I’ve decided that since I have absolutely no experience whatsoever playing RPGs, that I am not a good candidate of programming one, so instead, I’m going to work on a fighting game (while I also have no experience playing a fighting game, I’d figure it’d be a lot easier programming one than an RPG.) So here’s my latest brainchild: Insect Combat. Right now, it’s just a warning screen and a title screen. The only two characters I’ve thought of so far are Gi-Ant and Behe-Moth. Any other punny names you guys can think of would also be appreciated.

Attachments:

1. ic.vb

You know something? I’ve never played Mortal Kombat before. The only one I have is for the game.com, anyone know what the best version of it is, so I can play it for research on this game? I was thinking of having “EXTERMINATE HIM!” be on the screen when a player is almost dead, but I don’t think I can do that because of there only being 4 Character Segments & BG Maps (right now, it’s set up in the fighting screen that 0=you, 1=opponent, 2=background, 3=text.) Maybe if I combine 0 and 1 to be just 0, then I could do it. I’ll see what I can do.

You can have up to 14 BGMaps: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=background_map

The way you use CharSegs is really wasteful, What keeps you from using one segment for different “sprites”?

Anyway, text should be written to BGMaps dynamically and directly by a text out function, so you won’t need any extra CharSeg Space. I assume CharSeg 3 holds your font?

For your interest only (the following is not absolutely necessary since 4 segments are usually enough if used wisely), if you want to use the CharSeg memory really effectively, you could even fill it dynamically and make it hold only the chars you need at a time. The VBJAEngine has such functionality for example. For better understanding, here is an example of how Wario is animated in VB Wario Land: Instead of loading all animation frames for Wario into the character memory and load one after the other into a BGMap, the BGMap points at a fixed position of the character memory instead, and the program simply keeps loading the currently needed animation frame to that memory position. So you need to have only one Wario sprite in character memory.

In this example, I merged the opponent and fighter sprites into one thing so I can put the “EXTERMINATE HIM!” sprite set up. I suppose I could go even further and put that sprite set with the fighters, but I don’t feel the need to go that far right now.

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1. insectcombat07152011.zip

What do you think of this as a logo. I can’t keep using “Insect Combat” in the Impact font forever…

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   insectcombatlogo1.bmp
   

Controls: I don’t really play fighting games. For research, I played a little bit of Killer Instinct for Game Boy (the closest thing I could find for a fighting game for the VB.) I was thinking having the A button for jumping (like in Mario) and the B button for kicking, and making each fighter make his special move with the Start button. And I’d like each player to have his own special move, so any ideas? I have a Rumblebee stinging is pretty obvious, but what about insects that aren’t known for attacking each other? (i.e. ants/Gi-Ant)

Jump is usually up on the D-Pad in 2D fighting games. Typically there’s Punch and Kick as seperate buttons… and even strong, weak, etc (R trigger could be strong/weak modifier?). I wouldn’t make start an action button… how will you pause? There should be a way to block as well… maybe L trigger, or sometimes backing away from the opponent blocks. For special moves, usually you have to do a sequence… like Down, Forward, A.

DogP

OK, Here’s what I might have for each player: Jump is up on the left control pad, while the right control pad would move the player (up on the right one would make the player move up) punch is A and kick is B, left shoulder is block and right shoulder is used along with A and/or B and the control pad for special moves. An example of executing a special move might be down+A+right shoulder.

Not to be mean or anything but the best thing about the game in my opinion is the fact it seems this game will be 100% done and not ended as a demo as so many other VB games

Better a vb 16bit game then 10 36bit demo vb games

Yes, I hope on planning finishing this game, don’t know when, probably a long time from now. Sounds like you’re not liking what i have so much, care to elaborate on what you’d like to change about this game?

OK, I need help again. I’ve added a pause feature where you can pause the game, and when the game is paused, you can hit the select button which will take you back to the title screen. The problem lies with the music. It won’t play any more if you do this. If you go to the arena, the speech still works, but the music quits playing. Don’t be fooled since the code as it is now works fine in Mednafen, but something is wrong with my code and it doesn’t work in a real Virtual Boy. I think maybe the problem lies with the fact that the speech samples and the music are two different kinds of audio? I don’t know. I’ve attached the code so an audio coding wizard can look at it…

The answer to my problem has been found. I finally thought: “Why not make the music in one channel and the speech samples in another?” So that’s what I did. Seeing as how the music fades with each note played, it wouldn’t start up again unless it was called to do so.

I have it set in my mind that each animation frame set will be one character segment/map (all one picture in layman’s terms, cutting and pasting relevant parts of the picture of all frames of animation.) Right now, I have one picture of the first fighter and all his animation parts called “giant3.bmp”. I was wondering whether to have the insect face the other way when going left, but then I figured since this is a fighting game, he doesn’t need to and it’ll look like he’s backing away. What would also be cool is to put some battery-powered save memory in here, which I would use to keep track of how many fights you’ve won and lost, which I would put in a menu at the start. I would also have an option to view some credits here, too. I hope to make this at least a four megabit game.

Should I change the name of the game to “Insecticide”? I think it fits better to the “fight to the death” theme of the game.

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It also fits the “names are puns” theme of the game.

That would be a great name, indeed!

I vote for Insecticide

Well, I guess it’s Insecticide, then.

Is it bad I still like “Insect Combat” as a name?

No. It’s not a bad name. It’s less creative but more descriptive; you decide which quality is better.

But VB games have apparently always had descriptive names. Perhaps this is because by knowing which games were available for the system, one could also tell which genres were available; a marketing decision.

I prefer Insect Combat for the game’s name …