sprite cars in bump n' jump 16x16?!

[8bitwidgets.com]

8 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

Actually, it can be very effective, although you do not get 8x16 hi-res sprites

the cards are 8x8 right? but i read they are not actually 8x8 "pixels"..  are they more literally 16x16 pixels (but double X and Y of 8 pixels?) ? in 20x12 cards.

 

here is my concern about doing something with backtab beyond the resolution issue.  I would be looking to tween vehicles from a point A to a point B and that angle of approach could vary 360 degrees (or i might quantize it down to 8 directions to simplify if doing 360 degrees is too complicated) but for a sprite 360 would probably not be a big deal.. but 360 with backtab I could see being a nightmare of stuff..  maybe 8 directions would be more manageable

 

7 minutes ago, carlsson said:

here is a simple example

awesome!  yea that's very cool.  

[carlsson]

I suppose one issue with this is if you have multiple sprites (or background tiles) that need to cycle at different intervals. You can prepend one DEFINE and one DEFINE ALTERNATE for each frame, meaning that you can change the cards for two sets of graphics. If different animations are interleaved across frames it might not be an issue but if some happen to coincide, but not always follow eachother along in terms of frames, you got some thinking ahead of you how to solve it.

[mr_me]

2 hours ago, Zendocon said:

The running-man animation is 8 frames, so at double-resolution, that's 16 GRAM cards - one quarter of the available GRAM right there.  Fortunately, with most of the Sports Network titles, most if not all of the sprites at any time are the same thing - players.  With clever use of the available characters in the GROM library, you can reduce your GRAM consumption even further.

Plus another three frames for north/south running, and football has another five frames for getting in and out of the crouch position.  The Exec is designed to be used for any type of game so it supports different animation graphics for each of the eight sprites.

 

51 minutes ago, Caleb Garner said:

I'm surprised the running man wasn't in GROM seeing how common it was used in many mattel games.  

The graphics are different with different cartridges.  Football players have shoulder pads and helmets.  Baseball players have baseball caps.

Edited September 21, 2021 by mr_me

[8bitwidgets.com]

3 minutes ago, carlsson said:

cycle at different intervals.

what do you mean? 

 

  

2 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Football players have shoulder pads and helmets

yea that's true they were not all the same..  and i mean heck you have gram so no biggie.  i never played the sports games really..  but games like tron and night stalker seemed very much the same guy.. but i'm sure even they had some minor differences.  

Edited September 21, 2021 by Caleb Garner

[carlsson]

3 minutes ago, Caleb Garner said:

the cards are 8x8 right? but i read they are not actually 8x8 "pixels"..  are they more literally 16x16 pixels (but double X and Y of 8 pixels?) ? in 20x12 cards.

The cards are 8x8 pixels for a resolution of 159x96 (the rightmost pixel never displays). MOBs can be drawn at half the vertical resolution, thus the reference to 0.5 above, or expanded vertically to X1 (same as background) or larger pixels.

[carlsson]

1 minute ago, Caleb Garner said:

what do you mean? 

If you have two different animations going on:

 

1. Both take 3 frames between each new definition, and trigger at the same frame count. Then you can update both animations in one go.

2. Both take 3 frames but are staggered one frame apart. Then you could update the first one in this frame and the second one in the next.

3. One animation takes 3 frames between each definition and the other takes 4.

 

0 1 (2) 3 4 (5) 6 7 (8) 9 10 (11) 12 13 (14) 15 16 (17) 18 19 ...

0 1 2 (3) 4 5 6 (7) 8 9 10 (11) 12 13 14 (15) 16 17 18 (19) ...

 

As you see, most of the time those would be updated at different frames but once you get to 11 both need to be updated, probably from different parts of ROM so you could use DEFINE and DEFINE ALTERNATE.

 

Now let's add a third one that moves slower so it takes 5 frames but is staggered by one frame:

0 (1) 2 3 4 5 (6) 7 8 9 10 (11) 12 13 14 15 (16) 17 18 19 ...

 

Suddenly you have three animations that all want to be updated in the same frame, probably from three different areas. You could delay one for a bit of sluggish movement, or fill up GRAM with predefined patterns for one of those so you combine the two approaches of having entire animations in GRAM and redefine GRAM when required. You will eventually figure all this out.

 

Same goes about your tween vehicles, which might be software sprites that you want to redefine at some intervals. Earlier I made a crude example of that which you also might find useful to study.

 

Perhaps you should start with something simpler in terms of a vehicle game, one that only uses sprites and stationary background, whether or not it scrolls, and worry about the finer details later when you got the basics going.

[8bitwidgets.com]

6 minutes ago, carlsson said:

drawn at half the vertical resolution

ok ok yes got it..  now that makes sense.  I was doing the math and i'm like.. wait.. 196 / 8 is 20.. so those ARE pixels.. but clearly sprites could be crisper than that.  

 

so help me understand our car graphic in relation to the background.  you defined the car as an 8X16 occupies 2 cards worth of space, but you could make it 0.5 on the Y so that would effectively shrink it back to an 8x8 (card) space, but have more definition within that 8x8 space. 

[carlsson]

Yep, you're absolutely correct that it could be displayed at 0.5 so it takes as much space as a single cell in the BACKTAB. Remove ZOOMY2 for that to happen.

Edited September 21, 2021 by carlsson

[8bitwidgets.com]

39 minutes ago, carlsson said:

If you have two different animations going on:

ah ok i see what you mean now.. yea in my case i would probably just have everything be the same number of frames of animation and speed so they could all be updated at the same time BUT I definitely see what you are talking about and that would be important in various situations.  I tried out the "crude" example and that was really cool.   

 

39 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Perhaps you should start with something simpler

yea i already have one in mind..  basically a game jam idea that never went beyond it but i think it would be a fitting first game.  TL;DR it would be a kind of Berzerk / Venture kinda game, but with a twist. 

 

 

OK basic mechanics are like this:

 

1. you are a birthday bot in a kids pizza / arcade place in the middle of a busy mall

 

2. you find some robot arms (something your bot would love to have) left by an evil scientist

 

3. Unknowingly you connect them however, these arms are programmed to kill humans!

 

4. following the three laws of robotics, you can't allow this to happen.

 

5. Kids are attracted too you because you're all decked out in fun clown attire and fun music coming from your birthday scripting. 

 

6. You can detach the arms and move children out of the way of the various exits in numerous rooms to find the exit

 

7. Grab the arms and move to the next room figuring out how to get out.

 

8. However if the arms if left alone they begin to crawl towards the nearest kid to kill them so you have to be mindful of leaving them unattended too long or leave a room without them.

 

9. If you have the killer arms on you mall cops will shoot at you, or the arms but the arms are bullet proof so the cops will keep shooting at the arms which will single out cops to kill them.

 

 

Really form there it's just a matter  of creating lots of rooms.  probably randomize the grid for added replay value.  I think I can work fine with 8 sprites for this game.  I'd love to do a fun intro/cut scenes like above, but obviously intellivision style.. 

 

1 Player Bot 

2 Arms 

3 Kid 1

4 Kid 2

5 Kid 3

6 Adult 

7 Mall Cop

8 Bullet

 

probably some other little ideas but that would make up the overall vision of the game..  i'm learning a lot (with DZ-Jay's PM help!) with a pong game that will likely help me understand a lot of concepts i'll need for I,Killbot.. 

 

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Caleb Garner

[carlsson]

It reminds me that I never have gotten around to finish Berznake for the VIC-20. Perhaps one day I'll make an Intellivision version as well.

 

Snake (player) kills robots

Robots (computer) place bombs

Snake gets injured by bombs, i.e. starting with 5 energy points

Snake dies if it hits a barrier or runs into itself

Humans (computer) disarm bombs

Humans dig holes through barriers

Robot turn humans into robots by touch

Snake dies if it hits a human

[8bitwidgets.com]

9 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Berznake

nice   yea that sounds fun.  has a few layers of complexity to it.