Retro games

[Zoo]

Gauntlet has large maps that scroll. Is there any way to do that? I like the blogger idea.

[EqwanoX]

maybe, that would take some fancy codeing though and a prerendered sprite map. we could make this into a smashtv clone the way it is right now though

[EqwanoX]

spritenav as it is right now only has to push the player sprite. scrolling would mean pushing all boundry sprites, enemy sprites, and projectile sprites. so the alternative is to make a renders map as one sprite and check boundy coordinates.

this is the best i can do with scrolling maps while keeping the smooth movement, its laggy even with a small map with no enemies, so i think the best idea would be to use v7 for scrolling

http://www.mediafire.com/?wq2ck8a89dc3j8p

it basically uses grid code to identify and save boundry coordinates, it then runs a FOR loop to check if each coordinate is touching the player sprite

i remember matt saying nthfield is slow and inefficient, maybe it would run faster without that, im not sure.

matt, i meant to ask you, how do you know nthfield is slow? and how slow is it?

[Connors]

Then I still like Zoo's idea. Actually the code for SmashTV would wind up being pretty similar to Gauntlet. We've still got to make lots of enemies that all charge the player at once. And if we make it much like the original rooms wouldn't need tile maps for walls, because they are all totally open - just make one big room sprite.

[Gan]

I use to use NTHFIELD tons in Sc Physics to transfer data. I had believed it to be one of the major sources of slow down. Cause looping through characters of incredibly long strings 30 times a second seemed slow. Now I've scaled back.
I haven't done any official tests on it but I suppose someone should.
Make a project that records the start time, puts a number or string in an array, takes it out, records the new time and prints the amount of ticks that had gone by.
Then do the same with a fake array.

That'd allow us to do a direct side-by-side comparison of array VS NTHFIELD.

[Connors]

I know some programs can make 2-D arrays, instead of 1-D. Could you maybe look into that? You would get values with 2 numbers: if mapArray(x,y) = 1 then...
Then there's TNT Basic which has pre-rendered sprite maps built in and hasn't lagged for me yet.

[EqwanoX]

i updated the original spritenav system with enemies, its starting to get a little laggy, but thats on my g5
http://www.mediafire.com/?8cn48kx47zpepmd

[Zoo]

Great Eq, but unlike gauntlet, it takes like 5 seconds to die. Is there any way to make it use spawns?

[EqwanoX]

spawns? what do you mean? allies?

i added a map editor in the map method. so laggy! i gotta get an intel!
http://www.mediafire.com/?4b6opf3j2belfu3

we could make this work like the old zelda games where it would scroll to the next area when you touch the edge of the screen. this would allow for large maps and not sacrifice smooth movement

it gets laggy with lots of blocks, we could use the x and yrepeatsprite to make large walls with just one sprite but they would have to be manually coded

[Gan]

That's awesome. It is a tiny bit laggy on my machine as well.

[Zoo]

like the little spots that make enemys until you destroy them.

[Zoo]

Wows. I just realized that this could make a sweet shooting game. Think about it. Hoards of zombies coming from all sides of the screen, and you need to shoot as many as you can before you die. This is the best real-time battle engine i've seen on the GMG. I like the zelda idea. It would be a good compermise

[Zoo]

i added a map editor in the map method. so laggy! i gotta get an intel!

It doesn't lag for me at all.

[Zoo]

Are we still working on this? It'd be a shame to let a good gauntlet engine go to waste.

[EqwanoX]

yea i like the "left 4 dead" idea, and shooting bullets will run smoother than shooting rotating axes, so thats a good idea too. ill work on converting the axes to bullets. you wanna do zombie sprites?

idea:
keep axes as a special weapon that kills multiple enemies? so the axe only stops when it hits a wall or goes off screen