[Hoof]

That is an excellent looking screen. It isn't terribly difficult to match graphics (sorta ripped) but it IS hard to color coordinate that well. Beauty.

[T-Bone]

The pixel editing was indeed difficult as most Mario sprites contain 3 main colors so for every 3rd colour I had to basically create a pattern to represent it rather than an actual color.

Oh and by the way, I got the turtle shells to finally break through crap!

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 03 October 2014 - 07:49 PM

[T-Bone]

I'm also working to add a bit of A.I. to the game. Mario should be able to use his ears and enemies should be able to use their eyes. If Mario is in the cone of vision for any enemy that shoots projectiles, he'll try to shoot Mario, once spotted. If Mario is far away from an event causing sound, you should no longer be able to hear it OR the sound it self should became dimmed (if possible with MegaZeux).

So as an added bonus to the new A.I. features I'm going to implement, I'll be giving some sprites better edge detection. Meaning some enemies will be smarter than others. So instead of walking off a ledge they will turn around once they have found a pitt in their path.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 02 December 2006 - 10:18 PM

[T-Bone]

Snifits now have a sight range of about 30 spaces. If Mario is too far away from him, the Snifit will investigate if what he thinks is Mario in the distance. Once Mario is within his sight range, the Snifit will hold its group and shoot a bullet at him then retreat in the opposite direction.

So at the moment I'm reconfiguring the Hammer Brothers. I'm also making a Fire Brothers and possibly Boomerang Brothers!

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 02 December 2006 - 11:17 PM

[T-Bone]

There are now, proudly, 25 enemies in Super Mario for MegaZeux! Most of the new enemies are just color modified variations of existing enemies. Much like what was done in Final Fantasy and Mario RPG.

Here's the list so far:

Gomba
Your average Gomba.
Red Gomba NEW!
I believe this guy was featured in Paper Mario. In this game he a more intelligent Gomba than your average Gomba.
Koopa Troopa
Your average Turtle.
Red Koopa Troopa
A more intelligent Turtle.
Tough Koopa Troopa NEW!
A stronger Koopa Troopa that can't be distroyed by other shells while in its own.
Hammer Brothers
Your average Hammer Brothers.
Fire Brothers NEW!
Much like the Fire Brothers from SMB3.
Boomerang Brothers NEW!
Much like the Boomerang Brothers from SMB3.
Spiny NEW!
Acts identical to the Spiny / Spiney from SMB1, SMB3 and SMW.
Spikester NEW!
A faster version of the Spiny.
Buzzy Beetle
Buzzy Beetle acts the same way as the turtle does, just not as tall.
Birdy
The pink SMB2 sub boss that shoots eggs at Mario.
Snifit
Shoots bullets at you.
Snifit Guard
This gray version of the Snifit stands its ground while jumping occasionally to shoot.
Spookum
Spookum is a Snifit in a blue robe. He is not as intelligent as the Snifit.
Shy Guy
Much like the Shy Guys from SMB2 you can sit on their back and enjoy a ride.
Red Shy Guy
A smarter Shy Guy.
Sling Shy NEW!
This is a SMRPG Character that looks like the Shy Guy and uses a slingshot.
Pokey NEW! - Still working on this guy
This is the classic desart enemy that stands taller than Mario.
Spike
This is a SMB3 enemy found in World 3. It spits a ball of spikes at Mario.
Sparkz
This is an enemy from the Kirby Dreamland. You cannot jump on him.
Piranha Plant - Still working on this guy
Like SMB1's pipe dwelling plants with teeth.
Venus Fire Trap
Much like the Piranha Plant only this one can spit fire at Mario.
Crook NEW!
This is another SMRPG Character that I've added just for fun.
Sackit NEW!
Much like the Crook, only he steals all of Mario's coins when he bumps into him.
Muncher
The SMB3 enemy that was actually more like a terrain more than an actual enemy. You can't kill it or touch it.



EDIT:
I think I'm the first ever to take the character Crook from SMRPG and place him in a sidescrolling plateform game. I removed his sack though....... his bag of money.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 03 December 2006 - 02:37 AM

[Fighter_Phil]

Awesome, good job. Keep it up, can't wait until it's out.

[Old-Sckool]

I finished playing and I noticed that if you jump on a red turtle, it's shell changes colors. Also in the TEST version the spring block doesn't bounce you if you walk into the wall. Will we be able to run and slide in this game?

[T-Bone]

Since you mentioned "Red Turtle" you must be talking about the DEMO release. That's extremely old. In terms of the TEST version you played that's a bug i over-looked.

Thanks for bringing that one to my attention.

To answer your question about sliding and running, I've been thinking about it. But since its not pixel perfect I may not add sliding, just running maybe.

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 03 October 2014 - 07:50 PM

[T-Bone]

Old-Sckool, on Dec 3 2006, 12:10 AM, said:

TEST version the spring block doesn't bounce you if you walk into the wall.

Now fixed. Thanks for reporting

Also, if you happen to jump on the edge of the spring, it should act the same as jumping on the center.

If you'd like to test out the newest version of the engine, I've uploaded it to the New Releases. Though it doesn't contain all of its levels... its just a DEMO of what's to come!

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 03 December 2006 - 12:17 PM

[Tixus]

I noticed that when you stand on top of the shyguy and go under question blocks, they act like you're jumping and hitting them.

A quick suggestion: Give each robot (particularly though, the enemies) a pause state. You could pull it off pretty easily with subroutines. There are multiple benefits for doing this--for instance, when Mario shrinks or gets a powerup, you could have all action onscreen pause for a brief second while it happens, like in the other Mario games. You could also have that little death sequence where everything stops and Mario falls offscreen in his death sprite. I guess you could also have an in-game pause screen. :P

Just thought I'd throw that idea out there--it'd make the game a lot more Mario, AND it's easy to implement.

[Galladin]

Odd, I don't remember "beta-testing" this...anyways, looks good...

[T-Bone]

Yeah I'm actually working on making Mario's death sprite. So when you've lost your last diamond or if you fell in a pit or water, you become a small version of mario flying up then down off the screen. Adding a pause sequence to all on board robots would be a very good idea. Not just for effect but i noticed sometimes when your too close to an enemy while powerup, you don't become Super Mario, you just stay as small mario with two diamonds. The opposite sometimes happens when your powering down and a mushroom touches you. You sometimes become the head of small Mario and the body of Super Mario lol

Also, I should think of a different way of coding the coin boxes. Maybe I should make them customblocks and have Mario himself control them instead of a robot for each and every coin box.

Galladin, I don't remember either, your names been there since 2004 or 2005 lol

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 03 October 2014 - 07:51 PM

[Seventh Shade]

How would you do the blocks with multiple coins in them?

[T-Bone]

The single coin blocks would be easy. Just have Mario do what he does with bricks. But instead of copy space he'll copy a 2x2 dead yellow block and give himself an extra coin.

But that's a very good question and I've considered adding those in the past but at the time I didn't know how. Since I'll be converting all coin blocks to customblocks from robots it will be quite a challenge to make those types of blocks. I'll figure something out with using customblocks and overlays, since the coin blocks have two layers.

Another thing I noticed that isn't very Mario like, is that enemies standing on blocks above Mario don't die when Mario pushes them up. Traditionally this would be a new type of attack. I think this was a new move for Mario in Super Mario 3. I should defantly not leave that out, its a must!

[T-Bone]

I got bored and added even more enemies, blocks and colors. To sum up where all the enemies are from:

SMB1, SMB2, SMB3, SMW, SMRPG and Kirby.




EDIT:
There are now 35 enemy types in this game >_<

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 04 December 2006 - 04:07 AM

[Koji]

<3

[T-Bone]

Tixus, on Dec 3 2006, 10:55 AM, said:

I noticed that when you stand on top of the shyguy and go under question blocks, they act like you're jumping and hitting them.

I've used a technique from an incomplete game of my called, Grand Theft Auto: MegaZeux City to fix this bug and many others.

Its quite hard for me to explain but basically what this technique allows you to do is, steal from over 100 cars on a board. This was made possible by eliminating the dependency of other robots to interact with the player (, robot player or sprite player). So essentially the interactions are all made from one robot.

All unmanned parked cars in GTA:MZX are customblocks. All cars that you succeed in comendering, were once robots that become customblocks. So once the player "enters" a vehicle, he becomes the graphic of that vehicle and his position is replaced with where the vehicle he was entering; visually it appears as if the player has gotten into the car. The reverse process of this (getting out of your car and creating a new customblock) is quite tricky to do and even harder to explain and I won't.

The benefits of this interacting with customblocks technique are several. First of all, it dramatically decreases the amount of memory usage taken up by having an insane amount of robots. The second benefit is LESS PROGRAMMING. By having most of the objects you want your player to interact with, being customblocks, you are left with only one robot to code for all interactions with them. The third amazing part about this is that you can have almost limitless objects of these sorts now.

So this is the technique I've decided to use for Super Mario. Why have a 100 robots as coin boxes when you can just make them all customblocks and give Mario some code to detect those customblocks and then give him an action for when he interacts with them?

So this is what I'm currently implementing and its working out extremely well for this game and for any other future game I decide to finish.

With this new interactions with customblocks in place, we can now see some more features and items included in the future versions of this game. We can now expect to see:

Coins, Fire Power Boxes, Star-man Boxes, 1-Up Boxes, Maybe Vine Boxes, More Spring Boxes, More Munchers, Invisible Mystery Boxes, Maybe Flipping Yellow Blocks from SMW and other types of blocks Mario may interact with.

Speaking of blocks, I've changed Mario's interaction with bricks to make them a bit more oldschool. In SMB1, its almost impossible to smash two bricks with one blow. So I've now made it so that once Mario hits his head on a brick, he'll destroy that one and be bounced back to Earth.

[T-Bone]

Seventh Shade, on Dec 3 2006, 06:11 PM, said:

How would you do the blocks with multiple coins in them?

I'll try to make a mock up one when I get back home.

I'm sure it won't be very difficult to make it. I'll either use my customblock theory. Or I'll make multiple coin blocks controlled by robots.

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 03 October 2014 - 07:53 PM

[T-Bone]

Tixus, on Dec 3 2006, 10:55 AM, said:

A quick suggestion: Give each robot (particularly though, the enemies) a pause state.  You could pull it off pretty easily with subroutines.  There are multiple benefits for doing this--for instance, when Mario shrinks or gets a powerup, you could have all action onscreen pause for a brief second while it happens, like in the other Mario games.  You could also have that little death sequence where everything stops and Mario falls offscreen in his death sprite.  I guess you could also have an in-game pause screen.

I'm working on quite a few things at the moment at the global pause label is one of them. I'll basically be giving each robot on every board a "#pause" label.

I had included a pause screen once but it simply would bring up a default mzx window saying PAUSE. But I think your idea would work a HELL-A-LOT better because not only will it allow for betting game pausing (which isn't important) but it will help prevent many bugs from occurring. When a major event happens, I can get all on board robots to pause till the event is complete. So like you mentioned, grabbing a power up or getting hurt or even dying would be a few examples for one of these major events that would cause a global on board pause label being sent.

send "all" "#pause"

to Pause

send "all" "#unpause"

to Unpause


--other robots:

:#pause
end
:unpause
goto #return

Simple, simple! Thanks for the suggestion Tixus!

EDIT:
There's a bunch of new things I'm working on that I almost forgot to mention:

Hitting Bricks
I made it so that now when you hit your head on anything, your force of jump is destroyed, so Mario starts to fall. This is traditional to the original super Mario games and just physically makes sense.

Multiple Screen Scrolling Modes
Like the NES Mario games and SNES games, not all stages will have the same method of scrolling. Some are locked vertically and some horizontally. Some are locked entirely; these would be places like Toad's House or Yoshi's House. So due to the awkward camera movements MegaZeux can create when scrolling, I plan to make the game now have various types of screen scrolling modes depanding on the stage's layout.

Enemy Respawn
Most of the Super Mario games give their enemies a respawn ability. Which means if you kill the enemy or the enemy falls off the screen, he can respawn once Mario returns to where its respawn location rests. For this game I don't think I'll add respawn for when enemies are "killed" but for when they are no longer in Mario's view. This is something similarly done in SMW.

Projectile Respawn
Much like the enemies, I want to make all projectiles disappear once they've left Mario's view. This way i can introduce Fire Mario and other cool enemies that shoot shit.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 11 December 2006 - 11:33 PM

[T-Bone]

I've edited most of the audio. Some of those sound effects were really harsh on the ears. The jump sound effect is a lot softer and so is the coin grab sound effect.

I'm in the process of making a stage introduction screen for each stage in all worlds. Kinda like SMB2 whereas it will display the current world and stage your in and a bit of your current stats.

I've also added that hopping vulture looking dude from SMB2.

[Castlevania]

God damn it this game is sexy.

[T-Bone]

I actually don't think i should add the ability to kill enemies by hitting the block beneath them. It seems like it would be a lot of coding. Unless I can figure out a way to make it work.


EDIT:

Quote

A quick suggestion: Give each robot (particularly though, the enemies) a pause state.  You could pull it off pretty easily with subroutines.  There are multiple benefits for doing this--for instance, when Mario shrinks or gets a powerup, you could have all action onscreen pause for a brief second while it happens, like in the other Mario games.  You could also have that little death sequence where everything stops and Mario falls offscreen in his death sprite.  I guess you could also have an in-game pause screen.

The pausing and unpausing seems to work perfectly! I've made so that when you pause the music is dimmed and so is the overall brightness of the screen. Pausing will also freeze most animations.

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 03 October 2014 - 07:54 PM

[Seventh Shade]

Well, okay. But hammer brothers are going to be horrible.

[T-Bone]

I may make them strictly able to die this way. Its gonna be hell to code that haha but you have a good point.

[T-Bone]

I've created some new enemies and terrain. Of coarse some of the terrain shown here would never been see together opposed how this image was composed.

I've also fixed a couple more bugs involving the beetles shell not killing certain enemies and not destroying bricks.

[T-Bone]

Tixus, on Dec 3 2006, 10:55 AM, said:

You could also have that little death sequence where everything stops and Mario falls offscreen in his death sprite. I guess you could also have an in-game pause screen.

Feature added. I even added the little melody that goes alone with Mario's death.

[T-Bone]

With the help of some awesome people in the MZX community i was able to figure out how to make Pattern Tables Load in partial segments instead of wholes. So now we can expect to see some incredible improvements in graphics in this game. More so than ever before!

Now for what's been slowing me down. I want to utilize the robot_id counter and use it in conjunction with the sprite numbers. But the problem in doing that is when transferring those to another board. The robot_ids change on each board since not all boards have the same amount of bots present nor are they always aligned exactly the same on each board so the robot_id value changes.

I guess I'll have to figure out some format or just keep doing what im doing and giving the sprites a number myself instead.

EDIT:
I fixed the bug involving Mario not becoming super mario after grabbing a mushroom directly after being harmed.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 23 December 2006 - 07:02 AM

[T-Bone]

Since I now have a better understanding of sprite collision detection, thanks to exo, I've made these new changes to the turtle shells:

I've changed this:

Quote

if c00 Sprite p02 at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill2"
if c00 Sprite p03 at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill3"
if c00 Sprite p04 at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill4"
if c00 Sprite p08 at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill8"
if c00 Sprite "(17)" at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill17"
if c00 Sprite "(14)" at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill14"
if c00 Sprite "(15)" at "('spr1_x'-1)" "('spr1_y')" then "#kill15"

To simply this:

Quote

set "spr1_clist" to 1
if c?? Sprite_colliding p01 at -1 0 then "#kill&spr_clist0&"

EDIT:
This command checks if there are any enemies to the left of the turtle shell then it goes to a kill label to do the appropriate murders for each enemies.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 25 December 2006 - 01:13 AM

[T-Bone]

Now that I've figured out how to use the vlayer I've completely reprogrammed the sprite loading and drawing process. I'm still not finished doing so since I got a LOT of sprites. I've made must of the sprites use local settings within robots so I don't have to always write unique codes for each sprite. A smart move which may save me months of work.

I've noticed one thing that concerns me ever since I started using the sprite collision detection counters and commands: the game indeed is getting a bit laggy at times and has lost its complete smooth movements as seen in the last demo version i uploaded to the archives. I'll try to find a way to fix this glitchy bug I've run into.


EDIT:

By the way, in Super Mario games when you tap the opposite directional button, does Mario turn around? Or just move in to the new direction?

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 09 January 2007 - 07:06 AM

[CHEZZY]

I think he might move a pixel in that direction if you tap it with a feather.