This is my first real "Project" and not just a neat program like the Spirograph emulator I made last week. I am building a "port" of the popular economy game Animal Crossing, though with different mechanics and obviously a differently name due to trademark issues. I am writing it using PT_'s fabulous ICE compiler, using standard 16x16 sprites. I'll be releasing new versions as often as I can after I get a beta out, and I'll keep updating it until I can't anymore!

The current phase of my project is just creating basic sprites that align with the aesthetics of the previous games, such as grass, trees, paths, sand, water, cliffs, etc. next I'll begin writing a rudimentary engine including the necessities such as collision detection, sidescrolling, matrix querying and the like. As soon as I have a functional world to walk around in I'll make an upload.

Im considering switching to 32x32 sprites now that I think about it. I know it won't line up perfectly, but that will make room for a nice status bar just like in the game.

EDIT:
You may notice that the following screenshot is slightly less tall than your normal CE screen. This is only due to some negative space below the sprites that were cropped out. The space is 16 pixels tall and will be used for a status bar later on.

Here's your long awaited screenshot; It's just a simple sprite test with a barebones sidescroller. Expect a functional beta side scrolling engine and boundschecking mechanics in the next couple of weeks, keeping in mind that I still have tons of sprites and other tedious things to do on it. Also I'm in school so rip.

I've decided to use 32x32 sprites now because with a sidescrolling capability it will be more than enough. Also, it would make the game too easy if you were able to see a lot of your town on one screen. It makes roaming your town useless and not fun.

I would vote 16x16 sprites, just because of the size. Anywho, good luck with this program and ICE!

You're saying that 4096 byte sprites are too much data? luckily we have your handy scale sprite command so we can enlarge the sprites whenever we want!

Yeah, they kinda are, for a game that requires a lot of em'... Unless they are compressed somehow, which I do not believe is possible.

Anyway, HYPE TRAIN!!!

I don't know how detailed your sprites would be, but if they were just <16 colors for each you could maybe use a palette system? Like where each tile had a color set it used, and there were multiple color sets? That'd cut the size in half, or so I think.
32x32=1024 though, so why would each sprite take 4096 bytes? They don't all take 4 bytes per pixel, do they? :\

I'm no expert, but RGBA maybe? Or RGB and some constant. I don't really know, but there's probably a very good reason. I'll do some research and add an edit.

If you had 16x16 scaled up to 32x32 size, in 8bpp mode but with only 16 colors (4 bits) per pixel, I think that would be 16x16/2+1 bytes per sprite, which would be 129 bytes per sprite. Then you could do bitmasking for a palette like "XXXXYYYYb" with YYYY being color and XXXX being palette. That'd compress sprites a lot.

Yes. But that doesn't work in ICE. You will have to stick with 1 byte per pixel and the xLIBC palette.

Oops, forgot it was ICE.

I'll be back with more this week on HCWP!

*nudges PT_*

Boy I sure wish you could use Matrices in ICE...

Just use lists, and at the end of each line put a number that won't be there normally. When you go through the list and detect that number, treat the next section as a new line.

Alternatively, store the starting positions of each line either to the beginning of the list or to a separate list.

Heck, why not store 2 numbers at the 2 first positions of each list and make a 3d matrix

That is clearly the route I'm going to end up taking, though ICE lists are limited to about 7000 elements, which I'm not yet sure are enough for a world map. Also, named lists are not usable in ICE. Nonetheless, ICE is amazing and everyone should use it!

*hecking intensifies*

Keep in mind I only have but six possible lists!

First off: ONLY 7000 ELEMENTS?! Holy crud! That's a really bad programming language....


Also:
A wild Shameless ICE ad has appeared!

EDIT: If we had a screenshot for everytime I have typed "Shameless ICE ad" we would have... More screenshots then we have now. Please

Yes ONLY 7000. lol step on it PT_.

Keep in mind TI-BASIC lists are usually a measly 999 elements though lol

I know

If you start with L5, you have about 66K of free, continuous RAM, which means 22000 elements, which should be enough..


Wait what?