Panjoust - A New Simple Platformer

[fusion_power]

Holy shit that music, Getting to work on a jungle level ASAP

EDIT: okay, I got a little sidetracked, but this is JUST as necessary
I'm redoing the complete menu to fit the hand-drawn feel of the rest of the game.

Horray!

Video shows some interesting level settings. I really like the different moot of the scenes. But maybe the Sun is a little bit too big at the end? In reality, you actualy wouldn't see anything of the foreground when you star directly into that sun. So for "realistic" lightning, you shouldn't see the sun at all because it should be onto the other side to light up the scene from the side of the Player...but of course it wouldn't look that impressive with the missinf huge sun into the background.

I still think about the "spikes from the ceiling" because there is no ceiling at all. :lol: (This somehow kills the wide and free impression that the Background offers).I could imagine to put these spikes underneeth a floating plattform so you could also add these spikes under or ontop of other floating platforms later in the levels.

Is it planed to let defeated enemies drop an egg like in the original Joust? There you had to collect these eggs and when you are not fast enough, new enemies plop out of the eggs.

 

[Masterfurbix]

Any thoughts?

 

[Jourdy288]

*MIND BLOWING IMAGE*
Any thoughts?

Would make for an epic level.

 

[Xenu]

Any thoughts?

Looks really nice. I'm no artist but the sun looks a bit odd, like it was painted on top of the clouds. Could I suggest some cirrostratus clouds covering the sun? Perhaps a bit like this.

 

[Vorporeal]

Just read through this entire thread (not sure why I hadn't looked through it before). The game looks awesome. The graphics are beautiful (both Dragon_slayer's sprites and Amigo's watercolor-ish backgrounds). The music is totally epic. I didn't find it to be that difficult (although I acclimatize to game mechanics quite quickly).

One thing you could consider adding would be the ability to kill yourself with a catapult. Depending on a couple of factors (such as minimum height from which you need to drop the rock) this could end up just making it too difficult to use the catapult, but it could just make it a bit more challenging.

 

[fusion_power]

Any thoughts?

Bob Ross would be proud of you.

In detail, I would do less rough crisscross lines, just use the same style as ingame-mountains. Overall, the image fits very well.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Thanks for all the positive feedback!! Certainly makes my day, and the artists probably feel the same way.

But maybe the Sun is a little bit too big at the end? In reality, you actualy wouldn't see anything of the foreground when you star directly into that sun. So for "realistic" lightning, you shouldn't see the sun at all because it should be onto the other side to light up the scene from the side of the Player...but of course it wouldn't look that impressive with the missinf huge sun into the background.

Well when was the last time you've seen floating platforms and people flying on birds? this is obviously set on a planet far far away

I still think about the "spikes from the ceiling" because there is no ceiling at all. :lol: (This somehow kills the wide and free impression that the Background offers).I could imagine to put these spikes underneeth a floating plattform so you could also add these spikes under or ontop of other floating platforms later in the levels.

Exactly the thought i had. Putting spikes below visible platforms would imply platforms out of sight above the spikes.

Is it planed to let defeated enemies drop an egg like in the original Joust? There you had to collect these eggs and when you are not fast enough, new enemies plop out of the eggs.

Thought about that, but probably no.

*MIND BLOWING IMAGE*
Any thoughts?

I like the current menu graphics, but this looks good too

One thing you could consider adding would be the ability to kill yourself with a catapult. Depending on a couple of factors (such as minimum height from which you need to drop the rock) this could end up just making it too difficult to use the catapult, but it could just make it a bit more challenging.

Ghehe, sounds interesting. going to try.

Bob Ross would be proud of you.

"And now we are going to paint a happy little mountain over here."

Cheers!!

 

[Masterfurbix]

Bob Ross would be proud of you.

In detail, I would do less rough crisscross lines, just use the same style as ingame-mountains. Overall, the image fits very well.

The funny thing is that the best way to get rid of too many crisscross lines is to add MORE crisscross lines over top of them

Also, Xenu, thanks for the sun blending resource, I usually save all lighting and color effects for the very end, but I went ahead and finished that up before blending the mountains

does anyone think that the the lens flare is too pronounced?

 

[trabitboy]

New video. 2 minutes of the latest build after some improvements, with music.

Panjoust march youtube

Enjoy!

Hi, the "die and retry" third level actually got me looking forward to this game !
looks good frustrating r-type fun, but with different physics :lol:

 

[Jourdy288]

I think the flare is just right, although I think the sun is a little largish. Still looks epic. I think the outline is slightly jagged, though, is that just from resizing?

 

[Masterfurbix]

Most likely, but that won't be even close to noticeable on the pandora.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Curious how it looks in-game. Do you allready have some files for me to test perhaps? Also, will the graphics be of the same format, so i can just replace?

 

[Masterfurbix]

Honestly, it works best as just a static image, we can add moving clouds later

The way I did the first background was waaaay size inefficient, something like 4 images with a alpha.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/imzmndymywt/1.png

There's that, 90kb compared to the 1mb+ of all the other images combined

 

[foxblock]

The way I did the first background was waaaay size inefficient, something like 4 images with a alpha.

Looks very impressive

A note on size and alpha: Image size is the least of your (well more MarkoeZ) worries, alpha can and will be the real problem. You should use as few full-alpha-layer png images as possible in-game as they have a great (negative) impact on the performance and will be drawn much slower than colour-keyed images. So use them or no transparency (by combining images) at all or the game won't run smooth on the Pandora as it has significantly less power than your home PC.
Performance in menus should be no problem, but I can see you also use such images in-game, which might be a real problem later. Clouds probably look shitty with colour-keyed transparency, but you should try to use it where possible.

foxblock out

 

[Masterfurbix]

Actually, I'm proud to say that we don't have a single alpha channel .png in the whole running build. (sans the menu)

The clouds are going to look pretty damn cool when Marko gets around to adding them in.

 

[fusion_power]

A note on size and alpha: Image size is the least of your (well more MarkoeZ) worries, alpha can and will be the real problem. You should use as few full-alpha-layer png images as possible in-game as they have a great (negative) impact on the performance and will be drawn much slower than colour-keyed images. So use them or no transparency (by combining images) at all or the game won't run smooth on the Pandora as it has significantly less power than your home PC.
Performance in menus should be no problem, but I can see you also use such images in-game, which might be a real problem later. Clouds probably look shitty with colour-keyed transparency, but you should try to use it where possible.

foxblock out

Sounds like the ARM Chips still have serious Problems with true Alpha blending. I thought the Pandoras OMAP Chipset is fare more advanced but I've read alot indications from various developers, that Alpha (and Floatpoint of course) are not recommended when you want high performance. I don't understand much of the technical background but I thought, the SGX unit and the other Co-Processors of the OMAP are suited for helping the core with such calculations, so there is nearly 0 performance loss. ^^""

Anyway, a "classical" 2D Game don't need alpha, even the Sega Megadrive didn't support true Alpha Blending, they used the good old "one-Pixel-none-Pixel" chessboard pattern method for semi-transparency. I liked it.

 

[PokeParadox]

A note on size and alpha: Image size is the least of your (well more MarkoeZ) worries, alpha can and will be the real problem. You should use as few full-alpha-layer png images as possible in-game as they have a great (negative) impact on the performance and will be drawn much slower than colour-keyed images. So use them or no transparency (by combining images) at all or the game won't run smooth on the Pandora as it has significantly less power than your home PC.
Performance in menus should be no problem, but I can see you also use such images in-game, which might be a real problem later. Clouds probably look shitty with colour-keyed transparency, but you should try to use it where possible.

foxblock out

Sounds like the ARM Chips still have serious Problems with true Alpha blending. I thought the Pandoras OMAP Chipset is fare more advanced but I've read alot indications from various developers, that Alpha (and Floatpoint of course) are not recommended when you want high performance. I don't understand much of the technical background but I thought, the SGX unit and the other Co-Processors of the OMAP are suited for helping the core with such calculations, so there is nearly 0 performance loss. ^^""

Anyway, a "classical" 2D Game don't need alpha, even the Sega Megadrive didn't support true Alpha Blending, they used the good old "one-Pixel-none-Pixel" chessboard pattern method for semi-transparency. I liked it.

Well in all honestly... SDL 1.2 could probably handle alpha better. I keep saying I'm going to look into the mystical beast that is SDL 1.3 which adds some HW acceleration and so most probably handles alpha stuff a lot better... I just keep on not getting around to it... just like working with GL ES 1 or 2...

Basically you kinda have the right idea... we should offset stuff onto the hardware suitable for each task where possible... try to get floating point onto neon and things like blending done in the SGX.
Currently I'm using simple SDL 1.2 and that's the limitation NOT that there's anything wrong with our ARM chip. Regardless it's generally a good idea to only use floating point where needed.

EDIT: Also I've decided it's time to look into support GLES 1.0 ...

 

[fusion_power]

Sounds like SDL 1.2 don't support Hardware Acceleration? OK, I#ve forgot that the Software could be also a limiting factor. ^_^
But even without SDL I read alot of Float Point Problems with ARM Architecture. Well, I don't think that a simple game like Panjoust really needs HW Acceleration. But when it is not to hard to realize and the result is it worth to add HW stuff (more Speed, Less MHz needed...) I'm always for HW Acceleration.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Indeed, no Alpha channels present anywhere except for the menu.
No updates on gameplay or graphics today, but i added mouse/touchscreen support for the file selector (turned out to be very easy)
Added a very very useful copy function for the level editor. The last thing it really needed to be fast for sizable levels.
Fixed limitation on number of objects

Edit: Working on the scoring now. But since i plan to put some extra lives in the levels, i still think the level score should only be added to the main score at the end of the level. That to prevent people dying on purpose to boost the highscore. I am splitting the level score from the requirements though.

 

[Xenu]

Indeed, no Alpha channels present anywhere except for the menu.
No updates on gameplay or graphics today, but i added mouse/touchscreen support for the file selector (turned out to be very easy)
Added a very very useful copy function for the level editor. The last thing it really needed to be fast for sizable levels.
Fixed limitation on number of objects

Edit: Working on the scoring now. But since i plan to put some extra lives in the levels, i still think the level score should only be added to the main score at the end of the level. That to prevent people dying on purpose to boost the highscore. I am splitting the level score from the requirements though.

Will there be some kind of save-function or is it only an arcade-mode? If there are many levels there will be a bit boring to have to play threw 40 levels or so every time. Or will the levels be "unlocked" when you've beat them so you can practise them without having to play them from the beginning?