xdaniel Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 I'm currently working on a (different) PlayStation homebrew game that's supposed to become my entry for a PSX coding contest, the deadline being in the Summer so there's still plenty of time. It's a puzzle game inspired by Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon / Pokemon Puzzle Challenge / whatever other (non-)license the gameplay was paired up with, in which you flip two differently colored panels horizontally; make three or more of the same color line up and they disappear. There's some gameplay differences from Panepon, such as somewhat modified/simplified drop mechanics as well as new item panels, that change things up a bit compared to a straight clone. So yeah, first of all here's a video I posted and shouted about earlier, which represents the game's status as of today: Secondly, I'd like to have some feedback on a change in visual design I'm thinking about... Initially, keeping with the theme(s) of the SNES TA/PdP in particular, I wanted the visuals to be kinda cartoony, with bright colors, rounded corners, few straight lines and such. However, while redrawing the panel backgrounds, I thought of giving it a cleaner, maybe even futuristic design - in particular, things like ex. Wipeout's various fonts (tho that might be too futuristic) and, in fact, Nintendo's own DS incarnation of Panepon (Planet Puzzle League I think? I have the game but forgot the title...) come to mind here. Here's a screenshot of the redesigned panels, compare those to how they look in the video above: Similarly, I'm not that fond of my in-game font anymore either. I still like it, but... I don't know, I feel it's a bit too busy, if that makes sense. A more easily readable take on Wipeout's fonts might be nice. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EpicEbilninja Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 seems a bit basic, looking like your typical panel flip game I can't quite think of any at the moment, but a few added game elements would be a great way to improve gameplay! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conker Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 That's lookin' pretty good so far, xdan. And those new panels look pretty great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sakura Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 Fantastic work! It reminds me of Tetris Attack for the SNES and Pokemon Puzzle League for the GBC. It looks like you have the most important stuff in place, I hope you do well in the contest. As for the visuals, I guess I'm biased but I really think you should go with the SNES visual style. Maybe update it where appropriate, but I think it looks much better than the futuristic one you have going on there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xdaniel Posted January 12, 2013 Author Share Posted January 12, 2013 Thanks for the feedback and suggestions so far! seems a bit basic, looking like your typical panel flip game I can't quite think of any at the moment, but a few added game elements would be a great way to improve gameplay! Well, there's the item panels for one. Currently, only a bomb item is implemented, which clears all panels of the same color at once, but I'm thinking about two or so more. Otherwise... maybe have some kind of "mission mode" that has goals like "clear away 50 red panels" or "make a 3x chain"? Fantastic work! It reminds me of Tetris Attack for the SNES and Pokemon Puzzle League for the GBC. It looks like you have the most important stuff in place, I hope you do well in the contest. As for the visuals, I guess I'm biased but I really think you should go with the SNES visual style. Maybe update it where appropriate, but I think it looks much better than the futuristic one you have going on there. The panel graphics loading has been coded with multiple graphics sets in mind already, so having both, the SNES-style panels and the more futuristic ones, shouldn't be much of a problem. The interface and menu design is something else, tho... with that, I was originally aiming for something, I guess "playful" like the design of ex. , but I'm now leaning towards a clean, simple design similar to ex. Polarium's. And making that user-selectable would, in my opinion, be bad UI design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xdaniel Posted January 23, 2013 Author Share Posted January 23, 2013 A bunch of work has been done since I last posted here about this... more on the inside than on the outside, but there's still some stuff to show. SVN commit log first (January 13th to today), some screenshots and an album after that: Beginning of the visual style change, going from cartoonish to sleek/simple; big font changed, panel style changed (will re-add the previous one as an alternate), still more graphics to change Added gamemode for main menu; made Start on title screen advance to menu; tiny modifications to big font (some letter heights, fixed lowercase E) More main menu work, minor changes elsewhere (title BG) Modified big font, slightly improved menu graphics; added controls to menu; made menu actually -work- and get the player in-game; rearranged startup menu Added some background behind main menu entries Fixed fade brightness glitch in system code; improved mode change logic in main menu, ex. to allow return to title; other minor code/visual changes Started in-game overhaul: backgrounds & pause function added so far Minor AI changes; game now keeps track of occupied field height Added color-cycling to field BG as a height warning indicator; fixed date in GMSS startup debug message Updated makefile, emulator now expected in psxtools; added support for both controllers in GMSS & in-game 2P Versus Minor changes Preliminary stub code for memcard handling & message boxes Having slight slowdown issues (at least in part) due to the tiled scrolling BG; moved game logic processing to vsync, helped somewhat; need to rethink and rewrite the BG Improved memcard infrastructure & message box handling, game can detect and format cards, find, load and save its file, and continue without saving; still need to split some memcard code from src/modes/logo.c and turn into reusable functions for system/memcard.c Refactoring & expanding memcard support; created game-specific MC functions and structures, added calls to them to game code; cleaned up logo.c somewhat; still need to replace MC icon with an original one Improved error handling for memcard operations; added checksum and data ID to game data structure, game now checks file integrity ...and more memory card-related screenshots in here: http://imgur.com/a/HnNe8#0 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conker Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Damn, that's looking great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xdaniel Posted January 24, 2013 Author Share Posted January 24, 2013 Thanks! Also, have a new video showcasing some Memory Card stuff: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason777 Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 I envy your coding capabilities, xdan... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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