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[Kramlack]

Don't mind me, just absolutely killing it with GBC restrictions. Poop.

~There was an art here. It's gone now.~

The layering on the background may or may not actually work, since it uses a trick by 'flickering' two images so quickly that an actual GameBoy screen wouldn't be able to pick it up, giving you a layering effect. It won't work on emulators unfortunately, but this is possibly the effect we could get on real hardware. Everything else is fairly standard 8bit stuff like using sprites for the enemy instead of tiles, using raster transformations to get the waviness of the backgrounds, and a quick palette change while loading the text boxes to get the shading on the bottom.

tl;dr Yes it works, but the background will only show up with two layers on actual hardware.

EDIT: I'd like to add that there are things that can still be done to make this look better, but at this point, I'd like to keep a level of simplicity. It's getting a bit overboard already.

EDIT2: Also it's CRT filtered, IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL, that much will only be available via emulation, hahaha.

[Player Ʒ]

Riddle me this, Kramlack, have you heard of that game called Infinity that was never release? If I didn't know any better, I would have thought you were an Affinix developer or something. it's got so much GBC taxation, it might drain the batter like a Game Gear.

As for the flickering, I knew there were some games that pulled a similar stunt for shadows, making the ground look alpha-blended.

[Kramlack]

Yeah, I actually mentioned taking inspiration from Infinity in another thread somewhere awhile back (mostly for using gradients). It's great that you mentioned it though, because I actually hunted the programmer down some months ago. He shared some interesting stuff about the inner workings and things not shown in any of the trailers, like how he was about to store data in the GameBoy's VRAM so the game wouldn't just explode if you removed the cartridge (I mean, it would still be unplayable afterwards, but it would have a message displayed on screen instead of the generic fizzle out picture).

As for the flickering, I mentioned this last night in Thread Pollution, but Overkill showed me the trick being used in an old Japanese shmup for the GameBoy called ZAS. I've linked a video there so if you haven't seen it, it's worth looking at.

EDIT: I've copied the link here to ZAS so people won't have to dig around if they're interested in it at a later time.

EDIT2: Correcting my earlier statement about the flickering trick not working in emulation, it does indeed work, but only in the bgb emulator (to my knowledge).

[rdein]

~There was an art here. It's gone now.~

lol

[Slow]

I wonder if I'm the only one starting to get pissed off at that.

[rivon]

No, you're not the only one.
If you remove the image, you might just as well delete the whole post cause it's useless.

[Kramlack]

@rivon: I actually do delete posts now if there's no useful info in them or responses, but thanks for the suggestion.

[Oskuro]

The real pity is when the link to the image is broken (hosting site is down, image has been moved/deleted, glittery vampires have stolen the pixels, etc..) yet removing the post and all the associated answers leaves a sad thread.

[cynicalsandel]

~There was an art here. It's gone now.~

Why do you hate me?

[Oskuro]

New update to the Zombies (Now called "Corpsies").

• Tinted the skin so they look more Cadaverous rather than metallic.
• Homogenized Color Palettes and removed pure black eye outlines.
• Added a new "Labcoat" Corpsie.

Also tinkered a bit with the Doomie sprite, as well as all sprites in general.

• Shrunk Sprites so the size is a power of 2, with symmetrical halves (There was a center pixel before).
• Removed all arms. The disconnected fists seen are the sprite for the FIST weapon. Weapon sprites will be added at runtime (Notice the Labcoat has a different CLAW weapon).
• Improved the different Armor levels (Shown are light, medium and heavy).
• Removed black sprite outline.

Issues I have:

• Colors still giving me trouble. I'm designing with the idea of allowing hue variations, but some color hues (like pure blue, as seen in the Labcoat's feet) look horrible.
• Lack of outlines is a problem in certain areas, but space is too tight to add them in certain places. For example, the Labcoat's claws clash with the white labcoat (Point of the Labcoat is to be visible, so it might be acceptable if other creatures using the same weapon don't clash that much).
• Troop's green hair is giving me a lot of trouble.

New Ideas:

• Corpsie heads are going to be modular. I want to add different expressions, and maybe Z-Sec helmets to the Sarge/Commando Corpsies. Yes, I'm basing stuff off of DooM 3 too. Heck, I expect to add stuff from Quake also (Shamblies!).
• The point of the "Civilian" Corpsies is to drop powerups. Labcoats need to be visible as they'll drop health items, while the upcoming Techie will drop Armor. Weapons and Ammo to be dropped by the soldier types (And no, they won't be limtied to the weapons they had in the original games).
• I'm considering adding more armor options by splitting the shoulderpads in two. Currently, there's a sprite for the chestpiece and a sprite for both shoulderpads. Having a left and right shoulderpad gives a higher number of combinations both for monsters to look different and players to have different armor options.
• I'm also considering moving the Troop's hair into a "detail" layer and add more detail options (Like more hairstyles for Troops, a cigar for Sarges, or even make the Z-Sec helmets be details rather than alternate heads).

That's all for now. Can't showcase the code I've been working on with a screenshot/mockup

[Oskuro]

I'm not sure this is the thread to keep posting these, as I'm devoting more time to explaining technical concepts than actually making mockups (more are coming, though, I'm currently mock-ing the hell up of my project to make sure the designs fit).

Should I make a thread in the DevLog section instead? 

[John Sandoval]

ya

[Oskuro]

Been checking other DevLogs on that thread, think I'll wait until I have actual gameplay shots before starting it.

I'll keep my posts here limited to mockups. 

[SolarLune]

Don't mind me, just absolutely killing it with GBC restrictions. Poop.

Hah, really cool. I like the weird character - will you be waving the background like Mother games? Great job!

P.S. Are you actually going to make a GBC game, or is it just for style?

[Kramlack]

Yes, the plan is to have the backgrounds moving, but there's no guarantee Overkill can pull it off. Also yes, it will be an actual GBC game, Overkill's currently finishing off some tools which will help making programming on the Z80 a bit more smooth.