Custom Engine work:
- tiles -
Ice tiles - [not started]
Wall Grab - [complete]
Water tiles - [not started]
Low-gravity - [complete]
Boss Platforms - [complete]
conveyor belts - [not started]
Health Platforms - [complete]
Stage selection warp "save points" - [complete/not implemented]
- main engine -
Palette fades - [complete]
Stage selection framework - [complete]
underwater physics - [complete]
boss fight framework - [complete]
bi-directional scrolling - [complete]
chrRAM Bankswitching (animated tiles) - [complete]
Animated sprite weapons of multiple sizes and a weapon switching system - [complete] (im not sure if im going to use this or not, depends on the power ups I come up with)
Graphics expansions - [complete from currently needed parts]
full in-game map of the game world - [under consideration]
graphics:
story / cutscenes - ???
intro stage - [complete]
cavern stage - [in-progress]
temple stage - [complete]
??? stage - [not started]
??? stage - [not started]
??? stage - [not started]
final stage - [not started]
Audio:
Title screen - [complete]
Stage Select - [complete]
Intro Stage - [complete]
Stage A - [complete]
Stage B - [complete]
Stage C - [not assigned]
Stage D - [not assigned]
Stage E - [not assigned]
Final Stage - [not assigned]
Credits - [not assigned]
Boss Fights - [not assigned]
SFX:
in progress
Hey All.
With the competition deadline now past us, it's time for me to move my ramblings back into this thread.
Above is the summary of how things are going in general, but I wanted to take a moment to write up a little bit about Dimension Shift and the direction this game is going, what will happen next and
what there is to expect from this game.
I'll start off by repeating myself once again, I'm not really happy with the presentation we gave out for Byte-off. While it is a functional demo, it is really far out there from what this game will be when it's ready.
If it piqued your interest regardless, buckle on, and read ahead, you're in for a ride.
I stated in my old WIP thread that this game was just a pile of things that really has no direction and I merely started putting it together in order to get used to NESmaker, and assembly programming in general
but that has since started to change, and the game is getting more and more clear goals of what it's gonna be. First of all, DS does now have a storyline / sequence of events that does unfold a little bit about whats going on
but none of it has been created in-game yet. I'll reveal more about that later, but for those expecting a pulitzer-grade storyline, I'll have you know that akin to it's source of inspiration; Shatterhand, the story will be
shortly expressed and not quite as immersive as, say, zelda has or whatever. This is a platformer game afterall.
DS as a game will have a gameplay / world mechanics that are a mixed back of metroid, shatterhand and maybe a little flavor of megaman in it, i'd like to think the idea behind how the game world and gameplay works (or will work)
is quite interesting.
To elaborate that a little, we all know that DS has a stage selection screen that allows entering one of 5 stages in any given order the player wishes to,
but the catch here will be that instead of having 5 separate stages in the game, the entire game world consists of one interconnected set of stages/areas and the stage selection screen will simply act as a gateway to quickly access
different parts of the world and using the stage selection screen (after initially entering a stage) will be entirely optional.
A system has already been programmed and will be set in place once I create more stages and more of the world, that allows the player to define the locations the stage selection screen will take you, by "saving" the warp location
within any given stage by activating a warp crystal. This mechanic I have to admit I mostly designed for speedrunners in mind, as it gives a major case of variety in how the game can be completed. It also adds a little bit of an
adventure into the whole platforming mix, as you are free to wander anywhere into the world in whatever order you wish to.
At it's core, the basic idea of DS is the typical platformer, as in you search for the bosses and defeat them in order to progress to the final stage.
A little bit about the features / planned features of this game in addition to what has already been displayed:
first of all, what the hell is a boss fight framework ?
---------------------------
this is an interesting little piece of code we crafted in order to overcome some of the limitations nesmaker throws at you in regards of creating more complicated boss fights.
I've seen some games displayed here in the forum really kicked in gear creating varying bosses with multiple behavior patterns and attacks and im pretty sure atleast some of you ran into the whole frustration of
running out of object actionstates and/or AI scripts.
What I designed for DS is a new assembly called bosscheck.asm which is a trigger togleable piece of code that when triggered, runs once per frame just like predraw does, and othervise sleeps away not wasting cpu cycles.
In my demo what it does is that it takes over the control of the enemy objects during the boss fight, and instead of spending countless actionstates over multiple objects to create a complicated bossfight,
my code now writes the bosses HP into a variable (object itself is set to 255 HP) and instead of triggering changes in boss behaviors via AI actions and action end commands, the bossfight script modifies the monster on the fly based on it's HP
and all 8 action states are reserved for creating more interesting things for the object itself to do.
i didnt use this too extensively yet since my king blob boss is a relatively rushed attempt to create something for the competition rom, but even so, the boss fight in that demo consists of 6 separate enemies that each have their
own set of moves and the boss script controls the flow of the fight based on the master HP value given to the entire boss (combined 6 forms of it.)
I will take more extensive use of this in the future to present more interesting challenges for the player.
animated sprite weapons ?
---------------------------
this is a code framework, which' basis I originally wrote for the composer of DS' soundtrack, Digit2600 (which he greatly improved upon!)
I wasn't really planning to even use it, but eventually as DS formed into a more solid idea, i found a few uses for it.
this is a toggle system that allows switching the way sprite weapons draw, how large they are, how much damage they do, and how they animate based on whatever conditions you desire.
I'm currently not using it, but because object weapons lag in this engine so much, I decided to avoid using them and code my weaponry through sprite weapons instead.
Full in-game map of the game world?
---------------------------
sounds crazy ehh? That's what I said when my partner in crime, FIX94 brough up the idea, but he remains adamant that it can be created.
This feature is under consideration and there's no quarantees that it will ever be implemented at this point.
as for the rest, such as custom tile types like ice, or conveyor belts, they havent really been looked into yet, mostly because the stages that require them have not been done yet.
Water tiles im currently working on as they will be used in the cavern stage that im currently creating a tileset for.
they'll be a pretty standard thing, slows you down, makes you jump less high. cool detail but nothing rally extraordinary.
Still reading?
Thank you! i didnt expect people to be this interested about DS. I appreciate it ^^;
(also, renamed the thread to Dimension Shift now)