espire8

It's Trogdor! Nah, it's Albert the Ol' cigar chomping crocodile from the 50's "Pogo" comic strips. He's using the same chest/leg graphics as the Roo, so I know this character is doable! The dragon is questionable though; it's not your standard build so it may not work. Just fantasizing.

Great likeness of Mr T! Here's my non-human submissions some of you may recognise. yeah, I swiped the cigar idea.

Are we just limited to creating head shots? There's only 3 standard body types here. What if I want to design my own unique character body as I've done with Roo? I suggest you include at least 1 more set of human legs so there will be 3 different sets of human chests and lower legs to swap with, making for a greater variety of boxers. And keep at least 1 special complete set alongside for something more exotic.

No I haven't. I posted because of reading somewhere in the tread that the mole was not gonna work because of the wide looking pixel shape so I was just setting out to show otherwise.

No problem.

Neither can I! Groovy! Gravy! This game's gettin' ready!

That sounds awesome! This will fulfill that extra challenging gameplay element keeping the game fresh and replayable for a long time! I will rest now knowing how sweet this is all gonna be! Kudos!

Thanks, this one is much better now. I could make it so the rematch counter will always be set to 0 if the difficulty was B. But, I think Level 3 is already challenging enough! :-) Actually, this is not a new idea and I feel this would have been a great difficulty option as it was already mentioned.Your alternative approach sound like it's not possible at this point to implement this toggle request exactly as described. Bummer. If the problem is space, perhaps when you remove the play test level selection for finalizing, that may yield the space you need? Whatever the reason, can you keep this feature in mind for KO homebrew then? All in all, this game feels like it's just about almost ready.

Sorry that my first gripe did not come across correctly. The normal faces that look to the side when they walk do look fine. I meant the "angry" faces while they attack you. It don't look right to me when the computer stay looking to the side while attacking when my boxer is directly in front. It's hard to explain and I don't know if I'm coming across trying, but wouldn't two boxers who are up close facing each other be looking directly at each other given where they're placed single file from the player's point of view? When attacking, shouldn't the computer look at who he's trying to hit? If I'm directly in front of the computer 90% of the time he tries to hit me, shouldn't he look forward if I'm standing directly in front toe to toe? I should hack and post an example to show what I mean. It's less work than explaining it I think. Also, something is wrong with the second boxer. He dances more often now than before on all levels. In fact, that's all he seems to do! I play as I always have in the RC3 and that wasn't an issue, but in this release he just so annoyingly dances over and over again! it drives me to impatience when I have to wait for his dancing routine to finish just to start up dancing again back to back as it were the only move he's got. I don't know what's trigging it, if it's just me or the game but it's really awful. Do the new recovery have something to do with this?

This turned out great! Thanks for persevering on the face-flipping which is the best last minute addition by far! Flipping the normal faces to face the player sprite is a great enhancement too. And the cigar is way cool! He looks cocky now! hilarious! Only 2 gripes. 1.) The 'angry faces' on all the boxers should be looking directly forward (as in the original designs) when toe-to-toe with the player and not off to the side; that way punching a forward looking face will seem to actually turn the head to the side when hit. 2.) Ken's mouth is now pink while most including myself choose face 'B' which is black. I agree.Please lose the pink. Better it look like a mustache to some than lipstick to others.

I was attempting to turn each of the computer's heads to the side a bit. The idea is that these can flip too. Ooo... we get to punch the normal and angry faces too! j/k.. now I get it. Btw- I'm sorry Devin - but your pink mouth on tomato ken look like he's wearing lipstick. I'd keep his mouth color consistent and stick with black. It always looked like a mouth to me since day one. Should be quite easy to figure out because most already know mustaches don't disappear.

The constraint is is not as limited as I thought then. That's very good! You got Russ's sideburns back too! cool! Just to note - I wondered why the new head shots got their ear cut off on one side. Wally B also loss a lot of his forehead compared to your earlier design. I believe it's still possible to preserve the look of all your original normal and angry faces. Here's what I'd do with Wally's angry head using the new moveable 4-pixel wide ball for example: Whatever the reason anyhow, I'm just so thrilled now that the face-flipping is going to be reality! Thanks Devin, for all your thoughts and effort with implementing the flipping heads!

I looked the images and I am sure I can added flippable faces. The trade-off is that the ball will be fixed at 4 pixels. Fortunately, with only a few exceptions, all the faces can be drawn using the fixed width ball. This includes the ones in this release and the characters are drew for sequels already. If the ball is kept at the same width, the formula simplifies to: XReverse = -Xnormal Which is now possible. This all sounds very good. I re-did the hit faces following the new constraints you described. I'm not sure if "all" the faces mean: --the same ball width for the normal and attacking faces as well. Anyway, I just worked on the hit faces for now. The trade-off was not too severe. In fact, most has very few noticeable difference with the last boxer remaining identical. Only Russ loss his sideburns but I think the image still works. Hope they all work out for you. The pics on the left are the Before and on the right are After: Thanks for all your complements on the player sprites The color change idea to signal being hit I think might be too distracting especially if taking multiple hits in quick succession. However, I can understand if the 'hit' sprite's head look too swollen. I did that purposely to exaggerate the action and emphasize the impact. I like how the player look "thrown back" a bit and wanted to get your impression. Perhaps just letting the sweat alone fly farther out while keeping a normal sized head is more suitable for you? The socks was just because. That finisher move for tomato ken was a nice surprise for me. Glad you added that little extra. I'm really looking forward now to your face-flipping build!

According to your formula -I'm guessing that selectively flipping individual faces can't be done (it's either all or none so-to-speak). Your statement seems to involve the ball of all 3 heads per boxer. Is this why you still trying to flip the ball? To keep the "normal" and "attack" faces from getting distorted? This still means flipping both the sprite and ball for all the heads with not enough cycles. Question: Is it possible to flip only the head sprites and not the balls? If the case be yes, then why not solve the clock-cycles issue by just keeping the ball gfx for all 3 heads centered and fixed symmetrically as with the hit face? --that way none of the ball gfx need to be flipped for any of the heads. Flipping only the head sprites would use less clock-cycles as I would think. The idea is to "fit" the head sprites to the symmetrically fixed ball; in other words, let the faces work with the ball. Don't try to make the ball work with the faces. From there it's just a matter of moving a few colors and pixels to the rest of the face sprites as was done the hit face --which I'll be more than happy to assist. Of course, you know the constraints better than I -but would this idea work better for you?

You made the decision based on a poll separated by only one vote? I dunno, I would have thought all of the other people contributing different options and ideas here would have negated an almost dead even poll. Not that I mind the 5200 ones. They're ok. Just kinda boring. My thoughts exactly. I don't mind either, but wow, almost a split decision! Personally I still would perfer an akin 5200 style with the larger arcade-like fringes. It makes less sense to me reproducing the 5200 ghosts exactly pixel for pixel. IMO, this is suppose to be an arcade port - not a 5200 port. So yeah, duplicating the exact ghosts would be kinda boring. Well at least as a game it's still far better than atari's first.

Okay, here's a hack with the new hit faces in place for Russ and Wally B and rest of the crew. Also, redid TKO font, and I experimented a little more the player boxer sprites. No kangaroo in this hack though. KO_RC3_RussWallyB_hitFaces.bin I like your designs and wanted to see how I can build from them, hope that's okay with you. I provided pics of all the changes so you can view every detail in deciding what you can and can't use. Some last-minute feedback after much playing: -I found I was having problems differentiating the player's blocking frame from the normal stand when blocking toe to toe. This is especially true on a small screen. It reads a lot better when I have the player's feet planted farther apart and can then clearly tell when the block is broken by the opponent. This is an important visual cue you need to keep. I also made a few minor changes to the normal standing frame by slightly lowering one arm to avoid symmetry and thus improve the walk animation. Same deal with the player's hit frame. The visual cue is hard to see being within the frame of the other boxer. It reads better after I made a slightly larger head and sweat flying farther out so I can really tell now when I'm hit! I corrected the fore-shortening of the knock-down frame because it was a little too tall. In the punch frame I retracted his right arm back a notch and right foot a little more up so he looks to step into his swing. In the victory frame I dropped his head a notch into his shoulders so his gloves are better defined in the air. I added socks to all the frames too. Now my thoughts on the several comments made concerning the suggested 32k build. Well that depends on the "sprit" of the individual. It's not a matter to double but to keep from compromising some desirable content because of lack of space which is more to the point here. Hmm.. that begs the question: Which edition would sell more? Good idea! That to me sound like the best route to go. I don't think so. I will admit that 32k can seem vast. There is plenty of wasted space in the Minigame Multicart, for instance. The 8 games only use 11k of space. We could have made it 16k easily by using 5k for the menu. Instead we went 32k so we could put in some fluff. We used 12k for just the menu, and 9k of space is unused. I don't feel guilty about that. I agree. There's nothing wrong with moving this game up to 32k for the very reasons batari points out: - To make room for some desirable content that otherwise can't fit. - Not much effort involved to expand to 32k. - No real difference in production and memory costs. - Extra space don't need to be completely filled. I guess some programmers concider the challenge of scrunching code and data as a fun thing just for themselves and/or as a way of building esteem among their associates based on how much one can do with the least amount of space. Nothing wrong with that. Grant it, It's great for programmers to be able to do that sort of thing to sharpen their programming skills while adding content when given only so much space to work with -but space is now so cheaply affordable and abundant -I see no real reason to cut any desirable fluff out for lack of space. As far as customer expectations for a 32k cart, --if the memory costs were passed on to the customers, yeah, there would be expectation to a degree. But that's not an issue now-a-days because, as was mentioned, space is cheap! I think it depends mostly on how enjoyable and entertaining the content is rather than how well it fills up the alloted space. Believe me, the average gamer won't look under the hood and criticize any wasted space if it already looks and plays unlike anything that's already been done on a 2600. If it's cheap enough to use, easy enough to implement (and there are good people around here who can help you with that if nessasary I'm sure) and results in affording to keep the extra content instead of cutting it out, --what's there to feel guilty about? A satisfactory end product is what matters most imo. Why settle for less? I for one am willing to wait for a final product with the added content using 32k at practicaly the same cost. But whatever you do decide at this point is jake with me!

Hey Devin, sorry I couldn't reply sooner. Glad you explained the situation concerning the face flipping. I've not know about the constraints before but I can now understand it's not as simple a trick to pull off. Keeping my fingers crossed while you're still giving it some thought. I'm thrilled you like the new faces. I haven't done Russ and Wally because of the Roo that was in place, but since the original cast will stay I'll whip up the last two faces shortly -compatable for flipping of course. I can understand your attachment to your original characters and you should do what makes you happy of course. I like all your characters too! It's probably better, if you should decide, to go 32k to include more characters as with Roo, but I don't mind the game as it is now at 16k. It's really up to you. I also love the idea of OK Homebrew! I will see how the new TKO font looks on my sega nomad. I use the A/V input to preview what any 2600 game can look like on a handheld display. Btw-- I discovered a special finishing move in the first match when I counter-punched the nerd's special while he was one hit away from a knock down and my left hook sent him flying to the ropes like a sling-shot before he hit the mat! That was exhilarating! But this same finisher never happens to any of the other boxers. Is there a different manner to perform a finisher to the others or was it only for the first character? You ought to make possible that same finisher to be performed on all the characters, it's dynamite!

This game reads very well on a small screen handheld. The sprites are all nice and tall and the color is great. All those victory and idle standing animations really do add to the enjoyment. I noted the TKO font was kinda hard to make out on a small screen, so I have a mock compare to suggest a minor doctored version. The new "K" is 5 pixels wide so moving all the numerals 1 pixel to the right will make room for it. I also fix the exclamation mark since it looks like a semi-colon. Can you make the current on the top look like the example below it?

Wow. Plenty of posts here since I last visited! Been playing your latest build RC3. Kept me off the forums for quite awhile. I like the fine tuning to all the characters - the biker thug with the shades is noticably harder to ko. I usally now last all 3 rounds with him and win by decision. That's not a bad thing, I like the break in "putting away" others and winning by decision at times is good and challenges me to try harder next time. Concerning rematches, it would be good (imo) to keep as selectable with one of the a/b switches: A - 1 rematch per game or B - 1 rematch per character. I don't think you need a spirit bar; the health bar alone is probably best. The color cycling of the health as the spirit status that was suggested sound interesting though! Only thing missing are the flipping faces. I know it's harder to work flipping the ball gfx together with the sprite from the technical --but there's a way to work around that issue from a design standpoint if you're willing to consent to some new hit face designs. I'd suggest keeping the ball gfx position symmetrical under the hit face sprite so you don't need to 'flip' the ball. Then you need flip only the face gfx sprite in the same direction the computer boxer's body is moving whenever hit. In my latest hack of RC3 I've redesigned the hit faces of the character's and positioned the ball to match perfectly with the flipping face (well, the faces that are to be flipped ) while the ball itself remain static to good effect. Here's the bin: Edit: just posted last-minute to update the bin for a rather small but humiliating detail to the kangaroo's antics specially when you lose a match. I'm sure anybody can spot it! KO_RC3_flipface_Roo_hack_.bin The faces I redid have a more dramatic "cartoon style take" which I feel works really well with your other facial frames, but you can employ designs other than what I have to fit the situation to your liking. Here are some pics of those great moments! Lastly, I hope you do find a way to keep the kangaroo. I cleaned up the Roo's sprites that were exhibiting some ball gfx/color misalignments in the first hack. I'm pleased it now looks far more refined in this one than the last. I notice that a number of posts have already advocated for the Roo (thanks! ). I wasn't sure how others would feel about replacing Wally B because I know an extra set of leg and chest sprites are needed to keep him. I think it would be a good compromise to replace Wally B with the Roo if there isn't room for both. Excellent progress on RC3 nonetheless! P.S. Please LMK if you need any model sheets of sprite/ball images of Roo or the hit faces if you will included in the final release.

Thanks Devin. Please feel free to use whatever sprites I did that suits any of your characters! Btw-- The congrats screen is excellent! The bronze, silver and gold representing the skill level completion is clever. I'd suggest letting a game continue in a cycle after wining a belt to defend the title again at the next higher difficulty to win the next belt color for every 6 matches leading up to the gold belt. For those who want to begin a game at the highest 3rd level, you can use the trophies to indicate the number of times the gold belt has been successfully defended for every cycle of 6 matches up to the ultimate goal of 3 trophies and gold belt before beating the game entirely. That would make a great marathon of matches with progressive difficulty! Just some food for thought. Thanks! Hmm.. I wasn't aware of this but in that last hack it seems my sorcery back fired and changed another character, Russ Tick I think, into some sort of circus freak! No way for me to figure how to undo that, only a wizard like yourself can change him back to normal now. Something simular happened to the forth boxer too. Has to do with boxers #1 and #4 sharing sprites. The original thin legged frame you originally had in place is more suitable for the green haired guy because of his speed. I'd like to see that fat boy hack make the final cut, but I can understand if it can't fit. I might be able to solve this, however, my one last-minute change. When the computer gets hit - he moves to the left and right. I plan to increase this number. If there's a will, there's a way! I will do this! I have the primitives written already. Sounds good! Although the idea is just for a little extra polish, I thought it were worth a mention in case it were easy to implement. Really looking forward to next release canidate!

I been playing this for awhile now. Your last build is much better balanced for the different levels of difficulty. You had a good point about the visual noise in the hacked boxer. And he did seem out of place along with the cartoon style of your other characters and I think it's great how you give them a cartoon look. You're good with characters. I hope you don't mind because I did another hack, I'll post some screen pics to avoid confusion. -I experimented on your character's physic while keeping your style. -This time I tried to combine what you did with your last changes to the boxer without making him look too buff as I have done before. -I redone the ring lowering the ropes so the characters seem to look taller and used different coloring for the crowd. -One of the contenders act like a kangaroo and I thought a boxing kangaroo opponent would be a cool novelty, so I hacked one in place of the #3 boxer. I hope you like it enough to include in the final release. KO_Roo_RC_TEST_2009_02_23b.bin As far as the gameplay, it's spot on fantastic to say the least! Only 2 things I'd like to see improved (which btw has nothing to do with the game play): 1.) It would be good to have both boxers at the end of a round to automatically move back to their off-centered corners (same position as when starting a game). And during a knock down as well, have the boxer wait in his corner (off-centered) and instead of standing still, keep him animated stepping in place as the ref counts down to ten. Same thing for the player boxer to move to off-center instead of just backing straight down -that way we occasionally get to see the entire downed opponent in all his humble glory. In the case of a player losing a match, let the winning opponent throw a few mock air victory punches to provoke repeated play! 2.) The faces are done so well and if you touch up the "hit faces", you can "flip" the head images of the opponent's faces with each consecutive hit the player lands! That would be gratifying! I'm really enjoying your work, such an achievement and highly addictive game, amazing!

Cool! The art work of your version pac-man remind me of pac-mania, which is my fave of the bunch! The maze look great!

I was inspired by LS_Dracon's new boxer mock-up to do this hack. KO_Cruiser_NewBoxer_2009_02_20.bin Excellent game btw Devin! This is pure fun!

Hee-hee, he's about to down a crunch berry. Looks like ol' Captain Crunch after ten rounds of chemo. He needs dentures! Ha Ha! I'm just kiddin', couldn't resist sayin that. That label looks real good start:)

I can agree with you there Trebor. I tried to keep the arcade eyes and the pupils black on my first try but was said it look like a cyclops. So I tried again and changed the eyes to what may resemble but is not exactly a 5200 ghost. I placed the eyes farther to the side than the 5200 and kept a rounder shaped head and large fringes like the arcade -which I believe every ghosts designed should be patterned after. Anyway, it's funny how no one commented yet on the "saw-toothed 5200 fringes" on Clay's version, which I don't like, and presently appears on both ghosts candidates -which is why I didn't vote for either. It should have the large fringes, as I have corrected below. <--This would have my vote