SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

You guys are almost finished! I started only 3 days ago and all I have so far are the gamestates (lobby, play, pause, quit etc), a minimal sprite engine and an object that manages the screen (resolution, palette and images).

No external libraries or game engines, just pure BlitzMax.

Unlikely I will finish it in time, but I'm going to be careful adding things I would "like" over things that I need so hopefully I'll have something playable to submit as my entry.

Still tits up with the sound tracker. chip stuff is fully functional, its the wave engine which is giving issues - An I just got out the vocoder as well :/

OK, so here's a (slowed down - thanks soundcloud!) quick test of the chi-tune in operation with some in game music:
https://soundcloud.com/mavryck-james/chiptune-loop

The "melody" (dunno if "tune" or "melody" is the right word, so excuse) sounds fine and interesting but the "instrument" sounds _imho_ a bit too hmm "industrial", too "raw". Hard to describe, but it represents a dark scenery well and also a level containing many "metal" but it is too dark for a "game for all ages" (a platformer with cute enemies).

In the background there are some blob/blip sounds here and there... is this what you mean with "chi tune in operation with some in game music"? They seem to be of another style (they sound "clean" and more "non-industrial").

Again I see how writing posts in another language limits what you want to express - so excuse if I sound too harsh.

bye
Ron

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Your retro style game does not have to fall within the capabilities of retro hardware. If you want to do a full on 3D game in a 320x200 res with 16 colours

so if i create a 3d game which is playable in a 320x200 resolution, with only 16 colours in the game, all good ?

I will probably not have the time to finish anything worth it, but just taking the challenge, by curiosity !

and for the scaling in a higher resolution, if i copy the 320x200 rendered image on a texture, and stretch this texture on a quad so that it fills a 640x400 screen, (without bilinear filtering), would this be ok ?

Yes this would be OK ...


But pay attention that "scaling" a texture might look different to scaling individual textures. So having some individually scaled quads on the screen might look different to scaling a "rendered to texture".
Just experienced this myself. With r2t my tower looks not so nice when rotating ;-)




bye
Ron

Quoteso if i create a 3d game which is playable in a 320x200 resolution, with only 16 colours in the game, all good ?

Yup.

Quoteand for the scaling in a higher resolution, if i copy the 320x200 rendered image on a texture, and stretch this texture on a quad so that it fills a 640x400 screen, (without bilinear filtering), would this be ok ?

That is fine so long as your movement and rotation stick to the virtual 320x200 resolution. So you can't move your double sized pixels using 640x400 coordinates for smoother movement but would have to move 2 pixels a time to keep the virtual 320x200. Also the same applies to rotations ( see earlier posts how users keep the proper 320x200 res on rotations ).

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So you can't move your double sized pixels using 640x400 coordinates for smoother movement but would have to move 2 pixels a time to keep the virtual 320x200

Ooo so my 4 x magnification means everything has to move by 4 pixels?...I hadn't realized that.

With non game-play border my screen is 480, 270 multiplied by 4 to fit a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution.

QuoteOoo so my 4 x magnification means everything has to move by 4 pixels?...I hadn't realized that.

Yes, everything has to match the virtual resolution

If your movement is pixel by pixel in a 1920x1080 resolution then that is no longer a virtual resolution of 320x200. It's 1920x1080 with fat chunky graphics

Remember folks to check for the small things... virtual resolution of 320x200 means everything has to fall within that. Make sure you are not doing native resolution movement / scrolling / rotations.

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If your movement is pixel by pixel in a 1920x1080 resolution then that is no longer a virtual resolution of 320x200. It's 1920x1080 with fat chunky graphics

Fat chunky graphics lol.  They are that.

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Remember folks to check for the small things... virtual resolution of 320x200 means everything has to fall within that. Make sure you are not doing native resolution movement / scrolling / rotations.

That's us told 

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Make sure you are not doing native resolution movement / scrolling / rotations

what if the scaling/rotations/movements are done in the 3d engine itself ? As long as the scene is rendered as a 320x200 image, would this be ok ?

@RemiD
Yes. Also, it has to be the same 'static' 16 colour palette.

by "static" you mean no dynamic lighting/shading i suppose ? i only use "diffuse" colors at the moment, no lighting/shading

I guess you could use shading as long youre clever with it and only choose colours from your chosen 16 colour palette. For eg the pics i posted use shading but they are from the same 16 colour greyscale palette.

Basically you decide upon a palette of 16 colours, and your game colours never deviate from those exact 16 colours.