Apple Assault Advance ?

 Ah, yeah. Early this month, while the heatwave had not burnt our energy and house wasn't yet a post-camp-departure-mess, I had that Silly Idea (tm) that I could enter the

I would have read https://gbadev.net/resources.html#articles, installed the GBA devkit in addition to the NDS devkitpro (reality: done, but where) and I'd have quickly (ahem) converted the Green Zone graphics into 16-colors-per-tile so that they could fit in the smaller video memory of the GBA. Some sprites (funky funghi, Bilou) would have been turned into 16-colors too while some others (appleman, mostly) would have stuck to 256 colors because they're taking more than 16 :P

Only then, I'd have tried to rebuild the Dreams engine for GBA and imported the Dreams animation over the Apple Assault levels, and that would have been the basis for Apple Assault Advance. Luckily enough, the sound engine promoted by devkitpro would have been happy about my brother's good old 6-track variant of String Tracking.

Likely, I'd have needed to find a way to compile the GobScript state machines into plain old data that could stay in ROM so that the smaller-sized (256K?) GBA RAM could have been saved for really-read/write features. Same for the maps, most likely ... They're not that big, so they could have been fit to RAM. Maybe they would have to so that collectible tiles would have worked. (not that there are many such things in Apple Assault).

But that was before blogpress started pressing me to develop it again. I think I'll focus on making first steps with bosses in NDS Dreams engine, instead :P 

Yearling

Last year's "holiday todo list" is thus finally completed. The last touches to SpongeBop's behaviour were introduced mid-June, multi-palette support was released in March, ink hurts (when configured in that way) and (of course), we do have compound-animation for Bilou since September 1st, 2012, and I fixed much more than just the "landing bug".

What's up for this year's holiday ? I've got pendats animation (well, not the full set of actions, just the simple walk) and a first draft of verso-the-eraser. I just have used the last 70$ of NeoCompo prize to order a replacement part for my fridge (15°C cooling is not funny), and I still have much drilling and sawing to do outdoor to make the garden kids-friendly.

Si sur le devant de la scène je prend enfin le temps de mettre en ligne toutes ces réflexions sur le gameplay de Mario World, en coulisses, la révision de l'éditeur de niveau atteint le stade "tests intensifs". L'objectif ? Pouvoir enfin ajouter de manière fiable des monstres, encore des monstres, et pouvoir les lier les uns aux autres (indispensable pour SpongeBop) sans devoir passer par le PC et son éditeur de texte ... Mais le reste (clonage de niveau, wizards, etc) devra attendre: la Neo Compo 2013 approche à grands pas et j'aimerais pouvoir y présenter une première version de Deep Ink Pit ... si libntxm veut bien ... et la VTJ aussi.

The critical item to get started on a "deep ink pit" map right now is the level editor, which must be capable of cloning monsters that are attached to other monsters without messing up the level commands. It's still in "testing and fixing" stage, though. Then, I'll need something that makes the ink moving up ... that will involve a custom effect of some sort, as that's not something the state machines will easily handle.

I hadn't got much luck with musics so far: Both Piek's and Piet's tune play weirdly on the Nintendo DS... Deep ink pit will feature yet another song and if that one doesn't work properly either, fixes/level-up will be required on libntxm.

Will this be completed for NeoCompo 2013's deadline ?

Oh, btw, translation of Saturday's post is at last completed. 

2nd at NeoCompo !

That's rather a good suprise: AnimEDS was ranked 2nd (just behind Smealum's FPSMaker) at Neocompo 2012. That comes just in due time to cover homebrew hardware expenses and get me quickly back on track. Shopping time ^_^

Congratulations fly to Alekmaul for his 1st place in the GAME competition with a cute SNES puzzle game reminiscent of Sokoban (actually a port of an MSX game, afaik).

AnimEDS at Neoflash Compo

For the second time, I'm entering the "Neo Coding compo", with latest versions of AnimEDS and SEDS, with in-app help for almost all the operations. I had first some hope, as there weren't that much "good" (imho) applications submitted until Smealum (arsenal) nuked me with his FPSMaker ...

Un badge, des messages d'aide, un personnage moustachu en salopette dans un .spr (à la place de Badman), et voilà AnimEDS (et SEDS) prêts pour la compétition de "rétro-coding" de Neoflash. Cette année, c'est "toutes machines confondues", avec un sérieux regain d'intérêt pour les participants, même si je n'ai pas vu côté DS de production à la hauteur des jeux qui avaient brisé les espoirs de Apple Assault en 2010. Si je devais donner un pronostic, je parierais sur la victoire du FPSMaker dans la catégorie "Applications" (également sur DS).

Anyway, although I made the effort of having the compo badge shown in my entry this year, winning some prize is not my main motivation: I want to take the opportunity of many people blowing dust away from their handheld console and downloading homebrews to get more feedback about the user interface and how to make things more "user friendly". 10/15 blog readers have voted for that in the app/game poll that ends by friday ... but for that I'll need to know what people think and expect from my apps.

Ce qu'on en dit...

Histoire de prendre un peu la température, j'avais soumis Apple Assault à la compo Neoflash de l'été. Je ne m'attendais pas à gagner -- il faut dire que la concurrence est rude, avec notamment un excellent DuyuMania et ChewingBoy (de Morukutsu) -- quoi que ce soit, mais certains aspects des reviews m'étonnent quand-même. Petit tour d'horizon pour me détendre les neurones avant le rush mortel de demain.

If your dream wish is to have been turned into a blue Apple, this game makes that wish come true, but the red apples … well lets say they don’t like you and believe me, you don’t want to be next to the red apples, maybe if you grow up and jump from one tree to another you could be more delicious

Graphics: 4 -- Sound: 5 -- Control: 5 -- Fun: 7 -- Duration: 4

Bien sûr, le côté "graphisme" a souffert du look "damier-de-debugging", puisque c'est la version 1.1 qui a été soumise. Autre point récurrent et étonnant, c'est cette déclaration qu'il s'agit d'un "jeu bizarre"... Je note tout de même le côté "short range at attacks" que je dois effectivement ajuster (c'est déjà sur ma toudoulisse depuis les e-mails avec KirbyKid)

+Nice pixel art at the top screen

- weird game

- poor presentation on second screen

Graphics: great on the main screen. Lovely characters and backgrounds 2.5/2.5

Sound: Funny music but repetitive. 2/2.5

gameplay: good controls, odd style of game. Short range at attacks. A little bit difficult 2/5

Bugs found: No bugs were found, but has graphic corruption when changing levels

Will this stay on my memory stick? : Yes

Graphics: 15
Sound: 10
Controls: 10
Originality: 10
Fun: 10
Bonus: 5
Comments: An odd game, but the graphics are pretty decent. Bonus for open source.60/100

Tout juste une "satis'" donc, pour ce xam-ware de 2eme session ... De quoi alimenter la discussion avec les jeunes papas qui s'étonnent que je ne cherche pas à commercialiser la chose :P

Gfx: 10/20 -- Snd: 7/20 ( zik: 7/10, sfx: 0) -- fun: 10/20
idea: 10/20 -- Mi: 10 ( LT: 5/5, B:5/5, LO: 0/5) -- O: 5
I found this apple-game quite difficult to play. Graphics are OK and it’s nice to hear music, although it is repetitive and you can get sick of it. It's a pity that the bottom screen of the NDS is used to display the credits and some other ugly information, especially being a touchscreen.

See ? That's one amusing part of entering the Neo Compo. Not only you might win a prize for the best software (spoiler alert: I didn't), but you can win a prize for the best review of the submissions. The good news for me is that it gives me 'plenty' of feedback on Apple Assault 1.1

Ketchup Mock-up Spring Compo 2007

Ce ne sont pas les compétitions qui manquent sur la scène DS. Sponsorisées par l'un ou l'autre vendeur de linkers, par exemple, avec des prix venant de leur catalogue. La "NeoFlash" est une des plus connues, et quand j'ai fait mon petit test 'Santa Dangerous' vers le mois de décembre, c'était bien sûr dans l'idée d'avoir un jeu au parfum chrismal à soumettre.

Dans le genre, redbug nous a lancé une compétition assez spéciale: la compétition de mockups. N'importe qui sort son photoshop et fait une ou deux "captures d'écran virtuel" de l'application-qui-tue qu'il voudrait avoir sur sa DS. Un jury de 5 programmeurs passe tout celà en revue pour choisir les 5 meilleures.

Ensuite (et c'est là que ça devient fun), ils codent les applications pour les soumettre à la compétition NeoFlash de l'été (bonne chance, les gars).

J'ai regardé ça d'un peu loin d'abord (j'avais une conf' dans le pipeline, et croyez moi, c'est un autre genre de compétition), ne sachant pas trop quel était le principe ni le mode de soumission, mais gardant quand-même un oeil sur les différentes propositions ou mettant mon petit commentaire par-ci par-là.

Puis BangBash (encore lui ;) m'a inspiré une application qui-ne-tue-peut-être-pas mais qui serait diablement pratique pour continuer à développer le jeu Bilou depuis mon divan ... Un programme d'animation de persos 3D.

Features:
- import 3DS models (as files on SD card or via WiFi)
- allow creation of composite models by drawing separate objects one after each others
- define anchors and “strings” between objects of one model, as well as a ‘rest position’ towards which the angle/distance between objects
- record animations out of touch input (e.g. by defining a target position and speed and let the character evolve to that location). Visualize the animation on upper screen
- colorize the 3D model
- stamp sprites on top of 3D objects (e.g. the eyes of the character, etc), from a sprite palette
- substitute one object with another to do “3D sprite” animation

And most importantly: save the generated animation in a way that will allow it to be imported in a 2D/3D game engine (either full 3D engine, or something à la new super mario bros.)