Ninja Kombat release .03.1 latest update, WORK IN PROGRESS, full collisions, magics, working movesets, spacing.

[freshbrood]

Timing and possibly some magic damages are off and need to be tweaked. 

 

This is nowhere near complete. PLEASE DON'T MESSAGE ME WITH BUG UPDATES! - I know it's still very glitchy and buggy and I am aware of all of them!  

Please don't ask me why I programmed it this way instead of that way, etc.. It's the Atari 2600. Compromises had to be made and what you see is the best I know how to give you.

 

I apologize for all the false alarms and taking so long to release this latest update. I got sidetracked with trying to survive and put this off for a while.  

 

 

 

There is a 4 count beat and then a melody ONLY at the character select screen. The volumes are completely off and player 2 glitches the timing. Pressing fire on joypad two will allow player 2 to enter after player 1 is selected. 

 

There is no cpu ai programmed yet. This engine is based on MK2. The good news is because this is mostly in BBasic when I do release it, it should essentially be the MUGEN of the Atari 2600 and easily customizable by non coders. 

 

I really want to squeeze it down to 32k if possible for compatibility on all cartridges and consoles, without needing to emulate, but that is to be determined. 

 

Before I forget special thanks to Karl G particularly with the scanline counts being controlled by .05% assembly plugs and for figuring out a routine to duplicate color tables for full pallete swaps that saved a ton of memory, and for Maggie Vogel for helping with the chiptunes and for Chris Spry for helping me to understand the sounds, and to Albert & co. for running such a cool page. (And to the many other homebrewers who have inspired.)

 

I hope you enjoy! I love you my fellow Atarians!

 

Ninja Kombat wip v03.1 DEMO.bas.bin

Edited April 18 by freshbrood
MUGEN not MAME

[Living Room Arcade]

Is this really happening or am I dreaming?  MK for the Atari 2600???!!!  

Edited April 18 by Living Room Arcade

[masschamber]

aw man that's awesome

[alfredtdk]

My friend, this is simply incredible. The opening telling the story of the tournament with the figure of Goro, I am speechless.
The descent of the fighter icons across the screen, the tournament and the battlefield are all very beautiful, faithful to the Arcade. It's incredible that you're managing to compress everything, the logic, to work on the 2600.
I congratulate you and those involved in this project. It's too good.

[freshbrood]

Thanks! 

 

Fun fact: Raiden's body torpedo is actually only 7 pixels wide- the fewest horizontal pixel count in the game!.. but the VCS has 2 very rudimentary scaling options that let each pixel be stretched twice or four times as wide. All other sprites are 8 pixels wide- but they stretch double when attacking. Goro is fixed at double stretched for proper proportion. As a result I've altered some of his melee attacks to be a Shao Khan like shoulder smash instead. (because quad stretching him lost too much detail and looked awful) 

 

Also when doing Raiden's flying torpedo against the edge of the screen he will push through the opponent instead of going off screen. This is because the 2600's memory is so limited there is no room to "hide" sprites off screen, they just wrap around. So he pushes faster until the opponent is at his hands then matches speed, always ending up in the correct position. It was the most elegant solution I could come up with and I think it works.

Edited April 18 by freshbrood

[LatchKeyKid]

Very nicely done!  I love the sprite work.   I've had a pipe dream for a while now to make a samurai game but wasn't sure if the single button controller was enough to map all the combat moves I wanted to include (basic stuff like block/attack up and down plus jump and crouch).   If you don't mind me asking, how did you decide on the control scheme?   How many frames does each animation last and what kind of a delay did you institute for the jump forward/back feature?

[freshbrood]

The jump forward/back is just a straight line up, then up+over, then over, then over+down, then down. Basically 5 straight lines approximating the arch as closely as possible. This saves a lot of memory and allows for just simple intergers. The delay on arching jump- just a variable counter that decides how long to move up, then up plus over, then over plus down, etc.. There is also a separate variable to delay the up/down jump. 

 

The frames are ALMOST as many as in MK2 on Genesis. But not quite, so to make up for lack of frames and telegraphing an attack (aka seeing it coming and having time to block it before the final frame of animation) the punch (for example) will instantly appear with arm fully extended, but damage is delayed a split second so it can be blocked if the opponent is fast enough. This way it feels like a responsive input for the attacker while being fair to the blocker. 

 

I think sprites are totally maxed out or else I'd try to squeeze one more frame of the starting punch. So for now that's how it works. 

Edited April 18 by freshbrood

[doctorclu]

So cool I had to pause work, hook up my 7800, load this up (Harmony) and play it.  Really awesome.

[freshbrood]

Holding down+fire in the air performs a jump punch. 

 

Simply pressing fire without moving performs a low kick. During the knee bend animation press up for a high kick or away for a round house. 

 

I wanted standing block to be a hybrid of SF2 but without locking you in place, so you continue to walk away but upon hit it becomes a block. 

 

I chose the moveset based on what hand movements felt more natural to the sprite animations. E.g. while I really wanted Scorpions spear to be down, back, fire, it felt too unnatural to do down, forward, fire for his ghost punch which moves in the opposite direction. The jump punch has the character sprite leaning down/forward in the air and jump kick seemed to be used more during play so that's how I went with the controls.

 

I left a DEBUG in the game, so doing a straight up jump punch will change to the next character for testing. (forgot to remove it for the demo)

Edited April 19 by freshbrood