Fast Cars Demo (BMP Import Tool) (LowRes NX)

SilverDragonBlade 2020-12-03 00:52

your programs are just insane

your like a lowres genius or somthin

nathanielbabiak 2020-12-03 01:24

Thanks - appreciate the compliment! :-)

was8bit 2020-12-03 01:27 (Edited)

Absolutely awesome... thanks so much for all the tools :)

GAMELEGEND 2020-12-03 01:48

THIS. IS. AWESOME!!

nathanielbabiak 2020-12-03 01:50 (Edited)

Happy to help! :-)

I always plan to include a picture of myself and a little bio after the end-screen of every game I develop - I really just needed a way to import it! It was only after I was almost done that I realized this would be super-useful for importing tile sets too.

There's one more tool on the horizon, a compressor-decompressor combo. I realized that any maps of reasonable size would fit within the LowRes NX 32 kB ROM limit, but not if you have more than one or two! It'll basically be a version of gzip, but dumbed-down (I've replaced the Huffman encoding with a patchwork of other algorithms).

I was going to implement 7-Zip instead since it gives better compressed size, but I can't squeeze enough performance out of LowRes for the 7-Zip encoder (it's LZMA). It would require cross-encoding (using your PC to encode the file, then running the decompressor in LowRes), and that's too much for most folks. In my mind it also breaks the "spirit" of LowRes.

After that tool is done, I understand no one will use my Pxl Library without good example code for it (even if it is the best, IMHO), so I'm going to update my other "Old" uploads.

Then I'm not sure what I'll do... The raycaster is getting slow and annoying, and there's so many other good choices!

nathanielbabiak 2020-12-03 01:59

Just realized I've had LowRes for almost 1-1/2 years now and still haven't developed an actual game yet!

GAMELEGEND 2020-12-03 02:41

I can see the game you make end up being one of the most advanced games on lowres

nathanielbabiak 2020-12-03 02:45 (Edited)

Thanks! But for me that's actually a problem. While I'm writing code, advanced is fun... for me. But nobody plays games because the code is advanced! If I'm being honest, I might not actually be good at making fun games. I can make them pretty at least! :-)

Timo 2020-12-03 07:07

Regarding tile map compression: Some old games (e.g. Sonic) used meta tiles: for example blocks of 4x4 characters and they made their levels with these big blocks. But you would need a new map editor for it.

DrGonzo 2020-12-03 07:07

Bro we play with your code! I’ve done so many things with ur pxl library !! I guess we just don’t upload cuz it remains ur stuff :)

nathanielbabiak 2020-12-04 05:11

I spent some time today learning about metatiles - that's super cool! Thanks!

Timo 2020-12-04 09:28

I shared some thoughts about meta tiles here: https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/topic.php?id=1588

nathanielbabiak 2020-12-05 03:42 (Edited)

The Pxl Library 2.0 demos are updated! I'm glad I did too - I found a bunch of mistakes that'll get fixed soon. The mistakes are shown at the bottom of the main Pxl Library upload - so for now please be careful! ~Mistakes fixed, all updated uploaded as of 6 December 2020

Example

Fast Cars Demo (BMP Import Tool)