Post by trifalger in Slaughter comments

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I've been playing the crap out of the game today now that turning is sped up. I think I'm on level 5 with the lava but Maybe they shuffled because I've played it before and don't remember level 4 before today. That last jump puzzle in level 4 had me stumped for a while.

I thought that if 1.5 speed broke it then maybe 1.25 would be fast enough and tried to dummy find the code that had been changed from "within sight" and alter it but I guess you did move levels or something because most of the code was swapped around lol. I can't say that I notice the jitter but either myself or the level gets discombobulated at times and I lose track of what's where at high speeds.

I did start using Memorize and Recall a lot more and find it's a great built-in save-state. It was useful before busy rooms or making jumps.

Mouse mode was surprisingly intuitive but turning to fast seemed to register the opposite direction and along with the wonky fill rate I'd get lost as to where I was facing. Which makes me think why snap turning wouldn't work because it wouldn't have time to fill the screen. I do not have an SNES mouse and adapter and was playing in FCEUX with emulated IR mouse which might be responsible for the opposite input. I will probably end up getting one for Former Dawn along with an SNES controller though. Which makes me think if Slaughter could benefit from an SNES controller and shoulder buttons for strafing would work.

The level editor is pretty cool now that I've tried it out. I would've spent a lot of time as a kid building my own levels. I don't know how you'd save them though. I also don't know how to place or edit enemies yet. A manual for this game would be cool. It's already pretty expansive. I could imagine spending some time reading through it.

Mindbleach11 days ago

The posted version is a full 2x turning speed. It is a bit much, but... it really is better. If you're searching in a cheat-engine, the number wouldn't show up, because it's two INC or DEC instructions in a row. If you're looking at the source code, first of all, my apologies. But in any case it's about halfway down movement_alone. Ctrl+F "not strafing."

Reversed mouse input is definitely the game. I have no idea why it does that. I tried fixing it recently, to use the input more directly, and turning left was twice as fast as turning right. That's straight-up haunted. It's on the same to-do list as the hilarious variety of ways multiplayer can break. Less debugging, more exorcism.

Enemy placement is the screen with letters and numbers on top of floor tiles. There's a 7x7 subscreen, showing a zoomed-in view, since the grid for enemies is finer than the level grid.

How you'd save levels is a password system. Which I really thought I had an easy solution for. Quicksaves are already in VRAM - that's where they're stored. So this week I figured, I could store them as hex. Displaying the second screen would be a human-readable version of that data. Unfortunately for that human, even simple levels weigh about two hundred bytes, and then get fatter as enemies move around and bleed on things. My approach to that problem was: tough shit. The idea of someone typing in a four-hundred-digit "password" is funny enough, before the implication of a mapping scene. Unfortunately for me, even with compression, doubling the size of passwords like that can easily wind up too big to fit on one screen. So I still have to do it the hard way.

In the meantime, the way I save levels to put them in the ROM is opening up Memory Tools and copying them straight out of RAM.

trifalger8 days ago(+1)

The level design is outstanding. I've noticed some really ingenious layouts all over the game but I finally found the last enemy in level one and man... I thought those glide jump paths in later levels were sneaky but here in level 1 was the sneakiest I'd found so far. I actually thought it was a glitch because I went over the level many times searching to no avail.

If it's any help with save size I think I'd be ok with/without blood on the ground.

Hey there's friendly fire amongst enemies! And boy it helps in the last level. I cleared out all the enemies in the open ground and let the ones in the cave kill themselves a bit but unfortunately got taken out before I could reach the finish. So close. It's neat though to see their shots and bodies explode behind walls, reminiscent of the Farsight gun in Perfect Dark.

trifalger1 day ago(+1)

I 100%-ed the game! ...sorta. I killed all of the enemies but try as I might I couldn't find the final portal. I did end up using the Give Up menu to cycle through to see what was past the last level and man, the credits... much appreciated!!

The value of this game is crazy. 7 fully populated and varied 3D environments with platform puzzles and diverse enemies. I don't think I'd ever have believed someone describing this game to me on NES.

It blew up on youtube! Awesome! It looked like the top comments were neck and neck with how impressive but dizzying/confusing the graphics were. I went into NESDEV and response seemed about the same. I personally love the graphics and both my 11yo son and I had no issues navigating the environment or identifying enemies, especially with the recent releases. I checked the post again and I see a lot more support now. I think it just needs more footage out there and more people playing it to gain traction and grow wings.

Mindbleach19 hours ago

The game now has what I think are the two final levels, and one of them should clear up the final level. The other kind of final level. You know what I mean.

Enemies are a little more diverse, but not super well balanced. I tore out a bunch of code expecting I'd draw more guys, and instead let each level change their height and behavior. That needs tweaking. Enemy placement and quantity also need tweaking. Mostly to fill out secretive areas beyond that one trolling hidden guy in the first level. That was a placeholder for a secret exit or something, an entire year ago, but I might as well put some combat in the upper area if that's simply not a feature.

The game isn't done, done, but I think this is it for capital-c Content. I went from barely fitting four levels to having enough ROM for ten or eleven. There's nine and that's enough. According to John Romero that's a megawad.

The menu needs a whole do-over. It works for both players, finally, but it should really appear on either side. (Same side or opposite side?) God help me, I may yet redo the whole sprite-projection function, or at least drop it to 30 Hz when the game chugs. The tileset is surprisingly underused... and a lot of diagonals and dropoffs are still placeholders, somehow. It deserves music, and I have room, but apparently I cannot be arsed. I took a hard look at SNES controller support and said no. Maybe after I leave it alone for another six months.

I'm not sure what comes after this. Possibly chopping down a quick and dirty Wolf3D port. Possibly aforementioned dot-throwing. Possibly a C64 port, since I've got all the hard parts in 6502 assembly, and that machine could save your edited levels. But from here to at least the end of the year, it's only tweaks, fixes, and telling people the game exists.

The latter of which I did get scooped on.

It has been fun to watch the numbers go up, and tell people on Youtube to try their own ridiculous projects. Mmmight do a lower-detail version, per suggestions? It'd be an easy ROM-hack. I could add a mapper and make the tile graphics swappable, but quite frankly, I don't wanna. It's too much of an invitation to put in even more work. I want to do what's next.

itch.io

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