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

[X]

Sorry guys, I haven't done any programming at all so far this week. My life's been a mess these past few days. After my Rammstein concert I was popping pills in part for the post-headbang whiplash and in part just for recreation. But then my mom ran away from home for a couple days after a fight with my stepdad and I watched my aunt die in the hospital yesterday, so I've been trying to avoid turning to chemicals for comfort because that's what makes people junkies. ... In other words, I haven't been in the mood to program as of late.

Yeah you sound like you need some serious R&R after all that unneeded drama. You don't want to end up with a light touch of PTSD  If you can find ways to help put your mind at ease then by all means: DO IT!

-X

[Inccubus]

Holy crap! My sympathies, dude. Hope things get better for you.

[TheouAegis]

Found a little bit of a bug. Was standing all the way to the right of the test room next to the big wall and hitting the jump button did zilch. I'm guessing it's detecting the block on the upper right of Trevor's head. Also, I threw a knife at a candle that was half way off the screen and the knife disappeared before it made contact with the candle. Maybe give the weapons some leeway before you kill them for being off screen. Here's another thing... Putting a plat form near the top and Tossing an axe when Trevor is off screen makes him go into an animation fit that I think is probably caused by the sub-weapon being immediately destroyed.

By the way, could you explain to ma how the stage init goes about creating the block objects?

I missed your post completely, Inccubus. I noticed the wall glitch last night myself and I've been working on it. I know how to fix it, but I have to be careful because what's causing that glitch is also preventing another glitch. I'm working out the cure-all for that.

I've fixed the candles so that they disappear when they're supposed to and they should proc with items and the whip when they should, although I'm still working.

I'll look into the axe issue. You're most likely right about the problem. It should be fixed automatically since I'm going to stop using instance_deactivate. It's a glitchy and unruly command that's not flexible enough for me.

[Inccubus]

Cool. Looking forward to testing out your progress! ^__^

[TheouAegis]

As an added bonus (ok, I got pissy and went off on a programming tangent), I added sprite clipping to the torches and am currently working on sprite clipping for the skeleton (WIP because for some reason it only works properly when image_xscale=1 although I have seen glimpses of it working for a split second when image_xscale=-1 and the sprite is completely off the screen).

If anyone thinks they can help me figure out sprite clipping for the skeleton, here's my problem posted on GMC:
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=509386

EDIT: Just fixed it last night. Did some testing in debug mode and realized when it said the sprite_width was -18 (i had to pillow the sprites because of some weird bug in GameMaker) that it reversed everything on the sprite. It eventually occurred to me that the only thing not changing was the sprite's actual width, that is, sprite_width-sprite_width/2. So I changed it to draw_sprite_part_ext(sprite_index,-1,sprite_width/2*image_xscale,0,sprite_width,sprite_height,...,1) once I understood how the script works and that when image_xscale=-1, whatever pixels are at x=8 in the sprite are now at x=-8, but the "width" argument in the draw_sprite_part_ext function itself doesn't actually change, is just a reference point. Then I ran it, noticed how the new sprite lined up, and deduced the view orientation conditional for it. So now it works! ... Just wish I didn't have to pillow all my sprites.

Oh, and I just helped someone else make scrolling text using GM Lite  I'm sure there was a tutorial for it already, but I'm proud of myself for figuring it out... ... in under an hour. >_<

Also, although I'm not sure yet entirely, I'm considering having an early boss fight with Balore. Yeah, 2bpp Balore. Dunno how I'm going to pull that off quite yet with the 8-sprite/scanline limit, but it's just an idea for now. If anyone wants to make an NES-compatible Balore sprite/tile set (meaning most of him will have to be background tiles and the moving parts will be sprites since he's so big), let me know. I may need to change my story up a bit if he wouldn't be feasible. *looks at uzo* Basically, what I have in mind for him is Leon enters a church in a town overrun by zombies and the priest chastises him for unleashing the evil upon the rest of the land, then Balore busts through the wall. The priest runs away and Leon fights Balore. Something like that. Or if need be, Leon hops up to the roof of the church and fights Balore on the steeple while Balore moves side to side behind the steeple (this I know can be done as tiles if handled properly).

[Inccubus]

I've been mulling over the larger bosses in 8-bit style, but I decided it would just be better to ignore the per scan line limit on sprites especially since my games are built on a hypothetical cross between the NES and MSX. I really started thinking about it when I considered the inclusion of the giant stone golem from Haunted Castle.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

The way to do it would be to have the giant balore face fade in from the background like how Death's Skull does it in CV3, and then have two 'fist' sprites fall somewhere as if it were a BANG, then change it up by having them come in from the side like how Wily's Gamma Bot does it in MegaMan III.

The heroes can ride the fists up to where the face is and hit it in the eye or something.

But in order for that to work and look good, the background has to be pitch-black.

[Inccubus]

That sounds like a great way to execute Balore, Jorge. I think you could get away with some basic BG tiles for broken bars or something; just along the top and bottom fringe of the screen.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Ha!  If you use bars you can get away with even more, as they can hide the huge sprite or maybe make you have two sets of smaller sprites.
I may draw you a concept tiles art for this, but I'd need to know your screen resolution for the game.  Is it like the NES (256x256 or 256x224)?

EDIT:  Here's some concept boss stage work for you.
NOTE: THE FISTS WERE JUST A QUICK PLACEHOLDER, I KNOW THEY LOOK TERRIBLE BUT THEY GET THE POINT ACCROSS! xD

Aaaanyway...
So in here, the little 8x8 spot where the eye lasers come out, would be the weak point.
I shrank and messed with the AoS Balore face sprite to give you the general idea.

[Inccubus]

That looks like a pretty damn good start!

[TheouAegis]

He even included Leon in the pic
A for effort

[TheouAegis]

So yeah, the axe going off the screen and glitching Trevor issue is fixed more or less, but there is one issue I know exists but I'm having trouble capturing it so I can narrow down the scope of the bug: When Trevor whips at a bat, I swear there are times where the bat is dying BELOW the whip. I already gave it a narrow enough bounding box, I thought, but I could be wrong. If you can help me trace the bug, I'd appreciate it.

Oh, and I'm going over the bat movement again. It seemed off and in the timeline I had it moving with vspd=1/4 in a few cases, but looking back on it that was dumb of me (in trying to simplify timelines, I made them more complicated). So yeah, by next patch bats will move like they're supposed to hopefully.

[Inccubus]

I'll see what I can come up with, but I don't recall any issues with the bat dying below the whip.

[Aridale]

if your usin precise collision and/or individual masks per image in the whip sprite it could be an xscale error. You can xscale a player sprite that works fine but when its somethin that needs to be wholly to one side of a centered player xscale -1 doesnt work its like this
P = Player

P------> xscale = 1
P<------ xscale = -1

Im pretty sure its a bug in GM but its so hard to actually prove I dont think its been brought up much. Basically just make a different set of sprites for the whips and mirror them then use them when the players xscale is -1

I fought with one of my systems for days tryin to figure this out before I finally just said fuck xscale flippin and made mirrored sprites instead. Then the next time I made a new engine again I encountered it again and remembered then just tried separate mirrored weapon sprites and it worked fine. I havent forgot again lol

Its hard to notice cause the sprite IMAGE flips fine with xscale -1 but the collision masks dont

[Inccubus]

Actually in GM8.1 what I see is that it seems like the bats are dying above the whip. Hmmm...

Edit: Kind an important thing I noticed about your system for automating the placement of ground objects. It only supports 16x16 blocks. I think it would be a better idea to convert it to use 8x8 blocks instead since CV on NES had them set up that way. Say, GM would be a lot better if it could attach basic collision code to tiles directly with out having to mask them with objects wouldn't it? I think I'll suggest that as an added feature.

Edit Again: Modified your room init script to support 8x8 blocks and made it more efficient by having stretch both x and y independently.
Here's the code:

Code: [Select]

var s;
var r;
for(i=0;i<=room_height/8;i+=1)
{
    for(j=0;j<=room_width/8;j+=1)
    {
        if tile_layer_find(999998,j*8,i*8)
        {
            if!collision_line((j-1)*8,i*8,j*8,i*8,prt_ground,0,1)
            {
                brick=instance_create(j*8,i*8,prt_ground);
                s=0;
                r=0;
                with(brick)
                {
                    while(tile_layer_find(999998,x+s*8,y))
                    {
                        image_xscale=s+1;
                        s+=1;
                    }
                    while(tile_layer_find(999998,x,y+r*8))
                    {
                        image_yscale=r+1;
                        r+=1;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}