Zelda 2 on Uzebox

[blue_knight]

Very nice work on the map editor! Man, that's got me thinking about Moon Patrol again.

-Clay

Thank you. Did you try the teaser demo?

[nebososo]

I've written the first pass game exporter for the editor. I made 5 maps which are all exported. In addition the tileset is exported, start points, teleports, collision maps and kill zones are also exported. The game loads the result and now supports playing the maps, scrolling, collision, jumping (though I still need to add an animation frame, for now Link continues to walk as he jumps) and teleporting between maps. The maps are not compressed yet and it's still using 8 bit tiles but the nice thing about the export is that I can change this without changing any of the source data - just change the code, load the editor and hit F5 to export. The editor contains a list of maps, so I can make it teleport to maps by name, but on export the maps are saved in order and this resolves to an index.

Anyway I'll get some map compression for the gameplay demo, but will probably stick to 8 bit tiles until the full gameplay demo is complete. The demo I'm releasing today is NOT the gameplay demo, just a small teaser.

I've decided to upload the teaser demo - there are 5 maps to visit, move past the edges of each map to go to the next map. You start in the starting palace, go left to see a forest scene and a cave scene and right to see 2 different cave scenes. I've only been able to test on the emulator and I haven't spent any time on optimization, so let me know if it runs too slowly for you (it works fine in the emulator, running about the same speed as the Super Mario demo). Oh and there's no sound yet. I haven't redone the font yet, so the HUD no longer contains text. And finally you can press 'A' to jump.

This is still a very early work in progress, no enemies or real gameplay yet.
Zelda2.hex

There are 2 more "simple" areas for the gameplay demo plus the palace maps and town maps. And of course enemies, items, one spell, etc.

I download and ran it on the emulator. It is nice to know you're working hard. I don't really know if I should point out bugs, because it's just a demo and you probably know about them, but here they are:
I could be wrong, but the walking animation looks choppier than in the original.
Gravity looks more like Castlevania's, you fall down faster than I remember.
When you jump and hit your head on the ceiling, you keep floating for some instants before you start falling down.

Keep us updated.

[blue_knight]

I download and ran it on the emulator. It is nice to know you're working hard. I don't really know if I should point out bugs, because it's just a demo and you probably know about them, but here they are:
I could be wrong, but the walking animation looks choppier than in the original.
Gravity looks more like Castlevania's, you fall down faster than I remember.
When you jump and hit your head on the ceiling, you keep floating for some instants before you start falling down.

Keep us updated.

Thanks for trying it out.

Gravity needs some work still, but you can make the jumps which is what I was concerned about for now. Also the collision works, so it's a matter of tweaking some numbers some more.
The animation uses the same 4 frames as the original, but the playback speed may be slightly different.
In the original game, Link doesn't fall down immediately upon hitting a ceiling - but you're correct in that it shouldn't stay up the entire jump time. I'll tweak it.

The demo was meant to serve a couple of functions:
1) Teaser/Preview. See what people think (thanks for the feedback by the way)..
2) Establish that the project is feasible.
3) Make sure it actually works for people.

#2 still needs more work, mainly I need to get combat, large enemies and towns working. But atleast it shows that I'm serious about it.

[paul]

Mate, you're honestly putting us all to shame with this productivity level

The demo is coming along nicely. Will there be background animations? I've never played the original, so I don't know if the flames are meant to be static or whether you haven't gotten around to it yet. I understand that it's just a teaser.

[blue_knight]

Mate, you're honestly putting us all to shame with this productivity level

The demo is coming along nicely. Will there be background animations? I've never played the original, so I don't know if the flames are meant to be static or whether you haven't gotten around to it yet. I understand that it's just a teaser.

Thanks.

The torches are supposed to animate but it's just flipping the frames. So I've left it alone for now, I need to decide whether to take up 2 additional tiles or to make them sprites so I can use sprite flipping. (They were sprites in the original) Other background animation will be supported, though.

[uze6666]

Hehe, really cool to see Link moving around on the Uzebox! Thanks for the demo, I'll post an entry about it on the blog.

-Uze

[blue_knight]

Thanks. You can also put it in the work in progress list if you want.

Now revisiting the palette issue (just on paper, I'm away from my development machine), I realize that proper palette support probably isn't practical without decreasing resolution which I do not want to do. However there are two things I'd like to experiment with, I haven't really looked into much yet so maybe you guys can let me know the feasibility. Note even without palette support, I can still do the game though there may be some compromises to keep tile count down. That said the look of the game will still be maintained but some variety may be reduced. If I can get either idea 1 or 2 to work, then the amount of compromising would be much more limited or eliminated. Of course with the 1284P upgrade, all compromises go out the window. There would be enough ram to store tiles compressed in program memory (2bpp + CSets) and decompress into a ram buffer when loading a map (just loading the necessary tiles of course) - allowing for ridiculous numbers of tiles for a game (say 4k tiles taking half the 128k flash). And reading tiles from a ram buffer would free up a cycle, which could be useful.

1) "Color Shifting" tiles.
Most of the tile memory from Z2 will come from duplicating tiles, where in the original they used the same tile with a different 4 color palette. However, after doing some experimenting, it turns out I can duplicate a similar effect by doing "color shifting" using a logical AND with the color value (the tiles have to be made with this in mind of course). If I AND it with 0xff then no "color shift" occurs. The "color shift" values can be stored in ram, with maybe 1 value per "block" - say 4x1 tiles or something. So this would require 2 cycles to load the value every 32 pixels + some number of cycles to determine where to read it from every 32 pixels (I'm not sure about this yet) plus 1 cycle per pixel for the AND operation. So is there any way of getting back enough time for this without decreasing the resolution? Obviously the sprites cannot be color shifted to match the tiles, they would need their own color shift value.

2) Replace 0 with "background color".
Many tiles could be used in different maps if 0 (or some other color) could be replaced by another color. Kind of like a palette but replacing exactly one color with another color. Obviously the background color could be put into a register, the problem I see is the conditional copy, i.e. LoadFromProgram Memory -> Rn, if (Rn == 0) Rn = bColor.

So it looks like I may be modifying mode 3 specifically for this game, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

[blue_knight]

I finished the last two "simple" areas for the demo, now I just have the 2 complex areas - the town (2 outdoor maps + several interior maps + doors/NPC interaction) and Parapa palace (many maps, keys, doors, breaking bridges, etc.). In addition I have to get the overworld map working, as well as the various gameplay features (combat, enemies, spells, etc.).

Here are some in-editor screenshots of the two "simple" areas:


In addition, I've been thinking of adding some tweaks to the game. I'm a little torn on this idea, but I've been thinking of doing a "second quest" type approach, though not as drastic. The same gameplay, enemies, etc. but some altered layouts and additional secret areas. Basically it would feel like playing Zelda 2 but not everything is exactly where you remember it. Or maybe it'd be better to stay faithful (with some possible tweaks to reduce tile count if necessary, see the post above) and save the new stuff for the sequels. What do you guys think? I think I'll start a poll, if I can, about this - I'm not sure which way to go so I wonder what you guys think.

A first pass on a possible map from a new secret area that might be in the demo (viewed in the editor):


Finally, I've started working on the overworld creation and editing, though I don't have anything to show yet. The overworld will use it's own tileset and meta-tiles since none of the graphics are shared. This is mainly done so the 50-ish tiles for the overworld (I think, a rough count without actually ripping them yet) don't impact the tile indices used for the sidescrolling areas. I'll update once I have something working.

[uze6666]

I've created a skeleton for your game on the WIKI:
http://uzebox.org/wiki/index.php?title=Zelda_II

Add more meat when you get time...

-Uze

[blue_knight]

I've created a skeleton for your game on the WIKI:
http://uzebox.org/wiki/index.php?title=Zelda_II

Add more meat when you get time...

-Uze

Cool, thanks.