MegaMan Bittie-Network Devlog Pt.1

MegaMan Battle Network but smaller.

Hiya,

   Alice here, again! After two weeks of rest and intense gaming with a side of covid, I'm back at it making a new project. 

   Order Up! went well but the deadline was rough and I had to scrap a lot to get it across the finish line. due to the wordy nature of that game, i was very limited in what i could do.  so this time i'm gonna trade in narrative for function and see about replicating my favorite handheld game of all time.  Megaman Battle Network.  it recently got a ReMaster, so its back in the public conscious, so there's no better time. 

   MMBN was my favorite RPG for the GBA, yes I loved Pokemon emerald, Golden sun,Final Fantasy Tactics, and the like, but MMBN had real time battles and that just hit right for me.

   It felt more action oriented and skill based, while still having some strategy in the deck building and usage. its frantic, fast paced, and in some fights, really difficult.  Also the damage and misses are not judged on a RNG roll, but on your placement and timing and weapon choice. Never loved when the difference between a win and a loss is whether or not one hit crits.

I have ideas for how to pay homage to MMBN while making a fun small roguelike cardbuilder.

One Step From Eden did this a couple years ago, and i think its really cool. it does away with pausing the battle for selecting your hand, and instead just random draws and feeds it into your main and secondary attack slots. I don't like this. it keeps the fight quick, but it removes the strategy of card choice.

There's a lot there I like and will take inspiration from, but also a lot i would do differently, plus I have my own style and design sensibilities id like to express. 

Am I being terribly innovative or original? not really, but this is an idea to run with while I learn how to use unity and c#. if i can figure it out, great, if not ill fall back on a Lua engine like Love2D , but lets cross fingers and hope i can wade into the wealth of unity tutorials and come out with a working understanding. 

I know as much as I love Pico-8, there's a lot about it that keeps me from learning more widely used code languages and methodologies. 

and i would love someday to work on a team of people making a game and I think that gets more likely if i learn to use more utilized platforms. 

so for now, I'm going to work out a lot of the ideas for how to structure the games code, and how to go about all of the moving parts, in Pico-8.

It will also make a really cute piece of nostalgia bait. At worst, this is just more exercise in design, coding, pixel art, and developer log creation. 

Party Mock Anthem

Its time to make a mock up in the pico resolution. 

were limited on size but I figured there was a way to get a 16-18px sprite to fit . 

here's the most basic outline of the main screen elements. 

its a tight fit getting it all into a square screen, but maybe this will work out ok. 

now we can add in some retro sprites and a little fun, and we have a loose visual approximation of MMBN.

All that fits, lets try to work out the design of the menu. i don't know if ill be able to do the art for the cards large like this. I would likely need to get into high memory, or writing a second sprite sheet to the map before loading the level, since none of this game uses the map, its prime real estate for art. never done it that way, but i'd love to learn new things.

i had thought it would be fun to make this NES sprites, but they are just too ugly and pico can look so much better than the NES.

Megaman X was my childhood but 16bit SNES sprites are too much detail, BUT megaman x for gameboy exists. lets see how that sprite fits in our screen. 

hmmm that works pretty well. i think we're in business.  time to hit the beautify button and pico that up. 

just beautify the zero sprite for fun. pull in the MMEX mettaur for test fodder, we will be redoing all the enemies later to emulate the MMBN enemies. but i think ill keep the base form for Megaman the X variant. lets add some shading to really make it look like 16 bit art. 

I really like that. i think this was the point that i got invested in the idea. i'm an artist first so its always the point that shows me the way. 

Can we build it? yes we can!

its time to start building this inside of Pico.

for this project i decided the hit registration and information will be inside the tiles themselves. they will be objects in an array that contain things like the if theres and enemy or player on the square and if its an active hurt box.

so i set up the array and then made a double for loop to add the objects with x,y coordinates, and assigned those objects a sprite to draw. and poof a map. every entry above nine does a pal shift to blue. 

perfect, now we can assign the player a position 1-9 to start them, and shift it up one or down one to move up and down, and +or - 3 to move forward and back. some limiters using modulus to stay inside the map and poof.

now we can move but this is raw numbers, and in MMBN theres the ability to steal enemy space, or have your own squares denied to you, so i had to beef this up. 

now there's a true false state, if true, it turns red and becomes walkable. 

now lets work in the most basic enemy and hit collision. 

I created a setup that takes in an array of enemy types and placements from an object filled with these details. it deep copies the enemies data and places it into an array of current enemies, and then i have it draw all enemies in the array. 

now they are here, but to hit them i need to check all of the spots in front of me when i shoot. most basic hit scan check.  used a modulus to check positions in a multiple of 3 in front of mega.

the enemies are bland and ugly though, so lets go through the roster of enemies in MMBN and make some 16x16 sprites. while yes i can make them a bit bigger, but the restriction allows for consistency. 

these are the sprites i wanna bring to pico. we will keep their animations pretty limited, idle state, flash for wind up, then an effect and attack frame. 

my favorite bomb buddy was a pain to get fit into 16x16 but it did it. i love how this looks. 

now Mega has different buster weapons for different cards, so lets whip up some of those.

get a feel for how the cannon muzzle flash would look.

lets get it all in place and see how it looks. a little face lift to the battlefield as well.

so now we have the health of the enemies tracked, the ability to kill them, i imported my shmup explosion, ill mod it to fit the design of the MMBN death blast later, but for now its in place. 

and this is where our first week of progress has gotten us. there's a huge hurdle in the hit box for different enemies and player shows, as well as the enemy AI to pilot them. Its gonna be a headache, and ill likely have to reach out for help, but ill get there.