Adventures Of Lolo

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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

Post by D3thAdd3r »

@Uze
Alright thanks for clearing that up, not sure why I thought 8. All sprites are bound to finish a move(align on both axis again) once they start so even Lolo never requires more than 6(unless pushing a block,egg then 6 for that too) great, so I will probably cut ramtiles back it is squeezing resources badly for nothing. Unfortunate we can't gain anything by ditching sprite overlaps(that's what I got from your statement Uze?) as this game could get away without it pretty well. I intend to dig a little more into the low level stuff eventually, just to have a better understanding of it all really.Sounds pretty time tight in there I sure couldn't improve anything, but it is the most interesting thing about this platform coming from a mostly frame buffer background.

@Paul
Yeah last hex lots of little things might not work, I changed the GFX position #defines for most of the tiles easy fix. Set it up to do a lot less if (t >= 2 && t <= 5) kind of stuff and more if(t < 2)...if(t < 8) for moving enemies around etc. It will all be fixed. And of course I changed the controls without mentioning it :P and select is to test death animation and other buttons might be doing something debug related. The blocks now move correctly but will overwrite arrows,bridges,etc(as do enemies). I am working on enemies at the moment don't expect them to move around well yet but they are moving. They don't "think" yet like in the original but I will set them up to be a fast approximation of their behavior. A lot of this will be fixed when I get around to a RestoreTile() that can handle non alignment even if overlapping a bridge the player makes right next to a rotated arrow on top of a....just been lazy so far. Check the new hex for blocks and 2 more enemies I believe. Their animation is off for sure since they all run off a global frame interpeted in a different way which is wrong at the moment. Soon to get eggs working which is the heart of the game.

@anyone who cares
Some tiles can be changed by the player and so using vram as array it is an expensive case when say a block/enemy moves over an Arrow that the player rotated, or a bridge the player put down etc. Anything that isn't in the original progmem map. Especially if it's not aligned on either axis. Moving enemies continually overwrite vram when they reach a new location with an "occupied" tile that looks the same but will be counted as solid by collision. Their offset from their actual "occupied" position means nothing save for rendering sprites of course. This is original behavior because it's way faster than searching through arrays of enemies and doing Bounding box tests. If I was to do it with a 22x22 level array this would all be easy,faster, and take less progmem for the wasted occupied tiles but at 484 bytes that's pretty steep and 11x11 wouldn't be much simpler than the way I'm doing it now. The goal is 3 dynamic enemies in levels where moving blocks aren't many to run decently and let a sprite rotation setup handle it. Most objects at any moment they are stationary will be drawn with tiles except when on non-bricks or when Lolo(who can go on grass, sand,etc)blinks. Even at that it will only take 4 sprites for any stationary case.

Little updated hex, not sure what I have turned on an off at the moment. Maybe some "debug beeps" happening. Progress is being made steadily, playing around with the blocks in level 1 I realized so far I have managed to remake a very complicated Sokoban 2 :lol:
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

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Little update-
Knocked ramtiles down to 24 so lolo moving+pushing block + 2 moving enemies = 24 worst case. Works great. Drastically increased speed, in the 11*11 for() update loop I had lots of extra features thinking but they just aren't worth it at 121 ifs a piece(and weren't original behavior anyhow). It probably runs twice as fast and 2 dynamic enemies run flawless irregardless of map conditions. 3 works with the sprite rotation setup now but the target is 2 which never flickers. Finished distributing anything big that can wait a tick to never occur on a water update which is the most expensive thing and the only way to do it without palette animation of course. Now water is updated within a bounding box to cut the for loops down more and map flags implemented to indicate no water and other shortcuts. A 16 color paletted video mode would be so nice for a lot of uzebox games but would it be possible at anything more than Mode 2 resolution? Interested to see what blue_knight comes up with for zelda 2.
harryroy
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

Post by harryroy »

Hi everybody
It is really awesome, I was seven years old in a time where video gaming was "a Kid's thing", "a useless activity" and when video games where viewed as something that "were making Kids go dumb", basically if you played video games you were expected to end up like a drug addict or worse... almost 20 years later we discovered that they were right on the addictive side BUT fortunately in 1989 there were a handful of games reaching for the masses that challenged the idea that "video games make you dumb", and in fact made you THINK... the most important of all those "puzzle games" was Tetris on the Game boy... but there was also a little Jewel on the NES starred by a Blue Ball... this game had something hardly any puzzle game had back then and it's still rare to see today...
LoLo is a fun, challenging and very much addictive puzzle game that could teach current gen puzzlers a thing or two.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

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I also have some nostalgic memories of these games. Ah, to be a kid again :) ... I remember shoveling snow off driveways, mowing lawns, and other manual labor just to feed the habit. Hopefully this port lives up to the name. When I get some more time I'll finish up the latest build where the main gameplay elements are done and it's actually "playable". At the moment Lolo is at odds with my air suspension project, which unfortunately now has to quickly become my daily driver :| . So I'm screwed on time for a bit.
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

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Well a little update is in order, lots of boring non-visible technical improvements but I won't ramble about those. I have trimmed a lot of unneeded gfx from the game and now I am confident I can get it on the bootloader, with a good set of levels and a hint of extra sound, when I get the map compression done. This was the main obstacle, because there is no way to fit everything I want to do in 1 hex. So I am moving forward on this while I let the possibilities and suggestions for the much simpler Sokoban World simmer in my head a bit. I use the flags -DSCREEN_TILES_V=26 -DFIRST_RENDER_LINE=28 now, as Uze had suggested to me. It has made a world of difference for almost no visible loss. With a slight gameplay variance, it will now be possible to do almost every level from Lolo 1,2,or 3 since I can finally have 3 enemies with a magic shot being drawn + enemy shots. The 2 main gameplay concepts missing are nearly done, expect an actual gameplay demo in the near future where the game will make sense to those who've never played Lolo. I've only cut one enemy out totally, I'd like suggestions on is this:

Would it be better to have each Lolo episode have a smaller variety of enemies but more complete frames,sound effects,etc? Though different episodes would be maps with the other enemies so basically swap enemies in different episodes.

Or would it be better to have more enemies per episode but less frames?
Would you want more sound effects, at the cost of extra levels per episode? I'm shooting for ~20 levels per ep.
Would it be worth sacrificing a frame from lolo's walking animation? It is 7 frames each for up,down,left so ...should I really cut down our main character for something else?

This game will be a bit light on presentation even in it's final form, there's just not a byte to spare. The last episode will likely be a smaller set of the hardest levels, with some presentation and story.
I'm only going 1 route with this so please let me know how important it is on the bootloader or any other big aspects. I suspect no one wants to program their chip manually anymore and the emulator players have it easy anyways. On a more technical note I've been experimenting with a PostProcess() hook, per ram tile, in the ProcessSprites() kernel function. With the extra processing time I now have it may be possible to get even more content into the game later on or make more enemies possible. I think something like this would be a useful little standard option in Mode 3, and perhaps a little "library" could be made for common things whether saving space or effects. More to come, I'm exciting about this game again! I know this is a long post and it's hard to answer questions when I've only put out the rudimentary hex so far. I'm just after general preferences from you guys, the target audience.
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paul
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

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Would it be better to have each Lolo episode have a smaller variety of enemies but more complete frames,sound effects,etc? Or would it be better to have more enemies per episode but less frames?
I would vote for fewer frames with more enemies.
Would you want more sound effects, at the cost of extra levels per episode? I'm shooting for ~20 levels per ep.
More sound effects. ~20 levels seems adequate.
Would it be worth sacrificing a frame from lolo's walking animation? It is 7 frames each for up,down,left so ...should I really cut down our main character for something else?
7 frames seems like a lot. I would aim for 5 (squared frame and 2 on either side). I'd keep the idle blink :D

Nothing will kill motivation more than realizing you won't have enough flash for the grand plan. It's best to make the compromises that don't kill your enthusiasm for the game and then when done, you can cut things that do a hurt little more if necessary.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Thanks for the feedback Paul, this flash planning really has caused a lot of delay/frustration with this game. Ah, just thinking back earlier when I believed an integral level editor was realistic...:)
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uze6666
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

Post by uze6666 »

D3thAdd3r wrote:Would it be better to have each Lolo episode have a smaller variety of enemies but more complete frames,sound effects,etc? Though different episodes would be maps with the other enemies so basically swap enemies in different episodes. Or would it be better to have more enemies per episode but less frames?
Would you want more sound effects, at the cost of extra levels per episode? I'm shooting for ~20 levels per ep.
Would it be worth sacrificing a frame from lolo's walking animation? It is 7 frames each for up,down,left so ...should I really cut down our main character for something else?
7 frames seems a lot to me too. I'd prefer more diversity, level and enemy wise, over more animation frames. IHMO, sound FXs are also important and should go over more levels, specially if you are going for "episodes". I'd also add music when Lolo dies and go to next level (since they are very short).

On a more technical note I've been experimenting with a PostProcess() hook, per ram tile, in the ProcessSprites() kernel function [...] I think something like this would be a useful little standard option in Mode 3, and perhaps a little "library" could be made for common things whether saving space or effects.[/quote]
Pre/post hooks & "user" ramtiles would be a great addition. When you're done send em to me, I'll see to make then standard in mode 3. I'm also open to any ideas.

-Uze
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Ok guys, definitely cutting 2 frames then speed up animation. Funny, not one shared tile among walking frames in the original. That 1.5k saving will easily buy the sound that starts pulling it together as a game.

I'll definitely share whatever I have for ram tile manipulation, I write nothing amazing but why recode tedious stuff if it's useful. Some things can't be totally generic, but customizable to project specifics. At least I have some testing grounds to prove ideas feasible or not. I plan on pushing the envelope a little when I do get these 2 games "done". Dynamic sprite occluding foregrounds, seems slowish but realistic without using extra ram tiles at least in my notebook/head. Rendering 26 rows instead of 28 really allows extensive extra time. Lolo is necessarily bulkier than you'd probably think, but there's time easily just as an example.
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paul
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Re: Adventures Of Lolo

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Hey Lee, how big are the LoLo levels on average? When I get projectiles done, I reckon Platz could have a fair shot at this type of game. Most of your enemies fit the mutable bg mold and Platz is much cheaper without moving platforms. I haven't considered it being used without scrolling, so there's likely more flash savings to be had there. Anyway, it'd just be an interesting test. I certainly wouldn't change your plans or anything like that.
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