Patch 3.1.3 and tutorial video on how to implement

Bucket Mouse

Active member
There doesn't seem to be a physical patch -- just an updated version of the program itself. Am I doing this right?

I copied all my saves and data over to the new folder, in the proper places -- but I'm still having the same issues I was before. My game still freezes on Screen 1, only now it does it all the time, whether or not a monster is on that screen.
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
There doesn't seem to be a physical patch -- just an updated version of the program itself. Am I doing this right?

Yes. That's correct. It's not a patch, per se. It's an updated version of the program, updated version of the tool, with updated version of the engine. My STRONG suggestion is that you completely start from scratch (even if you just make sort of a *tester* game file) and walk through the new tutorial file so you can see the changes made. This is why we warned people up and down flailing our arms not to fall in love with anything created with the beta versions of this software...underlying engine stuff will be radically changed, meaning memory addresses will change, meaning things will break as we get this to it's more finalized state.

All of your graphic assets should be fine to load again, which is the good news. But as far as screen freezes, whatever was causing your screen to freeze in the original save state may be causing it to freeze here as well, if you're copying over ALL 'data' over to the folder. I wouldn't copy ANY data over to the folder (except graphics, if you want...but it would be good practice for you just to rebuild those quick...the more you do it now in beta, the faster you'll be at it when you make your real game come August, and the better you'll be with the tool!).

You SHOULD be able to open save states with other versions of the tool just fine, but you'll have to watch what you're compiling over there...if you're compiling broken things that were broken when you originally made them, the patch may or may not fix it...in some cases, it may correct those upon re-export...in other cases, we may just have prevented the ability to do those things, but bad data will still cause issues.

Try what I'm saying...download a fresh 3.1.3, try going from scratch, even if you just create squares and circles for assets...see if you get the same issues if you follow the new tutorial. If so, let me know and we'll try to tech it.
 

Rob Burrito

New member
got through the tutorial, fun additions there! wanted to mention on the 3.1.3 download, the beta assets/graphics were not updated to include the projectiles, key, and pickup/monster tile bmp's. was able to make them in the pixel editor easily, but some folks might be confused where to find em or think they're missing.
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah - it should be a completely blank asset folder. It was intended to have users use their own graphics. I just didn’t want to take time showing that again :)

So you got the new things working with no issues? :)
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
3.1.3 BETA CHALLENGES:

Let's see who can use what is learned in the 3.1.3 Beta to do some clever things. Again, please don't worry about breaking your game...if any of you are working on your magnum opus with the beta, you're doing it wrong...this should be for LEARNING the tool, and I can't think of a better way of learning the tool than challenging yourself to synthesize knowledge to make clever things happen!

So let's try a few simple, fun challenges - post video of any that you're able to accomplish here!

1) Create different weapons depending on if you press the A button or B button. (hint: create a new script, and think about how b button was used to create projectiles)
2) Make a monster or boss that has an animation state that looks like he's winding up to attack / inhaling to breathe fire / etc, before emitting a projectile. (hint: think end-animation)
3) Make a boss monster out of tiles, where only his eyes/hands/vulnerable points are objects, and when you defeat all the vulnerable points, he goes away (hint: think all monsters lock)
4) Make a monster that drops collectables as it moves around (hint: creates collectable objects...game objects are #$00-#$0F).
5) Make a monster that spawns other monsters (hint: monsters start at #$10, and are in order on your hierarchy list, but that monster you have this spawner create must ALSO be loaded in the group for the screen). If there are too many monsters on the screen, you might get slowdown and whatnot, but this is still a fun experiment to try!

Based on what you've learned so far in the tutorial, who can make these things happen? What other clever ways can you use what's already there to have interesting or unexpected effects? Let's see what you got!
 

Rob Burrito

New member
yup! everything working as expected so far in the tutorial. only goof was the monster lock tile. when it disappears, didn't know the monster lock tile 4th palette color should match the ground color- as the palette doesn't revert to the ground palette. having an issue with the regular bug monsters getting stuck on the top of the screen. reverse direction is on with edge detection, gonna change up the bounding box to see if it helps. hoping to get to the challenge this weekend!
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
Awesome to hear. It *could* be a wonky issue with speed/acceleration/bounding box issue...shouldn't be, but it's theoretically possible that it's an edge case!

Oh, and yes...forgot to mention that when these tiles are changing, the attribute value (sub palette) is NOT changing. Good note!
 

TurtleRescueNES

Active member
TheNew8bitHeroes said:
3.1.3 BETA CHALLENGES:

So let's try a few simple, fun challenges - post video of any that you're able to accomplish here!

1) Create different weapons depending on if you press the A button or B button. (hint: create a new script, and think about how b button was used to create projectiles)
2) Make a monster or boss that has an animation state that looks like he's winding up to attack / inhaling to breathe fire / etc, before emitting a projectile. (hint: think end-animation)
3) Make a boss monster out of tiles, where only his eyes/hands/vulnerable points are objects, and when you defeat all the vulnerable points, he goes away (hint: think all monsters lock)

UNTITLED TURTLE PROJECT v3.1.3 :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ar3_6zUH0

So I tried these challenges, and came close, but couldn't quite get it right. (Please forgive the crude animation. I still haven't rebuilt all of my animations.)

I cloned the script that creates a hero moving projectile, so that I can call another object with another button. Problem is, I can clone the script, rename it, and even edit it, but the game will not compile with the custom script. My guess is something to do with how the script uses memory and its colliding with the original hero projectile script, and I am not smart enough in that realm to know how to handle that.

My raccoon boss is made up of a body, and three "monster" parts that have to be defeated for him to disappear. That actually works. And if you look close at the video linked above, he does have a random arm shaking animation that fires off before his offensive action. But my biggest problem is getting the enemy projectiles to work. I am running into two issues. The first is the arms are on top of the raccoon, and since the raccoon is solid until the monsters are defeated, the projectile is blocked. But another issue I have is the arm on the right is intentionally positioned away from the raccoon to show its projectile is also not moving. I do have speed and acceleration values defined for the enemy projectile, but I still am having trouble getting all the stars to align.
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
Good for you for taking on the challenges!

I'll give you a hint on the first challenge. I bet it's something really easy. You've got your first script (that I created) called CreateSimpleProjectileWithMotion. In fact, not only does the screen say that, the LABEL says that (the thing at the top, italicized in RED in the built in code editor). I'm guessing in your "clone" script, this said the same thing, too. Labels have to be unique. So try this again, but try using "CreateSimpleProjectileWithMotion_2" in that label space, or whatever you "rename" your script to...make sure that the label at the top is unique, just like how the file name for the script is unique. :)

As for raccoon boss projectiles - the solid issue is one thing you'd have to get over for now, yes. You might have to put "shooting objects" farther away from solid objects (even if it makes no sense). I'll work on a way around this that is easy from the editor perspective, most likely.

For the second part...if your projectile is not moving. What OBJECT NUMBER does it create? What ACTION STEP does that create? These are important in teching the problem. Make sure that you're looking at the speed of the object being created. If you want it to shoot AT the player, make sure that the action step is also set to ignore physics. Make sure you watch that part.

But good job at cleverly trying to get around the problems! And great raccoon boss!
 

Rob Burrito

New member
challenge 1: took about 90 min, but as a second attempt coding not so bad haha. biggest issue was figuring out what was causing the compiling error in the code itself. got it though! was curious if there is a way to assign a specific palette to the player projectiles? i have it animated in all directions, and created in it's own palette, but seem to have an issue with the projectiles all taking on the hero palette. monster ones seem to be fine, all in the same pallete made for the deathly explosion animation though. guessing only two palettes can be loaded for the whole game objects (one of them being the hero?) any help on object/projectile palette assignment would be appreciated! also noted as a 2x2 tile projectile if you have it set to bounce off the edge of the screen (reverse direction on edge detection), there's some bounding box sizes that will catch em to get stuck on the edge.
 

TurtleRescueNES

Active member
I do believe I am in a state where Challenges 1, 2 and 3 are fully accomplished!

https://youtu.be/ZTEy4lHsDTI

In the video, our hero, Toby the turtle, has seashells as his normal weapon. He can easily dispose of some mean crabbies, but when he confronts a nasty raccoon, he finds that his seashells are not enough and is defeated by the raccoon's rotten fruit. Toby returns, this time with a backup energy bazooka weapon that easily eliminates the raccoon's weak points.

Joe, you were right about my issue with cloning the script. Your advice worked.

I gave up on trying to get the "Shoot at Player" script to work in this case. When I switched to "Shoot Straight", everything worked just fine. The only difference is the way the scripts call the weapon object is the state, and I can't reason why that would make a difference with the speed of the overall object. *shrug*

Toby's energy bazooka is using the "Ignore all Object Collisions" setting to get around the fact that his normal weapon cannot breach the solid tile type.

Rob, from what I've seen, you can either use the player palette, or its alternate palette. I haven't seen any other palette available.
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
@Jsherman...EXCELLENT! Great to see this! We have to find a way for you to get better high quality renders of your videos. Might I suggest a screen cap software to capture the window rather than using the output AVI? Smaller file sizes too, probably. Definitely something to show off here, and clever using "ignore All Object Collisions"! Though this might go away in future versions (selecting no type may cause this, and that bit may be used for something else...just something to note!)

It's amazing to see this early progress.

@Rob - you have four sub palettes per screen, with three (plus transparent) colors in each. NESmaker breaks it down like this by default:

Player/ Game Objects ---- Monster Palettes
0-1-2-3 || 4-5-6-7 ---- 8-9-a-b || c-d-e-f

Expressed in the update, I talk a little bit how the Player/Game Object palettes are set in the GameObject0 object (by default, the one called PLAYER). You see to sub pals there. Whatever you set them to will be what is loaded into the player/game objects pal. If, when creating your projectile, you use the first subpalette, it will use whatever is in the first subpalette of the player game object. If you use the second subpalette, it will use whatever is in the second subpalette of the player game object. What you see when you're actually editing the object is just a reference for you. The player game object is what's determining what gets loaded in there.

Similarly, the MONSTERS don't control the monster palettes loaded to the screen...all the editor does is determine whether it uses monster palette 1 or monster palette 2, and those palettes are there for reference. The SCREEN INFO determines what values those sub palettes actually load.
 

Rob Burrito

New member
on palattes i think i'm starting to get it, the four sub palettes (split between monsters and player/object) are in addition to the four screen palettes, making 8 total per screen? rewatched the 3.1.3 tutorial update and yes you mention the two palletes for all objects are set in object 0, and how to select between the two @ 17:08 - 18:08 for reference if anyone else is confused haha. for some reason thought there were more object palettes available. reminds me of the original legend of zelda, think i was confused as in there links fire, bombs and arrows were always loaded too with varied palettes compared to the player.

on the difference between shoot at player and shoot straight, when using the same game object for both, are they different action steps? i'm hitting a similar thing where the speed has a slight range where it will work for both, but they're not the same speed. when the speed was too high one was freezing the game when the monster shot at me, or the object moving so slow i thought it was stationary. i was able to get them both to work as a single object around 100 on the object/details/max speed value. i tried ignoring physics on step 0 and step 1, but they were still not balanced between shoot straight and shoot at player. adding ignore physics to all action steps of the monster projectile object made the shoot straight command always shot down left, while shoot at player remained locked on the player.

on to challenge 3
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
Yes - if you shoot straight with ignore physics checked, it will always shoot down left (it’s not getting values via trig to shoot towards). Shoot straight, you WANT the physics. Thats what makes it move.
 

Rob Burrito

New member
challenge 3 complete, joe hope you dont mind, for tutorial purposes i was originally making the boss you spouting hex values at the player haha, wasn't sure how to reassign a specific projectile to the different monsters yet.

video capture OBS/youtube seems like it will work after a bit of account setting up. in the meantime tinytake seems to be able to post up to 5 minutes for free and was setup in 5 min. guessing the forum wont host videos haha, can at least set a dropbox link i guess to save em there. so far easiest setup for video. any other video cap and posting methods let me know!

https://tinytake.s3.amazonaws.com/pulse/derpadoo/attachments/7744098/TinyTake06-05-2018-08-09-24.mp4
 

RadJunk

Administrator
Staff member
Dude, YES! That's amazing! And amazing working, making the tiles change when you've defeated them, etc. Great job, very cleverly done!

That's the sort of creative thinking it'll take to use this tool to it's full capacity. And I think it's hilarious, doubly so that I appear so much like Charles Manson? Hahah.

Great job. More challenges to come soon, but hopefully this allows you to start challenging yourself a little too! :)
 

Rob Burrito

New member
ha! i think it's the shifty eyes. i was thinking more scooby doo and menacing when drawing em. but manson, sure close enough for a boss. my head was going both the hero and enraged hex spitting boss your own likeness, keeping you from your own finished game. that was put together as monsters placed over the background monster lock tiles (tiles drawn to show missile damage once the monsters disappear), and a blank monster that shoots over the hair tile, stacked mouth/eyes/blank. still not sure how to animate the tiles themselves, but that would be fun for an explosion or throbbing effect. wasn't sure if you meant monster lock or pickups lock object for the boss hit targets, i did monster lock tiles for fun.

having a hard time with challenge 4, copied the projectile scripts to blank AI routines i added and saved, believe i have object and monster address and action steps correct in hex, but can't get the things to spawn in testing. not sure what i'm missing there.
 

Rob Burrito

New member
got challenge 4 to work this morning, think i just did the same thing i was trying last night. sometimes a break is all you need!

pickups.PNG
 
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