Topic awaiting preservation: Pseudo-Mario

Quite a while ago, I wrote a pseudo-platformer, inspired by an entry from TwoD to one of the 20 liners: http://wraypa1.demon.co.uk/JS/Mario/port.html . However, it suffered two major problems: IE only, and only a single level . Well, I spent 15 minutes or so this afternoon fixing the first (it now works in firefox), and making an approach towards the second. I made an editor:
http://wraypa1.demon.co.uk/JS/Mario/edit.html
I was just wondering if any inmates fancied a go at making levels. The instructions are on the page, though note that loading the page or new levels takes a few seconds. I was planning to make a proper version with a compilation of levels, and was hoping some of you would like to try making a level!

If no one wants to....sorry for pestering you

oh, and if you do make one, just paste the output here so we can all share your efforts!!!

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

drop jumps. how original.

editor doesnt work for me atm.

Sorry, works now. For about 2 minutes I had an evil bug. NEver found out what caused it, so bodged it

Should be fine now!

[edit]Basically, here's what happened. I was testing it on the server, everything was working happily. 2 minutes later, after posting here, it was b0rked in firefox. So, I wrote in a bodge to get it to work. Everything's running fine...until I try it in IE, and it's horribly slow. Now, the main loop is the same as in the main game, just cut down a little....and yet it runs a _hell_ of a lot slower now in IE?? now what the hell is going on there? Perhaps it has something to do with the construction of the field (loads of squares) or something. Who knows. I seem to be having a really bad time with my JS at the moment :\. Any ideas?[/edit]

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

(Edited by wrayal on 04-07-2005 22:36)

I haven't tried the editor yet, but for sure the line 62 is NOT a good idea. You should build a long string and insert it once instead of altering the DOM tree a zillion with those document.write( ).

Also, you should use CSS ( and actually CSS sprites as described by Dave Shea in ALA: CSS Sprites: Image Slicing?s Kiss of Death ) instead of IMG tags and image swapping.

Anyway I tried your mario script few hours ago, and it's really cool. I did not managed to reach the red square.

Ah, yes, of course poi. Obviously not thinking straight atm

I will have a look at the CSS sprites at some point as well - thanks!!
Still, reamins to be seen if that will improve in-game speed :\

[edit] Done - still thousands of images, but only one write, and it does give a significant boost - thankyou very much. Firefox still pwns it though [/edit]

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

(Edited by wrayal on 04-07-2005 23:11)

To make it short, CSS sprite are simply background images positionned to reveal only a portion of it just like the canvas animation method everybody used 4-5 years ago on JavaScript-Games.org

To get the ball rolling...
Pasting these into ozone certainly isn't going to work - too long! I'll put in an algorithm to compress them. For the time being, look here: http://wraypa1.demon.co.uk/levels.txt

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

Why do you want to compress these datas ( beside for learning purpose ) ?
There aren't big. There's only 436 values.

A few things could make this much easier to work with:

- Make the page layout work decently in 800x600; I hate maximizing my window.
- Let me click and *drag* to fill in areas rather than clicking each square one at a time.
- Give a button to clear the entire level.

A few suggestions beyond that:

- Provide a way to specify starting position
- Provide a way to specify a URL for a background image instead of the blue/white boxes (so we can actually make levels look cool), and maybe also an image for the player
- Make it possible to win when touching the red spot from *any* direction, not just the left, and when the dialog pops up and you click "OK," don't make the dot keep moving as though the arrow keys were still held down

Of course I recognize that may be a lot of work for little reward, but if you like working with this so much then it might be worthwhile.


 

Wow, what a compilation of holes. It was only going to be a bit of fun, but I guess it's time for a complete re-write. That's tonight booked. btw - I'm not pissed off about that, just....a little ashamed I suppose.
poi: I now have compression implemented. Before, it was a hell of a lot larger than that!! Can't remember the full size off the top of my head - something like 60*60....plus it had commas in between before = 7200 characters!!

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

I don't think you have to do a rewrite. =) I wanted to just point out a few things which I think, if changed, would make it more fun to edit levels. If you did them, it'd still just be a bit of fun, so please don't spend days working on it just for me.


 

Very good suggestions Slime.

Actually I'm planning to make a map editor, as I'm involved in the creation of an R-Type clone, in DHTML with an ounce of PHP to load/save the maps. One feature I thought of is the creation and use of "brushes". I want to have an area of say 8x8 tiles, to make some brushes to paint with instead of assigning the tiles one after another.

wrayal: Nothing to be ashamed. Afaiak you began to code only few years ago. I wish I made a game engine like yours with the same experience that you have today.

Oh, and as for the map datas. For the version that is online at the moment, you can get rid of the comas and store the whole thing in a long string. Thus slicing the size by 2. You could do something like :

map=('100110000andSoOn0010').split('')

Btw using the packer I made for 3DTomb II, which is a slightly enhanced version of Dithered.com : Javascript Compression, the code & datas to get your current map takes 622 bytes.

I did not tried to "reverse engineer" the compressed datas you gave above, but a simple RLE should do wonders for that kind of maps. A first estimation says the map ( still the one online ) has 266 state change. So at worst the datas should weigh between 266*2 and 266*4 bytes.



(Edited by poi on 04-09-2005 00:54)

Nah, it's stuff that needed to be done anyway . I'm not sure - this method is quite slow, but you're right - I probably shouldn't do a re-write. It is going to be fun, don't worry . I might have an attempt at re-writing the "ending" system - it's quite a slow method I'm implementing at the moment. Who knows - it'll be the first ever script I've actually bothered to get up to a decent standard, so I really ought to. THanks for the ideas!!

WRayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

http://www.slimeland.com/misc/slimelevel.txt

(Edited by Slime on 04-09-2005 01:27)

poi: thanks . Good luck on the R-Type clone - that would be awesome!

Anyway, I implemented the first three (same url), though the first one I had to cheat on - won't work in 800x600, but will work in 1024x768 :\

[edit] Just completed your level, and I have to say, that was _amazing_. Much more fun than either of mine, and it exploited the drop jump brilliantly![/edit]
[edit2] Using bitmaps instead of jpgs seems to have sped up some bits quite considerably, and when it's just 3 10x10 squares, bmps are ok . I'll implement the other 3 parts over the next few days. Though I wish transparet squares would work as a way to have a background, but that seems to provide no happiness :\ [/edit2]

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

(Edited by wrayal on 04-09-2005 01:41)

(Edited by wrayal on 04-09-2005 03:18)

Let me precise that I'm only involved in the graphisms of that R-Type clone which is done on Nintendo's Pokemon Mini handheld console. I only have 3 shades of gray ( using dithering & flickering ), and the screen is 96x64 pixels big.



(Edited by poi on 04-09-2005 01:49)

hmmm... I can't get it to load. Your site keeps timing out. Server issues I assume, so I'll try again later.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

Skaarjj: Yeah, sorry (connection issues, server was fine, but whatever...). Up again now

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

Wrayal, your third level is *evil*. =)


 

Slime: thanks - that was the intention I felt that the concept of having to scale that first column every time you landed on the ground was a bit harsh, but meh, it's a test.

I hope no players will use this, but people making levels might find the "b" key useful (work it out for yourself ) - been there since the very beginning, but was originally intended as a cheat

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

So far I never manage to pass the first half of the 1st level. When you are rather close to the left border, in the 1st 3rd vertically, and have to jump on several isolated blocks and an horizontal plate above you makes me screw my jumps