RONIN... A Samurai Homebrew Game (8/22 update and WIP bin)

alfredtdk · August 25

It's a nice trick, I'm going to try to apply this same concept of scrolling the playing field in Dracuvania to see the results. Congratulations, your Ronin game is getting better and better.

LatchKeyKid · August 25

12 hours ago, alfredtdk said:

It's a nice trick, I'm going to try to apply this same concept of scrolling the playing field in Dracuvania to see the results. Congratulations, your Ronin game is getting better and better.

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing how it works with Dracuvania (and love the name btw!) as well. While I still don't know how to string the playfields together, even one basic playfield proves the concept and gives you a feel for the potential gameplay. Last night, I added in 8k bankswitching to work with my code so am happy about the added flexibility/space that gives me. I've got 2.8k free in the game bank and 2.3k in the second graphics bank with however it divides up the code automatically. I have no idea if that'll be enough in the end but I should start to code the enemies whose sprites I already worked on this week to see how they look on screen/in game.

LatchKeyKid · September 22

It's been almost a month but I have been tinkering with the WIP homebrew albeit intermittently. I added in another bank to test out bank switching as well as added to more (three total now) generic levels to test out that function as well. To switch levels, press the second joystick fire button or "F" on Stella to cycle through the three. I wasn't able to make the opening trap work yet so removed it temporarily for now until I figure out how to code it successfully. I do hope to have some more "decorations" to spice up levels in the real game but for now this is more of a proof of concept for those features rather than a working version of it. For now the game is 8k/2 banks but I expect it to go up with time though I don't have a hard self imposed limit ahead of time. For example, I do plan on adding a title screen as well as hopefully an ending animation that would probably be part of a bank itself judging by sample programs out there; I haven't done anything more than cursory research on this though so can't say for sure if it's possible but I hope it will be.

I'm curious what folks here might think of a combined scrolling and static level design/progression. Basically, you scroll through until an enemy is encountered and then you're locking in on that screen until the enemy is defeated at which point you scroll again until the next. Replaying the excellent Princess Rescue, one of my very few quibbles with it is the respawning enemies if you even slightly scroll backwards and then forwards again (for example to jump up on a platform from the right to activate a gold upgrade box on the left and then you return to the right). I think a combo of the two styles mix fix that in a way but I figured I'd ask.