Jeanmilost 2020-10-24 21:44 (Edited)
This is a small tribute to one of my favorite license: Final Fantasy. This example is a fully playable but infinite combat sequence, as it could be found in the first games of the license. I not included the live and magic points management, and the menu is very basic, although the resources contain several still unused assets, so you can see this work rather as a demo, or as a prototype.
However I don’t know if a full Final Fantasy like game would be possible on LowResNX, due to the small available resources space and to the limited tokens. However Square Enix (it was still SquareSoft at this time) also worked around severe limitations when they created the first FF on NES, as explained in this very interesting article: http://q-gears.sourceforge.net/gears.pdf. I would be interested about what other peolpe are thinking about that: create a full RPG on LowResNX, it’s possible or not?
The characters are under copyright of Square Enix, but all the other assets (landscape, music, ...) are my own creation, so feel free to use them if you want.
GAMELEGEND 2020-10-24 21:47 (Edited)
this is sooooo cool!!!!
I LOVE FINAL FANTASY SO MUCH
GAMELEGEND 2020-10-24 21:59 (Edited)
of course it possible to create a full rpg on lowres
I'm doin right now
its gonna be one of the RPGS that I'm gonna upload
Jeanmilost 2020-10-24 23:24
Good to know 🙂 But the small resource storage isn’t an issue for you? E.g how to create a huge variety of landscape or animated chars? I'm interested to know that because I almost used all the available resources to create the scene above 😅 I know I’m probably doing something wrong, however. The best would be to access a kind of larger memory storage, like a kind of disk or cartridge, and to load the resources for the level/combat scene from there when required. But I don’t know if a such feature exists in LowResNX
And I look forward to seeing your RPG, because I love this kind of games 😉
GAMELEGEND 2020-10-25 01:29 (Edited)
well it involves a lot of flipping and reusing chars and pallette and I set my palettes and chars up in a way that allows me to make multiple buildings with a few chars and about 3 - 6 palettes
also I have 3 solid color tiles that make it easy for building 90% of the roof, sky, etc
and then I have 1 tile for the edges of the roof that I just flip horizontally same for the stairs
and this also allows me to only have to make a few chars for a certain building that I won't reuse
Jeanmilost 2020-10-25 04:32
Thank you very much to share these info, it’s true that reusing the chars is a possible solution, which I should apply more often in my dev. I have so much to learn 🙂
GAMELEGEND 2020-10-25 04:43 (Edited)
your welcome :)
Timo 2020-10-25 06:54
Great graphics and great music :)
I also believe that you can create an RPG in LowRes NX. But I would not try to recreate an existing game completely. At first try to make all main parts work in simple ways. E.g. battle, walking around a map, npc dialogs, inventory. And then create a simple story with it. If you still have free tokens, you can still add more effects and details.
You can create different character sets, e.g. Battle, overworld map, dungeon map. Then in the different parts of the game you copy the needed character set to video RAM. You can even mix character sets. Have two pages of the battle character set for your players and the UI, but reserve one page for the enemy. Then you can copy the needed enemy characters from another set.
And one question: Is there a reason why you code your backgrounds instead of using the BG Designer (or better the new Gfx Designer)?
And a technical hint: You don't have to redraw the background every frame. In LowRes NX the backgrounds and sprites are independent layers. You can simply move a sprite without destroying the background. LowRes NX simulates hardware sprites, so they are actual objects and you just set their positions etc.
Timo 2020-10-25 07:19
You could also create your sound effects in the Sound Composer. This can help saving some tokens in the code :)
GAMELEGEND 2020-10-25 17:00 (Edited)
another way I am saving char space is having two Sprites that use the same char to animate the legs
so instead of using 2 char spaces to animate legs all I have to do is draw 1 leg in one char space
Jeanmilost 2020-10-26 03:17
Thank you very much to all for these info and tips. I released a new version with small improvements based on several of them. There are several good concept I need to keep in mind in my next developments, among others doing a better usage of the provided tools. Once again, thank to all to took the time to read my code and to share ideas to improve it. You don’t know how it’s precious for me 🙂
