gbadev.org

[ThousandKnives]

I thought I would post the project I've been working on here. It's just a port of a game I did for a 72-hour competition about 4 years ago. But, I thought it would make a good project to start with to learn how to program for DS.

I started from the DevKitPro template and used LibNDS. It should run on any emulator or actual hardware. It's written in C++. Graphics are mostly by my partners from the competition Jawsh and Pegwo. I had to do a lot of working with them to get it to fit on the DS screen, and added a bunch of new graphics (mostly background tiles). Maps were made using Tiled and a custom program I wrote to convert XML to C headers.

Missing features:
-Saving high scores
-Arm7 sound handler
-Multiple scrolling backgrounds
Although I note these missing features, I pretty much consider this "finished" and will probably move on to another project at this point, but I would appreciate any feedback.

Binary: Download ZIP
Source: Download ZIP

Screens:
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[Images not permitted - Click here to view it] - [Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it] - [Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Here is a link to a page with info on the original PC version for DirectX.

[Dark Knight ez]

I must say, this game looks incredible.
Played it and it's pretty fun, although a tad challenging. :)
Great job, ThousandKnives.
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AmplituDS website

[Reppa]

Excellent homebrew i love it :D

[Dood77]

Don't have the chance to try this yet... It looks similar to Alien Hominid...
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If I use a term wrong or something then feel free to correct, I?m not much of a programmer.

Original DS Phat obtained on day of release + flashme v7
Supercard: miniSD, Kingston 1GB, Kingston 2GB
Ralink chipset PCI NIC

[alfatreze]

lovin' the look of it, I'll try this out a little later for sure.
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DS-Xtreme 4Gb [Fw 1.1.2]

[GoopyMonkey]

This is an excellent side-scroller. Nice one for a learning homebrew too; I can't even figure out how to scroll the screen in Actionscript!

I love the gameplay, although I wish there weren't as many power-ups; as soon as I get a good one I need to wait for all the others to disappear to carry on, or lose my weapon.

The controls are fine, but I'm not really used to using B to shoot. (On the DS, anyway.) Would it be an option to be able to configure the controls?

Nice range of weapons, my favourites are the laser and "fan".

I love the sounds! I tried making my own sounds for a Flash movie once, but they turned out terrible. Very well done! ^_^

Overall, I give this a 9.5. Very impressive for a first try, and as a classic side-scroller. Well done!

*dreams of level editor while challenging Sephiroth*
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My favourite DS apps:
GBAMP Multiboot
Colors!
jEnesis

[ThousandKnives]

Thanks for the positive feedback! This started as a GBA project about a month ago. After about 2 weeks of working on GBA I switched it over to DS and went from there. I've been pleasantly surprised with how straightforward DS programming is so far (with the exception of the whole arm7/arm9 communication thing).

Dark Knight ez:
I had a feeling the difficulty level might be a bit high. For me it's not so hard but then the designer always has an advantage. It's practically impossible if you are playing it on a keyboard. Mulit-directional fire or the ability to duck would help but I wasn't ready to go there in the DS version because they weren't part of the original and I don't have the sprite graphics for it. I'm not even sure the character can be made to duck because he's so short and pudgy- even if he laid down he wouldn't be small enough to duck under bulelts.

GoopyMonkey:
Control config would be an easy enough feature, all it really needs is a "Type A / Type B" switch, or I could just add the X button as a fire button.
Also- funny you should mention liking the sounds because my girlfriend HATES the laser sound effect. My secret was... effective use of cool edit.

[Dark Knight ez]

Yes, I died many a times.
Until I realised that the special weapons all have unlimited ammo.
So then I just made sure I didn't lose the multi-directional firing weapon and walked at a relatively slow pace and all was good.

Still hate the first boss, but not caring about your lifes there and just keep firing like a maniac makes it easy. (Trying to keep jumping over donuts is pretty much impossible.)
The second boss was awesome, and a lot more fun.
Anyway, great job on the game. I really like it. From graphics to polish.
You'd think I would complain for lack of use of the 2nd screen, but I'll make an exception for this game. x)
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AmplituDS website

[Lick]

Excellent game. Jawsh and Pegwo are really professional pixel artists. I've known them on Pixelation. The port works awesomely well on the DS. Thanks for the fun!
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http://licklick.wordpress.com

[ThousandKnives]

Jawsh and Pegwo did an awesome job on the graphics. I also knew them from Pixelation, and it was a Pixelation contest that this game was originally made for. Unfortunately my only real contact with either of them was through the contest and I don't know how to contact either of them anymore. If anyone knows how to contact them let me know, I'm sure they would be interested in seeing this.

Because the original was for DirectX, which doesn't have many restrictions on the size of your "surfaces," the original graphics were all kinds of weird sizes. The tiles were 20x20 and the sprites had lots of strange sizes like 44x40, etc. The tiles had to be almost completely redone in this version (half of them didn't exist in the original anyway), except for the windows and sidewalk that needed only slight modification. Many of the enemies and also the player are about 40 pixels talls and are actually composed of two sprites, one 32-square for the upper body and another 32-wide for the legs. The stage boss's overall dimensions are 128x144 and he actually is made of 5 sprites (4x 64-squares for the body and 1x 64-wide for the legs. In some ways this made animations easier, as they could be handled independently. I still had to make some minor modifications like shortening gun lengths & stances.

The spread weapon certainly makes the game easier, and the laser is the hardest to use due to the long cooldown period. My personal favorite weapon is the missle because, like the laser, it is capable of doing 2 damage per shot, but it fires more rapidly, and it also damages other enemies in the blast area.

Glad the second boss was appreciated, as I did put some time into him. He is definately more fun than the first boss, but I didn't realize I had made the donuts too difficult to dodge on the first boss. I will try to put these recommendations into a new release at some point.

[ThousandKnives]

I have uploaded a *minor* update of this game. The widespread feedback on this game has changed my mind about leaving it quite yet- though I'm still not sure how far it will go.

Download Game
Download Source
(Addresses are unchanged)

The game now uses Libfat and thus will crash certain emulators (I'm looking at you Dualis). Not sure about slot 2 devices, as I don't own one and so I haven't tested that. Works on my slot 1 perfectly, and will run on No$GBA though scores will be lost after powering off.

In this update:
- Better sound effect support
- Board to keep Top 10 scores & name entry.
- Various map edits
- First boss actions tweaked
- Powerup frequency reduced

Still to do:
- Control configuration
- Scrolling backgrounds
- Subscreen
? Directional fire / ducking
? Background music

Once again any feeback or bug reports are appreciated. My high score to date is 105,350. Enjoy!

[Sh4wn]

Great game! :D My high score is 88850 :')

[OSW]

yeah! awesome stuff.

[Jakeohagan]

this is a extremely well done game, and hard to.
good job!

[TheYak]

I really enjoyed it. Sad that it only had two levels, it'd otherwise be a permanent resident on my card. I didn't see any need for a weapon other than spread, though. If you implemented aiming, though, I'd probably see things differently.

I quite like the creative sound manipulations for the effects. The laser sounds unique (in a good way) and the little quips are amusing. Overall, it's top-notch except that its brevity makes it feel like a demo.
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DSL Onyx w/ R4 & 1GB Kingston SD. FlashMe'd v.7