RetroBytes Portal
Programming => Warhawk DS => Topic started by: flash on January 16, 2009, 10:32:16 am
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BaDToaD,
Here is an archive with the sprites and boss images.
Sprites are in blocks of 32x32, though we need to keep them in a central position with a size no more than 24x24. This is to keep a bit of FX space for rotation, etc.
Bosses are 64x64 and the full area can be used as wished (Though these may be increased to a massive 128x128).
The photoshop versions are also in the archive along with a palette file. This is imperitive that the palettes stay the same. I you look in photoshop and load the palette as a swatch, you can see the colours used (or set aside)
I have included gifs as requested also.
Thanks mate.
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Will try to have a look in the next day or two.
I have just got back from seeing Bill Bailey in the west end. The train back was late due to the train ahead breaking down... Grrrr. So it's now 3:50 AM and I'm posting here. LOL I must be mad :)
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you ARE mad, and I should know!!!
Bill Bailey - I bet that was great! He is excelent and also has the benefit of looking lots older than me and he is only 3 years older (45) ... Well, It makes me feel better at least! (won't help you though - or will it?)
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BaDToaD,Here are two versions of the game,1 with warhawk orig and the other with yours.I love the ship, it is smart. My only reservation is that it is "not warhawk", if you catch my drift? It has lost it's 'warhawkness' (word (c) 2009 Flash), it just doesn't feel right...It could be me? Please have a look and see what you think!
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Obviously I like it ;) LOL! I tried to work with the original sprite but I always did hate that thing! It's worth noting that it's just about the only non bas relief bit of the whole game! ROFL
What I tried to achieve was something Warhawkish (c) BaDToaD 2009 ;) and reasonably retro but within the boundaries of 16 colours not 4 or 3 or whatever the c64 had :)
I do however share some of your reservations about it losing it's "warhawkness" but I also feel that once there are sounds and bullets flying around the screen much if not al of the warhawkishness (c) BaDToaD 2009 ;) will return. After all the gameplay is what made Warhawk different to the run of the mill shoot 'em up not my graphics even though they were quite good for the time.
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I do agree with you in part...Warhawk was a amalgamtion of it's constitute parts. And I do believe that the graphics gave it the feel as much as the music. This is something that I want to try and capture - that esscence of Warhawkedness (c) Flash 2009, and try not to drift too far from the Warhwarkalikeyloo's (c) Fl (nah - you can have that one) (c) BaDToad.I DO like the ship!!! but I also like the 3 bits on the side of the original!I am keeping all the graphics and stuff in order and will use the ship on builds also. We will see where it goes.Thanks mate...
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From a designers point of view I prefer the new version. When watching the landscape scrolling below it, I feel it gives a far greater sense of a tiny fighter flying over the huge Alien bases. The original to me always looked more like an insect than a spacecraft. It looks like what it is... a sprite scrolling up the screen. It also has no lighting, no shadows and no shape as a consequence of that.
I will try again to see if I can come up with something based on the original...
:)
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Thanks mate...
We have plenty of time to play with stuff! This is gonna be a long haul from now till completion.
PS. I do LIKE it though!!!
PPS. Perhaps adding shading to the original, so the sides slope away? I like the sides with the 3 'strips', for want of a better word?
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I actually prefer the original ship mainly because it's white which stands out better against the level background. The newer model just doesn't look as slick IMHO. It would be great to see the style and shape of the original but with more detail. I'll post a comparson image so we can get some other opinions.
BTW Flash I really like the new horizontal scrolling which responds as soon as you move left or right.
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BTW Flash I really like the new horizontal scrolling which responds as soon as you move left or right.
You can thank BaDToad for that - he made me!!!
Must admit though (perhaps Cider has killed too many brain cells), but it was a real git to code for me? Looking at the code now - it seems so bloody obvious! Oh well. BT was right, the other worked but did not really suit it. This is much slicker!
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I find there are many different factors that can effect coding performace. From how much sleep you've had, how much coffee you've drunk to what time of the day it is. Also I find if I've been coding all night I can get stuck on a problem for several hours and go to sleep wake up and solve it in 5 minutes :D
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I know exactly what you mean!
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PPS. Perhaps adding shading to the original, so the sides slope away? I like the sides with the 3 'strips', for want of a better word?
I did attempt that yesterday before I created the new one. I will have a go later today. I only had 4 hours kip after the Bill Bailey gig so maybe today my fresher brain will figure out what to do with the old shape :)
I will also try adding extra reflective highlights to the new one to improve it's visibility.
Edit: Maybe people should be able to chose which ship to fly at the beginning of the game. Either original or new style LOL ;)
Mmmm in fact that gives me an idea. You could have different types of ship with different specs... Nah... It's been done to death before LOL
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BaDToaD,
You may enjoy this??
This is the ship from the title screen, and it does need some work. I have edited it resolution wise, but do not have the skills to go much further. Perhaps you would like to play?
All it has to do is stay the same size and contain 256 colours, any colours can be used except pure white/black (pure black for the background though - this is for the star code, it uses full white and black to know where to plot them).
You are free to do what you want with the mothership (that was never used in the game??)
It is up to you! Play with it if you want!
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I've had a tinker with the main warhawk ship today at lunchtime. Only on MS paint as I don't have my Amiga here but it was enough to convince me that a version of the original ship is doable :)
I have printed my hasty version out and will re do it properly on the Amiga tonight if I have time.
I may well have a go at the Start page mothership at some point too. Could be fun :P
As for the pallete rethink can't you just use that bright green for the Energy Bars?
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I have not go bright green in the tile palettes. These are seperate from the sprites :( SADLY! The palette on the toles is mostly taken up by the background with the planets in. This could be reduced to 128 colours leaving 128 free. But this would mess up the pallette on the stars unless the first 16 were the same colours as the 4bbp star tiles...
All could be made as 256 colour tilesets sharing the same palettes, but - this would be a waste of memory!
AaarrrggggHHHH! nothing is simple in this world - except Betts!
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Surely there must be a colour you can use. It doesn't have to be yellow. There must be something in the tile pallete bright and noticible. Even white would suffice.
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This is the palette - mostly constructed from the star background and reused on the others. As you can see, the first line is what we are using for the main level and fore-stars.I will have to re-work it! It will be easy to do once all the levels are converted... (hmmm). I need more colours to support the other levels anyway..:)
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Modified the palette to work with these 6 levels. The only downside it that the levels (though only using a handful of colours) will have to be 256 colours..
Mind you, this does open the possibility of tweeking them to add details and marks!
Levels 2-6 need work to remove stars and sprites.. I will get round to it later!
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I have managed to do the levels with a reduced c64 palette. I could only use 15 colurs as i need one for transparency...
I will see how it works when I get home!
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Sorted the palettes - this should make things easier!
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You have mail Flash :)
If you don't like this version of the main sprite I'll top myself ROFL
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You have mail Flash :)
If you don't like this version of the main sprite I'll top myself ROFL
Ok, Let me know what you think!!!??!!
I really like it, my only (small) concern is that is does blend a bit with the background - but that could be my colourblindness
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I like it a lot but I'm biased obviously LOL. I think the visability is fine but then I thought the other one I done was fine too... I do however prefer this one. I blame my previous failure on lack of sleep :)
I tend not to look at the ship much when I'm playing shoot 'em ups. I'm more or less watching the bullets stream personally. I kind of take in the whole screen a once.
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It is nice to have the graphics "gel"! Looking good!!!
Did you see the new level tests I posted, just prior to your "you have mail" message?
Just for comparison;
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Yeah they look really nice :)
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I did level 2 as an executable DS file so you can see how it looks!
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I'll have a look tomorrow when you remember to attach it. ;)
I need to hit the sack the Girlfriend beckons!
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Ok, take care mate!
ps. It is attached!
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Scroll up from here!
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When I took a look at the new sprite I thought it looked wonkey. IMHO It needs to be mirrored because shadows only make it look unballanced. It does blend too much into the background but I think making it mirrored will also brighten it up a bit by removing the shadowed side.
What do you guys think?
Also Flash why are you trying to fit every level palette into the one palette? Surely you could just write a new palette as the level changes?
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I am doing it all in one palette at the c64 levels only used 3 of the 16 colours each. It is just easier. Grit got complicated with different palettes and also the starback uses some of the palette itself. I just makes it easier to do and also leaves the other colours to brighten up the levels a bit with incidental graphics - when I can be bothered.
I have matched the exact c64 colours (-1).
Not sure about the ship, I sorta liked the fading on the right, but also, i do agree it makes it clearer!! Aaarrrgh! I don't know anything now - brain melted!
Spent 2 hours trying to get sound - again! No matter what I do, NOTHING!
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If you Mirror it it loses it's sense of being 3D
Don't look at the sprite in large view, look at it in game. IMHO if you still think it looks wonky then you are over analysing it. All the other sprites in the original game are bas relief but because you aren't looking for it you don't see it. In my opinion the mirrored versions lighting looks all wrong. It makes the ship look lit from above when everything else in the game is lit from top left.
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I agree BT, but it is a double edged sword thing. Yours looks correct and HK's idea stands out more? Perhaps the right hand side needs a little lightening?
The one thing to remember, on a real DS you suffer a certain amount of blur. The screen is not as good as a pc's, that is why a lot of DS games use bright colours. Until we get the sprite movement working on the DS, there is now way to know for sure!
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Sorry guys I'm sticking to my guns on this one.
People have commented to me before about the main sprite and as it says on the c64 warhawk wiki:
"Although there have been three-dimensional elements integrated into the the background and the enemy sprites, the own spacecraft lacks such effects and looks rather odd."
I rest my case.
If it doesn't work on the DS then I'll have a go at lightening it but with the limited palette that could be hard.
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I did not disagree, I agreed - but have the same issues with possible visibility problems on the DS, we will have to see - when I get it working in hardware. Am playing with that at the moment!
Perhaps you could try MAGIC, you were always quite good at that :)
Any joy with the motherfu**ershipythingmadoo?
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I've not had a chance at the mothership as yet. I may have a go tonight if I get time but I'm cooking for the GF tonight so I may have no creative energy left ;)
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How bloody hard is meatballs and beans!!?? :D :D
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Level 3 with the c64 double pixels removed
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Looking good :)
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I was just having a bit of fun :)
What do you think?
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/flash/WarhawkCover.jpg)
Would look better if I could get a high quality scan of the original artwork - sadly I do not have any copies :(
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Got the original game and did a scan!
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/flash/warcover1.png)
Takes a while as it is a bit large!! (sorry)
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Need some help/input here?
I cannot decide whether to have the aliens animating or to use the availible oam memory to have a larger variety of aliens?
We could have lots of different aliens instead and uses sprites together to create larger aliens? Is the animation gonna be that noticable on the DS screen with fast moving aliens?
any input would be great!
HK: can you work out how many 32x32 4bit sprites we can fit in oam memory?
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I appear to only be able to address sprites numbered 0-63?????
Ok, so on the basis of this, the DS is worse than the C64 for addressing sprites, taken from Captain Apathy's tutorial,
"The problem with this is that you have to keep the different frames in your Sprite Buffer, which can be relatively small. With 64x64 sprites, at 256 bit color, assuming you're using the E bank like I suggested, you have enough space to store 16 sprites. Thats not alot. You can use some of the larger banks to hold 64 sprites, but even that's fairly limited. However, assuming you're using 8x8 sprites, you can hold 1024 sprites with Bank E."
So, not sure what to do now? I think split the sprites up a bit. Ie. have the first 32 as "game wide" sprites and the last 32 as level specific. Then the sprites in the first 32 can be animated using dmacopyasync (we, some of them - though we do have a lot of vblank free). This way, we can have both animation and variety. Bit of an arse mind, but, doable!!??
What do ya recon HK? Should I try this way and code an anim system based on pulling sprite data from a anim bank using dma?
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Oh, had another play - for some strange reason, I think it is to take my mind off alien attack waves :)
Thought the text in a style for the old game of yore was fun :)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/WarhawkCover2.jpg)
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The Box Scan looks great :)
As for animations or different types of enimies... I know I'm gonna regret this but... different types of enemies! :D
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I think what I have a way to get both
A bank of standard and animating enemies and a level set minor bank for incidental changes? will take a bit of a fiddle, but will enably both variety and animation... :)
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BadToad:
Here is the WIP sprite set up!
Remember, you can only use the first 16 colours in the palette
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Thanks mate.
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That is ok...
Hope the timewarp does not freak you out!! :)