Wolfling reloaded [wip]

C64 scene events, programming, graphics and music. Open discussions and feel free to ask for help.

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Lazycow
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Wolfling reloaded [wip]

Post by Lazycow »

Hello Lemonoids,

I'm currently trying to port the NES game Wolfling to the C64.
If you don't know the game, you can read more about it over here: nesdev-devlog
(Wolfling is one of the games from the 2017 NESDev Competition)

I have converted the background graphics for the title for a first test:
Image Image
left:NES, right: C64

download of Wolfling V1.4: wolfling14-c64.zip
An even never Version called "Wolflnig reloaded" is still under construction...
Last edited by Lazycow on Sun Aug 16, 2020 5:26 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Lasse
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Post by Lasse »

Tested the V1.2 of the NES project briefly, excellent little game! Found the acceleration / braking a bit fiddly, but guess it just takes practice. Graphics conversion looks good so far!
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Post by Pyramidenkopf »

Good game. Yes, the controls are not exactly the easiest to master. I'm curious how it will look and play on the C64.
Are you still working on the NES version, or is v1.2 final?
Wolfling is a regular mapper 2 UNROM game with 8kb CHR RAM, right? I'm thinking about making a cart to play on real hardware.
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Post by NM156 »

The Nes version looks amazing, great gothic style graphics.
Will it be in hires?
Does this mean the Pharao game is scrapped or has it evolved in this one?
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Post by oziphantom »

You can exmoize code and data a lot easier on the C64 version as you are not limited to 2K of RAM. So if you have entity code per level, level data etc you can probably pack it. Also you can probably optimise your code with self-mod. Given you won't need meta-sprites for everything in the game, you sprite routines will drop a lot, and all the "piece" things together data will also vaporise, on they other hand you scrolling code will probably be a bit bigger but that is a one off cost. Since sprites will be Colour + ID with possibly X/Y expand you can fit those defs in 2 bytes not 4. Not having to worry about VBlank time, means you won't need to pre-build copy tables and then have extra loops to copy things in the VBlank, saving you more code space and RAM. Fitting music and SFX into 3 channels and not 4 will probably help a bit as well.
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Post by Lazycow »

@Lasse: The upcoming C64 version will try to improve the controls, because most players complained about that. Anyway... Fiddly controls... Isn't that a trademark of all Lazycow games?

@Pyramidenkopf: Yes, it's a "mapper-2 64K UNROM with 8K CHR-RAM" and it would be interesting to know if the game runs on real hardware.
(an updated version with improved controls is under construction, though)

@NM156: The C64 version tries to mix multicolor blocks and hires blocks with the multicolor character mode.
And yes, the Pharaohs Return prototype has been used to build this game. Nice guess! But that doesn't mean that it has been cancelled. Great events cast a big shadow... We'll see... :wink:

@oziphantom: Yes, the code can be packed on the C64 and on the NES you cannot do that. On the other hand, the NES version uses 64K rom, 2K ram, 2K screen ram and 8K CHR-ram, while a C64 single load game "only" has 64K ram for everything. Uh oh...
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Post by Lazycow »

Image
Ok, I've ported enough of the game for a test-room! For this build, I've used Powerglove's scrolling code, which also scrolls the color blocks. (Wolfling has horizontal scrolling only) Monochrome sprite and test-sfx only...

But the improved jump controls are already included. So if you feel like testing the controls, I would be happy about some feedback: (should work with PAL and NTSC, as usual)
download: wltest1.prg
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Post by Pyramidenkopf »

I'd say the controls are good. Definitely an imrovement over the original NES release. The only tiny niggle is that the heroine can land on the lower chars of a 2x2 char solid tile when she just about misses the the edge of that tile and normally would fall down. But that's not really a problem, and I've noticed that in a bunch of C64 platformers.

By the way, are you going to release the improved NES version soon or are you still working on that?
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Post by Lasse »

Feels better; you still lose momentum on landing but the changes are not abrupt so you can judge your motion better.
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Post by NM156 »

Don't know the original, but this plays and looks great already :)
Just a couple of observations;
Due to the player sliding a bit after landing this can cause you to fall off a platform so the player will have to account for the sliding and this could cause irritation when there are lots of little platforms. This could be solved by having only sliding for longer jumps or having minimal sliding for short ones.

As Pyramid said it is possible to land on the lower chars of a tile, only occurs if the platform you're jumping off has a single character.
Image
I woud have made color 0 dark grey to be able to use that as hires too.
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Post by Lazycow »

Thank you Wolfling-feedback-team! 8)

Seems like I am keeping this control scheme then. (I had prepared another variant which kept the momentum after a jump, but I didn't like it much) I'm not sure if I should address the slithering and the tile-collision, though. Maybe later.

@Pyramidenkopf: The bugfixed NES version will be delayed, because I'm waiting for Zolionline's improved level design.
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Nice !

Post by popmilo »

Awesome feeling jumping around!

Still needs some tweaks imho, but already very good.
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Post by saulc12 »

Sorry, couldn't resist knocking up some hires graphics to see how it could look:

Image

Image

Two versions, essentially the same, but the second has a little more colour variation to see how this could work out. BTW think it looks brilliant and it plays quite nicely although some jumps are on the tricky side.
Have a better one
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Post by Lazycow »

@popmilo: Ok, what should be tweaked? Give me a hint!

@saulc12: NEAT! :D Especially these variable colored backgrounds. But I think I prefer the multi color blocks for the foreground.

Unfortunately, my scrolling code uses Lasse's trick for faster color block scrolling, which forces each 2x2 block to use the same background color. So I cannot use the variable colored backgrounds. I always wondered how games like Turrican manged to scroll the colors without limitations and without any problems...
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Post by saulc12 »

Thanks for the feedback, was just playing around really to see how it would look hi-res , but the multicolour work done so far looks gooood.

As for how Turrican does it... Probably a lot of heavy optimizations using unrolled loops, lookup tables and self modifying code - eeek!
Have a better one
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