Tempest is possible

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CunningFellow
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by CunningFellow »

CunningFellow wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2020 3:17 am Things that would be nice to have
  • Selectable start level viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1905&start=380#p15111 [est. 200 bytes]
  • Increase powerup dwell time based on Z [est. 64 bytes]
  • Gradient on the 2000 on the title screen viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1905&start=450#p15505 [est. 200 bytes]
  • More vibrant "game over" screen with more colour and maybe its own animated background [est. 16 bytes]
  • More vector text "Caught You" "Avoid Spikes" "Eat Electric Death" [many hundreds of bytes each]
  • a "Meet the Enemies" screen in attract mode shows the enemies and some brief text [est. 50 bytes]
  • Extra audio channels so music and SFX can play at same time
  • User defined volume for SFX and Music
  • AI Driod as player two (new object type #define OBJ_Player2_droid 2) viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1905&start=420 [est. 100 bytes]
After the fixes tweaks and a bit of space saving I have come up with about 300 bytes of spare space.

Vote on what you think it most important to add.

I feel that selectable start level and meet the enemies is best bang per buck.
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Artcfox
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by Artcfox »

The two most important things that I think affect gameplay and enjoyment:

Increase powerup dwell time based on Z [est. 64 bytes]
Extra audio channels so music and SFX can play at same time

With an increased powerup dwell time based on Z, I think people are more likely to not die instantly because of bad luck. I can play all the levels until they wrap (at least pre-demon head mod) with 6 lives accumulated, but I'll die stupidly when I get an outta here power up so close to the edge that I can't see it. Increasing the dwell time of outta here helped some, but based on Z would be even better.

I really miss not hearing the "Play!" sound effect, so anything that would make that come back would be awesome.

If there is room left over after those two, my vote is for:

A "Meet the Enemies" screen in attract mode shows the enemies and some brief text [est. 50 bytes]

Though if not, I think that coukd be added to the game's wiki page.
CunningFellow
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by CunningFellow »

CunningFellow wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2020 3:17 am
  • Gradient on the 2000 on the title screen viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1905&start=450#p15505 [est. 200 bytes]
Well I can now say I can do this one for negative 38 bytes.

However It is going to be a chore to redraw the letters with a gradient. The BMP Uze/Alec provided isn't suitable so I think I am going to have to hand dither it somehow.

The vector mode can only have 3 colours besides black for each line of pixels.
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Artcfox
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by Artcfox »

Try using GIMP for the dithering. If you can display the pixels 1:1, take a screenshot open with GIMP, import the Uzebox palette, and then go to Image -> Mode -> Indexed and pick the palette. You can experiment with different dithering methods, using undo to get back and try a different one. Once you find one you like, save it and then hand-edit it into your spreadsheet so it meets your rules of colors per line? Or you can explore using GIMP to save as C header file or C source file.
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Jubatian
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by Jubatian »

Pass the image & limitations to work with to me! :) I think I could manage to come up with something! ;)
CunningFellow
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by CunningFellow »

Top is a nice looking shaded "2000" that Alec/Uze did for me using the Uzebox palette.

Middle is the tiles I started to try work on to meet the 3 colour per line and it kinda didn't look nice as I was going along.
Shade2000.png
Shade2000.png (17.88 KiB) Viewed 9583 times
The limitation is that the video mode is 2Bpp and can only have 4 colours per scanline. Black plus 3 non-black.

On the bottom of the picture is a exploded view of the little bit in the red box at the top. This shows the reason I could not just use the image from Alec. That little bit in the red box show 7 colours in a single scan line of dithering.
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Jubatian
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by Jubatian »

So this is meant to replace the "2000" on the normal intro screen, I guess about the same dimensions, with that the fourth colour ("Black") is actually the 1bpp SD streamed layer. So essentially 3 colours + transparency. Do you have limitations on the count of tiles, or using the entire 26 tile x 5 tile area is otherwise arbitrary? (approx. 2K in ROM space, 16 bytes / tile). Is the graphics mode capable to change the three colours for every scanline?
CunningFellow
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by CunningFellow »

Yes - The title screen.
Yes - Three colours PLUS transparency. The video mode can have the transparent colour anything, but the title screen is all black.
Yes - The graphics mode can change the colours every scanline.
Yes - I have a tile limit.

The video mode has 128 tiles available. I have used about 60 of them with the "TORNADO" and "PRESS START" that appears above the "2000"

In the current version of the "2000" uses 41 tiles because some of the tiles along the top of the "2" are shared with some of the top of the "0"

But even if "2" and "0" had completely unique shapes and are the same size of 6x5 tiles then that would only be 60 tiles used to draw "20" and the next "00" are free copies of the first "0"
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Jubatian
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by Jubatian »

Did an attempt at it!
2000
2000
2000.png (1.26 KiB) Viewed 9552 times
Also attached palette in case you had difficulties properly porting it. Hope it fits! :) (All the three zeros use the same set of tiles, there are some opportunities to trim tile count beyond that, quite some tiles are the same)
Attachments
Palette I am using for Uzebox stuff
Palette I am using for Uzebox stuff
palette_tiny.png (1.11 KiB) Viewed 9552 times
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Artcfox
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Re: Tempest is possible

Post by Artcfox »

Jubatian, that looks really good!

I actually think that you ended up doing it with just 2 colors + transparent black. I'm pretty sure you can add 1 more color to each line for a dithering effect, but CunningFellow would know for sure.

Edit: I found 3 lines that use 3 colors + transparent black, so we wouldn't be able to add dithering on those 3 lines, unless it was with one of the already used colors. I made a single-line selection in GIMP, Colors > Info > Histogram, and then dragged the single-line selection down a pixel at a time, while looking at the histogram.

Attached are screenshots of the 3 lines that I found used 3 + transparent black colors.
3+transparent.png
3+transparent.png (103.12 KiB) Viewed 9544 times
3+transparent2.png
3+transparent2.png (106.62 KiB) Viewed 9544 times
3+transparent3.png
3+transparent3.png (103.93 KiB) Viewed 9544 times
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