Announcing the beginning of work on GoSub 2. Improvements over the original are:
+I am going to add an octopus chasing you. To fire a torpedo in the direction you’re going, press A.
+I also plan to put in more than 32 levels this time. These levels include an in and out, and no treasure. Your search is for the big huge treasure chest I plan to put in at the end.
Right now, all I have is a title screen. There are two different animations, please watch both of them, and I remind you these are placeholder graphics, and may not be used in the final version (especially the torpedo sprite!)

Attachments:

1. g2.vb
2. g2.c

A few hours later, and I’ve made a lot of changes. I’ve changed the title screen, and when you press a button it goes into a sample level. Here’s where it gets kind of weird and I need some help. In Reality Boy, the game runs like I want it to (submarine, torpedo and octopus speeds are good), but in Mednafen, they are slow as molasses. Which is closer to the real thing? And if you can try it out on a Flashboy and let me know the speeds of the sprites, it’d be real great. I know I should get one, but I can’t afford it right now.

Attachments:

1. g2-1.vb

Just played this on reality boy and its weird but fun first time atleast
I move up and fire and the missile goes up, the octopuse touches me but atill i can drag him

Is this going in the competition?

I don’t think I could have this finished by November 1.

Added a level intro that says how many lives you have left and the level you’re starting on. If you press up, down, left or right, it goes away because I need that character segment for the torpedo. And if you’ll notice in the top left corner, when you activate the sub, for one frame, you’ll see the torpedo there and it goes away. I tried for a few HOURS to get it gone, tried just about everything, but still couldn’t get it to disappear. Why?

Attachments:

1. g2-2.vb
2. g2-1.c

Fixed it!

Attachments:

1. g2-3.vb

It seems to be coming along nicely, good job! Some friendly pointers though:

it goes away because I need that character segment for the torpedo.

Why would you need a whole new character segment just for the torpedo?

I’m pointing this out also because how you handled the graphics in tic-tac-toe in the same way. It seems you don’t yet fully understand how the whole chars/maps/worlds work together. There is no need to give every object in the game its own dedicated charseg for example. You can easily put both the sub, octopus and torpedo in the same charseg, even in the same charmap!

Then you just cut different parts from that same map to put in the different world layers. That way, you wouldn’t waste so much space in the rom, and you wouldn’t hit the roof of “only four objects on screen at once” that you often hit up until now.

Here, I put together this little graphic to help understand the concept. If you do it like this, you only need to use one charseg! The other charsegs only need to be used when the first one is so shock full of graphics that you can’t possibly fit any more in it.

Attachments:

1. 

   charsegs.png
   

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, I really don’t know how to call up different parts of a character map. I did what you suggested, but am at a loss over what to do next. I’ve attached the VIDE file so you can help me on how to call up different parts of it.

That’s easy!

When calling vbSetWorld to put for example the torpedo on screen, instead of doing this (from your code):

vbSetWorld(31, WRLD_ON|3, torpedox, 0, torpedoy, 0, 0, 0, 384, 224);

(that cuts the graphics from x:0, y:0 in the map)

do like this to call up the part of the map that contains the torpedo (at x: 0, y:24 in your new map ):

vbSetWorld(31, WRLD_ON, torpedox, 0, torpedoy, 0, 0, 24, 16, 8);

Here’s for the octopus (at x:32, y:0 in the map):

vbSetWorld(26, WRLD_ON, octox, 0, octoy, 32, 0, 0, 16, 32);

Also note that I changed the last parameters from 384,224 to the actual width and height of the graphic to get.

OK, I think I got everything all new. The game runs faster than it did before. And because I can now keep the text on all the time, to make room for it, I shifted the map down 8 pixels. Thanks for your help, Dan!

Attachments:

1. g2-4.vb
2. g2-2.c

Cool, glad to help! Just imagine all the extra features you now have room to add to the game 😀

Hint: You could even put the level graphics in the same charseg as well, and then still have different maps for the levels, but let all level maps use charseg 0 as well.

I’ve done a few changes. First off, shooting instead of the A button is now controlled by the right d-pad. Now you can shoot right while going left. I’ve also added a background.

Attachments:

1. g2-5.vb

Using the other D-Pad for shooting is a very good addition! Did you get inspired by Jack Bros.? 🙂

The scrolling background is a nice addition. :thumpup:
That is a perfect place to utilize one of the easiest VB 3D functions. Notice the 0 in vbSetWorld that I marked in bold/italic below? That controls the depth of that world. Simply change it to 2 or 3 to make the waves appear deeper into the screen than the rest of the graphics for a nice 3D effect! That’s all there is to it!

vbSetWorld(31, WRLD_ON, wavesX, 0, wavesY, 0, 0, 0, 384, 224);

OK, I changed it to two. I don’t really understand the red and blue lines Mednafen is showing, though. I suppose it won’t look like that in a real Virtual Boy?

Attachments:

1. g2-6.vb

VirtualChris schrieb:
OK, I changed it to two. I don’t really understand the red and blue lines Mednafen is showing, though. I suppose it won’t look like that in a real Virtual Boy?

No, it won’t. 😉 It’s showing the images for both eyes at the same time, red for one eye, blue for the other. That way you can simulate the VB’s 3D if you have appropriately colored 3D glasses.

[DanB]

That’s why the rest of your game is purple in mednafen. When there is no 3D, the red and blue images are identical, and red+blue combined equals purple 🙂

Get a pair of these:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.41561

They look cool, works with mednafen and are only $2.50 including shipping 🙂

• This reply was modified 14 years, 5 months ago by DanB.

Nice glasses! Do you have some yourself, Dan? I’d like to get a pair or two, but I want to make sure it’s the right colors. Those on the glasses I have are not fully correct. Might be an issue with my monitor settings, but I can’t get it right.

I don’t have exactly those, but one nice feature with mednafen (that Reality Boy doesn’t have) is that you can tweak the exact hues of red/blue RGB colors through the config file to match your glasses. Did you try that? It works pretty well for me.