Hahaha, difficulty is hard to assess for the developer
For example, when I did Transball, I really thought the game wasn't that hard. But that's just because I had played soooo many times during development, and I knew every little detail of the game. Difficulty perception for new players is very different
I just want to add my thoughts to some of the points you guys were discussing above:
- I also vote for being able to skip the intro. It only plays once, but for example, I do not have much time to play continuously, so, every time I play one game, I launch the game from scratch. So, that's 1/2 minute every time I play 1 game
- About enemies coming from behind: this is a complex issue! Some games (e.g. Uchusen Gamma) give a warning when enemies come from behind, which is very welcome. Others do not give any warning, and you have to be on the lookout. That works better in horizontal games, as the screen is wider and you have more space. In my game I went for a middle point: no warning, but enemies spawning from the back only spawn from two different points, and always the same two points. So, there are "safe" regions of the back part of the screen. But this is a matter of game design, so, I think it's up to you
Yeah, already make my decision to make intro skippable... warning is not that bad idea, just I have to think how to implement it... (but I'm sure that it is feasable to memorize the patterns, they aren't random but fixed...)
Try to disable FM PAC. The game uses only the PSG and probably FM PAC uses RAM
just tried on file-hunter (web msx) and it works only in PAL mode (selecting msx turbo r Europe PAL, I know it doesn't exist) so try to force PAL mode if it is possible
I have tried all your suggestions...but no luck...
I haven't a TurboR (I wish) so I can't figure what could be the problem...
You can emulate a turboR in openMSX.
New update (V1.2) just sent to msxdev and file-hunter too
Spaceship now is faster, its respawn final position has been moved about the screen center (in case of attacks from behind) and during respawn is now possible to get powerups.
Enemy bullets color has been changed to fixed white for every level but level3 (moon level) where the color is set to purple (due to visibility)
it will be soon online
What matters is not the quality of the work but of having done it. Thegeps, you complain about DaikuMaryuGaiking's job when he does it with his spare time and for nothing.
He's not under your command. You have to do with it or find someone else. It makes no sense to blame or to go after him.
Daikumaryugaiking, If thegeps doesn't want your job, it's not worth insisting let alone in public.
If you think that Freedom Fighter has flaws, indicate them but don't criticize the author! Thegeps will fix them if he can. The forum is there for that. If he doesn't like criticism, well, leave him. This guy won't improve like that, too bad for him.
Thegeps, What is the technical reason why this image cannot be integrated? This ship appears to be roughly the same size (wider but less high), so it should take about the same space in VRAM. If this is not the case, it can take up less space by removing the landing gear.
The matter is the number of tiles involved. The code load font tiles during i tro, from bank7 of ascii16 mapper. And due to the needing double buffering and the possibility to write on all the screen they've been copied in all of 3 blocks 2 times (every half block is used for double buffer: 0-127 values first buffer and 128-255 second buffer). I can't reload rhe fonts everytime I need them or I had to switch bank, because I need almost the whole room of every bank for each level to store two exchangeable tileset to scroll, different sprites, different music, different pattern different boss (wich tiles has to be doubled too and must fit in the remaining room! Now I'm at work but lately I'll post here screenshots of every tilesets from intro to final level. Font's tiles are always untouched.
And trust me. He did that image only to provoke me. I know him and the fact that he was banned from the most part if FB groups he subscribed is a fact...
Soon I'll talk here about the scrolling technique I used and all will be clear. You just habe to know that first 60 tiles are used from scrolling routine giving 30 dynamic tiles (to have a 1pixel scroll by simply drawing precalc tiles you need 30x8=240 tiles sp it couldn't be possible to have fonts and bosses, nor double buffer too)
You can reduce the number of tiles significantly by changing a few details like this.