Gameboy Development Forum

Libbet and the Magic Floor v0.02 is released. Highlights include a demo, more obvious indication of the exit, and sound effects.  Size is 8848 bytes.

* Combine identical strips, saving a few bytes
* Fix head bob when rolling left
* Draw track and score updates using Popslide, a VRAM transfer buffer
* Draw exit arrows at top left and right of 8-cell-tall floors
* Fade from white at 90% and 100% completion
* Fade to white on exit
* Tutorial demo (press Select)
* Separate Libbet's elbows in push-off cel
* Sound effects
* Animate falling in a hole and being ejected

See the GitHub release or download the ROM and source package (72 kB).

Libbet and the Magic Floor v0.03

This is a small release, as progress past the fifth floor is still behind writer's block.

Highlights:

* Rolling and landing sound better fit the material
* Reduce clicking when sound channel turns off
* Show squash cel when landing (first of 12 principles of animation)
* Make hands clearer in push-off cel
* Dead code removal and other size optimizations
* Rules research: Confirm that 100+ score for 8x6 is highly unlikely
* Comparative testing: Add patch to make GBA version work on GBA Movie Player
* 8611 bytes used

Download ROM and source zipfile, or view the release on GitHub

Now I'd appreciate help with the worldbuilding.

For the next release, I at least want to figure out what the title screen, any% ending, and 100% ending are supposed to look like. This largely hinges on the answer to one question: Why is the floor?

To generate concepts for the title screen and especially the ending, it might prove helpful to understand what's past the exit of the last room. That might depend on who built the floor and why. I'd hope it isn't as dark as James Dashner's The Maze Runner books or Vincenzo Natali's Cube films, both of which involve mind-wipes and a prequel that spoi^H^H^H^H explains everything.

A boulder person has three gaits: rolling, scooting, or jumping. Scooting is seen in some of my other works (particularly the "Lame boy" activity in 144p Test Suite) but not here. Rolling is more energy efficient than scooting or jumping everywhere, and she can carry things in her hands while rolling, though (at least in cut scenes) she would have to stop and untuck her head to see where she's going.

As for the "why is the floor?" question, I'd like draw a parallel to Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese? and its fan sequels, particularly Mason Brown's Who Cut the Cheese? and Deepak Malhotra's I Moved Your Cheese. These novellas take place in a maze inhabited by laboratory rodents and Lilliputians. After reading them, I hypothesized that the maze is an offshoot of Rat Park, a late 1970s experiment at Simon Fraser University concluding that rats given enough room to live and a sufficiently interesting environment will have less tendency to use drugs recreationally. That answered "why is the maze?" to my satisfaction. I wish I could see how to extend them to "why is the floor?" in this case.

I'm also trying to leave open the option of a later world reminiscent of Hipster Whale's Crossy Road or Konami's Frogger, or possibly even an overhead adventure reminiscent of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda or Square Enix's Secret of Mana. But the exact nature of the challenges Libbet is likely to encounter in this world still depends on "why is the floor?".

For 2 months, an ending idea hasn't come to me. But now I'm wondering what achievements I can add. I'd like some of them to acknowledge player tics, like jumping into a Mega Man boss door or a Super Mario Bros. 3 Koopaling wand, or opening a Toad House box while sliding so it looks like Mario is sniffing his armpit. Are these any good? Can you think of others?

Completionist
As an anti-frustration feature, the player can exit in my port after completing 90 percent of the floor. But to reward skilled play, show the number of floors completed with 100% after the final floor is completed. If all floors are 100%, award Completionist and give the good ending.

Sink it
When you land on a dead end, it marks the dead end with a hole and moves you to the starting position at bottom center. But in the GBA and NES versions, when you get the last arrow by moving to a dead end, it stops the game right there and doesn't move you. So I propose an achievement that alludes to a tic that I developed when playing the NES version: if you reach 100% by landing on a dead end, this is considered sinking the ball in the hole as in golf.

Dash for the door
My port has an exit door at the top to give a sense of space to the floors. If a floor is 100% complete, and every move starting at the move from the cell where the last arrow was awarded decreases the Manhattan distance (|x - door_x| + |y - door_y|) to the exit door, and the player doesn't pause between rolls or jumps, award Dash for the door. Cannot be awarded on same floor as Sink it.

To assess the viability of "Sink it", I ran the stats for how many OK floors have at least one dead end. (A floor is OK if its maximum score is at least the area, the round trip reachable area is at least half the area, and at least two back row cells are reachable.)

- 2x8: 17%
- 4x4: 26%
- 6x4: 40%
- 6x6: 52%
- 8x6: 58%
- Chance of seeing at least one dead end: 92%

v0.04 is released

Highlights:

* A+B+Select+Start during gameplay to reset
* Combo counter shows number of tracks laid without hesitation
* Add achievements Completionist, Sink it, Dash for the door, No scope, No peeking, Restless
* Display achievements in a window when they are earned
* Display floor scores and achievements after completing all 5 floors
* Popslide: Option to limit length of +32 runs and literals to save ROM size
* "Debughex" option to display a variable at runtime even on hardware
* Rules research: Confirm 92% chance of seeing a dead end in a game
* Docs: Add guide to encoding video with bgb

9540 bytes used.

Feedback is appreciated:

* See how big of a combo you can make. I want to know whether players find it unduly difficult to make large combos.
* Come up with names for the floor sizes for use on the result screen. Currently I have "Corridor" for the 2x8 and "Anteroom" for the 4x4; the 6x4, 6x6, and 8x6 remain.
* Title screen and ending concepts are still welcome.

Download: ROM and source code (88 kB) | release on GitHub

I've added a note about varying achievement difficulty in README. I wanted to make a point of having a few difficult bragging-rights achievements because I've been involved with another game that ended up with a reputation of having a large number of very easy achievements. I made the game and added hooks for another programmer to make achievements. I wasn't involved with the design of the achievements themselves, and when someone else made the achievements, they turned out to be "buy this game to inflate your Gamerscore in 15 minutes" easy.

Libbet and the Magic Floor v0.05

It's been the better part of a year, and still no action on the last part of #6. So I decided I might as well push out what I have.

Game changes:

* Fix first word of attract text after achievements and combo
* Improve arm position in many cels
* Buzz on invalid move (#10)
* Make fades much smoother (#9)
* Make skin color distinct from sack color using 7-shade display
* Add pattern to black cell so as not to be misread as a hole
* Add intro that wipes away console maker logo
* Display combo that just ended, with sound effect

Behind the scenes:

* Build-time option to use tilemap $9C00 instead of $9800 (requested by mattcurrie)
* Docs: Describe achievement conditions, and clarify that some are harder than others (requested by ISSOtm)
* Docs: Document metasprite format (requested by ISSOtm)
* Rules research: Discover that bidirectional evaluation does not appreciably improve speed of floor reachability evaluation
* Encoding guide: Add SGB aspect ratio and frame blending

We just crossed the one-third line with 10976 bytes. But I'm not too worried about the last major parts (title screen, SGB, and GBC) pushing it past 32K.

Download: ROM and source code (98 KiB) | GitHub release

Libbet and the Magic Floor v0.07 is out

This release incorporates a graphical facelift based on feedback in various Discord servers.

Highlights:

* Achievements: Don't get stuck if player earns "No scope" just before reaching the exit
* Wall facelift: Add volume and top-to-bottom gradient to wall (suggested by Daid); remove shear on side walls (suggested by DragonDePlatino); define door frame (suggested by M-Tee); darken area outside floor on GBC
* Add a shade to the underside of Libbet's body
* Floor: Larger dots on black tile (suggested by DragonDePlatino); larger flat areas on dark gray vent/grating tile moving detail to corners; square off corners (suggested by IRCWIP)
* Compute entire GBC palette before copying it first frame (reported by toxa)
* Switch to slightly faster random number generator
* Work around crash on boot related to STAT IRQ in VisualBoyAdvance
* Document sprite sheet rectangle list syntax (requested by ISSOtm)
* Switch from dedenter to RGBDS 0.4.0 indented local labels

Download ROM and source zipfile (114 kB) or from the GitHub release