Castle Paradox

mjkrzak · Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 43

From a memory standpoint, is there much difference to the size of image slices? Which is to say, should I be making an effort to use the smallest slice size when possible rather than a full screen-sized one?

I expect it doesn't matter all that much with only 30 or so in my experiment, but if there's a major difference in performance between them, it might be good to know down the line.

(Sheesh, two posts in a row for the Help forum. How depressing.)

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 10:17 pm Post subject:

Well, backdrop slice sprites take up about 64 kb in memory, so it would take 15625 of them to fill up a gigabyte.

A large enemy sprite slice takes up 6.4 kb, so you would need 10 times as many to fill up a gigabyte.

Also, remember that if you load two copies of the same sprite slice, it only takes up the memory for one sprite.

As far as speed, I guess the backdrop slices will be slower, but I have never measured how much.

How many slices do you need to display on the screen at one time?

mjkrzak · Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 43

About 30 or so, maybe half of them duplicates.

I wanted to see if I can whomp up something relatively uncomplicated that reads a standard map and translates it visually to the player in the form of a first person old school dungeon crawl.

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:01 am Post subject:

Aha! That sounds really cool! :)

30 backdrop slices doesn't sound like to much, so if it is easier to do them as backdrop slices, I say just try it that way. I wouldn't expect problems.

Do you have any screenshots of what you are working on?

mjkrzak · Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 43

Nah, just concept stage right now.

When I get proof of concept, I suppose I could put something up.

Gomez · Guest

I can confirm this is doable and runs pretty smoothly, though I used combinations of Large Enemy Graphics rather than backdrops, which might make a difference. You should hurry up and do it. It's way easier than you think it's gonna be and it looks really cool.

Sparoku · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:33 pm Post subject:

mjkrzak · Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 43

Reasonably functional, though the on-keypress navigation feels clunky. Gomez, how did you handle the movement?

Scene1
Scene2
Scene3
Scene4
Scene5
Scene6
Scene7

And I need to widen the field of view one square for a couple of distances. There should be a wall here:

Missing wall

As it stands, it takes a while to input the various views of each block, but once that's done, all you have to do is place the corresponding tile. Each block can have a different directional texture, like doors, though I haven't drawn one yet.

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 11:35 am Post subject:

Wow! that looks great

Can you tell me more about the clunky on-keypress navigation?

mjkrzak · Joined: 24 Nov 2009 Posts: 43

Well, it doesn't always go with 1 keypress = 1 movement. Often it takes multiple attempts to move. It was even worse when I had alternate sidestepping and WSAD directions. With those, it consistently took 2 keypresses to do a move. Which is rather strange, as all I did was add the keys to the switch. Same commands for moving forward and turning, but the different buttons always needed a warm up before registering.

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 8:06 pm Post subject:

Looking over the script, I am pretty sure this is the problem:

Gomez · Guest

Holy shit, yours looks way better than mine did. As for movement, I just used the default engine movement.

TMC · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2014 10:01 am Post subject:

Wow, looks nice!

Also, I totally forgot that Gomez/Giz created a first person dungeon crawler as well. I only remembered the one Sephy made (which was more or less the same as Giz's).

I recommend using keyval(key:foo) > 1 as in the script Giz posted, rather than keyispressed(key:foo). "keyval > 1" is only true either on a new key press, or on key repeat after a delay.

Incidentally, I just heard that backdrops aren't cached as they're meant to be, so loading or displaying a large number of them (I'm talking about 300, not 30) is far slower than it should be.
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Sparoku · Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 9:25 pm Post subject:

Kinda reminds me of Sword and Serpents for the NES.

In a good way, of course. Happy

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