Dimension Shift
- Thread starter Mugi
- Start date
Mugi
Member
Finally starting to get something done with the monsters too, the blob monsteers might move into the cavern instead of the temple, and crazy cultists hurling fireballs will propably populate the temple instead.
i started scetching out the expansion to the temple stage now, in additon to that, the world function system has been a bit more scetched out.
the warp crystals will serve 2 functions, they will let you return to stage selection, and they will allow you to save the crystal as the location for the stage selection.
in addition to that, white colored crystals will be plaed into the world, that will take you to the upgrade shop for power-ups.
on the other news, the 4 way scrolling was abandoned, and a free scrolling mode will be placced in it's place that doesnt require you to move just up/down or left/right, but instead do so at the same time, scrolling in any direction you want.
(more of this one we get it to function a bit more cleanly than it currently does.)
edit: crazy cultist (wip sprite
)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyDCdd8rfOQ
i started scetching out the expansion to the temple stage now, in additon to that, the world function system has been a bit more scetched out.
the warp crystals will serve 2 functions, they will let you return to stage selection, and they will allow you to save the crystal as the location for the stage selection.
in addition to that, white colored crystals will be plaed into the world, that will take you to the upgrade shop for power-ups.
on the other news, the 4 way scrolling was abandoned, and a free scrolling mode will be placced in it's place that doesnt require you to move just up/down or left/right, but instead do so at the same time, scrolling in any direction you want.
(more of this one we get it to function a bit more cleanly than it currently does.)
edit: crazy cultist (wip sprite
)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyDCdd8rfOQ
Mugi
Member
im still in really early stages of designing enemies and whatevers for this game.
it's still in most parts engine development and then stage design before i get the finalized enemies and stuff done.
the scrolling has been a major progress slowdown at the moment as i want that to work before i fully get into the stage layouts. Having a free scroll will in large parts dictate how much vertical movement and so on i can place on the stages.
it's still in most parts engine development and then stage design before i get the finalized enemies and stuff done.
the scrolling has been a major progress slowdown at the moment as i want that to work before i fully get into the stage layouts. Having a free scroll will in large parts dictate how much vertical movement and so on i can place on the stages.
Mugi
Member
i generally share updates as they come to be, but it's been a little slow now because of the whole scrolling business (its getting there )
sans that it's been work on the little things like trying to design more enemies, and expanding/adjusting the stages.
im not working on more stages just yet, need to come up with a boss for the cavern and some enemies to place there.
i can post a little video of the free scroll, but it's quite a mess at the moment since it doesnt quite have the load timings down so it basically just loads tons of garbage at the moment.
)sans that it's been work on the little things like trying to design more enemies, and expanding/adjusting the stages.
im not working on more stages just yet, need to come up with a boss for the cavern and some enemies to place there.
i can post a little video of the free scroll, but it's quite a mess at the moment since it doesnt quite have the load timings down so it basically just loads tons of garbage at the moment.
Mugi
Member
uh oh, so yeah...
https://youtu.be/nOCG_VNeF_s
you can see here that there are incorrect loads happening, which are basically a result of the fact that since in this test rom, the scroll is simply attached to the dpad,
pressing 2 buttons at once will cause the engine to have 2 instances writing into the row/column trackers at the same time, which causes weird shit to happen.
sans that, we're starting to get there. Joes code has been retired and there's a fully dynamic row/colum trakcer that allows loading data from arbitrary addresses on nametables. it now scrolls in any direction whatsoever.
edit:
here's a better look at things:
https://youtu.be/KzFiYgd0kKI
this one has now been sanitized to not mess up attribute loads during free scroll, so it's more or less 100% functional now.
the reason it tilts at the end of the video is because i scroll into a room with a single screen game flag set on it that disables the table loads.
sans that, free scroll.
now thre will be the interesting part of implementing collision table loads et cetera but it'll get there
https://youtu.be/nOCG_VNeF_s
you can see here that there are incorrect loads happening, which are basically a result of the fact that since in this test rom, the scroll is simply attached to the dpad,
pressing 2 buttons at once will cause the engine to have 2 instances writing into the row/column trackers at the same time, which causes weird shit to happen.
sans that, we're starting to get there. Joes code has been retired and there's a fully dynamic row/colum trakcer that allows loading data from arbitrary addresses on nametables. it now scrolls in any direction whatsoever.
edit:
here's a better look at things:
https://youtu.be/KzFiYgd0kKI
this one has now been sanitized to not mess up attribute loads during free scroll, so it's more or less 100% functional now.
the reason it tilts at the end of the video is because i scroll into a room with a single screen game flag set on it that disables the table loads.
sans that, free scroll.
now thre will be the interesting part of implementing collision table loads et cetera but it'll get there
Mugi
Member
....hoo boy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6drAU1Fo4Dc
<3
alsmot done with the whole scrolling business.
still monster stuff to sort out, and some issues with moving to screens when the row changes in the "map" (going from screen 1F to 20 causes interesting things to happen)
there's also the question of scroll boundaries, which currently dont really exist.
we implemented a sneaky system to replace the "screen scrolls R" and so on flags, and isntead scrolling is now always enabled to every direction.
the flags are now essentially "mask L" or "mask R" which makes it so that if a flag is set on a screen to mask left, the game will still scroll past the edge, but regardless of what the next screen contains, it will be hidden, and only black is drawn.
this is put in place to eliminate "screen clipping" during diagonal scrolls that would cause undesired screens to be partially displayed while moving around.
we'll have to see how we come up with something for actually limiting the directions the scroll goes, but sans that it works fairly well for now.
aside that (i know, im boring ,always scroll this, scroll that...) i made some updates to the intro/autumn forest tileset and reworked the intro stage a little. With a slight sacrifice in color variation i shaded the ground and the grass/leaves much better and completely redid the forest backdrop on the stage (now it's ridiculous 27 metatiles!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6drAU1Fo4Dc
<3
alsmot done with the whole scrolling business.
still monster stuff to sort out, and some issues with moving to screens when the row changes in the "map" (going from screen 1F to 20 causes interesting things to happen
)there's also the question of scroll boundaries, which currently dont really exist.
we implemented a sneaky system to replace the "screen scrolls R" and so on flags, and isntead scrolling is now always enabled to every direction.
the flags are now essentially "mask L" or "mask R" which makes it so that if a flag is set on a screen to mask left, the game will still scroll past the edge, but regardless of what the next screen contains, it will be hidden, and only black is drawn.
this is put in place to eliminate "screen clipping" during diagonal scrolls that would cause undesired screens to be partially displayed while moving around.
we'll have to see how we come up with something for actually limiting the directions the scroll goes, but sans that it works fairly well for now.
aside that (i know, im boring ,always scroll this, scroll that...) i made some updates to the intro/autumn forest tileset and reworked the intro stage a little. With a slight sacrifice in color variation i shaded the ground and the grass/leaves much better and completely redid the forest backdrop on the stage (now it's ridiculous 27 metatiles!)
Bucket Mouse
Active member
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NESmakers/permalink/876112432743083/
Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't you stated multiple times that your engine has become so altered that NESmaker won't recognize it at all?
I mean if it runs there now, groovy, let's get a module going, but if not....this needs a correction.
Correct me if I'm wrong but haven't you stated multiple times that your engine has become so altered that NESmaker won't recognize it at all?
I mean if it runs there now, groovy, let's get a module going, but if not....this needs a correction.
Mugi
Member
it loads in nesmaker but it's a bit of a hit and miss. you cant really do much since the screenflags are sort of half working and whatnot.
basically everything is set ouside of the tool. More or less i use NM to design stages for the parts they still display. (which is less and less with each new tileset lol.)
as for making a core, not going to happen anytime soon, there's still a lot to do before this actually works, and even then, it will be a lot of work to force everything into NM's UI.
i'd have to program multiple plugins just to manage portions of the engine that the UI doesnt recognize at all and im not a C# programmer so i have no idea where to even begin with that stuff.
it is still a game i started creating with nesmaker, and the engine is still there, but the amount of control you have over it's setting has pretty much diminished at this point.
sure, we're using screenflags now to control scroll masking. but that's about it. theres no free flags left and something will have to control scroll boundaries too. more notepad settings there.
it's just not feasible to try and turn this into something which has oneclick settings to control properties anymore.
you dont really seem to fully understand how nesmaker works in that sense. It's nothing more than a frontend to manage a code base, as such, you can load practically anything into it.
There's a difference of not working with nesmaker and not being usable with nesmaker. so yeah you can load this into nesmaker, make a screen and set your objects and whatnots, and then compile it and assume it didnt throw you 600 errors,
you'll really quickly notice how it does nothing like you set it to, because all the fancy buttons and tickboxes of nesmaker no longer have any effect on this engine, they have either been repurposed or completely disabled.
if you just came here to get yourself a scrolling core, you might want to look into jorotroids core instead, which currently does 2way and according to him, it will propably do 4way in the future.
and unlike our messed up engine, it actually still works properly with nesmaker.
basically everything is set ouside of the tool. More or less i use NM to design stages for the parts they still display. (which is less and less with each new tileset lol.)
as for making a core, not going to happen anytime soon, there's still a lot to do before this actually works, and even then, it will be a lot of work to force everything into NM's UI.
i'd have to program multiple plugins just to manage portions of the engine that the UI doesnt recognize at all and im not a C# programmer so i have no idea where to even begin with that stuff.
it is still a game i started creating with nesmaker, and the engine is still there, but the amount of control you have over it's setting has pretty much diminished at this point.
sure, we're using screenflags now to control scroll masking. but that's about it. theres no free flags left and something will have to control scroll boundaries too. more notepad settings there.
it's just not feasible to try and turn this into something which has oneclick settings to control properties anymore.
you dont really seem to fully understand how nesmaker works in that sense. It's nothing more than a frontend to manage a code base, as such, you can load practically anything into it.
There's a difference of not working with nesmaker and not being usable with nesmaker. so yeah you can load this into nesmaker, make a screen and set your objects and whatnots, and then compile it and assume it didnt throw you 600 errors,
you'll really quickly notice how it does nothing like you set it to, because all the fancy buttons and tickboxes of nesmaker no longer have any effect on this engine, they have either been repurposed or completely disabled.
if you just came here to get yourself a scrolling core, you might want to look into jorotroids core instead, which currently does 2way and according to him, it will propably do 4way in the future.
and unlike our messed up engine, it actually still works properly with nesmaker.
functionalform
Member
Bucket Mouse said:
I'll give ya some credit... quite ballsy of ya.
BUT
quite bluntly, Mugi doesn't owe you shit.
He's not beholden to just pause his game development to retrofit everything he's doing to create a module for us.
It's his project, and it does bend it's way outside of the tool some.
maybe once the tool updates, everything will fit inside it.
He offers an awful lot of help and he doesn't need to and certainly doesn't need to be DEMANDED to make things for us.
Bucket Mouse
Active member
functionalform said:
Why are you barking down my throat? I was pointing out that Joe seems to think Dimension Shift is running on NESMaker, so if it's not, Mugi should tell him otherwise. I thought of telling him myself but I wanted to make sure nothing had changed between now and the last time I checked this topic.
You REALLY misinterpreted that post.
Mugi
Member
i am still using Nesmaker to work on the game if that is what you're asking but yes, at it's current state, not everything of the engine can be one-click controlled from the UI.
It's basically the same deal than with the whole CHR business where the UI's hardcoded actions go against what im doing, and as such, i simply go around them by poking the assemblies in notepad from the parts i need to.
like i mentioned in the previous post, there simply isnt enough screenflags for example, to manage the scrolling in the way it is currently implemented, so parts of it is done outside.
i suppose it depends on what you count as "with nesmaker" or not.
it's a game that started it's life from nesmaker, and the world layout and a large portion of the screens are made with nesmaker's screen tools.
the object settings and placements are also done with nesmaker.
currently what doesnt work in nesmaker:
- half of my graphics dont display due to the whole path/hud deal
- some of my graphics are not manageable at all as i've manually added more CHR files
- bankswitching is not manageable from the UI (this brings extra complications to normal graphics managements, as the animations require chr tables to be written for each screen that loads / uses more than one bank)
- scrolling settings are not manageable from UI
- weapon(s) are only manageable as raw assembly, due to the way you can only define weapon offset for one weapon for the UI (DS uses/will use varying sizes of animated sprite based weapons which are plain out typed out by hand.)
there's lots of little things that add up making it a constant juggle between the tool and external means to get things done.
there are also various extra things such as the sound test, which are 100% detached from the base engine and nesmaker doesnt really know they're there.
the sound test screen for example, uses it's own routine to draw 8x8 tiles for writing the texts on screen, and has it's own chr file embedded within the bank it sits at.
i do tend to try and keep things manageable with the tool to the extend i can, but it's simply not possible for everything.
as for what comes to turning this into a core, the scrolling for example is several thousands of lines of new/modified code, across.... i believe 19 files now, and those files were already modified to do things specific to this game even before the scrolling even came into the picture.
cleaning everything up and turning this into an empty core would require way more free time than i currently have available.
edit: oh also, the game currently has no enemy/object handling at all, so it's not like it even works yet.
It's basically the same deal than with the whole CHR business where the UI's hardcoded actions go against what im doing, and as such, i simply go around them by poking the assemblies in notepad from the parts i need to.
like i mentioned in the previous post, there simply isnt enough screenflags for example, to manage the scrolling in the way it is currently implemented, so parts of it is done outside.
i suppose it depends on what you count as "with nesmaker" or not.
it's a game that started it's life from nesmaker, and the world layout and a large portion of the screens are made with nesmaker's screen tools.
the object settings and placements are also done with nesmaker.
currently what doesnt work in nesmaker:
- half of my graphics dont display due to the whole path/hud deal
- some of my graphics are not manageable at all as i've manually added more CHR files
- bankswitching is not manageable from the UI (this brings extra complications to normal graphics managements, as the animations require chr tables to be written for each screen that loads / uses more than one bank)
- scrolling settings are not manageable from UI
- weapon(s) are only manageable as raw assembly, due to the way you can only define weapon offset for one weapon for the UI (DS uses/will use varying sizes of animated sprite based weapons which are plain out typed out by hand.)
there's lots of little things that add up making it a constant juggle between the tool and external means to get things done.
there are also various extra things such as the sound test, which are 100% detached from the base engine and nesmaker doesnt really know they're there.
the sound test screen for example, uses it's own routine to draw 8x8 tiles for writing the texts on screen, and has it's own chr file embedded within the bank it sits at.
i do tend to try and keep things manageable with the tool to the extend i can, but it's simply not possible for everything.
as for what comes to turning this into a core, the scrolling for example is several thousands of lines of new/modified code, across.... i believe 19 files now, and those files were already modified to do things specific to this game even before the scrolling even came into the picture.
cleaning everything up and turning this into an empty core would require way more free time than i currently have available.
edit: oh also, the game currently has no enemy/object handling at all, so it's not like it even works yet.
