How's everyone doing?

I haven't heard much from most people with Compo threads...in a while. I was wondering how everybody is doing?

I'm kind of hoping that there's a dozen people out there working on games in secret. Probably not.

I'm working on a different project right now but I'm positive we'll be entering two games for the compo. There's time aplenty!

I still need to port Lala to 64K UNROM (currently a 64K+16K GNROM).

Well I for one am working on a game atm

I just feel it doesn't warrant a thread yet. I'm not even sure if I have the time to finish it.
So many ideas and loose ends

I have two compo games underway. Keeping them secret and then dropping bombs on release day is just more my style.

And it saves me face if I happen to procrastinate or otherwise fail.

My game is coming along fine! Hope to post a new build by Sunday, once I figure out a bug in my tooling.

I've got something in the works, and I'm somewhat convinced I'll actually have something by the end of January.

I've got a mostly-working engine now with a few tweaks still needed, but it's not quite worthy of its own post yet. I'm struggling a lot with music and art, but I'm learning a lot as I go, so it's probably worth it.

I suspect we'll probably see a good turnout.

(Also, apparently I've never posted before, despite lurking for years. So, hi!)

I'm doing fine, how bout you?

I'm still doing the foundations to my game. Not sure if I can finish it on time but I'm trying

Terribly!
Maybe.

Well, I had an entry started a few months ago, but after completing the basic game engine (player control, level-decoding, scrolling, etc), I haven't really touched it, since then! I'm simply too busy with other things right now.

It was a Super Mario Bros. clone, using NROM-256, I had devised a custom level format that is 30% smaller than what Super Mario Bros had, allowing for more complex level designs, in less ROM space!

The game is also way prettier than Super Mario Bros. while using less tiles!


Art-wise, the game was intended to have more graphical variations, like the later Mario games:


If I miss the compo deadline, oh well. But this game will be finished, eventually!

Looks good.
(thumbs up)

The red-yellow alternating blocks hurt my eyes. Maybe try less contrasting colors there?

Hey Alp, I'm glad you are entering the compo. Game looks amazing.

Is beautiful

Astonishing work! Well done, Alp! I especially like how you turn the lake into a desert by a simple palette swap; very elegant. And the ice level looks fun. Does your level algorithm always include a water line?


It may be less of a problem on ntsc/pal video, but in pixel perfect emulation, i agree on the checkerboard. Though, sonic the hedgehog does this with less contrast and those elements still don't appeal to me, so maybe it's more the pattern than the colours used for me.

Game's looking great, Alp! Looking forward to playing it!

Awesome use of color! With a single palette you were able to draw light and dark versions of ground and grass chunks, and the final result still looks pretty colorful.

... Wow, that looks amazing!

I'm struggling to understand how you manage to avoid imploding from sheer density of awesome.

Well originally, the checkerboard was yellow/brown, but when I added the background layer, it looked too washed-out, so I swapped the brown to red, for vibrancy. The problem is that the foreground/background platforms share a single palette.


I'm really just showing what I have planned, and if it doesn't meet the deadline, I can always release this later, on it's own.


Thanks! I was also considering a similar palette swap, for the cave background. Using the lake tiles for a top/bottom background layer, connected by stone columns, to give it even more depth.

...and yes, there will be slippery ice physics in this game!

Yeah, the water layer is constant, in the level decoding, but it can be swapped between the foreground/background layer (for castles), or disabled entirely, in the level's header byte. Water/Lava can't be manipulated in the middle of a level, simply because it would look strange.

The game engine supports 4 different background layers:
0: Global Background
1: Foreground, Back Layer
2: Foreground, Front Layer (Including blocks)
3: Foreground, Water/Lava (Optional)

The two ground layers are drawn separately from the blocks, but handled by the same drawing routine. They can be easily manipulated by a single control byte, allowing for a little more flexibility than the coin/powerup blocks, and breakable bricks, while keeping the data size small.

The checkerboard pattern for the first world's foreground layer, was intended to introduce familiarity, so players are eased into the game.


Thanks! The goal here, was to get a unique visual style, while using as few tiles as possible.
Including the 42-tile font, I'm not even halfway through the game's 4KB background tiles, yet!

Ideally, each world will have a different visual theme of some kind. (Grass, Ocean, Desert, Mountain, Snow, Forest, Sky, Hell) If there's enough tile space left when everything's done, I may consider adding a Super Mario World-like overworld, just to give this game a little more!

Speaking of Super Mario World... here's what world 6's "castle" stage is intended to look like!

Still chugging along on my game. Hoping it will be ready by february (it's looking likely). It's almost time to invite a few friends over and find out if it's any fun whatsoever...it's hard to gauge how it will actually feel once all 4 players are involved.

I've decided to work on a new game, and I hope I can have something reasonably ready. I might have to submit a "Part 1" or a demo ROM or something, as that would help deal with space constraints and will make the workload not quite as intense.

I'm not doing too well with my project, I've been finding that I can't even think about the programming problems in the few sliced up hours I have left after my day/night job and sleep. I'm currently trying to figure how to best use my remaining time. The idea would of been an omnidirectional swimming kind of game, something like The Legendary Starfy. I know I'm going to have to involve a pixel artist and a chiptune musician if this idea is to be done within the deadline.

Yup. Between work, family, other work, etc, I'm lucky if I have brain power for 30 minutes a night on this. I'm slow.

Story of my Life!

Really bummed, but I doubt I can make my game. I have a tiny NROM game idea I might try to whip together as a port of something else I made once.

Made Lala into UNROM successfully, and my other [NROM] entry is 90% finished. And might rescue an abandoned project for the "anything goes" category.

Really close whether I can get anything. Haven't slept in three months thanks to an asshole druggie neighbor.

One game is just missing music and sound integration, the other needs art, music, sfx, and testing. The first one is so close, but I'm in no condition to code anything, not even something that simple.

Hello there.

I am working on an NROM-128 demake of Super Smash Bros. (without reusing Nintendo's IPs) but I do not know if it is eligible for the competition. Mainly because it is definitely open source and freely redistributable which seems grey area reading the competition's guidelines/rules. The game is playable, but I do not think of stopping developpement anytime soon (and certainly not on january 31).

Please tell me if it is still eligible, I'll be sure to submit it as an entry.

About the game:

As said, it is a demake of the Super Smash Bros series. It features Sinbad from Ogre3D as the only playable fighter and is named "Super Tilt Bro." As an animated gif is worth thousand of words:



It's maybe late to start a progress thread, but I keep my twitter @RogerBidon updated as I go and the latest sources are on github.

I don't think the open-sourceness makes the game not suitable for the compo, quite the contrary.

Looks great, I love the contact delay complete with screen shake. Looks fun!

Hi Roger,

This looks awesome! The ghost gif in your twitter looks like the very best kind of bug.

I'm also hoping to have something for the compo. I originally intended it to be much bigger, but I am now working on something else quite exciting which is taking up most of my time.

My entry will be called Psychic Death House.

You will play little Tommy Taylor, who, guided by the mysterious Professor Jam, will try and rescue your friends from the creepy and mysterious Psychic Death House.

It will likely only be a single level, but hopefully a good one!

You might have been confused about not entering work that was already public prior to the announcement of the compo and not substantially improved since.

Open source software is certainly eligible. In fact, it'd be great for a remix compo that I have planned for the future, which will focusing on improving or remaking an existing compo entry. Both my past compo entries (Thwaite and RHDE) are under a free software license, as is my forthcoming (non-game) entry for this compo (240p Test Suite).

Thanks all, I'll be sure to submit it as an entry. dougeff will be pleased, this thread nets at least one more game to the compo

Will there be an special submission procedure, or progress threads are the way to go?

I went on hiatus once summer ended and my freetime went to shit, but I'm back for the holidays and back to doing nesdev. The game I was working on certainly won't be finished in time, but perhaps I'll crank out a quick minigame in the next week to have something to enter.

Some progress videos of my unfinished game which I never posted:

baby's first scrolling glitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYxQbQQX1DM
we have slope physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4C5KrFzD5o (warning: volume)
welcome to PPU hell glitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVSFxNbDUk
small december update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1l7hoL4xOQ

That looks great. Love those sprites.

Nice to see some ambitious slopes since my game will never come out. Planning more than 45 degree ones?

I see you've also got a Makefile with a `debug` target that is just Wine running FCEUX

Nope. There isn't much space for different block types and I figured 45 was good enough.