Armed For Battle is now available in either a Loose Cartridge or Cartridge In Box!
Details and purchase information is at
infiniteneslives.comThe
Demo is available at my Development Blog -
http://1010howe.blogspot.com/ Tutorials on How To Play (these videos show the new look of the game):
Castle/Kingdom ViewUpgrade ScreenWorld ViewBattle ViewI am pleased to finally announce my homebrew in development, called Armed For Battle.
Somewhere in the unmapped land surrounding your kingdom, evil rulers corrupted by greed seek to enslave your people. Scout the territory, then send your forces to battle any threats you encounter. With enough gold, you might win them over while avoiding massive bloodshed. Use caution when venturing into the unknown. It is rumored that Dragons and Giants may live somwhere outside the safety of the kingdom.These older trailers can also be viewed:
Castle ViewWorld ViewBattle View
The MS-DOS font and overly-simple music makes it resemble something made by Colordreams... I think you could improve the music by a lot, just look at what the guys on the Famitracker boards are producing.
Also, keep essential game elements out of the top and bottom 16 pixels of the screen. TVs cut that stuff off.
it looks pretty unique, i'll definitely give it a try when it's released!
Strategies are rather unusual genre for homebrews, thisi is interesting. However, graphics and sound (if the sound in the video is from the game) needs improvement. If you can't improve them by yourself, I'm sure you can get help by asking here or at FamiTracker forums. It is easier to get help with music, though.
Cool! Something about the gameplay reminds me of warcraft 2, but I haven't played many such games so forgive me if that's way off. I happen to like the music, it is effective and tuneful. I for one don't think that every single game needs to have late-nes-era graphics and euro-chiptunes to be good. A simpler style has its own atmosphere and its own charm. If everyone churned out the same style it would be a very boring scene indeed.
I guess the only thing I wondered about was sound effects, will there be sounds to indicate building, marching, etc. ? That would be neat.
Thanks for the replies so far - I appreciate the feedback.
Dwedit - thanks for pointing that out with the edge cutoff. I currently have my graphics starting 8 pixels down from the top and 8 pixels up from the bottom. Later on, I'll probably look into this more, and test it out on several different tv's. For the music, not sure what I'll do yet. I think I definitely am biased - when you hear your own creation coming through the speakers, it's going to sound like gold, but I have seen some mixed comments on it. I actually had a much shorter loop until recently, so you have no idea how many times I've heard that song, and I still didn't grow tired of it.
Shiru - yes, the video's sound is from the game, but it might be used for the title screen, rather than the gameplay. I'm curious what you didn't like about the graphics? By the way, I haven't played it yet, but Zooming Secretary looks awesome. Very creative way to translate a busy day in the office over to a game.
GradualGames - congratulations on Nomolos. I've been watching it's progress, and sounds like release is really close. Yes, Warcraft 2 is actually one of the games that had influence on mine. The tricky part was coming up with something that works similarly but with the limitations of the NES. I will be putting some sound effects, for example to indicate when an upgrade finishes. The code is in place for playing sound fx, but the sound data has yet to be made.
rizz1010 wrote:
Dwedit - thanks for pointing that out with the edge cutoff. I currently have my graphics starting 8 pixels down from the top and 8 pixels up from the bottom.
My rule of thumb is to use the visible area of scaled mode in PocketNES for GBA as the safe area: 16 from the top, 11 from the bottom, and 8 from the left and right sides. That's comparable to most CRT SDTVs I've seen, so you should be safe. HDTVs, on the other hand, tend to behave like emulators, cutting off roughly 8 pixels on top, 8 on the bottom, and none from the sides unless you turn on the clipping window in PPUMASK ($2001).
Quote:
For the music, not sure what I'll do yet. I think I definitely am biased - when you hear your own creation coming through the speakers, it's going to sound like gold, but I have seen some mixed comments on it.
The first thing it needs is a volume envelope: volume decreasing over time, or rapidly increasing and then decreasing over time. Even Super Mario Bros. has envelopes, which are more apparent in the instrument used in the water levels but still subtly there in the more common tracks.
Music sounds just harsh, sort of annoying, and that could easily distract from the gameplay. Tepples pointed out to one of problems, another one is these low pitched intervals with the beats.
Regarding graphics. Beauty aside, the most important function of the graphics in a game is displaying certain objects, so you can easily recognize them. I can't easily tell what is what in this game. It may be better in an emulator, which has perfectly clear graphics, but I don't think it is better on a real TV screen. Other thing is that there is too much green, and most of the other colors are either black or something dark, so green really dominate.
Shiru wrote:
Beauty aside, the most important function of the graphics in a game is displaying certain objects, so you can easily recognize them.
In the bottom left, I display information based on the cursor position. This will help anyone new to the game, or will be a quick reminder if a player forgot what something does. In any real time strategy game, there is always a little learning before a player gets used to what certain icons will do.
Thanks for asking. I'm happy to say that progress has been fairly steady. For a while, I had to revamp some code that could be reduced in size. It would have been great to keep plowing forward, but I just had to reduce a little space.
I have been working on the Overworld of the game, and it shouldn't be too long before I'm able to get another video up. I'm looking forward to showing more.
Nice project! Look a bit complicated to control but might just be a false impression from watching the video without playing it. It would be cooler with Zombie though!
I have question - how many bytes takes the core of AI and how many objects you can control with it without much visible slowdown?
Thanks
80sFREAK wrote:
I have question - how many bytes takes the core of AI and how many objects you can control with it without much visible slowdown?
Thanks
The AI is not implemented yet. I haven't fully worked out the battle system design, but I have at least 3 ideas in mind for how it will work. Based on the design ideas I have, the AI won't use an extensive amount of bytes. I'm not sure if you meant for variables or for ROM space though.
Variables are your units on the battle field, isn't it? What will be the limit for amount of units?
Core is code to control units. Pure asm or something else?
80sFREAK wrote:
Variables are your units on the battle field, isn't it? What will be the limit for amount of units?
Core is code to control units. Pure asm or something else?
When I mentioned variables, I'm just meaning the RAM from $0000 - $0800. I can't comment quite yet for the amount of units because final decisions have not been made.
If I understand your question asking about pure asm, it's all asm (not a C language converter or anything).
Thanks for the questions 80sFREAK - sorry that I have to be vague with some of them, and some questions I just don't have all the answers quite yet.
Thanks for the answers and i have even more questions
1)how big is map?
2)save stated will be supported?
3)which mapper you will use?
Thanks in advance
80sFREAK wrote:
Thanks for the answers and i have even more questions
1)how big is map?
2)save stated will be supported?
3)which mapper you will use?
Thanks in advance
1) the world map was designed to use a 16x11 meta tile area. You'll see this when I post the new video... should be only a few days away (keep your fingers crossed).
2) there will be some type of saving system
3) UNROM
Just curious, how you will organize saving system on UNROM?
One possibility is to use the variant of UNROM/UOROM that emulators implement, which is equivalent to this three-chip design:
- 74161 to hold the bank number
- 7432 to make a fixed bank
- 7420 to decode SRAM (like Family BASIC) and avoid bus conflicts
Another possibility is... HUGE PASSWORDS!!!
I'm liking the huge passwords - it'll surely bring back memories of the way we had it back in the day.
Seriously though, I'll be looking into various options a bit later on. Thanks tepples & tokumaru for chiming in.
Great news. I have now uploaded Trailer #2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oilPleLInr4The first video featured the Home Castle, where a player gathers resources, builds various structures, trades for gold, and amasses an army. While doing all this, the player must uncover the overworld and seek out any threats to the kingdom. The new video features the Overworld view and how it works.
tepples wrote:
One possibility is to use the variant of UNROM/UOROM that emulators implement, which is equivalent to this three-chip design:
- 74161 to hold the bank number
- 7432 to make a fixed bank
- 7420 to decode SRAM (like Family BASIC) and avoid bus conflicts
Purity
Nothing to show quite yet. I'll say that I'm working my way through some AI currently.
Looking good! I never understood why folks were down on your graphics and music in the first post. I like the graphics, and the music wasn't bad. I do like the sound of the new music better, but I like the old tune better.
qbradq wrote:
Looking good! I never understood why folks were down on your graphics and music in the first post. I like the graphics, and the music wasn't bad. I do like the sound of the new music better, but I like the old tune better.
Thanks! It's pretty tough to look at your own stuff with an unbiased opinion. I always simply get excited when some code actually works correctly, and I do what I can with my graphics and music - it won't be on par with professional graphics or sound guys, but I think it's decent for a one man show.
I took a break for December, but I am back to programming once again. In March, I will be at
Midwest Gaming Classic (near Milwaukee) showing the game's progress so far. Hope to see you there - I should be a bit further along than I am now.
No chances - i do live across the pond with surrounding of bamboo and sakura.
Trailer #3 is up on youtube.
Now is your chance to see a battle in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEzaI2w_xC0Feedback is greatly appreciated (hopefully it's positive), whether you comment here, or give a quick thumbs up on youtube. As the video mentions, please subscribe so you'll catch more uploads in the future - I plan on updating more frequently as the game gets closer to completion.
I'm not sure whether I figured out what's going on? It looks like you're picking the order in which units go into battle? Looks reasonable...
As an aside, one thing that will help with the clarity of NES videos on youtube is to upscale your input with nearest-neighbor 2x before uploading; otherwise the mpeg artifacts make a blurry mess of everything.
Are the MPEG artifacts any worse than, say, RF artifacts?
Here's what I did for my
Rock TV video:
- Pad to 280x240
- Stretch to 560x480 nearest neighbor
- Stretch to 640x480 with linear or better (corrects the aspect ratio while preserving clarity of pixel edges)
Do you use AviSynth? If so, I could help you write scripts to do various sorts of processing.
tepples wrote:
Are the MPEG artifacts any worse than, say, RF artifacts?
This is quite a tangent, but IMO, yes. MPEG artifacts produce high spatial frequency correlated noise and blurring on both axes of both luma and chroma content, especially problematically vertically. NTSC OTA RF demodulation adds a wide variety of (usually) uncorrelated noise sources, and, depending on the receiver, either induces only a minor horizontal bandwidth filter and no vertical filtering, or induces a minor both-axis color filter in exchange for superior luminance bandwidth. (Obvious exceptions: in the Bad Old Days, if you chose the same channel for your NES as some local public TV station was broadcasting)
lidnariq wrote:
I'm not sure whether I figured out what's going on? It looks like you're picking the order in which units go into battle?
Yes, you have it figured out for the most part. I'll add a few more details. The player will add units to the queue on the left. Once battle begins, the troops will march onto the battlefield, and the player can load up the queue with additional troops. Currently, I have 16 troops max (8 for the player, 8 for the enemy) entering the battlefield. You will also notice that troops enter at different speeds, which is dependant on the type of troop (i.e. catapults will move quite a bit slower than knights).
Thanks for the comment by the way. I've been on this project for quite a while, and sometimes I forget that a new pair of eyes won't know as much about the gameplay. The good news is that I will have a well laid out instruction manual.
The instruction manual is in progress, and I wanted to share a sample. I have been hesitant to give out any official release date, but I can tell you that the end is in sight. At the very least, there will be a demo by the end of the year - maybe sooner. If you PM me with your email, I will add you to a list that gets contacted at the time of demo release, cartridge release, etc.
I now have a
development blog. I'm hoping to add some sort of content weekly - if I have nothing new to talk about, I will add old stuff, which might be scans from when I was designing parts of the game on paper. I used to go nuts over the Nintendo Power articles that had to do with game development, so maybe you'll find this to be cool.
The latest entries in the blog feature a preliminary sketch for the box artwork, and an interview from pixlbit.com.
Looks pretty awesome
Looking forward to this one!
The
Demo is available at my Development Blog -
http://1010howe.blogspot.com/My youtube channel has 4 tutorial videos that will show you how various parts of the game are played. You will also see the newer look of the game in the videos:
Castle/Kingdom ViewUpgrade ScreenWorld ViewBattle ViewIf you have any additional questions about how gameplay works, please contact me, or you can add the question to the comments section of the video.
Hope you like it!
Impressive. I like it. I'm also working on an RTS, but it's for Android.
janzdott wrote:
Impressive. I like it. I'm also working on an RTS, but it's for Android.
Thank you. I noticed you are from Wisconsin. I've been attending Midwest Gaming Classic, and have shown my game there the last 2 years. I
highly recommend this convention if you like video gaming (old consoles, new consoles, arcade games, etc). I'll be there this year too (April 2014).
That's cool. I live a couple minutes outside of Madison, so it's that's only an hour drive. Are there people there that would be interested in hiring a programmer? Unfortunately I don't have a degree yet, gonna go to college next year.
My blog has been getting updated about every week or two. Please check it out.
I will have the game with me again at this year's
Midwest Gaming Classic (April 12 near Milwaukee).
If you don't want to miss the release of this game, or other significant updates,
please PM me with your email address.
Please check out
my blog for the latest updates!
As always, please PM me if you'd like to be on my contact list for important announcements.
I have a new demo now available on
my blog. In this demo, you'll get a look at the new resource collection, new battle casualty scene, new music on transition screens that didn't have music before, and the new building found in the game. My blog has been getting updated about every week or so. As always, please send me your email if you'd like notification when the cartridge is released. Thanks!
Limited Edition will be released in May! Check out
my blog for details. Contact me (easiest way is to use my blog's contact form) if you want notification when the release is here!
I have some exciting things to share.
The Official Trailer(featuring a few parts of the gameplay you likely have not yet seen)
The auction for 29 Limited Edition copies.Pictures of the Limited Edition itemsThe auction will end on June 5th (less than a week), so check out the info above soon!
Armed For Battle is now available in either a Loose Cartridge or Cartridge In Box!
Details and purchase information is at
infiniteneslives.comThanks for looking!
So I got around to playing this game in the past few days and it's a fun and quite long game. I'm currently at level 10 of 20, and I find myself eating food each time I get into a battle. I've got the first bar of some of the music stuck in my head due to a screen switching trick. Gameplay wise, this is a better RTS then Overlord/Supremacy for the NES (but Overlord still has one of the best title screen music).
I do find the frequent random nameable and palette corruption to be slightly annoying but usually correctable.
Once I get to the last level, I'm thinking I might do a NES homebrew marathon on Twitch TV for a week or something. Including a play through of the last level of Armed for Battle.
So a question: I read in the manual that you can build storage buildings but I have yet to see such a thing. Is that later in the game, or a feature that got cut?
43110 wrote:
So I got around to playing this game in the past few days and it's a fun and quite long game. I'm currently at level 10 of 20, and I find myself eating food each time I get into a battle. I've got the first bar of some of the music stuck in my head due to a screen switching trick. Gameplay wise, this is a better RTS then Overlord/Supremacy for the NES (but Overlord still has one of the best title screen music).
I do find the frequent random nameable and palette corruption to be slightly annoying but usually correctable.
Once I get to the last level, I'm thinking I might do a NES homebrew marathon on Twitch TV for a week or something. Including a play through of the last level of Armed for Battle.
So a question: I read in the manual that you can build storage buildings but I have yet to see such a thing. Is that later in the game, or a feature that got cut?
Thanks for posting! The homebrew marathon sounds like an awesome idea. As far as the Storage Buildings, yes, they were cut, and then replaced with the Scholar Temple. The gameplay/fun did not seem to benefit at all by the use of the Storage Building, and so I came up with the Scholar Temple which did have benefits in the strategizing aspect. I discovered just a little too late that a mention of the storage buildings was still in the manual (it was removed in the key places of the manual). I had a blog entry back on
02-27-14 that bid farewell to the storage buildings.
This is a really cool project. I like what I've seen and what I've played of the demo
! I don't know if you've already discovered this bug but during the battle scene when I got down to about 4 guys on the battle field with my army depleted they were frozen in the first column of the battlefield and wouldn't attack any enemies and the enemies wouldn't attack them. Nonetheless keep up the good work!
Light-Dark wrote:
This is a really cool project. I like what I've seen and what I've played of the demo
! I don't know if you've already discovered this bug but during the battle scene when I got down to about 4 guys on the battle field with my army depleted they were frozen in the first column of the battlefield and wouldn't attack any enemies and the enemies wouldn't attack them. Nonetheless keep up the good work!
Great to hear - thanks! This bug was fixed for the final version of the game. It's been a while, but I am thinking this was a rare occurrence on the demo (or at least I haven't gotten much feedback about this).
Armed For Battle will be at the
Portland Retro Gaming Expo happening next weekend!
At the Infinite NES Lives booth, you can come see and demo the game. You'll also be able to save on shipping AND get an additional $5 off with the
coupon at my blog.
I'm very excited to be in attendance this year at the show!
Sale coming up!
Armed For Battle will be $5 off from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (11/28 - 12/1).
If you haven't been to InfiniteNESLives lately, 2 other homebrews have been added to the
products page.
