Dimension Shift Byte-Off 2019 Demo

Mugi

Member
Hey all.

I've just done submitting Dimension Shift into Byte-Off, so here's the ROM for all of you to try out too.

Lots and lots of love and care has gone into this ROM, and I'm hoping it shows.
for play information, read the readme, but here's some of the things i did not put into it that has been done to this rom / engine.

- fully functional 2-directional scroll
- CHRram bankswitching
- extremely optimized engine (screenloads literally take 1 frame to execute, which is roughly 20 times faster than the basic 4.1.4 core i started with)
- Full fade in / fade out palette fader for warps etc
- color emphasis to enhance screen fading
- hidden sound test room (happy hunting)


This rom has basically been through nothing but devious bugtesting for the past week or so, and I hope that the amount of love and care poured into this shows somehow....
well im just ranting here, here's screenshots and a download link:


UDPADE: updated the link with a new rom that (hopefully) solves all of the spawning issues after death.
UPDATE2: 0.03 fixes an extremely rare issue of corruping tiles when screenswitch occurs during scrolling / some monster spawn/ dublication issues were also fixed.
UPDATE3: v0.04 fixes issues with attack being overwritten by other action states / fixes issue with screen borders doing weird things (hugging right wall no longer tilts the game, and falling while hugging the wall no longer wraps the screen.)
----------- player has now been made invulnerable during bosswarp to prevent warpdeaths that mess up the game.
UPDATE4: v0.05 fixes a stray audio issue where the "splat" ate the attack sound on monster death. Handle game reset has been rewritten so that it does not flash garbage on screen during game reset. stage graphics were tidied up and the stagemap.png has been updated to reflect the changes to the stage graphics (very minor stuff.)

ROM File: https://dev9.blacklabel-translations.com/scrn/dd/rel/DimensionShift_v0.05.zip


Screenshots:

001.png
002.png


003.png
004.png


005.png
006.png


007.png
008.png


009.png
010.png


011.png


Map of the demo stage:

Golden_Temple_Map.png






edit: spelling.....
edit2: added a playthrough video recorded from an actual PAL NES through RF, for the authentic messy NES feeling. (played and recorded by FIX94 from the compo entry rom.) it spoils the credits and shows the whole boss fight, for those who want
to struggle through it themselves, play the rom before watching :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R05mDmCZj58
 

Retrobuster

New member
Wow.....way to make us all look bad! ;) JK JK! This looks/sounds amazing and I’m going to try it out a little later! Congratulations on this!
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
OOOOooooohh :D°°°
Thanks, Mugi! Will try before going to bed (already 02:00AM here and I have to wake up early tomorrow >_<)
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
The scrolling engine looks very good.... very fluid. Didn't have any glitch during my small minutes playing<3 Congrats, Mugi!!! It's beautiful.
Will you release a Mugi core after the compo?
 

Mugi

Member
DimensionShift's codebase is so detached from nesmaker now that it's practically impossible to turn it into a core at this point.
So no, that will in all likelihood not happen.
 
Whoa Mugi.

I just finished your demo. Let me just say that that boss was an absolute beast. It killed me at least 10 times lol.

That was really incredible. The scrolling is super smooth, the graphics were so good I had to remind myself this was NES not SNES, and I am so jealous of those fading transitions.
The game looks beautiful! And even just looking at this first stage, its super fun!

Keep up the good work, I hope to see this game completed one day.

Just saying, as someone who works at a retro game store with customers who are interested in homebrew:
A completed version of your game would sell. Easily.

Great work! And good luck with the competition.
 

SerafukuSoftware

New member
Words cannot describe how Impressed I am with this how far Dimension Drive/Shift has come so far, well other than "No F@#$%&g Way! This is sick as". I've genuinely enjoyed playing this and I'm just amazed by all the graphical effects (including the candle illuminating the cave walls) and gameplay mechanics you've added since the first W.I.P I tried out. You've put a hell of a lot of effort and TLC into this, and I hope it gets you somewhere.

I'm defs looking forward to seeing how you go in the competition pretty soon, in which I wish you all the best of luck! Thanks again for being an Artistic Inspiration for me with my game xD
 

Bucket Mouse

Active member
And the award for "selling themselves short" goes to....Mugi. He's been complaining all week that his demo isn't very good. It's probably going to win by a landslide.

I can beat the first blob, but not four of them. Does beating the boss give you the sound test screen?
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
chronicleroflegends said:
Keep up the good work, I hope to see this game completed one day.

Just saying, as someone who works at a retro game store with customers who are interested in homebrew:
A completed version of your game would sell. Easily.

Definetly! I would buy this game!


Bucket Mouse said:
And the award for "selling themselves short" goes to....Mugi. He's been complaining all week that his demo isn't very good. It's probably going to win by a landslide.

+1 my vote on that one, too. Ah ah ;)


Mugi said:
DimensionShift's codebase is so detached from nesmaker now that it's practically impossible to turn it into a core at this point.
So no, that will in all likelihood not happen.

I understand. It's ok... it's very good. (...I hope Joe could inspire himself from your code and fix the NESMaker engine ;))
 

Mugi

Member
chronicleroflegends said:
Whoa Mugi.

I just finished your demo. Let me just say that that boss was an absolute beast. It killed me at least 10 times lol.

That was really incredible. The scrolling is super smooth, the graphics were so good I had to remind myself this was NES not SNES, and I am so jealous of those fading transitions.
The game looks beautiful! And even just looking at this first stage, its super fun!

Thanks!

Yeah, im aware that the boss is quite brutal. I have issues defeating it myself too :p
Wouldn't say the Graphics are quite up there at SNES, but I'll take this compliment any day xD



SerafukuSoftware said:
Words cannot describe how Impressed I am with this how far Dimension Drive/Shift has come so far, well other than "No F@#$%&g Way! This is sick as".
I've genuinely enjoyed playing this and I'm just amazed by all the graphical effects (including the candle illuminating the cave walls) and gameplay mechanics you've added since the first W.I.P I tried out.
You've put a hell of a lot of effort and TLC into this, and I hope it gets you somewhere.

I'm defs looking forward to seeing how you go in the competition pretty soon, in which I wish you all the best of luck! Thanks again for being an Artistic Inspiration for me with my game xD

Thanks!

It's interesting that you mention the candles illuminating the wall as that's one of those details i literally spent hours doing, going through all the screens in the stage and poking the wall colors.
I was pretty sure people dont pay attention to little things like that xD



Bucket Mouse said:
And the award for "selling themselves short" goes to....Mugi. He's been complaining all week that his demo isn't very good. It's probably going to win by a landslide.

I can beat the first blob, but not four of them. Does beating the boss give you the sound test screen?


I'm not really trying to sell myself short with the game, but the fact is still, that this is first and foremost a mechanics / engine demo,
and the gameplay aspect of it for now was quite rushed and is, in my own opinion slightly lacking.

there's no real monster variety yet, and even the boss is just a blob too.
That said, i am actually surprised how good of a boss it made. When i first brough up the idea that the boss is a blob, and keeps changing to another blob,
it sounded like a REALLY boring punching bag boss to me, and to everyone i mentioned
it to, but it turned out to provide some decent challenge afterall.
I can barely even beat it myself,
and the development rom actually has a debug health cheat that gives your HP back by pressing select so that i was even able to test this lol.
(cheat not present on the compo entry !)


Beating the boss takes you to credits.
The soundTest is a hidden screen that just has to be found :p



Mugi said:
DimensionShift's codebase is so detached from nesmaker now that it's practically impossible to turn it into a core at this point.
So no, that will in all likelihood not happen.

I understand. It's ok... it's very good. (...I hope Joe could inspire himself from your code and fix the NESMaker engine ;))
[/quote]


I know it would be beneficial for people and it would be beneficial for myself too to turn this into an empty module, but so much has been done to the game now that practically half of the data
in this game is completely ignored or not recognized by nesmaker anymmore, turning this into a core would require ALOT of work, both on my end and then adding some things into Nesmaker itself.

Im not really a C# programmer so i couldn't be able to make necessary plugins for nesmaker to handle the extra data of this engine even if i wanted to.


that said, if there's something in my engine that Joe wants to add to nesmaker, all he has to do is ask.
The game's scroll and the palette stuff are actually the same functions that do exist in 4.1.4 scrolling platformer core. they've just been through "some" bug fixing.



Edit: Also, i forgot to mention this, but because of the CHRram Bankswitching,
this rom will no longer function when converted to mapper 2 (the animations will not work) so it is unplayable on a nes/snes mini unless you use retroarch in it.
 

Rayquaza911

New member
Hello, a friend notified me of this demo and decided to try it out. Looks great. However I have found a bug. I don't now how I did the first one, recorded it just as I became the bubble. I died to the boss, when I respawned back, my HP was 0, then an enemy walked past where I was standing, gained the enemies health, and now I can control the enemy. Then it becomes weirder as I gain control of a different enemy.

https://streamable.com/m9ytn

I tried to replicate the glitch and got this. Seems all you have to do is keep punching while spawning. Could die from other places too not just the boss.

https://streamable.com/qsyu6
 

Mugi

Member
Hrmh, i thought i fixed this one already. Thanks for letting me know, ill have to take another look at it.
Its basically a case of inputs not being disabled so the action state of the spawn object starts changing instead of the player and causes ......interesting things to happen.
This is actually a really old issue.

Shame it still slipped into the demo, but i hope you othervise enjoyed the game :)
 

Mugi

Member
I updated the first post with a new download link that should take care of the spawning issues after death.
 

Kasumi

New member
Linking this on the off chance that it's a secret:
Code:
https://i.imgur.com/oIStKOa.gif
Even if it's intentional to get there, there's a bug with input reading. If one continues holding down during the screen transition, it works on that menu immediately (so it starts on option 2, rather than option 1), so the menu is recognizing a hold, not a press. (To fix this you can read the joypad once before the menu logic runs, which will turn the press of down from a previous screen into a hold.)

Punches sometimes don't come out, or come out for basically no time:
hvODZyM.gif

If one releases left or right on the same frame as one presses B, the attack doesn't come out AT ALL.
08SzqsT.gif

If one releases left or right after pressing B, returning to idle will stop the punch. This GIF shows the punch getting cut after two frames when it's normally out for 11 (also shown). So if you run up to an enemy, punch, then stop, you're more likely to miss.

This seems nitpicky because in the GIFs I'm playing frame by frame, but I only started looking for this when I was hitting things inconsistently and wanted to know if it was me or the game.

Holding toward walls while transition screens gets you to the wrong screen, which is probably more of a NES Maker thing...

It allows this shortcut:
wjpCwH3.gif

But it also allows this softlock:
I6dUtcB.gif

Dying during this transition really breaks the game:
GQ2edUQ.gif


The wall hangs are cool, and the graphics are nice but the punch issue made things really frustrating for me.
 

Mugi

Member
Im sort of aware of the edge thing. Didnt find thid particular way to skip rooms but im aware that the edge stuff in itself has issues. Some poking already went into that to prevent weird screen warps during the vertical climbing section but obviously it still needs vork. (I think it also causes monsters to not take damage in the rare case that they stand right on the edge of the nametable)

Dying during transitions is something i hadnt considered but im also aware of this behavior, looks like it needs some further poking. Basically what happens there is the fade runs on top of another fade and the engine doesnt approve.

What comes to the punch, it looks like it might be a case of bad input checks (hold a button forces a state change or so) that interferes with the attack. Ive noticed this a few times but never actually had a consistent way to replicate it.

Thanks for this, i really appreciate the time you put into explaining everything you found in so much detail. It will help a lot with working on fixes.

Being a demo i did expect bugs, but your bugfinding really takes the cake :p

I hope you enjoyed the game nonetheless!
 
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