Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zelda De-make

labs.benpurdy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Zelda De-make

#11

Post by ThatOtherPerson »

sthatipamala wrote: post #10
Zikes wrote: post #5

The associated blog post from Ben Purdy: http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking-zelda

What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor." Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I find such a software?

He says he stored the map data as a single PNG. So, each pixel specifies what tile type that area of the map is.

Re: Zelda De-make

#12

Post by benaiah »

sthatipamala wrote: post #10
Zikes wrote: post #5

The associated blog post from Ben Purdy: http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking-zelda

What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor." Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I find such a software?

Presumably it just means that the engine constructs the levels from an exported image (such as a png, not a psd), instead of creating the levels from a more complicated data system. Because he knows the exact sizes of things, and "sprites" are a 1 to 1 mapping to game objects, he can easily do this. In a more complex game this would be impossible, but it works very well for his purposes.

Re: Zelda De-make

#13

Post by dangero »

This is a fantastic commentary on what makes a game fun. I'm always intrigued by titles that require nearly no art skills. "Thomas Was Alone" kind of surprised me in that way too because it was successful side by side with other titles on Steam while using an art style that was so simplistic almost anyone could have done it.

Re: Zelda De-make

#14

Post by [deleted] »

sthatipamala wrote: post #10
Zikes wrote: post #5

The associated blog post from Ben Purdy: http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking-zelda

What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor." Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I find such a software?

[deleted]

Re: Zelda De-make

#15

Post by benpurdy »

ThatOtherPerson wrote: post #11
sthatipamala wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor." Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I find such a software?

He says he stored the map data as a single PNG. So, each pixel specifies what tile type that area of the map is.

That's correct, it's nothing fancy. Rather than use anything complicated it's so much faster for these sorts of game-jam situations to pack all the level data into a bitmap and just edit it visually. Since I was loading the level image anyway for display, it made the process of editing monster placement, triforce pieces, etc very fast.

Re: Zelda De-make

#16

Post by Zikes »

dangero wrote: post #13

This is a fantastic commentary on what makes a game fun. I'm always intrigued by titles that require nearly no art skills. "Thomas Was Alone" kind of surprised me in that way too because it was successful side by side with other titles on Steam while using an art style that was so simplistic almost anyone could have done it.

It's funny because mechanically it's not too terribly different from many other games of its type. That story and narration are a huge part of its success, and well-deserved I think.

Re: Zelda De-make

#17

Post by alxndr »

benaiah wrote: post #12
sthatipamala wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor." Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I find such a software?

Presumably it just means that the engine constructs the levels from an exported image (such as a png, not a psd), instead of creating the levels from a more complicated data system. Because he knows the exact sizes of things, and "sprites" are a 1 to 1 mapping to game objects, he can easily do this. In a more complex game this would be impossible, but it works very well for his purposes.

Yeah, go on to read the Meta Screens section and it describes how this technique is being used.

Re: Zelda De-make

#18

Post by benpurdy »

daturkel wrote: post #6

Just wish I could see my current orientation! (Seriously though—from a given screen, I have no idea what the result of A is going to do or what the arrow keys are going to do. If i'm at a square and facing left, hitting the left arrow key will move me left, but if i'm facing any other direction, hitting left will rotate me. It's important that I know which way I'm facing.)

Yeah, I thought about that problem quite a bit. I decided it's just gotta be one of the challenges to playing this thing, otherwise I'd have to cheat and use something more complex than a single pixel (or add some kind of transparent or blinking "cursor" in front of the player).

Re: Zelda De-make

#19

Post by benpurdy »

Kenji wrote: post #8

Pretty good work. Didn't like it at first but then ended up playing it for a few minutes, even though I wasn't in the mood for playing games. I noticed one thing though, I looked into the code (it's neat and tidy!) and the game logic (updates) was built into the render function that gets called with requestAnimationFrame. Might be a problem on devices that aren't refreshing @60 hertz because the game runs as fast as…

Good point. At 30hz I expect it'd be like playing it on the NES when too many enemies were on screen at once.. This flaw crossed my mind when I was building the game, I decided to just ignore it and hope most people are running at 60hz rather than tie all the various game timing to fractional deltas or implement one of those fixed delta game loops.
Post reply on HN