The New 8-bit Heroes: New NES game and creation documentary
Created by Joe Granato
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Two things...a patch, and a beta cart!
about 9 years ago
– Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 06:52:45 PM
So two major things.
THING #1
For those of you who have checked out the beta and upvoted us on Steam, you are awesome! You've helped us tech a handful of bugs, too. Essentially, there are five classifications of bugs that we're looking at.
Design choices - these may be a matter of preference. For instance, some people don't like the acceleration / deceleration of the player and feel like it is too fluid of movement for a top down adventure game, while others think this is a great addition and helps the platforming aspects of the game play more interestingly. There are other examples. These are not *bugs*, but are player preferences of how they wish the experience was different. We have not made any modifications to design choices yet, but we are always appreciating the feedback.
Limitations /outgrowths of the hardware - An example - some people have expressed wishes that, say, there was more color depth, or that night and day were a little more distinguishable. Others, that the animation or sprites were more detailed, citing other games with more detailed graphics or more fluid animations. With the NES, it's always a matter of decisions. In order to have a game as complex mechanically with as much gameplay area and as diverse monsters and story points as Mystic Searches will have, things like animation (where every 8x8 tile of every sprite for every frame of animation for every direction takes up memory) had to be simplified. We have not, and probably can not make any changes to things related to limitations of the hardware and how our engine operates.
Quirks - quirks are little things that don't affect the gameplay all that much...for instance, if you bounce off a jump tile at the top of the screen and *jump up passed the top*, you might see the top of your head appear at the bottom of the screen. Or when talking to the NPCs, it will still make the jump sound even though you're locked in with the NPC. These are details to clean up, for sure, but don't really impede gameplay. We have fixed a few quirks, and will continue to, but probably not get to all of them for the beta. Still, reports of these are invaluable as we finish the full Mystic Searches.
Bugs - there are a few known bugs. For instance, sometimes when you attack a monster, it becomes locked in its hurt state for an exceptionally long time. Or when you slash a bush while in shallow water, it does not register a collision. Or sometimes when you stomp a trapdoor, it *opens* the ground next to it if you were positioned just so. These affect game play and are larger concerns and we are ironing them all out one by one for the beta.
Game Crashers - there are times when the game's memory gets inexplicably corrupted and all sorts of things happen that cause the game to crash or be otherwise unplayable. THESE are our main concentration, and we have found and fixed the only one we know for certain about.
We have already fixed a significant game crasher and many of the bugs that have been reported, and a patched version of the game is at the download location. If you need it again, it's at: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880758073
Please go, play, upvote, comment...help us bring Mystic Searches to that platform! And also, if you want to be part of bug reporting of feature requests to help shape Mystic Searches, there is a discussion on the steam page about known bugs. Feel free to comment there with your thoughts (or as always, email us or respond here).
THING #2
I continued to get requests. We were really on the fence about it. But enough people were asking that we decided to do it. Available starting now, you can get Mystic Origins, this prequel beta quest to Mystic Searches, on a cartridge. We will also be including a few features that aren't on the online beta
MYSTIC ORIGINS ON A CART!
You can order it *now*. It's is essentially ready to ship *now*. The only wait time will be for actual manufacturing, and we expect it to arrive in April. The decision game when we affirmed that this takes zero time away from our production of Mystic Searches and is just an added bonus for those that have expressed interest.
Again, to be very very very clear - this beta is 100% free to play on line. Some of you likely don't care so long as you get to play it, and will likely think this is superfluous...we support your decision! But for those that want the physical artifact for their collection, or want a true NES experience to be able to play the beta on real hardware...enough of you guys asked for it for us to make it a thing. So this is for you. And we're letting you know first so that you have access to *first run*, which will be on a specifically beta-tester colored cart (yellow, we are 99% sure, as that was the color for NES NFR copies...but we're checking on availability) and, upon request, will have an order number hand written on it. After the first run, it will probably be available on standard gray only.
***Note, Mystic Origins plays on any hardware-based NES compatible system (so YES to retro duo, retroUSB AVS, NES toploader...but not necessarily Retron5, since it is emulator based).
Look at the first project update and you will see the download link for the game. Most of you will already have a java runtime environment installed on your computers, but if you don't, just go to java dot com and download java...then the .jar file that contains the game should open straight into that runtime environment.
Also, while on the Steam site, please give us an upvote if you want to see us on that platform and drop a comment to let us know what you think!
Lastly, in case anyone wants reference to the manual (you may want to give it a glance) - here you go. We tried to really even keep the verbiage similar to what you'd find inside of an old NES manual from 1988! How did we do?
Also keep in mind - you're only looking at not quite 10% of Mystic Searches with this beta...so if you enjoy this small adventure, you have a lot to look forward to!
Beta, Steam, and other goodness...
about 9 years ago
– Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 11:49:48 PM
As usual, we are white knuckling things around here. But everything is awesome.
Our goal was to get the *prequel beta* up today, on MAR10 day (March 10th / Mario) and just in time for the Fort Myers Film Festival, where The New 8-bit Heroes shows tomorrow at 4pm. What makes this difficult is that it's not only a matter of the game functioning, but it's also working out the distribution method. We want and really *need* a central point where people can chime in on their thoughts, report bugs, hopefully share their enthusiasm, etc. We want to be able to track where the game is going and gauge everyone's experience with it. We want it in a format that is generally pretty universal, so when we start making updates, we're updating one central file, not something for every possible deliverable format.
This is why we've spent a lot of time working with Derek Andrews of Gradual Games (Owlia, Nomolos) who has a great virtual machine, allowing us to essentially deploy once from our tool and have a version of the game that is playable on PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, emulator, AND real hardware! Here's us on our first test day...ain't it cool?!
This whole thing called for a redesign of the site, which we will be working on for weeks, I'm sure...but the important things will be there this evening...the beta and even a mockup of a "Mystic Origins" manual (good practice for the real Mystic Searches one!). If by chance you don't see the link to the beta today when you see this, check back again a little later. It'll be there!
But not only that, we have also launched our Steam campaign as of today. For those of you on Steam, we really want to bring Mystic Searches to that platform for a lot of reasons. Help us get greenlit and please express your excitement or anticipation in the comments to help rally others to check it out! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880758073
The first thing you guys will notice there is the trailer. Now, we were going to do a really cheesy 80's style trailer, and still plan to, but circumstances prevented it from being possible in time for today. But this one still gives a great look at some gameplay footage:
(spread the word...make it viral, friends!)
Yes, it is a busy time. I'm looking forward to your feedback on the beta!
For anyone who may have forgotten the website, it is www.TheNew8bitHeroes.com. Again, the beta may not be up there at the time of my posting, but if you don't see it now, check back again in a little while and it'll be there for you to enjoy this weekend.
So to recap....
Go upvote Mystic Searches on Steam
Go check out the beta on the site
Enjoy the weekend in all of its impending pixelated bliss
The Holdup, in all of it it's wretched splendor...
about 9 years ago
– Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 06:06:28 PM
What's the hold up with the beta? The world is built. The NPCs in place. The monsters rockin. The music glorious. Despite it's couple of quirks, "Mystic Origins" is a great little NES game in its own right, and a perfect vertical slice of Mystic Searches. It is fully ready to be played...
Except this obnoxious cosmetic glitch. Which has been thwarting me for three weeks now. I've rewritten so much code that my fingers have calluses, and we've tweaked the tool to death.
The good news is, this little issue IS able to be circumvented temporarily as a band-aid solution if need be to get the beta out, but I am hoping to completely discover the problem before moving forward.
Here is 8 minutes of explaining and teching the problem for my fellow NES developers. It really is a head scratcher, it seems.
For those that like the behind the scenes stuff, this is for you. And it offers yet another quick glimpse at NESmaker.
A few hiccups with the beta -
about 9 years ago
– Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 10:35:10 AM
Alright, there are two tiny hiccups with the beta release, and I thought I'd share them.
1) When playing on the actual hardware, there is an anomalous issue. On certain screens (specifically, when a room is populated by certain monsters) there is a graphic glitch that manifests on the screen. It is a weird horizontal line that shows up on the screen that looks *glitchy*. Oddly enough, I saw this happen one time on an emulator and fixed what I determined to be the problem...Now, this does not happen on the emulators, only on actual hardware and I can not seem to trace a cause. Erasing a few of the monsters from the program fixed it but then seemed to then affect other monsters the same way. So this suggests one of three possible options.
Worst case scenario - it could be a glitch in the code. At this point, since it doesn't manifest in the emulator, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are almost 120,000 lines of code, and since I don't know what's causing it and it's a hard thing to reproduce, this will be excruciating to track down. While this isn't a *game ending bug* or anything, it is obnoxious enough that I want to find it now before it gets worse.
Slightly less obnoxious a potential problem, but still a pain...it could be a glitch in our TOOL. I was making modifications to monsters and monster groups frequently. Maybe when deleting a monster or monster group, *something* didn't fix right in our array. That could have anomalous results, but those results *should* appear in the emulator as well, so....?
Lastly, it is completely possible that the board I have used as our demo cart has developed a few bad sectors. This would track...that when we shift the memory around slightly (by deleting monsters) new things are affected (that now occupy that memory space). And man, we have beat the hell out of that board and that cart with all of our travels and constant flashing, bashing around in the bottom of suitcases, having things spilled on it, taking it apart to demo the board...And it would also explain why we don't have the behavior on the emulators.
We are sincerely hoping it is the last of those three, because then the problem is not really a problem. I have ordered a few replacement carts to test this, while continuing to check for other issues.
2) The other issue is how we will distribute the beta. Our original intention was to begin our Steam Greenlight campaign for Mystic Searches, and make this beta downloadable as part of that campaign. Now, it seems, Steam Greenlight has announced a major overhaul to this paradigm. We are uncertain how to proceed. We are reworking our website to support this in the event Greenlight is no longer an option.
Just wanted to let you guys know what the hold up was! In the meantime, here are a few pencil sketches from the prequel quest (and possibly the actual Mystic Searches) manual of Julain's behaviors:
