Interstellar Slipstream (WIP)

[3DPLABox]

Hello all!
Interstellar Slipstream is my second attempt at a NES Maker game and one I hope to follow through to completion. I've spent the past two weeks working off and on to get some background sprites and the title screen complete. This will be a horizontal space shooter heavily inspired by the likes of Life Force and Thunder Force III (my favorite SHMUP). Hopefully I can get it to the point where I can add cutscenes and other story elements, but that's way down the line as I have to figure out all the basics first. NES Maker is still very new to me and there's a lot to learn.



The first stage will have the player departing from a hangar in a transport ship that is currently under attack. Maybe some screen shake effects could be added for extra immersion? I'm planning on having the back of the ship busted open after a few screens to reveal a handful of enemies as a good primer for the controls and feel of the game.



The first major issue I've come across that I haven't been able to find a solution to is in the following picture. Right at the screen boundary between the first and second screens, the background tiles get all funky for what looks to be the first half of the second screen. I followed the shooter tutorials from beginner to advanced (and added the bug fix posted by AllDarnDavey here) and still haven't found a solution. I'm sure it's a simple fix, but it's one that continues to elude me. I have pretty much zero Assembly experience, so any help would be appreciated. Until that's fixed, I'll just keep making more background tiles for future levels.



Some enemies have been mocked up as well as some additional space sprites, but I will save those for a future update.

 

[Jonny]

I get the same issue when going from a 8x8 tiled screen to a 16x16. If you can have a 16x16 tiled menu screen or cutscene in-between your start screen it should work.

You could even have game warp to a blank screen and then to the game play instantly.

[8px start screen] --> [16px warp screen] --> [16px game]

This is a workaround rather then a proper solution but it works

 

[dale_coop]

Hmmm... @CutterCross shared a fixed for that issue (but I can't find it)

 

[3DPLABox]

Thanks for the suggestion @Jonny ! Right now I have it warp from the 8x title screen to the 16x warp screen then to the 16x game. It cleared up a lot of the weirdness, however doesn't fix it entirely. It's much more playable, but now looks like the following:



You can see the floor tiles changed to one of the wall types, the windows are cut in half, and of course the obvious black line at the midway point.

 

[Jonny]

Hmmm... @CutterCross shared a fixed for that issue (but I can't find it)

Is this it?
https://www.nesmakers.com/index.php?threads/mega-metro-vania-title-screen-issues.6401/#post-31780

 

[3DPLABox]

Reading through that thread it does seem like the 8x-16x transition was definitely a contributing factor, but the second glitch I posted still remains after the fact. I even disabled hide player and hide hud on all my screens to see if that had any effect, and it didn't fix the problem for me yet.

 

[PasseGaming]

Very nice, I'm a fan of shmups, in the process of making one myself. Are you using the shooter module or are you going with something else? How are you dealing with the horrible limitations of the shooter module? Like only being able to have a handful of monsters on the screen? For bosses, how are you going to get around the inability of having monsters move up and down? They appear to only be able to move left or right and stationary without doing weird stuff. Sorry for all the questions. Issues I've had with my game I been working on since August and haven't found a way to deal with them yet. I've asked for help and recieved very little with those issues. Much of it having to do with how janky the module is.

Oh, I did find a "fix" for that issue involves a buffer screen. But it still does it occasionally. Not really sure why.

 

[3DPLABox]

Questions aren't a problem! I'm going to have many myself going forward.

I'm starting off with the shooter module but keeping an eye on the forums for any and all optimization tips to make it as quick as possible. I don't know assembly at all, so I'm looking everywhere for tricks. At the moment I'm focusing on background sprites and level design because I've got that part mostly figured out. Eventually I'll move on to monsters and I'm hoping by that point there may be more community tutorials for fixing/bypassing some of the limitations, especially the enemy limit.

 

[PasseGaming]

There hasn't been much in the way of aid for the shooter module. You and I and a handful of others are the few that even bothered with the module. That's why I was asking all those questions, been at it for 5 months and as of yet there hasn't been much in that department other then what I've done myself and found help with. The monsters are going to kill you, to keep it fast you'll have to have few animations and few monsters on screen. Still haven't figured out a reasonable way to speed it up without giving up entirely on animations. You can do that, the tutorials do show how to really speed it up but at the cost of pretty much all the bells and whistles... maybe we can work together with figuring out some of this stuff as you are really the only person I've seen yet who is making a shooter besides myself.

 

[3DPLABox]

I'd be down for throwing some ideas around! I've only had NES Maker since about a week after Byte Off started though, so my useful contributions may be few and far between. I've got a vacation coming up over the holiday so I'm hoping to dive in and really knock some stuff out on this game.

As far as the animations go, I'm considering that part of the polish phase for the game. My plan of action right now is to get the ship movements/collisions/rate of fire/etc exactly where I want it while building the levels. After that I'll probably move on to boss/enemy designs and patterns. At that point I'll try pushing the engine limits and see what animations and crazy stuff I can accomplish.

 

[AllDarnDavey]

You can see the floor tiles changed to one of the wall types, the windows are cut in half, and of course the obvious black line at the midway point.

One thing I'd do is set your player to start right at the beginning of the level (completely skipping all start screens). If doing that results in no corruptions you'll know it's something to do with the transitions. But if you still get corrupted graphics you'll know it's something else causing it.

You might want to check the NESmaker facebook group, I know this exact issue was posted on there during byte-off2020. I know the main cause was going from a 8x8 screen to a 16x16 screen without a buffer in between, as others have said, but there may have been some other small detail we're forgetting.

 

[3DPLABox]

I deleted the screens I had made and moved everything over by 1 screen to start fresh. I originally had my first level screen (16x16) starting at 0,0 while my last row were all (8x8) screens. My thought was that since NES loads half the screen before the first screen it may have been overflowing into screen 256 (8x8) thus causing some problems. I then took your suggestion @AllDarnDavey and started the player at the very beginning of the level and saw no corruption whatsoever.

After the level ends it will go back to the title screen (8x8) >> blank buffer screen (16x16) >> level 1 (16x16) and it still has that glitch. So it definitely has something to do with the transition from the 8x8 to 16x16 screens that I haven't figured out.

 

[AllDarnDavey]

I think I found an older thread on this issue from byte-off... Looks like you might have to make a small tweak to your warp tile script as well as the airlock screen.

[4.5.6] Graphic Glitch after Warp?

Anyone know why this happens after warping into this screen? MetroVania module. If I start from this screen, everything is fine. But if I warp in to this screen from a special screen, I get this weird grid of graphic glitches on the scroll border. Also my player starts automatically running to...

www.nesmakers.com

 

[Jonny]

Reading through that thread it does seem like the 8x-16x transition was definitely a contributing factor, but the second glitch I posted still remains after the fact. I even disabled hide player and hide hud on all my screens to see if that had any effect, and it didn't fix the problem for me yet.

Where you're getting that vert black line, what sceen is that on? The second one of scroll?
Do you have any monsters on those screens?
Maybe check all your screen settings are the same (palettes, day monsters, screen type etc etc), . It should only go by the first one of scroll, but you could try for nothing.

 

[3DPLABox]

I read through that thread and added the lines of code to the warp tile script (didn't say specifically where, so I tried a few places) but it didn't seem to do anything. I do have a buffer screen between the 16x and the 8x. I've even tried 2 buffer screens and it didn't help any.

The black line pops up on the first half of the second scroll screen, and no there are no enemies anywhere in the game yet. I'll double check that all the screen settings match tomorrow when I'm back at it.

Even though we haven't figured it out yet, I do appreciate you guys helping me out!

 

[3DPLABox]

Progress has been slow the past two weeks, but I've updated some of my background tiles and added broken pieces to show the ship being torn apart. I also found out why I was having a problem with enemies spawning only on the left side of the screen. Apparently the enemy spawn area wasn't set properly. So that works now, and I've even toyed around with the enemy AI just a bit. Eventually I'll face the problem of designing and placing enemies while trying to avoid slowdown, but today is not that day.

My main focus for the moment is level design and background sprites. In my upcoming vacation I hope to be able to knock out a full level or two.

 

[3DPLABox]

Started work on sprites for another level! This level will transition from a crystalline cave into a magma filled cavern. Here's some mock-ups of what it could look like. I still have more actual background detail work to do to help the foreground stand out, but I'm calling it a night after a few hours of working on it.

 

[3DPLABox]

I've been too busy to work much on the game the past month or so, but I did manage to mostly finalize the look I'm going for with the crystal/magma level. This will be a very tight level with minimal space to move around in. There are going to be turrets a-plenty, lots of paths to choose, and maybe a dead end or two.



A tutorial level may be added as either an optional bonus stage or it could be implemented directly into the start of the main game. I would love to make the grid subtly pulse a bit, but first I have to figure out how to animate background tiles. That is a project for another day.



Last night I stayed up much too late designing my first boss! It has yet to be actually implemented, but I think I got the color scheme where I want it; and with a two frame animation, I think it will serve its purpose for the time being. Based on the Ophanim in Christian angelology (apparently that's a word), I wanted to incorporate a boss that features spinning wheels covered in 'eyes' but still fits in with the sci-fi aesthetic. I think I did alright for myself on that front.



And finally here's some rough 'sketches' of what some of the enemies may look like. Colors will most likely change as well as the way they are drawn, but for the time being they are good placeholders as I implement features. All of these designs are actually based on a small sprite sheet I made over a decade ago in high school when I was trying to make this game in Flash 8. I never got very far in that version, but I'm excited to finally be making the dang thing I've been dreaming about forever.



Comments and suggestions on how this is going are always appreciated!

 

[Pauldalyjr]

I've been too busy to work much on the game the past month or so, but I did manage to mostly finalize the look I'm going for with the crystal/magma level. This will be a very tight level with minimal space to move around in. There are going to be turrets a-plenty, lots of paths to choose, and maybe a dead end or two.

View attachment 4336 View attachment 4337

A tutorial level may be added as either an optional bonus stage or it could be implemented directly into the start of the main game. I would love to make the grid subtly pulse a bit, but first I have to figure out how to animate background tiles. That is a project for another day.

View attachment 4338

Last night I stayed up much too late designing my first boss! It has yet to be actually implemented, but I think I got the color scheme where I want it; and with a two frame animation, I think it will serve its purpose for the time being. Based on the Ophanim in Christian angelology (apparently that's a word), I wanted to incorporate a boss that features spinning wheels covered in 'eyes' but still fits in with the sci-fi aesthetic. I think I did alright for myself on that front.

View attachment 4339

And finally here's some rough 'sketches' of what some of the enemies may look like. Colors will most likely change as well as the way they are drawn, but for the time being they are good placeholders as I implement features. All of these designs are actually based on a small sprite sheet I made over a decade ago in high school when I was trying to make this game in Flash 8. I never got very far in that version, but I'm excited to finally be making the dang thing I've been dreaming about forever.

View attachment 4340

Comments and suggestions on how this is going are always appreciated!

This is looking great, keep it up! This is going to be a good one.

 

[Basty]

I'll have to say. You are really talented background artist.