Nim & Nom - v1.2 Easy Mode!

Hey everybody! It's been quite a while since I've posted any sort of update for Nim & Nom but I'm happy to announce that it is finally finished!
I hope you enjoy playing it!

Controls:
A - Jump / Confirm
B - Attack / Back
Start - Pause / Confirm
Select - Restart Stage

Screenshots:


Source code: Link
Here is the source code for anyone interested in it. I'd just like to add that this has been a big learning experience for me over the years I've been working on it and I've learnt a lot. Though as I learnt more I did not go back and rewrite routines or reorganise code and this will be evident when looking at the source. There's a lot of redundant, inefficient, duplicate code and some outright silly mistakes within.

Version 1.1 Changes:-

- Fixed graphical screen wrap issue with the boulder and the ducks' Projectile.
- Fixed a glitch with the top-left boar in stage 2-9 where it would continuously charge at nothing.
- Damage from the boar has been reduced from 10 to 8.
- Damage from the ducks' projectile has been reduced from 8 to 6.
- Damage from the duck has been increased from 6 to 8.
- Damage from the Sheep has been reduced from 8 to 7.
- Damage from the fly has been reduced from 7 to 6.
- Damage from the gull has been reduced from 10 to 9.
- The interval between the ducks' shots has been increased from 64 to 72 frames.
- Respawn time for the flowers on stage 2-9 has been increased by 12 frames.
- Respawn time for the flowers on stage 4-3 has been decreased by 575 frames.
- Landing lag from the player attacking has been decreased from 7 to 4.

Version 1.2 Changes:-

- Easy mode has been added!

- (Easy) Damage multiplier has been lowered to 0.6 (single-player) and 0.5 (multi-player).
- (Easy) Modified the behavior of a few of the enemies.
- (Easy) Reduced the speed of many of the enemies.
- (Easy) Reduced the amount of stages that have weather effects.

- Added snow to stage 4-2 of multiplayer.
- Increased the tempo of the music for PAL consoles by 12% approx.
- Removed a single fish from the stages 4-1 (single-player) and 4-2 (multi-player).
- (Normal) The interval between the ducks' shots has been decreased to 66 from 72 frames.

There's not a single game on any platform I've been looking forward to as much as this. Can't wait to play it!

May I use this in the next Action 53 volume?

Ah, this one was nice! Good work finishing it.

How many levels does it have, now that it's complete?

I've been looking forward so much to see progress on this, and here you are with a finished game

I hope so. I'd love to have the opportunity to illustrate the creatures.

Just played it! Won't be able to beat it in a while (which is good) but this game will have me coming back Congratulations on its completion and thanks for a nice weekend finale!

Made a little famitracker cover of the title music to celebrate your release/give something in return before going to bed.
https://frankengraphics.files.wordpress ... gement.mp3

I'm really happy to hear that and makes me glad I pushed myself to finish it. There we're many times I thought I never would.


Go right ahead, I'm happy for you to use it!


Thank you!
There are 33 levels in the game. I planned to have more and had the ideas to do so but ultimately decided against it partly due to the limited space available for graphics and my lack of experience programming a game.


It is absolutely awesome and I love it! Thanks!
It took me so long to make the music and to see you make a cover in such a short time just amazes me.

Thanks, glad you liked it. Well you had a line ready for me to improvise over. Half the of the effort writing music is coming up with and deciding on the theme itself. A loop is also much less daunting to interpret than a 3-minute song.

Out of curiosity, do you hard-type music as code/data or do you use famitracker to come up with it?

Glad to hear you want this in on the a53 cartridge, it'll be a great addition.

I just have a difficult time coming up with music. I spent a bit of time trying to improve what I have but didn't have much success. For me, the music was the most difficult part of making the game.

To create the music I mess around on a keyboard until I find something I like. Then I recreate that in famitracker and play around with it a bit more. It's a little more work but I find it difficult to create music solely using famitracker.

It fills me with joy to think that Nim & Nom will be on the a53 cartridge.

Great entry. Good to hear it will join the Action53
If you finished this before the compo deadline, we would have quite a serious contender.
To be honest, I cant beat the game, I tried and failed. The later ice levels are too much for me.

This game is beautiful and plays really well. I don't know how to beat the bigs yet, I managed to kill one of them but I don't know how. Will try more later.

Thanks!
A lot of people have been having trouble with the ice levels overall between sliding on the ice and the placement of enemies. If you don't mind me asking, at what level did the difficulty become too much?


Thank you and good luck with the ice levels!

Don't know why I typed bigs. I meant pigs. Yeah, I will probably need it

For me, the difficulty got too much in the first few rain/wind levels, I don't remember exactly which.

This one:

In some attempts, I managed to eat all flowers before any of them regrow...but then I run out of time before I can eat remaining two enemies.
Btw, I noticed there is a bit of a lag after you jump, chomp in air and land on ground. Was there a reason for this other than hindering player ability to jump immediately?

I've had a few people mention that the wind is too strong and just find it a nuisance. Sadly with how it was implemented I am unable to make it any weaker. It's just one of many parts I'd like to change but am unable to.



More so to stop them chomping immediately, when the landing lag was implemented the game was rather different and I used it to prevent the player from being essentially invincible. Until you mentioned it I had actually forgotten about it.


Just a quick question, if I post an updated version of the game, would people prefer I keep the original up as well or take it down?

Keeping old versions up is helpful for bisecting version history to find where a problem was introduced. But I'm fine either way, so long as both have version numbers, dates, or other identifying marks.

I think it is more important to keep version history for tools.

If old versions are distributed, i'd probably keep them bundled in a zipfile or something.

Version 1.1 is now available! See the original post for details and the file!

Thank you all for the feedback, it's been a great help! After listening to it all I took some time to look at the areas mentioned and to contemplate the issues given. The changes I've made probably wont make it too much easier but I do hope it helps provide a somewhat more balanced and better experience.

Also, would anyone be interested in a cheat for more time?

Ack, got logged out when replying. Short version follows:

It's still great, but I didn't notice much of a change in the difficulty?

On the level with 2 flowers, 2 red fishes, and rain, i feel like one too much element is introduced at the same time which is quite the difficulty gap compared to earlier stages. Maybe remove one of the fishes? Maybe remove the rain? Or increase the flower countdowns. Or make the flowers use the same timer (ie if the second flower is eaten, the first will synchronize, that is, restart the countdown, since it was overwritten by the second flower munch). Just some options.

I think it is a good rule of thumb to not measure against ones' own skill. Game devs quickly become experts on their own game, while new players don't have that chance.

Maybe you can ask someone who hasn't already played it to record a play session (fceux offer input-scripting "movies" which are lightweight).

Thank you for all the input and suggestions, I'll mull over it for a while and have a thorough look at stage 1-9.

Many of the changes balanced out the difficulty in the second world. Though the damage reduction does affect the entire game, it mostly adds an extra hit.

I understand and have tried not to measure to my own skills but even with that said it's still hard to get it right. I've lowered the difficulty greatly compared to what it once was and I'm glad I did that. I just become attached to parts of the game while developing it whether it be bad or good and find it difficult to let it go. Though that is something I need to learn much more readily.

As you've suggested though, I really do need to watch other people play the game. The problem with simply removing/changing enemies is that doesn't necessarily fix the main problem causing it too difficult. Sure, removing some enemies will make it easier but if there is another problem that is the cause it could manifest itself later on in the game for those players. Such as not showing how certain mechanics works clearly enough. I don't want to simply shift their frustration to another stage, I want to fix it if possible. Though, even with that thought, there is only so much I can do with the way the game plays but I will try my hardest to find a solution.

I don't want you to make the game too easy.

I would want to see a difficulty setting: Easy, Normal, Hard, 2xHard, 5xHard.

This game could certainly use an easy mode. After watching some people play it I've noticed that many players have difficulty with the movement alone, which only becomes worse with the added effects of the weather. I don't believe there is anything I can do to help alleviate these issues other than removing the weather completely but I feel that would compromise the quality of the game and I would rather avoid that. But anyway...

Easy mode is here! (v1.2)
It took me a bit of time to implement it but hopefully it will enable more people to enjoy Nim & Nom.

This will mark the last update for Nim & Nom barring a significant bug I didn't find while working on this update. After working on it for so long I've found it to be such a relief to have it finished, knowing I can now put all my efforts towards new projects. Though I will admit I did find myself having fun while working on these updates and will miss it. Anyway, Enjoy!

Krill, this game is absolutely wonderful and I'd like to congratulate you on your work!

I've recently got back from JagNESfest party (yes, Jaguar and NES join venture) and what is significant that literally ALL Atarians were amazed by this game, so, words of appreciation goes out to you from Atari scene as well

Also, PM sent.

Make us a social networks friendly way to share and like this. The game is incredible in every sense of the word.

I've been meaning to create a twitter account to post updates and future projects but I've just been too busy to get all of it organised but I'll definitely get to it when I get a chance. Thanks again for your kind words!

I've posted the source code for the game in the original post for anyone interested!

That's really awesome! My PC was broken when you posted this and I forgot to check it. I'm doing that now.

I have a small question: how are you compiling this? I see it is nesasm3 but I would have trouble figuring out the command paramenters, so a batch file would be appreciated ^^
edit: okay, got it. couldn't be simpler. For anyone wondering, create a nesasm3 folder, have nesasm3.exe there and nim_nom as a sub folder, then just have a batch file inside the nim_nom folder:

(windows)

The thought of providing the batch file didn't even cross my mind and thank you for providing an explanation for those who needed it.
I've gone and updated the source to have a batch file. To assemble you will need to place nesasm3 into the same directory as the batch file.

Oh and if you have any question about the code I'll be happy to answer them.

Would you consider a cartridge release?

Just wanted to say I'm really enjoying the game and that I like it so much I've been doing some runs of the game. Thanks for making such a fun game, and feel free to check out the run if you want to see it, there are a lot of neat strats for clearing screens quickly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy0WpK6DixY

It is an awesome game indeed. I'm going to watch your run now.
ps.: I remember your amazing runs of the super pitfall hack!

While I like the idea I don't have the knowledge or tools to do so. Though if you're looking to own Nim & Nom on a cartridge, it will appear in a future volume of Action 53.


That is amazing, great job finishing it in less than 10 minutes!
It was a great joy watching you speed run it but it's left me feeling a little curious about how fast I could finish it.

Just got around to playing this; it's pretty awesome. The graphics are gorgeous. I got up to the bird level; may pick it back up another day to see if I can get further. I really liked the rain effects and such. (The main character's also pretty likable.)

I also like how you use time as health. It's more forgiving than instant death, yet provides a definite challenge.

Nicely done!

I just got around to playing Nim&Nom with a friend this weekend and am nothing short of astounded. This game is truly special and extremely fun to play with a friends. The only shortcoming I could possibly site is the brevity of the music, but even that works towards a sort of bubble-bobble charm. I am very very impressed with the programming and design here. Bravo!