Oink 'n' Boink - 2 Player Battle Game

[JamesNES]

Totally good advice, I can try everything I can think of to crash the thing and be fine, then give it to someone else for 30 seconds and the game's locked up!

Over the last week I went back and fixed all the stuff I'd broken, made it actually testable for more than one level at a time. Did some testing and fixed some bugs. Best one was the game warping to the title screen when you try and throw a ball. Somehow an RTS went missing from the bottom of the ball throwing button script.

My partner had an idea for a game where you got to steal carrots from rabbits so I worked on that too, got it down pretty good. The rabbits have proper line of sight, blocked by solids and run at you if you get into one of the horizontal or vertical axes. They keep running straight until they hit a solid and then reset. Getting the line of sight to feel right was really fiddly.

I had it so they only chase you if you walk in front of them, but that was too easy. Then I had it so that they change direction and follow you if you stay in their line of sight so you had to be fast, but that was too hard. So I think this is a good middle ground.

And they don't see you if you hide in the bushes! PVP collisions are turned off for this one as I couldn't think of a way that would work well.

 

[SciNEStist]

Those bunnies look great. would be neat if their ears went up while they were in "chase mode"

People have been talking about a stealth based game like this for a while in these forums, looks like you get to claim credit for pulling it off first

I made a zombie game a while back and my solution was to have the enemies target your last known coordinates when they had line of sight, then when they reach that position they check for the player again. if they see you they resume the chase, otherwise they go back to idle behaviour.

With that system the player couldnt just turn a corner, they had to actually hide while out of site. you would have to add some more tall grass for something like that to work though.

 

[JamesNES]

That is a good middle ground, the way I programmed it they either stick to you like glue unless you can run around behind something, or they get their blinders on until they smack into a wall. If it ends up too easy still I'll be giving that a go, shouldn't be too hard with a couple of bytes of ram. All the collision and movement in this one is handled outside of NES Maker's usual routines so I could have total control!

And I will be redrawing those rabbits, probably make them an extra 8 pixels higher so I can actually fit proper rabbit ears in.

 

[JamesNES]

I didn't feel like it was done so I added pathing and stuff to it. Now they can optionally follow set routes, and when the run off from them and lose you, they return to them!

Could really have done a proper stealth game. Definitely got to redo those rabbit sprites though lol looks like something Bugs would transform into after drinking a potion.

 

[Jonny]

I think the rabbit could be make to look more rabbit-y without adding extra sprites. Let me know if you want me to have a go at tweeking it.

 

[SciNEStist]

I like the sprites for the most part, but having a visible difference between attack mode and patrol mode would be good for players.

 

[JamesNES]

Yeah you're right, I'll make em red or something when they're angry. Gonna put an MGS style '!' over their heads too haha

 

[JamesNES]

Made this one today, you have to mash the button to try and pull the other player off the edge (obviously). The more correct buttons you mash in a row, the stronger your guy gets, but if you push the wrong button then you're power goes down faster.

Had to do some fun stuff with scrolling since the rope was gonna be too big to be a sprite. It's got two splits, one for the hud and one for water. Easy enough on a big blue background!

 

[SciNEStist]

witchcraft!!

 

[5kids2feed]

That’s more of what I was first attempting to do with my arm wrestling game, have the button sprite above the player but, my coding skills are nowhere near yours Incredible job!

 

[JamesNES]

You should've posted on the Discord! Everyone is helpful there, any excuse to code something for someone

I added some sharks swimming around down the bottom and actual win detection for the end of the game, with an animation. Too cute. Never thought I'd make a game with so much pink.

 

[SciNEStist]

I get how you are scrolling to make it look like they are moving, but are the clouds/sun sprite based?

 

[JamesNES]

I get how you are scrolling to make it look like they are moving, but are the clouds/sun sprite based?

The sprites look like this; the hole in the middle is sprites so you don't notice the platform scrolling. When a player wins it stops drawing the hole sprites and overwrites them with bg tiles so it doesn't flicker when they fall through! Think I have room for maybe 3 more sprites before it crashes haha

 

[SciNEStist]

was splitting the hud much lower, the water much higher and integrating a background in there not an option?

 

[JamesNES]

Screen splitting without using dpcm or a scanline counter (not on this mapper) is super imprecise, like it can vary by a quarter of the screen depending on what the code above it is doing, and I haven't learnt the dpcm method yet so it's plain backgrounds and trickery for me, for now.

If I put a bar down the middle you can see the wobble of the splitting... and this is actually pretty stable! Safer just to do with it with sprites.

 

[5kids2feed]

Insanity! I can’t even fathom how this is done

 

[JamesNES]

Just put

LDA #$xx ;; the x scroll value
STA $2005
LDA #$00
STA $2005

at a point in your main loop and see what it does. The more consistent the code above it the more stable the split will be. It's not a classy way of doing it but you can hide it well if everything's choreographed nicely. I had sprite zero hit in for the HUD but it slowed gameplay down so I just went for this

 

[JamesNES]

Finished the "Pig o' War" round, added special music for falling off/the shark coming up, and made the water down the bottom scroll back and forth because... why not.

Made a little flame appear above your head when you get above four bars of power, and made the power easier to build up.

Fun part now is what next? My mate suggested a game where you run back and forth grabbing fruit that fall from the top of the screen but I haven't worked out a way to make it more interesting yet.

 

[5kids2feed]

Hmmmmm how about a 2 player pig pen maze? Or even Pig Pong (ping pong)….. or possibly a game to see who can get the muddiest?… or or or a game where they use their tails to bounce like springs?

Just spit balling here

 

[SciNEStist]

if you are gathering falling fruit, have the pigs collect the fruit and deposit on their side. also have non-fruit items fall down that wont count towards the score, but you can toss these items at the other pig to knock their fruit out of their hands. could make for some competitive play.