General Projects Screenshots/Vids Thread

[TobiMikami]

Le Thermal Visor.

That the health bar is not properly centred at the top is bothering me more than it probably should.

It's actually proper:

Speaking of that, it's now integrated and fully functional.

There's a real-time demonstration at the end of my new darkness tutorial video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF6ZHfkfDYE

[Lunaria]

OCD aside though, I still insists that this is not a good idea for a HUD if you're making a 2D side scrolling game. There is a lot of clutter on it that does nothing but block the view of the action/important things. And it doesn't really add anything either to have it structured like this. One of the largest appeals with the HUD overlays in metroid prime is just how much immersion they add, it really makes it easy to feel that you're there in that powersuit. In contrast, this is a game where you see the action from a third person perspective, so really, it makes no sense to have a first person overlay.

[Quote58]

I'll also add that one of the reasons the prime HUD worked so well was that it was built around the controller (like many gamecube games). You move around the environment with an analog stick, so the dpad and c-stick can be used for the 2d layer over top without it feeling like a bunch of extra controls to think about. The 3d movement is handled with the analog stick and face buttons, the 2d overlay that only needs up/down/left/right is handled by the buttons which only have up/down/left/right. And if you want players to use an analog stick (like am2r supports), well that's fine but I for one would hate to play a 2d Metroid game that forces me to use an analog stick for movement. It also then sucks for anyone who wants to use a keyboard, because then things have to be mapped differently and it would be a mess.

The thermal visor overlay looks cool (though why it doesn't change the palette of the environment and not just the enemies I don't get), but it doesn't make a ton of sense.

One other things bugs me about this thing though, why on earth is the resolution so small? If it's supposed to be more like an authentic GBA game, why add all the prime stuff? It looks really weird on such a small window, and all it does it limit how much level data you can show on screen at any time.

[TobiMikami]

I personally feel the main purpose of analog is simply for the fact that 3D has a depth and therefore 360 degrees of movement, that being said, it's somewhat impractical for 2D gaming. Some people like that kind of thing, but I don't plan to invest the time to set up something I personally can't even test because I lack the appropriate hardware to do so. The main reason the environment doesn't change is basically this: The sprite index of the Geemer is set to change when the visor is active. The objects in the room do contain sprites, however, they're set to be invisible. Setting them to a blank image would result in a lack of collision. As far as I'm aware, there's no way to toggle visibility in code the way you can toggle the image index. If there was, It'd be pretty badass. I still, in some ways, want to drop the alpha in parts of this visor, I did expect it to show through somewhat more transparent in some areas. However, 3D or not, the visor was considerably cumbersome in the original Prime game. It was used in two bosses, same with the X-Ray visor, and aside from specific areas and enemy encounters, their usage was minimal. The Phendrana lab was probably the longest consistent use of Thermal Vision, and provided you collect the items on the first trek, the only real backtrack is for the Chozo Artifact. Even the crashed Frigate usage of it is minimal for the purpose of finding a conduit, and both Thardus and Metroid Prime only require its use for brief moments of the gameplay. That being said, it was never designed to be a primary visor, it did its job and gets turned off, so the fact that it can be somewhat cumbersome on screen is minimal due simply to minimal usage. In no way though, is this game traditional in any way. I may still bump the resolution up again to 480x320, but I feel any more than that would simply take too much away from the focus of Samus. Some people will like the game's setup, some people will probably hate it, no matter how it's set up. I'm simply focusing more on what I myself overall like the most, while simultaneously creating a fairly competent engine that could be used to build a Metroid Prime 2D if someone put forth the enemy and level development necessary to do so.

[DSO]

I feel like with all the other things I have to do, it's been far too long since I worked on just plain building rooms. Getting back into it feels good.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Quietus]

Nice work, DSO. Now you need to hijack the routine that causes Samus to emit bubbles underwater, reposition it to her arm cannon, and have steam emitted when you fire. :nod:

[biospark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPXTZwwjGEw

[Quote58]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzGFa9zw_8E

[Quietus]

I love the mini HUD. I presume there are other icons for Supers, Grapple etc.? If so, it'd be nice to see the full layout. :^_^:

[Quote58]

Thanks!

So to clarify, the video shows the new HUD, which after much revision I think works pretty well. It is made of only 2-3 sprites, fits in VRAM, and there's a little room for extra stuff as well. As for other icons, there aren't any currently because I do not need any others, but it's be possible to add them. The super missiles just replace the missile icon because I prefer that system.
The etanks work similar to Metroid zero mission and fusion, but the difference is that the GBA games have a lot more room in VRAM. So much so that they simply reserve space for an entire line of etanks, so that it requires only one tilemap. Super does not have that space, so mine uses tilemaps for 1-14 etanks of full or empty, peiced together. Thankfully this was made vastly simpler and easy to read/change using macros.

The charge beam spark is frame for frame the same as Metroid fusion (this took a substantial rewrite of the original routines), and I also made it draw in the correct angles while spinjumping ala AM2R (that used zm gfx for the spark though)

[Quietus]

It'd be nice to get an extended version, with the added Supers. It'd certainly fit in with something I'm currently working on and off with. :heheh:

I wouldn't even need grapple or x-ray, just the Supers.

Edit: Reread above reply.

[benox50]

An alpha version of vanilla HUD could be useful in a way that all the resolution of the snes is used for showing the actual room

[Quote58]

An alpha version of vanilla HUD could be useful in a way that all the resolution of the snes is used for showing the actual room

This has been explained a few times in this thread before, but essentially: There are 4 top rows of 8x8 tiles used for the hud. These 4 layers use layer 3, just like the FX do. This layer is by design stored and displayed in 8bit instead of 16 bit, and set to be translucent. This means that when they are laid over other tiles they are subject to palette blending and are semi transparent. In the original game, these 4 rows are set to only display layer 3, giving the hud a black background, and more importantly, covering up the top 2-3 rows of level data, which is not updated the same way the stuff below the hud is. The top 2 rows are updated much less frequently than the others, meaning they look fine when not scrolling, and in certain cases (moving down for instance), but will be a garbled mess in general. The 3rd line is updated correctly but because of how objects like projectiles handle being offscreen, anything that moves off the bottom of the screen will briefly appear in the 3rd line. It's annoying, but fixable. The top 2 lines are also fixable, but would require substantial rewrites of certain routines. I've been looking into it every now and again. Certainly doable, but not easy, and there may be other consequences of doing so.

So, because of this, to get the maximum amount of level data on screen at any given time, you need to either have no hud, a translucent hud which looks bad, change all sorts of FX routines and shuffle vram to fit 16 bit gfx (and then the FX looks bad), or, what I opted to do, which is to unlock 2 lines and use sprites to display the hud. This still required a lot of disassembling, and I had to modify the FX routines a bit, but it gives most of the 2 normal lines back, while also getting to use 16 bit sprites.

That being said, if you want to see how that works for yourself, here's a hex tweak:
16A3 - 1F -> 01
That should unlock all four lines but continue to display the hud overtop.

@Quietus
I'm planning on releasing a more standard version of it once I get some of the HDMA things fixed with FX like water. Fog/rain/spores work, but liquids are a pain. The point of making it fit in vanilla vram though was so that I could release one with stuff like supers as an option, so it'll be out at some point.

[Quietus]

That's cool, Quote. It sounds like you've already done tonnes of work on it. :^_^:

[Quote58]

I did a thing the other night for ice beam. The original video had cropping issues so I made a new one, it also shows an example of how the concept can be used in a hack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvtq-yrb0gw

[Cpt.Glitch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTqzujfnKkk

[Quote58]

A couple things left to change about it, but here's a thing I made last night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV2j7T1IiKo&lc=z134tvrigpzucjigd04cebf5fobbjphi1h0

edit: I cut the vertical jump in half, so now you don't jump quite so far up when you exit the spark.

[altoiddealer]

^ That's awesome  :bounce:

[Quote58]

^ That's awesome  :bounce:

Thanks!

In other news, here's the water FX + rain FX, something I'd always wanted to see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2fcgUsXb-U&feature=youtu.be
(this is just proof of concept, I still need to write some routines to make it work better)
Thanks to black falcon for pointing out something I hadn't realized

[Hackmi]

That is a super awesome addition to the shine spark.
Great work.

[Shockwave_S08]

Very nice addition to the Shinespark there! I could see that either being used to solve advanced Speed Booster puzzles, or as added functionality to either the Hi-Jump Boots or Space Jump.

[Quote58]

Here's a couple of things I forgot to make videos for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVFeOFkafRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjx7A37LDwo

[Quietus]

I'm just thinking that the latter is going to make for some insane TAS. :cool:

[Quote58]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEiKFkrRsY
Also included a patch for it in case anyone wanted to play around with it.

[Quote58]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ib0fkK4p4s

Wee, automorph now preserves speed the way mock ball does, allowing for neat speedbooster tricks