Homebrew Fireworlds - A DS platformer/puzzle game. (DS Entry)

[BigLord]

I surely hope so! It'll be great, right, right!?

 

[Dirbaio]

Yeah, I hope so!
Some stuff I've been planning for FW2.

- An adventure-like game mode. Maybe with prettier graphics, a stronger story, longer levels, powerups, enemies, bosses...
- Time-attack mode, with online leaderboards.
- Better physics. I'll use the Box2D library if I can get it working.

 

[Cyan]

Annnnd Tadaaah !

Spoiler: Fireworld 2 - Map editor mockup

Done in Photohop, not an actual program.

G= gravity element
B = Block element (ice, iron box, etc.) (select the desired block element from the drop-down menu in the 2nd toolbar, or edit the Block settings later).

It would be great if each element had an element_ID and their own settings.
This way, gates could be any color (not green or blue only), and will have an Element_ID to link a switch and gate together (maybe multiple links at the same time?)



Element examples:

Music element:
Element_ID: Music_01
Value: Fireworld Theme

Gate blocks:
Element: Gate_05 (multiple wall blocks could have the same ID to act as a gate at the same time)


Switch:
Target: Music_01
Set value: (and select in the sub-menu a list of possible theme)
Set time: infinite

Another Switch:
Target: Gavity_01
Set value: Gravity point upward
Timer: 5sec

Another Switch:
Target: Gate_05
set value: grant access
Set timer: 0sec (need to be pressed, when quiting the switch then the gates go back to it's initial value: block access)

Drag/drop element to move them.
Right-click on a wall element and select Edit-physics to move a quad patch corner coordinates.

Wall could have different colors (set a palette first for the current level), or textures.
The edit menu could be used to change the wall type (normal, lava, etc.) without deleting and recreating another one.

Maybe use 2 layers (BG/FG) to edit the background (or load a static image for background).

@Dirbaio: It's only some ideas for improvement.
Maybe you already have another ideas, but I think an element_ID system will be very flexible to build event element for an Adventure game.

Edit:
I can't compile revision03 (I didn't try r02), with devkitARM34. maybe I'm missing a library?

fireworlds-game/arm7/source/main.cpp: In function 'int main()':
fireworlds-game/arm7/source/main.cpp:77:14: error: 'BUS_CLOCK' was not declared in this scope

 

[Dirbaio]

Ah, libnds 1.5.2 has probably renamed BUS_CLOCK again.

I'm still using 1.5.0 because I didn't notice 1.5.2 was out.
I've just updated, I'll try to fix it and I will commit a new rev

Anyways, not much has changed. I added a pause menu, changed restart level from Y to Select (I saw some friends frustrated because were always hitting button Y without wanting to), and added a new variation of the main tune for the ending credits.

Fireworlds 2 will be mostly made from scratch, since I have to replace the whole physics engine with Box2D. That, if I can make it work. I've tried all from here and also did my own port, and ALL the box2D-nds versions were crashing.

I'm now trying to debug it. Anyways, any help on this would be REALLY appreciated!

EDIT: It does compile well on 1.5.2. Then it's your libnds installation which is outdated. Some older libnds had BUS_CLOCK named TIMER_HZ instead. Either change BUS_CLOCK to TIMER_HZ, or update your devkitPro. I recommend the latter. Fireworlds will probably break with old libnds's.

EDIT2: I just tracked down the crash. See spoiler below:

Spoiler

I've taken Box2D's Hello World example, and added a text Hello World in the main.
Even though NO Box2D's code is being run, just declaring a world makes the ROM crash.
Also, not shown in the pics, but it crashes when running consoleDemoInit(); Why a line that is not executed causes this change? I have no idea.

(Sorry for the huge screenshots)

Aaand:

WHY!!!???

 

[Cyan]

Ah, you are right, I updated only devkitARM without updating libnds.

I can't help you with Box2D debugging, sorry

I think you'll find help only on their forum, or finding another developer who used it successfully.

 

[Dirbaio]

Yay! I got it!

It was a reaally silly thing: Declaring the b2World like that makes it be allocated into the stack. Aaand... a b2World instance is around 100kb big, while the stack on the NDS is just a little less than 16kb.
So allocating it in main memory with new worked.

I'm working on making Fireworlds work with it

It's a bit hard because I have to trash half of the engine, but it's looking good.
I'll post it in Google Code when I have a playable prototype.

 

[Arisotura]

I tried this game recently, it's fucking bloody awesome. And the DS's tiny 3D engine supports that, man I'm pretty damn sure one could make awesome things on the 3DS.

However, there are some little issues , for example at the end of level 24, you end up with 10 of 9 energy bits... but that's not much really.

 

[Cyan]

10 out of 9?
I didn't found that bug.
How could you pick more energies than the level's count? I'll have to try it!


Good work Dirbaio with finding the problem with box2d memory.
Good luck with the future beta/release.

 

[Dirbaio]

I did know about that bug, I think it was reported here earlier.
Sometimes, an energy is counted twice I dunno why. I think it's because you collide with the energy and the energy collides with you, the same frame. That can happen because "dead" actors are not removed until the end of frame... Yeah, I screwed up hard in the collision stuff.

Anyways, it's not worth fixing now because all the collisions stuff is now trashed, in favour of Box2D.

BTW, here's a really simple box2D test: http://dirbaio.net/d/fireworlds-box2d.nds
Tap to create a box. Start to delete everything. R to toggle debug screen.
It needs the data folder from fireworlds 1 to be present, sorry

 

[Cyan]

I played with the boxes a little, collision and gravity is good. Maybe a little slow when there's too many on screen (or on the entire level?).
I went up to CPU 1000%

Inversing gravity or moving blocks with stylus would have been great, but it's only the first beta.
Let us know if you need other things being tested.

 

[Dirbaio]

Yeah, it was only a test, so I didn't add many things.
I'm now working on getting the actual game work with Box2D. It's looking great so far.

As you say, the CPU usage is a bit heavy, but I've found some ways to optimize it, like disabling asserts (-DNDEBUG flag) and disabling Box2D continuous physics

Still, it gets slow with lots of objects, so we won't be able to add lots of objects to the level. Anyways, objects that are not moving are set to "sleep state" so that they don't consume CPU time. That way, the limit is on moving objects and not on total objects. A cool Box2D feature.

I also did a small test to make the game run at 30fps instead of 60fps, to get double the CPU time for each frame. but it looks UGLY as hell, so it's out of question.

 

[Technicmaster0]

Seems like the filetrip download link is down :/

 

[Rydian]

Seems like the filetrip download link is down :/

http://gbatemp.net/topic/334640-i-want-to-get-nsmb-editor-off-filetrip/
Probably the same thing.

 

[Foxi4]

Just watched the trailer and... wow - those particle effects (those are particles, right? Not some sprite magic?). It really looks amazing, especially considering the platform this was written for, I'm loving it, congratulations on a job well done!

 

[Cyan]

yeah they are particles and he said he did it in ASM to achieve this result.
The game is great, and has good ideas on the game physics. it's also the only homebrew I complete!
It has a level editor too, (even if he said it was the buggy version, it's working fine).

He requested that Filetrip removes the file and let the users download it from his website only (though, googlecode doesn't have it so the file is not available anymore to public. But you can always compile it)

 

[Dirbaio]

Totally my fault
I thought I had a download on dirbaio.net, but I was wrong. Sorry!

I will upload it again tomorrow.

Also I will profit from the occasion to fix some bugs and polish some things. Some levels have silly bugs. Also Level 31 lags badly. I'll try to fix the crash when opening and closing the DS. (It's a buffer overflow in ASLib...)

And some new levels and things, maybe? Who knows

 

[Dirbaio]

Download of version 1.1: http://dirbaio.net/d/fireworlds.zip (Please do not mirror.)
What's New:
- Fixed lag in all levels.
- Improved all the levels: Fixed unintended shortcuts and made those very-frustrating-levels less frustrating.
- Reworked the appearance of the fireball. Now it has a more definite shape and looks more like fire!
- Some random graphical improvements/fixes
- It now has a pause screen!

Here's a screenshot of how the fireball looks now!

And another one.

Also I've moved the source code repo to GitHub. (Because git is better!)
https://github.com/Dirbaio/Fireworlds

No new content or levels for now, because I wanted to upload the thing today, and I don't have more time. But I'll make an update! Suggestions are welcome.

Also, could this thread be moved to the DS homebrew forum? I have a feeling nooone looks at this forum. Thanks!

 

[Cyan]

Thank you for the update, I'll try it when I have some time.

I don't know about moving it to DS homebrew, as it was part of the competition, we may keep it in a Competition forum along with other competitions we did/will do.
I'll see if we can put it both Competition section and in the DS homebrew section too, maybe the new forum allow virtual links. I'll have to check new features.
For now it's moved to DS homebrew.

 

[corenting]

Thanks for the update it's one of the few homebrew I really enjoy playing. The concept is good and addictive.

 

[Fyrus]

How did I manage to not have heard of this before ? It really looks awesome, I'm gonna try this as soon as I can