Project GagaWing (HOR help needed)

[GagaMan]

I've been thinking of making a new version of a game I never completed in Multimedia Fusion this time using HOR (the scrolling shoot 'em up BOR Mod: http://openbor.net/hor/), so I could port it to the Dreamcast. Here's some shots of the original MMF version I was working on:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/gagashot03.gif
In-game shot of first version, featuring first boss.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/miasprite.gif
Early sprite (with wings nicked from another sprite)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/gagapow01.png
Old title screen, Back then it had a different name.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/gagapow02.png
Character select.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/sprites.gif
Some newer sprites (yes, that is Cats from Zero Wing in there)


The game is a scrolling shoot em up based on my webcomic Manga-Gaga (http://www.mangagaga.co.uk). The game will have spoofs from moments from many of my favourite shooters such as Contra: Hard Corps, Battle Mania, Gunstar Heroes, Gigawing2 etc. The game would have around 4 playable characters, each with their own bombs and animations.

Only problem is, I have no idea how to edit HOR at all. I looked at the guide at the HOR website, but none of it really makes much sense to me. There doesn't appear to be any folders where all the images and animations are held in the open source release, so I don't know how to replace sprites. If anyone could help it would be much appreciated, so I can get this project idea off the ground.

[Christuserloeser]

Your game looks fantastic. I really love the sprites you did :)


HoR works similar to BoR (as it's built from the BoR engine), so some instructions can be used for HoR too.

At first, download the BoR Edit Pack here:
http://www.senileteam.com/downloads.php?d=5

To extract the PAK files, you could use the BoR PAK extractor:
http://borrevolution.vg-network.com/pakextractor.zip



The OpenBoR manual should hold some useful info too:
http://openbor.net/downloads/OBM.rar

(It's mainly focussing on OpenBoR features, but there's some useful general information about how the BoR engine works.)


The custom palette guide by Drikobushi and probably other guides that can be found on BoR Revolution might be useful too:

http://borrevolution.vg-network.com/tutorial.htm


Btw, the official HoR forum is located here:
http://openbor.net/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=12

[GagaMan]

Thanks for the links!

EDIT: Figured it out, got the extracted folder now.

[Lord_Ball]

Good to see some interest in HOR.

I know the engine isn't much, but it does have the basics.

I have made a few recent improvements - here's a sample ;)


http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/8318/horcharge6zu.gif

I've been playing around with the player info display so don't worry about it for now


Nice sprites by the way - sure beats the ones I made!

[Politiko]

HOR is pretty awesome. I hope to see some cool things to come out of it.

[GagaMan]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/title.gif
New title screen!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/bearboss.gif
New boss sprite. It's a screen filler!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/sprites1.gif
Some of the new enemies sprites. Some of these may change . And yes, that is a nun on a wine bottle at the end there. Excluding these last set I've been making all the pixelart in oekakiBBS (an online paint type program), of all things.

I have the first three of them installed into the game, but I can't quite get the collision detection (i.e - where they can get hit) right. I've used the BOR instructions, but for some reason I can only shoot them from their offset, rather than their bbox, and I'm pretty sure I have them the right way around. For example:

loop 1
delay 3
offset 29 34
bbox 0 0 30 43
frame data/chars/enemies/twit1.gif
frame data/chars/enemies/twit2.gif

(this is for that blue sprite on the far left) Correct me iif I'm wrong please.

[Lord_Ball]

I have the first three of them installed into the game, but I can't quite get the collision detection (i.e - where they can get hit) right. I've used the BOR instructions, but for some reason I can only shoot them from their offset, rather than their bbox, and I'm pretty sure I have them the right way around. For example:

loop 1
delay 3
offset 29 34
bbox 0 0 30 43
frame data/chars/enemies/twit1.gif
frame data/chars/enemies/twit2.gif

(this is for that blue sprite on the far left) Correct me iif I'm wrong please.
:confused:
It should work fine - I never changed how the collision detection is handled from bor - I'll look into it though.

[Christuserloeser]

I couldn't figure out the problem either.

Could you upload the original single frames for that enemy ? I mean atm, you got them all in one huge GIF.
It probably would be helpful to be able to check the single frames you're working with for that enemy.


Btw: That new boss looks really scary - a huge improvement over the initial one ! Also the new sprites are amazing - especially the nun on a wine bottle stole my heart on first sight :D

[GagaMan]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/twit1.gif http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/GagaMan/twit2.gif
There you go. The colours are a bit off because I'm not replacing the colour palette till I have all the sprites ready.

[Christuserloeser]

...which is a good idea.

Your offset is defined a bit too much to the right I think. Try the following values:


offset 18 29
bbox 7 8 22 20


That should do.

[GagaMan]

That's better in that you can hit them in their dead center now, but it still seems a bit off, in that sometimes you can shoot them dead on and it doesn't count. Hmm.

[Christuserloeser]

Then try adjusting the bbox

bbox 4 5 25 37

This value also includes the gun. Should really be better.

[GagaMan]

Now why didn't I think of that? That works much better now, ta.

[Christuserloeser]

Btw, if you want to ease your work with the offsets, you could create a template for all your sprites.

You create a default GIF in that pink color that's big enough to carry all your smaller enemies and playable characters. In Adobe Photoshop (I also use Corel Photopaint) you copy all your characters in there and adjust their position around one single offset.
Then you export all frames to GIFs.

If you do the same for the bigger enemies, you should only ever need to define two offsets for all your characters. One for the smaller ones and one for the bigger ones.

You sometimes even can use the same bboxes for certain enemies and characters.

A more detailed description of that method is available here (http://borrevolution.vg-network.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73&sid=07e4986231fe73e9dc38ef2c02b1821d).


Faster Offset Adjustment

Procedure:just take all your sprites or frames, whatever, and make a generic size for all of them, usually for me it's 150 x 150 on small ones, 200 x 200 for bigger ones, and try 1st making the idle animation somewhere , then use the same idle offset you make before for making all other animations...by doing this, you just have to use the same offset (and also maybe bbox's) values for every single animation in your characters' txt, saving LOTS of time. I'll try to post later an example, but you can always check my mods and my characters' txt, they all use the same offset and bbox almost on every animation . for adjusting the 1st offset and bbox, Photoshop seems to be the best program for BoR modders so far, plus , the onnion skin feature always help on getting perfect coordinates for all animations according to the 1st offset value you made.

[This hint is (c) by the almighty Mr.Q]


You'll be very pleased to see how great it works once you really got all offsets set up properly. Q's method currently is giving Rage of the Streets a major boost. :)

[GagaMan]

Sweet, I'll be trying that out then, once I've sprited everything.

[Christuserloeser]

Any news ? :)

[GagaMan]

I haven't had time to work on it much recently, sadly.

[Christuserloeser]

That's too bad. I was hoping that if you'd be working on your game, Lord Ball would have a good reason to continue improving and updating his engine with new features too...

Hope you'll find the time to work on it again. :)

[GagaMan]

I have a couple things on my plate at the moment, mainly and animation for a TV channel. I'd like to come back to it soon though, if I can be arsed to get on with the spriting that is =P

[Cupcake]

I really wish I knew the programming half of things. I'm a fairly good artist, and a huge shmup fan, I just have no clue how to actually make them (the closest I have came to making a game was with RPG maker about 7 years ago.) I think that HOR has potential for some great homebrew shmups. Gaga man, I hope you continue your work and hopefully it will inspire some other people who know what they are doing to start work on their own shmups.

[Christuserloeser]

Cupcake, actually I could try to help you if you want to make a shmup for Dreamcast with HOR. Let's start a new topic and I'll try to answer all your questions on where to start, how it all works, etc.

- Maybe this would help more people to create their own shmups with HOR. It's an excellent engine with lots of potential.

EDIT - Started with a little guide: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=49493

...and yes, Lord Ball is still working on the engine itself! I recieved a PM just a few days ago where he said that he currently is dedicating all his time to HOR for a really big project he's working on :)

If you wanna support him and join his project, give him a PM over at BoRGeneration.com:
http://www.borgeneration.com/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=14
He didn't mention he would need support, but I am fairly sure that he's interested as from what he described it sounded VERY ambitious :)

[Dull Blade]

Since I also seem to be rubish at C++ I shal also proceed my game dev dreams via hor. If java was used instead of c++, I would fell right at home with dc programming