Blake Stone: Planet Strike Maps??

[JonLeung]

I too, am awed.

[DarkWolf]

Thanks, I appreciate the comments.

[Maxim]

I'm not sure what's up with this:



http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/3852/cropqh6.png" width="418" height="185" alt="User posted image" />



Is the grey powerup (goggles?) supposed to be halfway up the wall, or floating in space, or is it just wrong?

[magicbay]

it's just wrong.

[Will]

Actually those grey powerups as you call them are actually enemies called ceiling mounted turrets. They're supposed to be marked on the ceiling, but this indication is extremely difficult to conveniently place. If there was another way, the maps would be at top notch quality.

[Maxim]

I still say the "transparent" walls are too dark. I suggest something like http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php">this to sort out your monitor's levels.

[JonLeung]

I figured they were ceiling mounted turrets.  But geez, Will, they're still top-notch quality!  



I can understand that only so much can be done, since the game's simple engine doesn't really account for a ceiling - thus being able to be mapped this way at all.



Maxim, that looks pretty handy, thanks for the link.  One of my monitors is always too dark (but I don't think that can be helped, as it's probably a hardware problem at this point, I always have it cranked up and it's still dark), and my new(er) LCD monitors seem really bright and I'm not sure if that's by comparison to my old monitor or if they really are too bright.  Sometimes I can visibly see the difference between colours even with with RGB value difference of 1, and I'm not sure if I should be able to.

[Revned]

Maxim Said:

I still say the "transparent" walls are too dark. I suggest something like http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php">this to sort out your monitor's levels.

I didn't even notice them. Definitely too dark.

[Maxim]

How about a shadow (even a lame one that's just the same shape in 50% alpha black) on the floor below them? It wouldn't be there in the game but it would be a good depth cue.

[DarkWolf]

The turrets do look weird.  I've never been happy with them as some are supposed to point in a certain direction to start off with (using the other frames looked even worse). I will try a shadow, the next time I do a few maps to see if it helps any.



The original game has brighter wall textures.  I suppose making the walls a little more transparent would make things better.  Part of the difficulty in the original is that the floors were mainly dark and the wall textures were usually bright.  It was difficult to find a balance between the two.  You can see the same effect with the "cloaked" enemies in this game.  When they overlap 100% floor tile they are just right, but are hard to see when they overlap a brighter wall.

[magicbay]

I'm also writing down the names of all the levels for this game and can submit them if yall are interested??

[DarkWolf]

They're in the map, I was just too lazy to put them in the file name.

[DarkWolf]

Here is a preview of the changes.  Transparency of the walls was changed from 75/128 to 55/128.  I added a checker-board shadow the turrets.  Would have loved to do an alpha value based shadow, but the script is designed for 24-bit sprites using 0xFF00FF as a masking color, and I really don't want to have to convert all the sprites just to do a shadow.

[magicbay]

that's understandable when dealing with programming code.



Most of the time it's just too much trouble to deal with and sometimes it's not much of a pain and it makes ya get excited to work on them.

[magicbay]

hey DarkWolf?



I was wondering about how far you are in the remainder of the maps and am dying to see them.



I'm only curious because I can't wait to see what they look like if ya decide to post them during the week or during the upcoming weekend.