[T-Bone]

Interesting. Well in that case since i don't have pixel movement nor do i have plans to implement the feather into this game, I'll just keep it the way it is, until someone mentions it.

I'm very pleased with the new results of this game. The jumpy'ness seems to be completely gone and I'm no longer experiencing any type of lag during gameplay. I'm at the moment perfecting all of the collision effects for when Mario touches things - including enemies and powerups. I'm really excited that this game is finally coming together - hope I can get some levels together before fall for you guys.

[T-Bone]

Guess we won't see Mario for MZX for some time now; I've just encounted a major problem in the sprites. For some odd reason now, not all of the sprites are drawing from the vlayer. This bug started occurring after i started adding new sprites. Gah i hate trouble shooting.

[T-Bone]

I still haven't been able to fix these sprite bugs out. Seems like the more on screen active sprites I have the more of them become inactive and not drawn. Guess I should give this game a rest for a bit and work on my other unfinished projects.

[T-Bone]

Good news! I've successfully fixed the sprite bugs that once had prevented me from continuing work on this project. It wasn't even that complex of a problem. I guess a little over 6 months of a break from anything would allow for more clarity to resolve any problem.

I'll try to patch together a new demo for you all to play around with come the new school year (Fall). Hope your all as excited as I am about this!

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 27 August 2007 - 06:04 AM

[steel_dragoon]

This looks very awesome. Can't wait to play through a larger level with more enemies and such!

On a side note, are you still working on the Zelda game?

[T-Bone]

I'm still poking at the Zelda game, yah. In terms of Super Mario I now have it so that I can have multiple enemies of the same type on one board. Like tons of goombas!

[T-Bone]

Animation Fix: Mario used to appear as if he was just standing, while falling. Now whenever he is falling he looks as if he's falling, arms out and legs out. I've also improved the landing animations.

I've also added new enemies from SMB2 and SMW.

At the moment I'm working on the gravity of enemies as well improving the physics of Mario during leaps.

[T-Bone]

I've finally fixed the enemies' falling physics. I can now give weight to enemies so each can fall at their own specific speeds.

There's a couple bugs I'm working out in this version:

- Mario turns to the opposite direction he is facing once he bumps into a wall
- Occasionally enemies won't register being jumped on by Mario
- If Mario grabs a Mushroom while under a small overpass, he gets stuck
- Mario can sometimes stand on turtle shells
- Mario can ride spikedballs (this would be good for eggs but not spikedballs!)

There's also some other things I'm working on adding:

- Animation for when Mario dies
- Animation for entering pipe (big Mario / small Mario)
- Unique characteristics for the new enemies (Monty Mole, Rex, Bullet Bill, etc)
- Fire Mario

EDIT:

Fixed:
- Spring blocks (music note box) which didn't always make Mario bounce depending on what part of the block Mario jumps on
- SHIFT to Run (works really smooth now!)

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 29 December 2007 - 02:06 AM

[Kom]

I'm amazed that you can hold a project for so long, but still, it's great that you're working on this.

[Tixus]

Quote

- If Mario grabs a Mushroom while under a small overpass, he gets stuck

for that one, you could just handle it the same way they did for the NES Mario games--do a check to see if Mario is "inside" of something whenever he grows or stops ducking, and if he is, move him to the right and keep checking until the area underneath him is clear.

[T-Bone]

Yeah I was actually thinking about that. If Mario's head collides with a customblock = push entire Mario sprite to the right by one space.

What I find interesting about this is with the enemies if they grew while under an overpass, they would just get stuck. Like turtles returning into shells. Maybe I could give the enemies the same anti-stuck routine aswell?

EDIT:

Okay i've added an anti-stuck code to Mario and it works great. I've also fixed the bugs that made Mario turn to the opposite direction if blocked in the current direction walked.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 30 December 2007 - 04:43 AM

[T-Bone]

I'm having troubles giving Mario the ability to kill enemies by hitting a brick with his head, of which they are walking on. Since all the enemies are sprites and their robot controllers arn't actually on the stages, it makes it very hard for me to get Mario to tell a sprite to die or get hurt by a bump from beneath.

I'm thinking i could get Mario to send a "checkbump" lable to all enemy sprites once his head contacts any brick. Hmmmm....

EDIT:

Each time i bring up a problem or a bug I immediately seem to find a way to fix it. Mario can now kill enemies by hitting them, if they are standing on a brick above them.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 30 December 2007 - 05:45 AM

[Lachesis]

The simplist way I can think of to fix it is to name every robot after the sprite it controls (ie: spritebot_X), and when sprite_clist&N& != -1, send "spritebot_('sprite_clist&N&')" "bump" but you're probably too far along to implement something like that, no?

edit: that is, after performing a northwards collision check :)

This post has been edited by Kuroneko: 30 December 2007 - 06:40 AM

[T-Bone]

I was actually considering that. All sprites already share the same name (number) as their robot controllers.

I could conduct collision tests and use the send command with the collision result counter within it. So ya basically everything you said lol

My previous way of detecting for bumps actually failed. Time to re-code!

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 31 December 2007 - 03:20 AM

[T-Bone]

Okay boo the clist counter isn't working the way I'd like. It requires the sprites to be overlapped inorder to detect them. Least that's what I think. That sucks if thats the case.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong?

I have all sprites set up to use if sprite_colliding to check if a sprite is at a location related to another sprite. But how do i do this for unspecified sprites with clist counters if the clist counters only work for sprites overlapped?

I was hoping this would work:

(Mario is sprite 0 and all other sprites' controlling robots would be the name the same number sprite they are)

After Mario has already bumped a brick and broke it

set "spr0_clist" to 1
If c?? sprite_colliding p00 at 0 -2 "check"
end
:check
if "spr_clist0" = -1 "donothing"
send "spr_clist0" "bump"
end
:donothing
end

(-2 in the sprite_colliding command would be 2 spaces north of Mario's head)

Doesn't seem to work. I thought sprite_colliding command would set the location of a sprite collision detection location. Man these things can get confusing....

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 31 December 2007 - 05:13 AM

[Wervyn]

Problem 1: send "spr_clist0" to "bump" trys to send a bump message to a robot called "spr_clist0". That's probably not what you want. Instead, you want to name your sprite robots things like spr0, spr1, spr45, based on the id of the sprite they control. The tutorial I wrote describes a good way to do this. Then, send "spr&spr_clist0&" to "bump"
Problem 2: The first thing in the collision list is probably going to be the block above the player's head, not the thing above the block. You need to iterate through the whole collision list and send bump to everything in it. Encapsulate the send command like this:

loop start
send "spr('spr_clist&loopcount&')" to "bump"
loop for ('spr_collisions'-1)

Also recommended: Send to subroutines, not labels, and don't hardcode sprite numbers like you're doing. And set sprN_clist 1 is redundant if you're using if sprite_colliding immediately afterward.

"It's not hard, you're just not motivated enough to learn it."

[T-Bone]

Yeah i was actually using subroutines like #bump and "('spr_clist0')" for the robot names. The code i posted above i retyped out, didn't CCP from my MZX file. Sorry bout that.

I'll test out your code. Does it matter though if there's over 30 other robots (enemies, items) controlling sprites detecting for collisions at the same time? That's how I currently have it.

Your right about not hardcoding the robot names to their sprite id's. I got other problems in doing that before. I'll fix that later on too.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 31 December 2007 - 05:51 AM

[Lachesis]

If you use Wervyn's loop, you could have hundreds of different collisions and the code would be as content as a bee. His loop is set up to be optimal; it checks the exact number of collisions that occured when the collision check was executed.

This post has been edited by Kuroneko: 31 December 2007 - 05:54 AM

[T-Bone]

Wervyn, on Dec 31 2007, 12:35 AM, said:

loop start
send "spr('spr_clist&loopcount&')" to "bump"
loop for ('spr_collisions'-1)

Wow... it worked.... THANKS

I now have to test it with all the other sprites that detect for other sprites. Hopefully everything works out fine and this robot doesn't conflict with the other robots.

This post has been edited by T-Bone: 27 December 2012 - 05:55 AM

[T-Bone]

I'm finding the "having to hold multiple buttons on the keyboard to run" somewhat annoying... that's just me I guess. So I'm going to add an option in the beginning of the game, where you can turn running automatically on or off.

There's still much to improve on before i release a proper fully playable demo. There still is a couple physics issues involving jumps and falls.

* On occasions Mario will still get stuck in blocks while jumping diagonally.
* Mario doesn't fall at an angle, when he physically is suppose to. It works however, if the player is holding a direction key.
* Ducking is delayed after just falling or walking

So I got lots of work to do before I can release anything new. But I'm working on it!

[T-Bone]

UGH! New bug involving when you jump on enemies.. sometimes Mario doesn't bounce and the strangest bug of all.. if you jump on a turtle it creates coin blocks all over the place o_O

Looks like I got a lot of bug fixes to work on before i go crazy on making new stages. I've already started adding new enemies to the game. It's a lot of work since some of the enemies got their own abilities (flying, jumping, walking... running...etc).

When I fix these bugs up i'll put together a small demo to replace any old one(s).

Hope people are keeping up to date with the progress... I know its taking a lot longer than expected.

[T-Bone]

Okay I just figure out a solution to a problem i was having a couple years back about the number of enemies of the same appearance I have on screen and the conflict between character table space. Basically after playing more NES mario games and seeing how they utilized there pattern table space... i figured i should use the exact same way they have for managing characters. I've been going about it all the wrong way by having one enemy have its own animation of x amount of chars. Instead i should do what they did for the NES and designate x amount of chars to enemies moving left and enemies moving right. So far when an enemy changes directions instead of changing the actual char's animation, have it so it changes TO a different char on the existing table of animations.

Might sound complicated but its defiantly going to pay off in the long run. You get to see more enemies of the same species on screen at one time. This will allow for floods of enemies of the same kind... this could be a lot of fun. Now to implement this change is going to really take some time.

Its possible that making this change may cause other problems, so I'll off on it until I get all the above bugs (in the posts) fixed first.

[T-Bone]

The disadvantage is we won't have a broad variant mix of species on one board at a time. Which is more true to the licensed Nintendo Mario games in that, you won't see 20 different kinds of enemies in one stage. Basically, you'll see goombas with turtles... , shy guys with snifits....

Depending on how much charspace this new method may take up, I may have to remove some text chars to make this work. Thank God for whoever made it so the MegaZeux menu's no longer depend on the current character table in use.

These new limitations might actually help the game. It would force me to create a theme of enemies per stage , rather than placing random enemies from various Super Mario games in one place.


EDIT:
(Accidentally hit post rather than edit)

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 23 September 2008 - 12:36 AM

[T-Bone]

I've been working on some mini-bosses for the game. Those familiar with the official licensed Super Mario series would know who these reoccurring bosses are:

Bamma, Flare and Hamma Jamma are 3 variations of hammer, fire and boomerang brothers. You must jump on their head or bonk them from beneath, three times to defeat.

Lakithunder will toss Spikesters at you, as well as use a lightening attack. You must jump on his head, three times to defeat him. He rarely swoops down so it is going to be a challenging boss.

Stone Buzzy Beetle is a stronger Buzzy Beetle that you must jump on three times to defeat. Each time you jump on him.. he'll retreat to his shell and try to hit you with it.

Army Hammer Bro is a hammer brother that you cannot jump on. He's got a spiked helmet on so you can only attack him from below; which is a rare opportunity. He never fights alone, so be prepared to fight against multiple hammer brothers.

Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2 will appear in the game. I'm still working on the battle system since Mario currently cant pick up items and toss them. I might make it so he can do this with eggs only.

Magikoopa (who may be renamed later on) is a possible mini-boss i may add.

I had original concept for bowser but i decided to remove him due to a palette issue; considering the fact that I will not be making any castle levels or stages with dark backgrounds.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 24 September 2008 - 09:11 PM

[T-Bone]

Okay I'm working on some new enemies, their graphics and movement and attack scripts. The biggest challenge for me was getting them to look like how they would in their original games.

Bee'Zerk (the bee from Super Mario Land) was the hardest out of the new batch. I had a couple concepts before i finalized him to this appearance. His original design did not fit within the pixel limit, so i had to do a bit of work around which i think I'm getting a lot better at. I haven't figured out a movement pattern yet but im thinking about making them similar to the bee's from Donkey Kong. In that they patrol a certain area and you just have to avoid them.

I've added Cataquacks, the duck creators you see in Mario Sunshine and A couple later sequels of Mario Kart. Since they are only in 3D, I had to redesign them into the small bit sprites you see here (in green). These enemies will be basic creatures, much like Goombas.

I decided to add the Trouters from Super Mario 2 for where ever there is a bridge they would pop out to surprise you. You can sit on their heads to get to higher areas, so I may make a couple hard to reach areas that would require you to jump on these guys; Or some hard to reach items.

Along with the trouter i also added Ninja, the black star creator. His graphics were very easy to redesign in MegaZeux. Only difficulty with him will be his action script, his moves and such.

Missile Bullet Bill is the red bullet. It will just be a bullet with some AI. It will turn around and try to hit Mario if it misses him.

In one of the Super Mario Land games there were Turtles with black shells that if you jump on them, they explode. I decided to add these guys to replace koopa troopas in more dangerous levels. They are known as Nokobons or Noko Bombettes. I completely redesigned them to look more like the koopas i've used in my version.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

This post has been edited by T-bone: 30 September 2008 - 02:36 AM

[T-Bone]

Fun times! Decided to introduce Thunder Lakitu from SMW2 to join forces with Lakithunder to aid him in a battle against Mario!

So I'm working on a Boss stage right now using Thunder Lakitu and Lakithunder. When you encounter them... one will fly around trying to hit you with lightening (Thunder Lakitu will try to burn the ground beneath you) while the other one rests at the top left or right of the screen (opposite of a pit) tossing Spinies at you (Lakithunder will toss spikesters). The Lakitu that is attacking you with lightening (or in thunder lakitu's case, fire), you will get the opportunity to jump on his head once. After you jump on his head, the two Lakitu's switch positions; while one will be attacking the other one tossing Spinies from the corner.

So Mario will have to avoid Spinies while waiting for the current Lakitu to swoop down so he can jump on his head. When you manage to jump on one 3 times (once every switch) the Lakitu will die then you will have to face the last Lakitu who will shoot his lightening/fire, occasionally toss Spinies and swoop at Mario.

The Lakitu during swoops would go as low as one space above the ground, so if Mario ducks he shouldn't be harmed. This can only work when i get the ducking bugs fixed. Its possible I might just make it swoop 2 spaces from the ground.

I'm also considering giving them the ability to retreat to their cloud and then disappear into the background clouds and reappear else where on the screen from clouds in the background. This might be a sequence that occurs each time you jump on one of them; for when they switch positions. Would be easier in the programing, then i won't have to program some kind of navigational paths to get them to find the positions they should be in to switch places.

This will most likely be the hardest boss battle in the game. I have it set for the Sky World. I may decide to bring in some massive bosses from past Mario games, just to provide a boss that isn't just a color / char modification of an existing enemy.

[T-Bone]

Kom, on Dec 28 2007, 09:00 PM, said:

I'm amazed that you can hold a project for so long, but still, it's great that you're working on this.

An embarrassingly long-time... going on almost 10 years (and I'm quoting a year old post). I'm still hopeful it will get completed. I'm currently working on the main menu and scene loaders. I'm using an insane amount of sprites and char graphics now. Its quite hard to manage everything, so I'm doing what i can to make things a bit more neat and easier to work with; for me.


EDIT:

I will be pumping out a new Demo soon, considering how many new engines have been added I need some help with testing from everyone else.

This post has been edited by T-bone: 29 October 2008 - 07:16 PM

[Kom]

I'll be sure to get on this when it does come out again, the original demo was great.

[T-Bone]

I'm leaving to British Columbia for bit over a week. Hopefully when I get back I can start doing some more touch ups.

[T-Bone]

I'm back from British Columbia!



Now that I'm back I've decided to fix some old games that have already been added to the digitalmzx archieves aswell as attempt to complete Super Mario... which is not easy!

This post has been edited by T-bone: 20 November 2008 - 07:50 AM