Knytt Stories Remake

[Tobriand]

I've just discovered this game: http://nifflas.ni2.se/index.php?main=02Knytt_Stories

... Have you come back from playing it yet? If not, then go play it now.

Ok, now, I know it's an MMF game, and consequently, cannot be ported (or not unless Clickteam actually come through on their idea of creating a "compile for GP2x" option in later MMF versions, which I believe never came off).

However, it's just so pretty, and would be perfect for the GP2x's resolution. But non-trivial to do, of course - would need a full graphic set, a platform engine that behaved similarly to the original, enemy behaviour, and, of course, a readable level-structure. Doable, but with a lot of work, and only by someone who knows a great deal more C than I!

On the other hand, it's a great game, and vaguely reminiscent of Simon Parzer's Doukutsu, with shorter, cuter stories, and even more lively backgrounds (the wildlife really makes this game), and I'd say, well worth the effort.

So: Anyone up for the challenge?

 

[Rivroner]

Cool graphics, i like it

I think this game was commented some time ago in this forum, but may be in other i read.

 

[Dimacus]

The ambient music in this game is really nice as well.
But i guess someone should ask if the author of the game permits a clone of it.

 

[sensible GP32]

I'm hooked great game!

 

[Tobriand]

Well, I sent him a brief email asking whether he knew SDL, and if so, whether he'd be interested in doing a SDL remake of the game, but I've yet to hear a response. Somehow, I doubt he's a C person, though, given that the game is in MMF originally...

 

[dockthepod]

Yes amazing game. I still need to try out Knytt Stories but the original was awesome. Coding this sort of game would be pretty easy... it's just the level design that is the hard part. Looking at the site it looks like he has made a level editor and all that so I wonder if the level format is documented somewhere This could be a cool project.

 

[Dimacus]

When i was lurking about in his forums, i seem to remember a thread where he commented on he did not want to make the sucessor to within a dark forest with MMF,
but i might remember wrong and he just ment something else.

But if he is not interested in making the port himself, someone else could do it, if s/he had permission to use the graphics and music.

 

[sensible GP32]

Yey finished the first game, now playing through some other level's

damn you to heck Toriband !

 

[WhiteFalcon]

I have not tried the game yet, but from the files it consists of...

All the graphics seems to be there in standard PNG files, ambient sounds and music in OGG files and the levels (map.bin) is a ZIP file. Although its header is probably removed or altered, it can be unzipped and then it looks like a plain dump of the level data plus some additional info. If someone wanted to re-create this, I would be happy to help with figuring out the level format etc.

And I should actually try runnning the game

 

[Oncer]

A few facts about Knytt Stories
. buttons needed: direction keys and ~4 buttons, ok.
. mouse: no (except for the editor, which we don't need on the GP2X anyway)
. native resolution: 600x240 (25x10 on a 24x24 tileset) .. this is a problem, and I'll show you why:

Knytt Stories is an exploration game where the levels are built out of multiple screens, no scrolling. There is always one entire screen on display, and the GP2X display is too small for that.

This would cause serious gameplay problems even with the standard levels.


What else worries me is the complexity of the levels. It's like 5 layers of tiles and there are also some advanced special effects, along with streaming OGG music. Do we have the processing power for all this? Also don't forget the enemy AI, seems difficult to port because it most certainly is made in MMF.

 

[Tobriand]

Well, Re: the resolution, the obvious thing would simply be to implement scrolling in any remake, although this might lose the game some of it's charm, admittedly. Scaling probably isn't a real option, given the low res but high detail nature of the game. But scrolling could certainly be done, simply because the project would be a remake, rather than a port; the object is to have an engine outside of MMF that can interpret the game's data. I imagine you could potentially ignore the discrete rooms nature of the game as it is, too, as an option, but that would introduce it's own problems (particularly in terms of realism regarding the enemies that follow you, and probably with memory as well).

In terms of power, I've no idea. Streaming ogg, I imagine, would best be offloaded onto the 940 with Ogg940. I vaguely remember being told the GP2x could handle 8 layers or so, but I can't remember the details, nor the situation when it was tested.

Other problems - making sure the physics are the same, AI similar - would, I imagine, be significant challenges for anyone trying to take it on board. Like I say, this would be a pretty big project, but the results could be very very good.

TBH, though, given your port of Doukutsu Monogatari, I'm quite certain you're more aware of the limitations of the GP2x than I am... if you're concerned about the limitations, then everyone else probably should be too...

 

[WhiteFalcon]

Tried the game, looks nice

Knytt Stories is an exploration game where the levels are built out of multiple screens, no scrolling. There is always one entire screen on display, and the GP2X display is too small for that.

This would cause serious gameplay problems even with the standard levels.

The resolution is truly not too friendly for the GP2X, but it would be possible to either split every wide screen into two parts and show each separately (each screen would then be 300x240 in size) or make every single screen scrollable. Making all the game a scrolling platformer would probably be too large a change.

What else worries me is the complexity of the levels. It's like 5 layers of tiles and there are also some advanced special effects, along with streaming OGG music. Do we have the processing power for all this? Also don't forget the enemy AI, seems difficult to port because it most certainly is made in MMF.

I played only the tutorial, but there doesn't seem to be that many layers. Perhaps I am wrong and in the game there are more layers and effects. Still looks doable. No idea about the OGGs, I have never even played an MP3 from inside any of my programs. All this wouldn't be a port, more like a remake written from scratch, using only the resources, imho.

EDIT: Cheers to the quicker Tobriand

 

[Oncer]

QUOTE
In terms of power, I've no idea. Streaming ogg, I imagine, would best be offloaded onto the 940 with Ogg940. I vaguely remember being told the GP2x could handle 8 layers or so, but I can't remember the details, nor the situation when it was tested.

I think the performance would be no serious problem, but it's an additional effort to optimize the game engine, especially if it should feature the exact behaviour of the original.

But now to the real problem: look at the second screenshot in my previous post. See the little enemy on the right side? The one outside the GP2X screen? With the red arrow and exclamation mark? In the game it moves left and right, and it kills the player on contact. As you can see in the screenshot, in this particular case the moving distance of that enemy is more than the entire GP2X screen. In other words: you wouldn't see him on the GP2X version. Not until it's too late.
If you don't know what I mean, play the game and look at the room yourself.

On a second thought not even that might be enough to stop the game from being fun. Maybe if Nifflas (creator of the game) could help us with the level format and some other things. And if he could give us permission to use his stuff (gfx, music, levels).

Another thing that comes to mind is the Pandora. With a good scaler (bilinear at least) we could do 800x320 (or 600x240 w/out scaling) on the Pandora's screen. Knytt Stories in its full glory.

 

[Tobriand]

It had crossed my mind that it'd fit much more prettily on Pandora, I must say - especially when you first mentioned the possibility of performance being an issue.

The screenie for the second one isn't loading in my browser for some reason, but I know the style of enemy you mean (I remember one from one of the unofficial level packs). Personally, I doubt it'd be too much of an issue - the game style is to kill you often but not penalize you too badly for it, so all as would happen is you'd learn to jump before the enemy arrived on screen. It'd certainly make things harder, though.

Still accademic, though, unless we can firstly get permission from Nifflas (and, preferably, file format help), and secondly find someone actually willing to do the underlying coding - which I suspect would be very significant indeed...

 

[Yrx]

Since the screen is prohibitively small and the game can't even be run on GP2X hardware, maybe it would be better to make a game that has a similar concept, but isn't exactly the same. It has a very simple concept, and it wouldn't be too hard to make a game similar to it. Then you don't need to worry about permission or anything like that, as it would hardly be the first sidescroller.

It is a neat game, by the way. I'm just trying to be sensible, lol.

 

[Tobriand]

True, but one of the amazing things about it is the number of excellent levels... and those aren't going to come out of this community. It's one of the disadvantages of the community we've got here - there's a lot of devs, but not so many (active) designers for things like levels. A remake would, presumably, automagically be compatible with all those currently made, which, really, is a good bit of the point!

 

[Dimacus]

I just browsed nifflas forums a bit and saw this:
"I can not do this myself, but I do allow people to create remakes of all my free games for any operating system or console. I don't quite expect to see it happening, but anyone who want to give it a try have my full support."
Now he said this in a thread about porting Within a dark foresst, but the post was made not to long ago, so i guess it's valid (Thread here)

So I guess it's OK if someone wants to write an engine for it.
I do still think that whom ever want to do this should contact Nifflas first tough.