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Cherkov

53
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11
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1
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A member registered Jul 25, 2016

Recent community posts

That looks really good. I can't wait to check it out later.

Ah. I think I understand what you mean by rippling now.  I think I ran into something similar when editing the Kung Fu title screen. The title uses a pseudo 3D effect on the letters to make them appear like they are popping out. Trying to  use the deform tool to simulate that in true 3D was difficult. The Kung and the Fu used the same texture, but were treated as separate objects. When a deformation was applied Kung it looked different on the Fu since it was a shorter object. Don't know if I am explaining that well...

Anyways, that does sound like a lot of work for the ramps. Hopefully you can get it to work. I wish you luck!

Scripting will work for adjusting the Z offset for a shape. The problem becomes all Y movement becomes Z movement. Moving up and down the track will look as intended, but then Y movement from  jumping in the air will turn into Z movement as well. I like the idea of using the shadow as an indicator to when not translate Y to Z, though.

Cool. I thought about trying this one but wasn't sure how to turn the flat pseudo-3D ramps into actual 3D objects at the time. Thinking about now, maybe with some cloning, texture editing, and the deform tool, something could be worked out.

You might be able to do do something like what JJXB did with River City Ransom to get the rider to move in and out as opposed to up and down. It is basically translating movement on the y axis to the z axis, and then zeroing out the y axis.

I've done something similar while messing around with Commando. I had a script that rotated all the background sprites 90 degrees and made the player move in and out of the screen instead of up and down.

I'm not familiar with the rippling effect you are talking about. Do you mean what is happening to the ramp in the picture you posted?

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Wow! This is epic! I love all the details you got in there. My guess is that you used a lot of cloning and texture editing for that. I can't wait to check it out when I get a chance.

Here is a link to the video file if you need it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/le3ttah6z0k9qzp/Desktop%202018.04.28%20-%2006.47.43.02...

Thanks. I'm glad you think so. I was really pleased with how this one turned out. Putting the video on Facebook is fine by me.

Here is Wrecking Crew 3D-ified.  It should be 100% complete, but let me know if I missed anything.

3dn

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kr6zjv5rgtn47uo/Wrecking%20Crew.3dn?dl=0

Video

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Thanks geod. I did use the Game Genie codes for getting all of the editing done. I just recorded the video without it.

As for the cylinders, it's just my personal preference. I like the depth it adds to the characters. That's kind of why I asked about changing geometry through a script. That way, if someone prefers it with the default shape, they could just run the script and change it all at once. What I was really thinking was something more like a way to alter the 3dn file all at once, not a script that runs during the game. Like a button to press that would adjust the properties of shapes with a certain tag. Not sure if I am explaining that well.

Anyway, the gauge script was something I was trying to do to fix the health bar for the player and enemy. They use one tile that slides to the left and remove unneeded tiles as the health bar drops, but when the health is down to the last tile, it starts to slide behind the letters. Normally that would be covered by the other sprite, but I removed the black from the UI. You can see it happen in the video when  I defeat the first boss. I was trying to write a script to address that, but ran into troubles tagging things properly and decided to shelve the idea for now.

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Here's a 3dn for Kung Fu.  I'll try and get a video up soon, but I really suck at this game. I blame it on the controller...

3dn

Kung Fu (U) [!].3dn

Video

Yes. This is something I was wondering as well. It would be nice to go through the game tagging objects, and then run a script to change it all at once.

Yeah, but those are the easiest to do. Bionic Commando is killing me right now! :(

I've only played through the first level so far, but it looks good.

OK, cool. I figured it was a pretty obvious problem, but I didn't see it on the forum. I was wondering if you have a public bug list?

I'm not sure if this is really a bug, more like an annoyance, but whenever the UI is being moved, the mouse cursor moves at a slightly faster speed than the UI. While that isn't a big issue, what happens if the cursor comes off of the UI is.


One thing that happens is the camera will move since you are holding the left mouse button while dragging. How extreme the movement is depends on how fast or slow you happen to be moving the mouse at the time.


Also, what's more annoying is that it will also change to edit a different shape if the cursor happens to roll over a new shape. This also happens when using the scroll bar while editing a texture. That can be really frustrating when you put a lot of work in to editing and then it is all lost. That has taught me to use Adjust a lot more often while editing textures.

That is a great explanation of the Deform formula. I have some questions about x, y and z though. Delta is the change in direction. So I figure Size is the size of the shape in x, y, or z direction? Or is it the size of the sine wave? Pivot seem like the origin point of the sin wave maybe, so 0.5 would be the middle of the shape in whatever direction. I can't figure out what the x, y, z is in the parts like sin( _ * x + _). Is it the movement of the sine wave in that direction on the particular plane? 

Sorry for all of the questions. I never got far in math. I'm trying to brush up on my sohcahtoa.

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I was just saying how I wish I knew how to use the tools better. I know Merge and Delete are Shape mode, and Create is Tile mode :P

The Deform tool is something I am trying to get to grips with. I'd like to know how you got those windows in. It looks like you took the building shape and cloned it and then deformed it, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.

There is one problem from a gameplay point of view. There is a guy that occasionally pops out of the windows to throw flower pots at the fighters, and a lady that throws confetti at the winner. It would be cool to get the window to "open" when they appear. That seems like it would require scripting to read memory and deform the window accordingly.

Setting the restriction to 1 fixed the building immediately. That's one function I haven't played around with much. I though the numbers represented pixels, so it's good to know it's really tiles. I must have missed that part in the manual.

Thanks for explaining how the backend stuff works.  It really helps when editing. I've read through the manual and managed the basics with some trial and error. I would love to say I completely understand, but I'm not there yet. I wish I had a better grasp on the more advanced tools, like Merge, Delete, and Create in tile mode.

There is a shimmering effect when zooming or moving the camera. It only happens when the graphics quality is set to medium or high, so it might have something to do with the shadows. It looks like some sort of moire pattern. Here is a video of it happening during zoom.

Shimmering pattern

I ran into this problem while working on Urban Champion. There was a piece of a foreground building that the program recognized as part of the city skyline. I was able to get it separated using the delete button, but that messed up the city skyline on other screens. When I tried to restore those pieces back to how I wanted, the original piece I wanted as the foreground building became part of the city skyline again.

Here is a picture of the offending piece.


And here is how it look in the texture editor.


With a little searching, I eventually found the part of the texture used to draw that part of the shape., but when it was changed, it ended up changing more than I wanted.


The other problem I had was trying to add a window texture to the buildings display windows. Originally, I was going to use the clone tool and add another piece as the glass, but when I tried using the texture tool, the results were not ideal. Here is a picture of the window and its texture.


And here is how it looks when filled in.


Now I still could have made this work by cloning another piece and scaling it down and offsetting it, but wasn't prepared to spend that much time.

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The infamous Urban Champion in 3D! Worked on this one for a little while. It's still not 100% how I'd like it, but it's not bad overall.

Update: So I think I'm done with this one. There were a few more things I wanted to try, like scripting the confetti to sway (right now they're just on different layers) and adding some glass to the display windows. Maybe later. The Youtube video isn't completely accurate to what you'll get, but close enough.  Enjoy!

3dn

Urban Champion (W) [!].3dn

Video



Edit: Updated 3dn file

Works great! You are amazing! You even fixed a little graphical bug I chalked up to emulation, where one frame of the little fireball enemy in Donkey Kong was missing the bottom half of the sprite, but only when moving right.  You can see it in the video I posted in the repository. Thanks.

It no longer causes it to hang, but it does give the following error - "An item with the same key has already been added." - and all the 3dshapes revert back to their default settings losing all of the edits that were made.

The steps taken were:

Open 3DNes.

Load the rom.

Click on the item to edit. In this case, I chose a rolling barrel that had SizeZ set to a different value than the rest of the frames. It is set to 12 while the rest are 10.

I adjusted the SizeZ value from 12 to 10.

Saved the 3dn.

Exit 3DNes.

Reopen 3DNes.

Load the rom.

That's when the error occurs.

Let me know if you have any luck. I have another one doing it as well.

Here is the broken one

Donkey Kong (U) (PRG1) [!].3dn

And here is the backup

Donkey Kong (U) (PRG1) [!].bak

There was a problem with a 3dn I was working on. It was causing the emulator to hang when I tried to load it. I could load the backup file, but when I made any changes to it and saved, it would cause a hang next time it was loaded.

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Here is an updated version of this file. I had to redo it all from the start, but it should not cause the emulator to hang anymore. Let me know if this works.

Donkey Kong (U) (PRG1) [!].3dn

Video

It's looking so good. It really has come a long way.  Keep it up!

You're right. You can still select it by clicking, but I find it easier using the nav buttons. It can be difficult to select the missing sprite if there's another sprite right behind it. At least I had that problem with River City Ransom a few times.

If you accidently set something to zero, use the Nav buttons to get back to the sprite since you can no longer click on it. I've had it happen quite a few times, so I know how frustrating it is.

No. This is majorly messed up. Scrambled character sprites and weird looking backgrounds. The text comes through fine though.

There are other games that do that for me as well. I just assumed it was like that for everyone.

So playing around with it some more, I'm wondering if it has to do with color palettes. Since sprites are only allowed 4 colors, or 3 and a transparent color, they seem to be using this sprite to add a 5th color to the main sprite. I don't know why that would cause an issue with the patterns, but that's my thinking so far.

Looks good so far. The first village is a mess for me. Is it that way for you too? I'm assuming it's just an emulator issue, but I hope it's not my PC!

I forget exactly when, but it was while digging, as opposed to just walking through tunnels already dug, since that is when he pulls out the shovel. It might have been just one frame where I was digging a specific direction like up or down.

With things like those, I set the depth of one to be a little higher or lower or even a different layer depending on which one I want showing, otherwise, if you set the faces to the same depth, you end up with Z fighting.

I gave it a try but couldn't get it to work. First I set the sprite to 0 and then changed the other sprite to cylinder. No luck.

So then I tried setting the sprite to 0, saving and exiting the emulator, reloading, and then changing the other sprite to cylinder. The thinking being that maybe some variable or flag was being stored by the software that could be cleared by reloading. Again no luck.

Finally, I renamed the .3dn file and started with a fresh one thinking maybe the file was storing a value. No luck there either.

I tried in multiple different spots where I know the problem exists but couldn't get it to work. I even found that the sprite serves another role by being pieced together to form giant letters in one instance. Parts of the letters were missing when I set the sprite to zero.

Here's another thing. I must be wrong about it being just overlap because sprites overlap all the time in these games and it has never been a problem, but also I found a spot where that sprite didn't make this happen as well. I'm going to play around with it some more and see if I can find out anything else.

Now that I know, I have noticed it more in other games, too. Urban Champion and Dig Dug were some I was playing with and I can reproduce it pretty easily. It definitely is happening during sprite overlap.

There were 2 rectangle sprites I noticed. The brown one is Dig Dug's shovel and the red one is his pump. If you look closely at the Dig Dug sprite when he is digging or pumping, you'll notice a little cutout in it. On a regular NES, the rectangles would be drawn behind the Dig Dug sprite and the color would only be seen through the cutout, if that makes sense. They use that technique in other games as well, though I'm not sure why.

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I worked on this one for a little bit. There is still some minor pop in that needs some work and I barely made it through the first level, but hey, it's something. Next time I'll have to use the Konani code. Hope you like it.

Contra.3dn

Video

Pattern preset hotkeys sounds great, but will they be user definable? Each game can need its own settings to get a good effect and I think hard coded values might be a problem.

If you can do that with animated sprites, that would be better than good, that would be amazing! As long as the user still has some control over it, that's cool.

Do you have a feature list of what's being worked on and what is planned for later updates? I don't want to keep bugging you with things that you are already addressing.