[Vanya]

I also might throw in one of those spinning jumps that happens a lot in platformers and copy Samus, because the jump will often cause the player to bump their head on ceilings, especially in earlier levels where the jump is low.

That sounds like a great idea.
Might I also suggest expanding the running animation by a frame or two? It still looks too close to the Belmont Strut, I think.

[M-Tee]

A,B,C,B is a perfectly fine running animation, no reason for more frames there.

I'll gladly send an nes file. Two things though first: Are there any other frames of animation I haven't made? Is there a dying frame or anything like that? Shoot me a screen shot showing them, and I'll gladly take a pass at them. This includes the upward shooting frame, so that I can have the gun nozzle at the right pixel to align with the shots.

Also, with transparent being 0, what order are your colors, in terms of colors 0,1,2,3. That way I can get the .nes file to coincide with your palette.

I did a pretty solid flip jump for Captain America a while back.  That game had a strange layout for it's flip jump, 24x32 char. sprites, with a peculiar p shape flip jump.

Would you be looking at 16x16 or 24x24 for the flip jumps? 16x16 are hard because they can never really logically hold the characters. (I always hated Samus' flip and ball mode actually.) But I'd take a pass at either.

I've since decided to move my efforts to gamemaker and original IPs, but I've got a fair amount of original (no edits) spritework done from previous half-finished hacks, love to work on little side projects, and I'm pretty strong with palettes from an aesthetic point as well, if you'd like some collaboration on the art side of things.

EDIT: Also, is the exhaust from the jetpack while flying part of the sprite or is it a separate sprite? If it's separate, it will need to go behind this sprite.

[optomon]

The exhaust is part of the frame. No death frame or anything else really. Lots of weapon related stuff.

It will be a few days before I can send or receive any files, I am in a remote location away from my computer. I will gladly send a screen of the tile sets.

[M-Tee]

Sounds great. I'm knocking out a 16x16 flip jump now, and I did a looking up shot with the gun nozzle one pixel right of center (even pixels, no center) How many frames for the exhaust?

[optomon]

It's currently at four, but could easily be reduced to three.

[M-Tee]

Here's a 4-frame jet exhaust animation, a 4-frame 16x16 flip jump, shooting straight up and a megaman-style slide just for good measure. 

All tops are compatible with all bottoms -except- looking straight up and crouching. I doubt with normal controls, you'd be doing that anyhow.

Also, I took the liberty of some redesigns of your aliens. Wasn't sure of tile restriction, so with the exception of the spy, I gave them each a simple 2-frame, full tile animation. As named on your site, there's the spy, pupple, glug, miglaf, and golmar.

[optomon]

The walk animation could be 3 frames instead of (A,B,C) instead of four. This style is more cartoonish style, 3D style. While impressive, I would need to put it up in the game to see it for myself, but they should look all right. It's reminiscent of the revision I did on enemy sprites in level 5. The spy is 3 frames, with it looking to the left, center, and right depending on the player X position.

[M-Tee]

Anyways, man. If you put these enemies in and didn't change the rest of the sprites, they'd stick out... and I don't know how much you're tied to the art you already have,  but if you'd be interested, I'd love to help you do a graphics update and give a very cohesive style to the spritework. Your backgrounds are solid, but I think i could take your character designs--which show some really great ideas--and give them that extra push to make them very memorable aesthetically.

Mull it over, let me know.

[Valkyrie_Ace]

Cartoonish or not, these sprites have a slick style to them, and the main character sprite especially is a significant improvement over the existing one.  I know if it was my game, I'd happily accept the submission (as long as there are no technical issues to implementing them).  I've done some minor sprite work in the past for a very high-profile homebrew release and I can recognize quality work when I see it, but I do acknowledge that part of the satisfaction the author derives from the project may come from making all of the elements of the game himself (although judging from the projects I've lent a hand to, this tends to become a daunting and time-consuming endeavor).

[optomon]

These are the sprite sheets for level 1 for reference. I put in the graphics you provided for the player and the glug alien. The way it is setup is somewhat disorganized, mainly because I made up a lot of stuff as I went along. The easiest way to provide extra tile space for the roll jump probably to make upward draft of the flamethrower 8x16 rather than 16x16 for each frame (unless I decided to alter the number display to bg tiles). Also the feets for the regular jump frame are the same as for one of the walk frames now. Also, the dead guy in the bottome corner is a different character, not the player.

[M-Tee]

Great, man. I'll have a go at it.

As for the flip jump, can you x and y flip the tiles in realtime?

If so, you actually have enough tiles available now for it. Although the flip jump has four frames of animation, frame 3 is an x-and-y flip of frame 1, and frame 4 is an x-and-y flip of frame 2. So it only requires 8 unique tiles. You could paste one frame over the legs currently in the jump, since it utilizes one of the walking frames, and then you could paste the other four tiles, two in the far top left, and two below the crouch.

Also, I definitely wouldn't cut the walking animation down to A,B,C... from A,B,C,B...  The latter allows even movement of the legs between each frame, where the former would have a jerky transition from C to A.

EDIT: As for the regular, standing frame, frame B (where both legs are down) is the only one that would make sense. I hope it's possible to ensure that is the frame for standing.
January 05, 2013, 12:10:45 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

                              

here's the spy, my cooling source, popple (with new spore for spitting), opto,  I tweaked the miglaf's walk some, and the dead guy (In your original sprite, it looked as if he died from something protruding or exploding from his back, so I tried to keep that look.)

I've finished a handful of items, and will post the rest and everything cropped back into the spritesheet in a day or two.

[Valkyrie_Ace]

Wow, those look pretty sweet, nice job. 

[johnny]

Anything new with this project? Were the new graphics used? How much further along is it? Updates? I dunno. Just curious.

[Pikachumanson]

I've been told he's waiting for spritework to be done.

[M-Tee]

Update status from the graphics end. Area one has (almost) entirely new background tiles, all new enemy sprites and palettes. There is also a temporary new sprite for the first boss, for which new behaviors are being programmed. The majority of area two sprites have been reworked, and the background tiles are in progress of a revision.

Currently, I'm working on new flamethrower animations, which require re-coding of the existing sprites. The current plan is once the flamethrower animations are complete, a video showing the updated first area will be uploaded.

These would have come sooner, but I distracted myself with a side project which had been planned for a weekend, but blossomed into the better part of three weeks. Luckily, the side project hit full completion as of last night.

[optomon]

I finally completed another boss last night. Here is a video of it in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1_Pvi1VTbk



This video also shows the new player sprite. This boss has a large sprite, but was able to work around it by putting him on the ceiling. He will move quickly when the player jumps too high, so it doesn't take kindly having its sprite scanlines messed with. This set piece was very expensive in terms of memory and data, especially the tentacle attack, but I feel it was worth it.

M_tee is doing a great job so far. The overhaul of Area 1 looks amazing. It's giving the game an extra edge of quality.

[FallenAngel2387]

So, going by that video, I take it there's a mechanic in which you can swap weapons in real time?

I gotta say, aside form the "metroidvania" aspect, there looks like no trace of the game being hacked left in there.

[optomon]

Flamethrower = tap B twice
Wall climbing fireball = down + A
Jetpack = Press A mid air
Toggle to make shots float/fall = Select
Shoot = B
Jump = A

[Valkyrie_Ace]

Looking good, nice work by all.  The game is almost starting to look like a commercially produced NES title now.

[Pikachumanson]

I can't wait to play this! I love metroidvania games!