Topic: Petit Computer

I just wanted to let you all know that I am working on a top-down RPG zombie game. I actually think it is decent. It currently features a shop, a villager who randomly walks around (he seems to like hitch-hiking because he always goes over by the road). there is also your house. those are all in the village. then in the deadworld, there are 2 perks. you score points by stabbing the zombies, or you could just shoot them (no points). Also, the game is called Modern Magic: The DeadWorld. One more thing: What did I miss?

I had no clue VAL() could do that! I thought all it could do was find the value of "8" or something like that. Thanks. Now my program is saving and loading smoothly. Thanks!

@Mariominer No problem!

Only about a year and a half worth of posts. Nothing much. I told you that its impossible to leave Petit Computer. You just can't escape its charm.

I think we should have a contest. We have groups of 3-4 people make programs, and then we compare the group's programs! Opinions?

No, you have a point....

Requesting a little input. As I began working on the 8 robot masters, I was also working on editor-specific entities not found in the main game. Two of which are a "Level Complete" entity that when touched, would signal the end of the level, and "Weapon Tank" entities that when touched will grant Megaman that a specific sub weapon indicated on it (like "H" would stand for the weapon from Heatman). My problem is how do I want these entites to be represented. This is what I have so far.

The sprites on the left side animate into a glowing orb for the "Level Complete" entity, and the ones on the right as the "Weapon Tanks" (animated with the first tank-like sprite). They are all using the same color scheme as Megaman, so if he has a select sub-weapon active, these colors will change with it like the Weapon Energy Capsules, Extra Life and E-Tank do. At first I was pleased with them, but now I'm not quite sure. The Weapon Tanks might be hard to distinguish against E-Tanks, though the purpose of their design was to be like them, and in other games, an "M" Tanks was meant to fill up all sub-weapon energy. I thought about combining the orb with the letters for each, but that would then mess with the plan for the orb to have its own separate function. What do you all think?

@Discostew I don't think it's that big of a deal; I think that as long as they're not placed in an area of high action, you should be able to tell the difference. If you're worried about the confusion, you could put them on the loading screen (if there is one) with the name of the ability/function next to each. You know how some games have tips that display while loading (like Skyrim)? You could do the same thing... even if it meant extending the loading screen a bit to give them the chance to read it.

Argh! I just went over some estimates. My plan was to have all my data reside in the first 3 GRP slots with audio being the only one inside the PRG as I package it all together. That way I can reserve the 4th GRP slot for user-made levels via the editor. Unfortunately, my estimates seem to reveal that if I were to make all the levels needed for the base game, I would overshoot my 3 GRP limit. Unless I devise a better compression algorithm for my graphics and/or the levels, I may not be able to have the game as one complete package but separate assets. I'll have to look things over once I get to that point, but for now, it's not looking good for my original plan.

@randomous That's not a bad idea.

@Discostew Why do you need to store user-generated levels within the program itself? Do you think the users will meddle with the file? If you store it externally, you could make as many levels as you want (provided you're willing to write all the code for checking for GRP existence). Then you can create another external "swap" GRP to swap out one of the internal audio GRPs for the external user level GRP while you're loading the level, then swap the audio file back in when the level data has been read.

I probably should have explained it better, because the user-generated levels are meant to be external. I'm trying to say that I want just one GRP slot available for the loading/saving of those levels, but because I want all the base data to be packaged with the PRG into one file, I would have to fit the data within 3 GRPs (one reason why I'm deciding to put the audio back into the PRG as actual scripts than just data).

It's not so much as people meddling with the files as it is people accidentally doing something to them like deleting them or writing over them since this program will allow such user-generated content. Maybe I'm thinking too much into it.

@Discostew Ahh, I see. You want a GRP to be available internally for swapping... I think lol. Well, if worst comes to worst, you could always swap one of the internal files to an external file long enough for the user generated stages to be loaded, then put it back once it's done.

I am developing my game engine right now but I still can't decide between what method to use for maps or levels.
How reliable is the array system for drawing bg tiles? I don't want to have to have thousands of lines of data statements per level area
for lttp or for petit smash bros. was considering just using SCRS for petit smash bros to keep stages smaller but not sure if that would be sufficient enough.
For some reason I just don't like the scr files I don't have very much direct control over what gets drawn to the screen this way.
Maybe I'm being too picky but in most other projects I've built on pc, I have full control over what's being drawn to the screen each frame
So if I need to I can cut certain tiles out , or change their properties.. and easily check if they're even on the screen.

Would a method that checks whether a tile is on the screen or not before drawing it save time or create more issues?
I think discostew's method uses something like that.

The main barrier I"m facing is getting large tiled maps into a system like discostew's arrays maps. It's easy but it's not since
it would consist of alot of meta tiling or fiddling around with some kind of pc based editor. There's just too many tiles to place
inside ptc and it would take forever. Without a pc based map editor that acurately exports the tiles as well...
Should I just build my own map editor that works with the bg tiles? It seems like the most viable step.
Any suggestions or ideas? FYI I've recently figured out that donkey kong country 2 style tiles (in terms of color quality) are possible with SOME color loss.
It's actually pretty impressive. I was thinking of trying to remake a donkey kong country 2 level either bramble scramble or castle crush.
I'm not sure about positioning sprite entities though or hitting my limitation on pallete.
Petit computer should be capable of it.
I suppose the forums is a much better place to talk about this than the wikia chat.

Any ideas at all I'm not opposed to let me hear them.

Also @Randomous this is as far as I got with drawing bg tiles to the GRP layer. I want to be able to I guess... do more?
http://imgur.com/xZDfxAt

How would I translate this into a map system. I know about arrays, data types etc. what I'm asking is best approach, not "how"
If you can answer that'd be cool.
Any other ideas? it appears dkc2 style/quality graphics can be achieved on petit computer!! so why is everyone doing NES quality sprites? 0_0

To further my example I think maps/levels like this could be possible in ptc. I mean with THIS graphical quality! if each tile had it's own pallete or if palletes were split to three or four for the map itself. http://www.spriters-resource.com/resources/sheets/25/26896.png

The choice with going with NES quality on PTC for me was rather simple. Because PTC technically can't handle much over what NES allows. Graphically by how many colors it can display for each sprite/tile, yes, but practically everything else, not just graphically, but processing-wise and others, no. It's a really restrictive system, meant for simple programs. I had to develop so many functions for existing capabilities because PTC either did not provide them or the built-in functions were so limited/restrictive that there was no other choice but to develop my own. Having to make my own and have them operate each frame would cut into my overall processing quota, which is already low. Sprite animation is one where it was too limited. Palette animation is another that just doesn't exist in the system. What I can't believe is that they didn't allow some simple operations like mosaic (where the graphics get really pixelated) and screen fading, which are built into the hardware and take very little to operate. To be honest, I'm having doubts that I will make anything else with this PTC version once MM2PTC is done.

I really hope they don't make the 3DS version as restrictive as this.

School starts up again after winter break. Petit Computer Community dies.. anyone else seeing the same correlation here?

if anyone wants to help me with petit smash bros let me know. I'm looking for helpers for the new game engine and system.
The game will use Double Sized SCR files, so people can make levels if they want but they need to tell me what they're doing first.
Quality standard is that tiles must be at very least gba quality or more than 20 color palletes. Allow for one transparent tile as tile 0.
That's all .
Let me know !!!
But I don't need mappers I mostly need coders. The reason I'm asking for help is because the game is pretty large and I'm running out of time.
After I go to the dentist again I'm going to be either stuck feeling in pain for a week just not sure how it will heal.

I am making a simple game using easy lines of code.
and I need to know how to do something. take a look at this line of code.
Input"Number of items";bit$
the player would now select the number. for example he would type say 900.
how would I take that number in the programming and subtract a certain number
from that input"Number";bit$

To do this, you must first have a line of code like this:
bit=val(bit$)
Val() finds the value of a string in numbers, not the character code, so it would find that Bit$ is 900 and then whatever variable you want to assign the value of bit$ to will be 900 and you can subtract a number. Hope this helps!

but once i use
bit=-val(bit$)
later on in the code how would i subtract from bit$
?