Sprite Frustrations

[MausBoy]

I haven't been able to come up with a running/walking man sprite in 8 pixels that is worth a sh*t, and I've tried many times. Can anyone point to some online examples? I've done a million searches on yahoo, google, and ask, and I haven't been able to find a single example of an 8 pixel sprite, much less walking/running animated ones.

 

I don't want something I can just rip-off, I more want to see how others have done it to apply to my own attempts.

 

An example of your favorite running animation in a VCS game would work too.

[Dragnerok X]

Try pitfall. In fact, the "running man" sprite was one of it's greatest innovations.

[MausBoy]

Know where I could find an animated gif of Harry? He has quite a few cells, and he's evidently double-width, which makes it harder to turn him into a gif myself to examine the way he moves frame by frame.

[Dragnerok X]

Know where I could find an animated gif of Harry? He has quite a few cells, and he's evidently double-width, which makes it harder to turn him into a gif myself to examine the way he moves frame by frame.

 

Here.

[jbanes]

Know where I could find an animated gif of Harry? He has quite a few cells, and he's evidently double-width, which makes it harder to turn him into a gif myself to examine the way he moves frame by frame.

Ok, I cut them all out for you from Pitfall II. (See the attached ZIP file.) They're not in order, but you should be able to figure out the sequence.

 

Some interesting points:

• The animation is obviously designed to take motion blur into account. Harry is a bit of a jumble while running.
  
• Because Harry looks poor during his running sequences, he has a special sprite for when he's stopped. This sprite has Harry standing in an upright position.
  
• Harry is only 8 pixels wide, but he's of variable heights. The 2600's vertical resolution was put to good use.
  
• Harry is one legged. Since his green pants obscure any indication of which leg is which, the same sprite is used for both legs.
  
• Because Harry is horizontally stretched, Harry's head is only 2 pixels! Even worse, his neck is one pixel!
  

Pitfall.zip

[MausBoy]

Thanks jbanes! So I said I wasn't gonna rip off Harry, but I did anyway. I just added a cap and a purple sweater/blue jeans. I'm doing a kick-ass 2 player foot race game in bB. I know I've said this before, but seriously, this time everything is 100% doable with the current version of bB.

So finally, all this time after I started, I'll be releasing my first finished 2600 homebrew! I'm pretty excited, it took a lot of work to get to this point. I know it was a drop in the bucket compared to the ASM guys, but still. It's nothing near as cool/pretty/fun as Deimos, but it is pretty fun, and I'm damn proud. So anyway, thanksx1000 for helping me finish it!

[jbanes]

So I said I wasn't gonna rip off Harry, but I did anyway. I just added a cap and a purple sweater/blue jeans.

Don't leave us hanging. Let's see an animated GIF of it!

[MausBoy]

Ok, here is Player 1 & 2

 

Will people think it's extremely lame that I stuck Harry in my game instead of someone new?

Edited November 17, 2006 by MausBoy

[jbanes]

Ok, here is Player 1 & 2

Dude, that's a great little sprite hack! The hats look much better than Harry's buzz cut. If you gave them red and green shirts/hats, they'd be shoe-ins for a certain pair of plumbers.

 

 

Edit: The sprite sequence is wrong. Harry doesn't use the standing position while running. The 90 degree leg cross should be used instead.

Edited November 17, 2006 by jbanes

[MausBoy]

Like this?

Thanks again! I like them too, and I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about rippin off poor Harry, there aren't a huge amount of variations that'd fit in 8 pixels I guess. At least not any that I can pull off evidently, I sure have tried. I agree about the plumbers, but I have my fingers crossed for a cart release. Now if I can just figure out some decent programming to split the score into two 3 digit scores, since this is a 2 player game...

 

edit:

 

This has me pretty confused! I can do the math as far as adding to each players score, ie score+1000 adds a point to player one, score+1 adds to player two. It's figuring out who won that's got me!

 

plus I'm using:

set kernel_options PFcolors background playercolors player1colors

Which creates jagged lines in the background, yuck. Wish there was some way to fix that.

Edited November 17, 2006 by MausBoy

[jbanes]

Like this?

 

This has me pretty confused! I can do the math as far as adding to each players score, ie score+1000 adds a point to player one, score+1 adds to player two. It's figuring out who won that's got me!

While it's possible to test the score variable, it's a pain in the butt. What I do in Deimos Lander is that I keep a backing variable with a value to test against. I then update the score and the backing variable in unison to give the illusion that I'm actually testing the score. I'm not going to dig out the code at the moment, but it looks something like this:

 

 dim fuel = f

 fuel = 100 : score = 100

...

onThrust
 if fuel = 0 then return
 fuel = fuel - 1 : score = score - 1
 yspeed = yspeed - 10
 return

 

For your purposes, you could do something like this:

 

 dim player0score = a
 dim player1score = b

 player0score = 0 : player1score = 0 : score = 0

...

onScorePlayer0
 player0score = player0score + 1 : score = score + 1000
 return

onScorePlayer1
 player1score = player1score + 1 : score = score + 1
 return

checkVictory
 rem I used 100 as a winning score here. Replace with whatever you use as "winning"
 if player0score > 100 then goto player0Won
 if player1score > 100 then goto player1Won
 return

 

If the scores will be higher than 255, then you'll need to use two variables and carry the extra. For example, I currently use "fueltanks" in addition to "fuel" in Deimos Lander. If "fuel" goes to zero, "fueltanks" is checked if it is above zero. If it is, one is subtracted from "fueltanks", and 100 is added to "fuel". The score is intially set to whatever the value of "fueltanks * 100 + fuel" is, so this procedure is transparent.

 

In your case, you can use divisibles of whatever the winning score is. So if the winning score is divisible by 100, you can have a second variable that would count how many times a player's score has rolled over 100. You can then test the second variable for "variable >= WINNING_NUMBER/100". (e.g. if the Winning number is 500, then variable >= 5)

 

plus I'm using:

set kernel_options PFcolors background playercolors player1colors

Which creates jagged lines in the background, yuck. Wish there was some way to fix that.

Sorry, I can't help you there. I've never used that combination before.

[MausBoy]

Brilliant! Thank you again, I never would have thought of that. Scores only go up to 100 so this is prefect. You've helped me out a ton with this game tonight, hope I can return the favor someday. Which begs the question, will you be releasing anymore bB games?

[jbanes]

You've helped me out a ton with this game tonight, hope I can return the favor someday.

Don't worry about it. It's my pleasure to help.

 

Which begs the question

<pedantic>raises the question</pedantic>

 

"Beg the question" means to ask the reader to accept a nonsensical or unrelated statement or question in the process of arguing. For example, saying "lying is wrong because we ought to tell the truth" is begging the question. The author is begging the reader to accept it at face value rather than through logical argument.

 

More Info

 

Sorry about the momentary lapse into pendantry, but I got burned on my own misuse of that term, so I'm sharing the love.

 

will you be releasing anymore bB games?

Well, first I need to finish Deimos Lander. Once that's done, I had some thoughts about a adventure/treasure hunting game similar to sc07's Pirates. However, that thought requires custom kernals all the way.

[MausBoy]

That's what I get for trying new terms, eh? Deimos is about as good as it gets, don't know what else you plan to do to it, but it's great the way it is. Guess I should recheck the thread and see what's new. I think the way Pirate's is done is awesome, and it's a great engine, but I don't particularly enjoy the game itself. It'll be cool to see the format broadened and built up.

 

Here's a quick bin demo of the sprites. I did this seperate from the main code, so it's just a quick demo. I think they look pretty damn good myself. This is gonna be your standard Run, Jump & Duck game, where hitting the left side of the screen kills you. Anyone who's ever played Fusion Frenzy knows what I'm going for.

runforitdemo1.bin

Edited November 17, 2006 by MausBoy

[Heaven/TQA]

what about decathlon sprite? same as herry? and in pitfall2?

[MausBoy]

The decathlon sprites are larger than 8 pixels, and as far as I know Harry is unchanged in pf2. Thanks for the suggestions though!