nes Super Sunny World - NES Platfomer

[matthughson | 171]

About the game:

Super Sunny World is going to be a very simple, bright, colorful, platformer inspired by Super Mario Bros 1. I'd like to recreate some of the "design magic" of that game, with a few little twists to the formula.

This is not a hack! It is an original NES game!

Development Schedule:

Originally, I set the goal of finishing this game is just 4 weeks! However, at the time of writing this, I am on week 3, and there is still a lot of work to do. And to be honest, the game is shaping up really nicely. I don't want to rush it out at this point, just to meet so arbitrary goal I set for myself.

Release Plans:

Super Sunny World will be available as a physical NES cartridge and a digital ROM download.

Edited June 3, 2023 by matthughson

[matthughson | 171]

I've actually been working on this game for 3 week already, and you can check out recaps for those 3 weeks here:

 

 

 

[MrWunderful | 2,926]

Great sprite work. Looks outstanding!

[Scrobins | 1,719]

Can you stop being amazing for like 2 seconds? Gah!

[fcgamer | 4,719]

This looks really fun!

[erac | 78]

Wouldn't it fit better if the girl on the cart also had pink hair? Now it looks like a completely different girl.

[matthughson | 171]

22 hours ago, erac said:

Wouldn't it fit better if the girl on the cart also had pink hair? 

Yup. Cart mockup was done before the game assets.

[a3quit4s | 4,092]

4 hours ago, matthughson said:

Yup. Cart mockup was done before the game assets.

For the love of god please tell me you aren’t doing LRG again

[matthughson | 171]

3 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

For the love of god please tell me you aren’t doing LRG again

I'm not doing LRG again.

[a3quit4s | 4,092]

8 minutes ago, matthughson said:

I'm not doing LRG again.

Hopefully that means you aren’t sacrificing a physical run! Maybe you’re even working with Mega Cat or 6502! Or just kickstarting it! Either way the game looks fantastic and can’t wait to play

[matthughson | 171]

41 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

Hopefully that means you aren’t sacrificing a physical run! Maybe you’re even working with Mega Cat or 6502! Or just kickstarting it! Either way the game looks fantastic and can’t wait to play

I'm going to try selling on my own storefront and distributing through Broke Studio.

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Consider me interested,  not that I matter in the scheme of things.  I don’t want to deal with LRG anymore than minimally required.  And most homebrew tends to look good but play wise shows it was amateur hour.  This doesn’t seem to be the case here, a rarity sadly but good for you.  I’d like to try and remember to keep track of this as it seems solid.  Weirdly reminds me slightly how Giana tried to ape Mario too, but this seems more effective in that respect which is a good thing.

[SuperJimtendo | 1,116]

Following

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Finally home and can use my computer again, just watched that week 3 recap and that's insane.  The music is on another tier, feels like from Sunsoft with love.  The gameplay very SMB1 but then a bit more, not quite 3, but hell that's just 3 weeks work too which is insane all things considered.  You are like eating and sleeping right?  It's clear where things are done and yet to be done, like transitions from growing/shrinking, maybe some effect when you croak, little things really which is fine as it's largely functional.  I stick with my hours old comment, this is on another tier than most of the shoddy homebrew going back a decade now and too many of the cheap hacks as well.

[matthughson | 171]

31 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Finally home and can use my computer again, just watched that week 3 recap and that's insane.  The music is on another tier, feels like from Sunsoft with love.  The gameplay very SMB1 but then a bit more, not quite 3, but hell that's just 3 weeks work too which is insane all things considered.  You are like eating and sleeping right?  It's clear where things are done and yet to be done, like transitions from growing/shrinking, maybe some effect when you croak, little things really which is fine as it's largely functional.  I stick with my hours old comment, this is on another tier than most of the shoddy homebrew going back a decade now and too many of the cheap hacks as well.

Thanks! You seem to get exactly what I am going for. Almost like "how you THINK super mario bros 1 felt".

[a3quit4s | 4,092]

@matthughson just a heads up on Broke Studios, I got an email from @dale_coop that the limited editions of Skate Cat were apparently shipped with no game flashed to them. Since they come from France, he had to get someone in the US to flash the games for him. I would be weary of using them simply because they are in France and most of your buyers will probably be US. 
 

Food for thought anyways. 

[matthughson | 171]

On 3/9/2023 at 11:38 AM, a3quit4s said:

@matthughson just a heads up on Broke Studios, I got an email from @dale_coop that the limited editions of Skate Cat were apparently shipped with no game flashed to them. Since they come from France, he had to get someone in the US to flash the games for him. I would be weary of using them simply because they are in France and most of your buyers will probably be US. 
 

Food for thought anyways. 

I appreciate the heads up! I can't speak for anyone else (and this doesn't diminish any issues Dale had), but Broke has been the absolute best-in-class in terms of manufacturing and distributing for me. I used them for both batches of From Below (NES) and they were amazing (carts for batch 1, and full CIB and Shipping for Batch 2)!

[matthughson | 171]

Week 4 has come and gone, and here is the latest update video:

 

[matthughson | 171]

Week 5 working on my new NES game, Super Sunny World, has been a little slow.

The good news is that the soundtrack is now complete and we can spend most of this week's video previewing it! Enjoy!

 

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Feels more like a sunsoft or demoscene chiptune type arrangement for the game, not bad, different (in a good way) for sure.  Doesn't feel like a set of tracks so much from the era other than a few select standouts so it's unique.  I'd say some work was done even if slow given you have a working death restart continue scenario going so there is an actual challenge to it.  How's gameplay testing going for bugs and other weird oddities?

[matthughson | 171]

6 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I'd say some work was done even if slow given you have a working death restart continue scenario going so there is an actual challenge to it.

Thanks. Yah, some stuff like this doesn't look impressive but can be time consuming. 

 

7 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

How's gameplay testing going for bugs and other weird oddities?

I haven't even really started looking at that, as there are so many obvious game breaking bugs to look at first. I need to get the game to a more complete state before I start looking for bugs in earnest.

[Tanooki | 4,930]

It doesn't need to be impressive, not in some early beta/late alpha stage.  Right now it's about function over finesse.

 

From my past experience where you're at now, you're approaching the need for a few checkers or taking a step back, evaluating what there, deciding on any changes now better than later, and implementing that along with any critical fixes.  Right now it would be best to make sure each stage intended into the game can at least be comfortably played out start to end, then if they roll to the next stage too, later then looking for ways some doofus will be different trying to break it as some gotcha moment.

The death/continue screen it's basic sure, but it works.  Later given your CHR and PRG space remaining, that's when you want to look into going ham wild on nice touches.  Maybe a cute animation, a more detailed font and text on there for GAME OVER or PAUSE maybe using that Mario style font you aped.

Nice little touches go a long way.  In the play areas the most critical thing I can think of to start to make the game have more depth and impact, add a background layer or two, some form of parallax scrolling.  Right now it's as stale as a smaller sized HuCard on TG16 where the ground, foreground and background seem to be the same layer with your sprites just moving around on top of it, flatter than a south park character.  I mean you did it slightly with last weeks little waterfall in motion.  it's a bit jarring given the rolling detail of the rotating flowers, shimmering boxes, and moving sprites.  Other little touches within the sprite limit, other secondary statics like the little flowers in the bushes could flutter over +1-2 frames too like a gentle breeze is on them.

Depending what memory mapper you're up to I'd go with some kind of static bar at the bottom like Kirby and SMB3 use with relevant details and the rest, gives it more professional look and character.

[matthughson | 171]

Thanks for the suggestions @Tanooki. I'm still a ways off from anything close to an alpha, but I will for sure be doing some beta testing once I'm starting to get some real level content in the game.

If you're curious, here's my todo list to essentially hit alpha for "features". Of course I want to build beyond this core set of mechanics, and I also need to build some actual levels, but this is the list I'm working through for now:

## Task list

### Enemy Behavior

* Boss
* Fire Ring
* Spiked
* Lakatu
* Bullets
* Fire Balls
* Squid
* Fish
* Hammer Bros
* Hard shell turtle

### VFX and Art

* Animated water

### Audio

* Hook up SFX
* Music setup per level type

### Meta Game

* Coin display
* Set Level Order
* Cloud Level
* Credits
* Checkpoints
* Timer

### Player Mechanics

* Vines/Climbing
* Swimming
* Flower Power
* 1UP
* Coin Cache in Blocks
* Hidden Blocks

 

[G-type | 2,479]

looks good!

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Well that's a good start of a milestone tree.  I was under the impression of it there were some stages designed already and the general enemy behavior was more there, but I guess not.  With that list it should be interesting to see what turns up by the week.