Post by Mindbleach in Slaughter comments

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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.

trifalger12 hours ago

I don't know what a lower-detailed version would look like 🤔. Cute?

For music all I could think of was 8-bit Duke Nukem theme. There are some great ones on youtube. They sound awesome while playing Slaughter.

The new 'ghost' effect on enemies is neat. I can't tell sometimes if they're going in the walls or are just transparent. Maybe both?

I think cleaning up the edges of cliffs would do a lot to reduce the visual confusion if that's possible. Maybe a few small tweaks and suddenly everyone can play it.

I like the 1st new level, level 4 with the red/yellow/blue. That's when I noticed the ghost effect. In the new level 7 the destructible portals is a neat idea that stumped me for a bit- I mean, there was nothing else to do right? Cool mechanic. AAAND it finally clicked how to beat the game in level 9. Duh! 🤦‍♂️But I got overwhelmed with all the red on red and close quarter enemies and the menu text was black making it pretty hard to read.

I think I realized part of why the new level 7 felt off. You go from the open blue/yellow level, to Hell basically, and then back into the trees with level 8. With a name like Slaughter the red/darker levels totally makes sense but they're mixed in with the rest. You could start the game off in the overworld, more open/brighter levels like 1,2,3, 8 and 9 and then proceed to take a trip into Hell with the darker ones like 4,5,7. Maybe make it something like 1,2,8,3,9,4,5,7. But lvl 9 is waaay too hard to go in the middle. it's honestly an incredible end-cap to the game sooo... man idk lol.

If you feel it's time for you to move on for now that's probably for the best. I'm an NES dweeb (still 6502 so yay).

Still, I can't help imagining all sorts of things for this, like new or reimagined games in the Slaughter engine. There hasn't been an FPS that's run at this speed before for the NES. An FPS RPG like a Zelda 1 or Crystalis would be insane. Bomberman. Also just fleshing this game out would, for myself, be equal to Former Dawn. Pack a manual with enemy names and behavior, level names and settings, a storyline (you're here to kick ass and chew bubble gum?). Snes controller integration could give shoulder buttons for strafing and added buttons for easier weapon swapping/bombs. Saves would be nice but it's a pretty short game and skippable levels (Give Up) and Memory/Recall make up for it.

Mindbleach7 hours ago

The palette order vaguely conveys a day-night cycle, but is admittedly rough. It needs fixing. As with the diagonals and cliff edges - it's programmer art. A flat-color version would presumably look even moreso. Somewhere between Hovertank and Behind The Iron Gate.

This engine specifically might get reworked for a first-person Metroid affair. Fewer enemies (with respawning), limited draw distance, some kind of level streaming. I do want to play with controls that rely on timing. Like a double-jump that's also a Half-Life long-jump depending on when you press the button, and a unified gun for both pew-pew-pew and BLAM. And definitely SNES controller support, there, because I'm not doing multiplayer again unless it's really funny. Like if Slaughter 2 has four-player deathmatch. I can't beat Faceball on Game Boy supporting sixteen people.

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