sorry for necroposting, but sivak, can you re-upload that video to youtube again? the last time it was uploaded was during the mid-july to august time when they were applying some completely ridiculous audio-compression-effect crap to all their audio, which was fixed in mid august, but all videos uploaded during that range need to be re-uploaded or the audio volume goes all over the place.
Awesome game btw, are you going to sell it through bunnyboy/retrousb? I'd buy it.
Are you going to do the other 2 classic columns songs (atropos and lachesis), or the original (not-columns-3) version of clotho?
LN
I didn't see this before the necropost, but it looks a well crafted game with some neat presentation.
I also think the white flash would look better as a black blank screen instead. Like suggested before, it would look even nicer if it faded to black, then the screen was blanked, tiles replaced, then faded back in.
Regarding comments:
The video is only a demo, so I'm probably not going to re-upload it. If I feel like sharing a score video sometime, I may do that.
The game will be in cart form, yes. The Sega music is not going to be selectable in the final game as it's copyrighted. I didn't remove the song from the music data, however, so it's still playable in NSF form.
And regarding the whole miniscule white flash issue... I'm just not going to change it. Especially not at this point.