Muri dev blog, part 2

2013-12-01

It's time for another Muri post! Graphics The game emulates the 320*200 EGA graphics mode that uses the 16 CGA colors for its palette. I've actually only played a few games that ran in this, like Duke Nukem, which used the optional brown color instead of gold. There's a lot you can do with these 16 colors, but I didn't want to use dithering or more advanced pixelart, since it would look more like an Amiga game in style. I was rather inspired by the simplistic look of games like Electro Man, plus I'm not that good of an artist. You might remember the bright-red and yellow character portraits in Duke Nukem - it's hard to get a proper skin tone, especially a darker one, with these colors without heavy dithering. The only time you see Adwoa without the helmet is when red sunlight is reflected in her face, providing some context for the high contrast. Thanks to Scott Robertson for help with this! The only other time people's faces are seen is in a greyscale portrait, which probably looks better than if I'd tried to do it in the 16-color palette. Speaking of these limitations, the colors used for the Muri suit were chosen to stand out from the background and enemies, and each suit has a different colored visor. Smooth mode Late in development, I realized that the game - which normally runs in 16 frames per second - may be too archaic (and a bit nauseating) for most people. The low framerate also makes it harder to turn around quickly or react to enemy bullets. After a bit of testing with doubling the framerate and rewriting the code for the player character, I decided to implement a 32 FPS "smooth mode". The smooth mode required programming special cases or timing changes for all the logic in the game, which was pretty tedious. I think it was the right decision in the end though, making the game more visually appealing to players who don't want their retro games that retro. Essentially, it just makes everything move twice as smoothly. The game asks you to select the "authentic" or "smooth" mode on first startup, but can be easily changed in the options afterwards. It was the only option I considered important enough to ask the player about, since many players never go into the options menu. The next post will be about sound, enemies and pickups!