Topic: NES-Style Castlevania Belmont Engine for GameMaker! (Version 0.3 UPDATE!)

[Esco]

She let me work on it a little last night, but I fell asleep so didn't get a whole lot done. But yeah, she told me I could work on it a bit as long as I don't ignore her. We argued over it, so she relented a teensy bit.

I will skip writing some politically correct BS like most people here did and just get to the point with you: man up.  Otherwise someone who knows how to act like a man will roll up, snatch your chick, and start doing it for you. Women only like BOYS (notice I didn't say men... no man would let this trash fly) that act like you are doing for so long, then they get bored and move on.

It's one thing to only do something in moderation and not neglect your chick (if you don't already know to do this, again I say the same thing.... man up. You should know better).... it's another thing to let someone tell you what to do.

[darkmanx_429]

She let me work on it a little last night, but I fell asleep so didn't get a whole lot done. But yeah, she told me I could work on it a bit as long as I don't ignore her. We argued over it, so she relented a teensy bit.

Dude I am an 31, married for 3 years, in the military and also going to Game Design School full time. I will be finish in 5 quarters. My wife works and she knew I was passionate about video games when we met. When I am not working, 99% of the time I am doing my homework in front of a computer. I am either doing some digital art, or modeling, or learning a scripting language. When the brief opportunity comes up and I can relax or have a break, naturally I want to work on my game (here on the thread) or network and do that type of thing. Even if there is no time (when does really anyone have enough time) I make time for her and we do things together. The point I am trying to make we have never once "argued" over me doing my gaming thing because she knows that I am passionate about it and I am working hard to make a better life for us. That also means staying current with whatever new game design programs are out there. If she can't support you dude find someone else that does. No offense, but maybe she just isn't feelin you anymore and just using your programming thing as an excuse to piggie back on and leave. And just so you know my wife has two degree's and is a mortician. She did work at SOE for a year, but she is just a casual game player. It's not really her thing, like with me.

[TheouAegis]

I'm still working on it. Was recreating Wallachia Village, trying to get a working door (almost finished, having an issue with views), and then a room transition. Probably will throw in a Zombie. Sadly I have nowhere near as much done as i was hoping, but we already had this discussion...

[TheouAegis]

Update: Got the door working now. It looks nice. For those of you who hate timelines, sorry, it uses a timeline again. And like my other codes, the code is spread out in multiple places. Tonight I hope to get vertical room transitions (climbing up or down stairs to the next area).

Still also trying to work out the vertical scrolling tiles issue that Dracula's Curse seemed able to handle simply because of name tables. I'm toying with two ideas so far to deal with how Dracula's Curse deleted 16 tiles from the room every 256 pixels: Either use two views as the player nears the x256 marks, or just shift all the tiles down 16 or 32 pixels depending on their location in the oom. Both have their drawbacks, though...

[Inccubus]

Is there any discernible reason why they would have done it that way? And to be honest, it seems like a waste of time to implement something the player would never see and the end user could do without. Seriously, why implement a feature that just seems to makes it more difficult to put a stage together for the end user? Most of your users won't even know about these missing tiles unless they ever tried to hack CV3. Just saying it seems like a waste of your talent to recreate something inherently inefficient.

[Claimh Solais]

As cool as it would be to mimic the NES CV games right down to the finer points, I'll have to agree with Inccubus in saying that, yeah, it's something that can be done without.

[Aridale]

thats what Ive been sayin since he started this project... Its pointless to try to exactly mimic an NES game with gamemaker because it could never ever ever be run on that console. Make it SEEM like it could be on the nes but use modern programming techniques and application. Dont make things just cause thats how the NES did it. The NES is almost 30 years old

[TheouAegis]

Well this is for me more than any of you and that's what I want! That and if someone wants to build their game with 32x32 pixel TSAs, then that's what they'd need. I mean, if you want to recreate CV3 with its backgrounds intact, either you work with TSAs or try to place 100s of 8x8 tiles in a room. And in order to recreate the cathedral or clock tower with TSAs, you either need the game to auto-delete 16 pixels or double up the tile count.

And some things are meant to be drag-n-droppish, such as enemies and what not. To keep things small, I'm obviously not making multiple candles/torches/etc for each drop placement, so there will still need to be some user customization. But the doors are designed to be automatic. Enemies will be automatic (btw if someone knows what the drop ratios are for enemies, i'd appreciate the info). Belmont will be automatic, obviously. Rooms will require only minor customization (stage number if #-01, maybe candle drop specifics). It's just taking time cuz i don't think out what i'm doing ahead of time, just program it as i get an idea.

[Claimh Solais]

Well this is for me more than any of you and that's what I want!

Well, when you put it like that, then I can't argue with you. That's exactly what I do with my projects, so, yeah. If you wanna do it, then go for it.

[Aridale]

well thats all fine and good make it however you wanna make it but dont put it out there for other ppl to use as an "engine" when your only makin it to your own specific standards

[Inccubus]

Indeed. It's fine if you just want to do it like that for your own benefit. As a programmer I can understand that. However, I can guarantee once this is out there and you present it to people as a CV engine they are definitely not gonna be very enthusiastic about having to use TSAs when they can just build the maps quickly enough by placing their tiles in any size arrangement they choose. It isn't limited to 8x8 tiles. Having to build the TSAs out of the existing tile set is an extra step that people won't want to waste time on. But, of course this is from an end user point of view. I definitely appreciate the work your doing regardless. It saves me a bunch of time and effort even if I have to implement my own stuff into it. So thanks for making it.

[uzo]

I have to agree the idea of adding that quirk in has absolutely no logical meaning behind it. CV3 used it as a work around because they couldn't do it easier. You can do it easier, so why?

It only hurts the potential users of your engine to make their own games. It benefits NO ONE, and the end user, the player, will never see the difference regardless of which you do.

Why hurt the potential developers, for something the players will never see the difference in? If anything, you should be making development easier, not harder.

[Corpsecrank]

Looks really accurate. I may have to make something with this since I already have an 8bit character sheet I made up a while back as well as some enemy sheets.

[TheouAegis]

It's actually very fast to make TSAs, in my opinion. Once I got used to the arrangement of my TSA sheet, I could recreate Wallachia Village quickly with little problem. Would take much longer in my opinion to build one tile at a time rather than pre-arranging the tiles and just building rooms 4 tiles at a time.

But whatever. Pray my girlfriend gets a job so I can spend more time on the program. She told me I could work on my program and now she's bitching that I don't pay attention to her when I'm programming. >_> Girl needs a job to fill her time.

[Inccubus]

It's actually very fast to make TSAs, in my opinion. Once I got used to the arrangement of my TSA sheet, I could recreate Wallachia Village quickly with little problem. Would take much longer in my opinion to build one tile at a time rather than pre-arranging the tiles and just building rooms 4 tiles at a time.

I'm sure it works great for re-creating an NES game and you already know what the TSAs are. However, no one making an original game is gonna waste the extra time to plan out what their TSAs might be when they can just arrange their blocks right on the tile sheet and select any size block of graphics in the room editor. That's just my opinion of course. And believe me, I've made some hacks of CV1 & CV3 stages in their respective editors and there's nothing worse than getting stuck wishing you could ditch the TSAs just so you could get this one block in this one spot. And I just thought of this, there's nothing stopping people from simply making their tile sheets into blocks of TSAs on their own and setting it up appropriately in GM directly. And even then they'd still have to lay their ground tiles on a separate layer. I'm not saying not to do it if you want, but don't expect it to be a popular feature of the engine when GM already has a perfectly efficient interface for tiles that many users are already accustomed to. That said, I am looking forward to seing how you recreate the TSA system out of sheer, morbid curiosity.

But whatever. Pray my girlfriend gets a job so I can spend more time on the program. She told me I could work on my program and now she's bitching that I don't pay attention to her when I'm programming. >_> Girl needs a job to fill her time.

On a personal note, that's exactly what my ex-wife used to do to me. She'd bitch and complain that I never got any projects done, but the second I dedicated any time to it she got pissed that she didn't get enough attention.