UN Squadron 7800 graphics... Any advice/feedback is welcome

[gorfcadet]

UN Squadron could totally benefit from an increased palett and HSC support. Pokey would go a long way to help audio. Some of Capcom's best music and audio came from this era at the arcades. UN's sound deserves the best it can get. I'm still planning and reading old source code and you could fill the Library of Congress with everything I don't know. Whether it is XM or not, I'm doing this to have fun. Being a dad and teacher comes first. If someone comes along and wants to help me out or whatever that's fine with me too.

 

As for sound, I will be looking at Commando's samples for inspiration since it is also Capcom and on the 7800. That means Pokey. Otherwise, I'd look at 2600 Commando if it ends up stock. Keep in mind, I'm a designer at this point and all of GB's kind help and advice is helping me understand the environment, but I havent coded a full game since high school so unless GB, Perry, or Bob decides to either teach a class or jump in as the coder mastermind, don't rush to get too excited.

 

I'll take this as far as I can, but it has been well over a decade since I touched this stuff and it sure wasn't assembly!

 

Well, evening all! GB, thanks so much for your help today.

 

More pics soon!

Edited December 17, 2012 by gorfcadet

[Greg2600]

So would this be a xm game then? If so how could it be made better other than the sound as the obvious upgrade from a standard 7800 game?

I know your just starting to get ideas but just wondering...

Sirius by Tynesoft was a horizontal scrolling shmup that runs fairly well, so I don't think so. My point earlier was that sometimes it's wise to sacrifice somethings to get the game to run well.

[GroovyBee]

UN Squadron could totally benefit from an increased palett and HSC support. Pokey would go a long way to help audio.

 

POKEY and HSC so thats an XM game . The XM can't increase the number of colours in the 7800's stock palette and it can't change the stock graphics modes either. As a programmer you are free to change palette colours any time you like. So that could be on a DLI to give you a multicoloured horizon or on a per sprite wave basis too.

 

The XM's RAM would also allow much more flexible scrolling schemes to be implemented too.

 

The only potential problem with power-ups being made from the same palette as the sprite wave that dropped it would be if its graphic is still around when a new sprite wave appears. If thats the case you'll have to come up with an algorithm to assign different palette indexes. If you split the sprites into air and ground types and then assign each complete sprite wave an increasing number (as the level progresses) then a Round Robin style of algorithm would work fine. Even something super simple like if its an odd wave number then use palette 4 or an even wave number use palette 5 for air based enemies and swap between palettes 6 and 7 for ground based enemies. That way you can have the next wave of sprites in their colours and a power-up from the previous wave's colours on screen at the same time.

 

I'll take this as far as I can, but it has been well over a decade since I touched this stuff and it sure wasn't assembly!

 

Just keep on plugging away at bits of it as you get the time and inspiration.

 

GB, thanks so much for your help today.

 

No problem!

 

More pics soon!

 

[GroovyBee]

Sirius by Tynesoft was a horizontal scrolling shmup that runs fairly well, so I don't think so.

 

Both Sirius and Plutos need on cart RAM so don't run as stock machine games.

[Mayhem]

In the arcade version it was 2p simultaneous. The snes version infamously was one player just like the snes Final Fight. Capcom couldn't count to 2 back then for whatever reason

However the SFC/SNES version has some substantial differences to the arcade version, and is the much better game imo. Especially by virtue of being one player only. If you are just focussing on the arcade machine then yes, two player mode should be a consideration if possible at all.

[7800Lover]

UN Squadron! I used to play that in the arcades. I wish you success in making this for the 7800. I'd definitely buy a copy!

[AtariMagic!]

the arcade was average, enjoyed the C64 version very much though

[Austin]

the c64 was average, enjoyed the arcade version very much though

 

There, fixed.

[gorfcadet]

I was going to get back on it this week, but no power. I'm at my mother's charging phones etc. Could be seven days! argh. Graph paper is my friend.

[GroovyBee]

Graph paper is my friend.

 

Nothing wrong with doing it old style .

[gorfcadet]

edit: Let's see if this is easier to see.

Only had power back since yesterday and most of that time has been cleaning house and cleaning out the fridge. I hope to get to the Thunderbolt fighter tomorrow. Added the white border around the status icon and health bar, cleaned up pixel work on the pilot, (I had a few pixels wider than they should be in certain vertical columns) and started keeping a visual tab on the lower right to keep up with how many colors I had used in all of my mini paletts. I used the type tool in ps to approximate the text for score and life. Hope everyone is doing well and had a spectacular Christmas. Edited December 31, 2012 by gorfcadet

[Stun Runner 87]

 

 

 

 

edit: Let's see if this is easier to see.

 

 

 

 

Only had power back since yesterday and most of that time has been cleaning house and cleaning out the fridge. I hope to get to the Thunderbolt fighter tomorrow. Added the white border around the status icon and health bar, cleaned up pixel work on the pilot, (I had a few pixels wider than they should be in certain vertical columns) and started keeping a visual tab on the lower right to keep up with how many colors I had used in all of my mini paletts. I used the type tool in ps to approximate the text for score and life. Hope everyone is doing well and had a spectacular Christmas.

Christmas was good.Maybe Santa will put atari 7800 UN Squadron carts in our stockings next year to make christmas great.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Stun Runner 87

[GroovyBee]

Added the white border around the status icon and health bar, cleaned up pixel work on the pilot, (I had a few pixels wider than they should be in certain vertical columns) and started keeping a visual tab on the lower right to keep up with how many colors I had used in all of my mini paletts. I used the type tool in ps to approximate the text for score and life.

 

Looking good. A few observations and comments :-

 

- Don't use an anti-aliased font for text. It looks OK on small images but on a real TV it won't look so good. Having said that a small amount of anti-aliasing can look good when added by a pixel artist's hand (if you have the colours free to do it). Contradictory I know .

 

- The face is now using 5 colours because the border around it is a different colour to the eye white. Not such a problem. You could do the faces and health bars in 160B and that would get you 12 colours (and a background).

 

- There are some "blank" background colour lines under the faces which can be used for changing colours in the status area that can then be used in the playfield. This will mean all 24 colours are available for use on the in game sprites.

 

- It looks like you'll be using different sized zones throughout the status area because the score digits and health bar graphics span either 8 or 16 pixel high zone boundaries. If you were going for a fixed height zone throughout then you'd need to cut up the digits in software and place them like you would a sprite or use twice as many graphics (or more). It all depends on what ROM space and RAM/CPU resources you've got e.g. using a single indirect mode Display List (DL) header or a DL header per digit.

 

- I can see 3 background colour changes. Not a problem but two of them (under the status area) will need a WSYNC to prevent on screen jitter.

 

- The playfield doesn't start on an 8 or 16 pixel boundary vertically. Again its not a problem. It all depends on how you size the status area zones as to where a sprites Y coordinate starts e.g. relative to top left of the screen or relative to top left of the playfield. Will you need to clip sprites in Y? By that I mean can sprites be slightly outside the playfield at its top and bottom? Don't worry about clipping in X you effectively get that for free with MARIA.

[gorfcadet]

Hey GB! Once again, good catch on the third background color. I didn't see that in ps. Fixed that and the white is now all one color in the status image along with a simplified placeholder font for the status area. Also started work on the vanity screen and decided the name should now be AREA 78 as an homage to the original title and the system it is now intended for. Also to imply things are open to change from here one out.

 

 

 

[GroovyBee]

Hey GB! Once again, good catch on the third background color. I didn't see that in ps.

 

Colour mismatches would normally get picked up when you start converting the graphics to go into your code.

 

Fixed that and the white is now all one color in the status image along with a simplified placeholder font for the status area.

 

The font looks much cleaner now.

 

Also started work on the vanity screen and decided the name should now be AREA 78 as an homage to the original title and the system it is now intended for. Also to imply things are open to change from here one out.

 

Vanity screen huh? It'll be a 128K+ game them . Thats good because it gives you a ton of options for solving problems and can make a graphically rich game as well. Changing the name and doing your own thing is a good idea too. It means that you can play to the strengths of the machine.

 

How wide in pixels will the "AREA 78" letters be in total? Just curious. But don't worry about how much space your game takes up at the moment. Once its going you can start counting the bytes .

[7800Lover]

SWEET! I like the screenshots so far. It's impressive what can be done for a system that was originally constructed for simpler arcade games like Donkey Kong, Asteroids, and Dig Dug.

[Bakasama]

Say isn't the Japanese name of this game Area 88?

[KeizerGhidorah]

Say isn't the Japanese name of this game Area 88?

Yeah, it's based on the anime (and manga) of the same name.

Edited December 31, 2012 by KeizerGhidorah

[gorfcadet]

OK. Last update for today. Added the Thunderbolt (my personal favorite) to the sprites, added p2 pilot's status face and worked some more on the vanity screen. Also made first attempt at designing the ammo. Hope everyone is well.

 

AREA 88 was a big favorite of mine as a guy who grew up on G-Force, Voltron and Speed Racer. I like the idea of AREA 78 and the freedom it gives me to make some redesigns later on to pilots and fighters and maybe a secret fighter to hide in the code.

 

 

 

 

 

[gorfcadet]

And a new pilot enters the fight! I'll be working on this one soon.

 

[GroovyBee]

Looking good. Now you've got quite a few assets appearing in the mocks you might want to start putting the normal pixel sized versions in some tile sheets too. The best thing to do is top left align them on an 8x8 grid and store them in a lossless compression format like *.bmp or *.png. If you add a little palette (near each of the graphics) containing all of the colours used in it (background colour first) it'll help the conversion process later. It doesn't matter if you spread them over a few files. So you might end up with files called status_faces.bmp, status_font.bmp, game_player.bmp and do on. As long as the file names are meaningful it'll be easy to add graphics to the right place and find them if you put the project down and then come back to it later.

 

You might also want to start creating backups/archives of your work. Use zip (or whatever you use on mac ) archive file names like filename.version.date.zip that way you can look back at the work you did last week or whenever you had the time. It also means that a programmer (if its not you) can ask for specific art work by version or date if they want to check changes. Keep the backups on a USB flash drive or use something like dropbox to keep them safe.

 

Keeping an updated todo.txt in the archive backup will also help when you need to look at what assets are outstanding or to keep track of things that are "up in the air" because you are thrashing things out with the coder and something isn't the right size/bpp/frames etc.

 

If you like making animated *.gif files to look at your sprites in action keep track of the inter-frame delays in a text file too. That information can be passed onto the coder so its all synced up to how you expect it to be. You could also give the *.gif to the programmer but then they have to load it up and dissect it. If its all information to hand its much easier.

 

Apologies if I'm teaching grandma to suck eggs by going over work practices but getting organised early in the project makes life so much easier if/when you are part of multi-person team or even as a lone wolf and you make a design decision that you need to access the implications of or in the worst case you have an OS or hard drive crash that you need to recover from.

[gorfcadet]

GB you are the man... no, this is all helpful as the last time I did this I was way younger and less stupid. I might take time and do some master sprite sheets and I was thinking about doing some motion tests with animated gifs once I had enemy sprites and backgrounds rolling. Still trying to think of clever ways to use color and cheat in the background department and putting together thoughts on boss sprites/artwork.

 

My thoughts on gameplay are to condense it down to UN patterns that really built the memorable parts of gameplay (think 1942 sideways) with "bonus" rounds where enemy choppers perform Galaga style galactic dancing patterns for fun. I need to start getting ideas for boss sizes/colors.

 

Whether I do it myself or hand it off to an experienced programmer, I want the art assets neat and helpful so I am not the cause of any migraines on my end. The 78 had plenty of space shooters and twitch arcade games, but I feel this is a game with colors and personality that the 7800 missed out on even though AREA 78 represents what was going on in the arcades at the time.

 

So, here is what I have been messing around with this morning:

Added two new pilots. One based on Speed Racer and his pallet swapped twin that is an homage to Ken the Eagle from G-Force/Gatchaman. Also added the F-8E Crusader, the F200-Efreet and cleaned up graphics on the F14 and Thunderbolt.

 

 

 

 

 

Next up will be adding choppers, ground enemies, and the shop screen (though don't expect to see the crotchety old man; maybe something closer to the shop girl from Forgotten Worlds).

[gorfcadet]

Here is the WIP sprite sheet to this point. Of course I'll be trimming the fat as it were to keep the memory manageable; recycling colors in the enemy pallet whenever possible. Need to see the choppers and tanks animate to make sure the effect works. Hope everyone is having a great New Year's!

 

 

 

[DracIsBack]

Hope to see a prototype at some point.

[gorfcadet]

HA! Me too Drac! Still a lot to learn and I wouldn't even ask someone to get into my mess until I feel the graphics are finished. Since I'm still learning, I want to get the graphics part out of the way so my brain doesn't explode trying to process two sides of the coin at once. Maybe someone will like what I've done and get involved on the programming end; if not, I'll sure do my best. The tools do not seem very mac friendly, so when I get there, I'll be digging out the old p4.

 

For now though, let me introduce... the shopgirl!

 

 

A little color heavy, but she'll be on a black screen with white text and leaves room at the bottom for a pallet refresh for the shop items.