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[Tain]

NOTE: updated this post since the game's taken a new visual direction

This looks awesome:

Official site: http://steelassault.com/
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/43113410/steel-assault (there's a pretty great trailer on the KS page)
Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=377961407

I'm generally cautious about smaller-team action platformers like this, but this is being developed by Sri K (who knows what makes the genre work at its best) and the proposal sounds great. The game's tone seems about as serious as I'd like, and the footage shows some awesome aesthetics (which I've wound up preferring post-rework).

The Kickstarter page puts to rest a lot of concerns that I'd normally have about a project like this:

An arcade-style game. What that means is: tight length, tight design, and high difficulty.

Multiple difficulty modes, from Expert (the hardest mode, which the game will be initially designed around) down to Novice mode (which most people will be able to beat).

You have one life, and there are no levels per se. Instead, the game will be one unbroken "shot" from start to finish, beginning when the player is dropped off in the first level (or last checkpoint, on lower difficulties) and ending when he/she either dies or defeats the last boss. (Remember how Sonic 3 & Knuckles had Act 1 and Act 2 levels seamlessly connected? Now extend that to an entire game.)

"Flow" is extremely important to us in designing Steel Assault. Many modern 2D platformers take the route of "bite-sized" design: hundreds of levels or checkpoints, each less than a minute long, and with infinite lives. But while "bite-sized" design is now a popular paradigm for platformers, we believe that this design choice severely limits a game's flow and tension, and (even more importantly) player immersion in a game's atmosphere and world

Fundamentally, we believe that retro styles should be an invitation for developers to push the limitations, not an excuse to fall back on them. We don't have any nostalgic pretenses or axes to grind with modern videogames, and we're not trying to sell you some tired rhetoric about "the good old days". We just want to make a kickass 2D action game.

Update: For reference, the game had a stricter Famicom-style to its visuals earlier in development, looking like this:

They also put together a style guide to explain when and how they'll be following or avoiding Famicom hardware limitations in their design. You can still see it here, if you're curious: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets...b81786df2e2e7f6c6408a34f_large.PNG?1419736901

 

[andymcc]

i only clicked this thread because i saw the words "famicom" and "tain".

i know how critical you are of many of these retro-throwbacks.... this looks RAD AS FUCK. finally glad to see a Famicom-styled game that isn't an empty riff on Mario, Zelda or Mega Man.

 

[Durante]

I really like it when developers creating "retro" styled games actually do work with retro limitations.

A far cry from the common paradigm of having blown-up 16x16 pixel 8-color character sprites walking around in 1 pixel increments on a 1080p screen with a true color background.

 

[RM8]

Looks awesome. I love when developers actually try to mimic the limitations of an old platform instead of just making everything low-res and calling it "retro" or "8bit" despite tons of colors, rotating sprites, etc.

 

[Ingueferroque]

That art style infographic is excellent.

 

[Dunkley]

For how misused the term 8-bit is in indie games, music and art, it's refreshing to see a game that actually is 8-bit.

 

[pixlexic]

expansion through carts is sorely missed by ones like myself .

F you optical disk with you slow loading and lack of expansion!!

 

[Eusis]

For how misused the term 8-bit is in indie games, music and art, it's refreshing to see a game that actually is 8-bit.

You'll have people argue this still, but at least it actually looks like an NES game rather than looking like an SNES (2D PS1/Saturn at an extreme!) and claimed to look 8-bit. Or just being highly pixelated but clearly too colorful to have been an NES title, and too smooth to have possibly been on a PC using that resolution too.

 

[Canis lupus]

This is from a gaffer I believe, saw it in the indie dev thread. Looks and sounds awesome.

Will there be a Vita or PS4 stretch goal?

 

[impirius]

Finally, some NES-CD prototype footage

 

[CamHostage]

I like it so far. I don't particularly have a militant stance on how "8-bit" a retro game should be (though I admire the developer's attempt to be authentic here) but there are certainly key elements here that remind me of those days when limitations were met with undaunted technical trickery. And the weapons so far seem intriguing (I like the "lightning ball" thing that doesn't kill enemies by itself but creates a line of death when linked to the player,) hopefully they have some good ideas for attack variety with what they're coming up with.

Funny that they bring up both Vice: Project Doom and Shatterhand, those are the games I thought of when looking at the screens. It feels like one of those forgotten games that you would have found out 10 years later was a pet project of somebody on the Castlevania team.

Finally, some NES-CD prototype footage

Apparently, the guy working on the game can actually do it and get the "FMV" to run in a NES emulator, he even posted the ROMs:

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11290

There's something called Bad Apple PV-FC 2 which was a converted anime opening (it's impressively long, but only a b/w shadow play.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRdGhHEoj3o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXRxHK-wlIo

 

[Crankshaft]

Shatterhand is one my favorite NES games and watching the game play definitely is giving me a similar vibe. I hope this is successfully kickstarted.

 

[SriK]

Hey, I'm Sri, the programmer and composer for Steel Assault! Glad you guys seem to like it so far. If anyone has any questions about the game, feel free to ask!

Also, I'm glad you found that thread CamHostage, ahah. I was going to post about it and other NES demos in a campaign update, there's a surprising amount of stuff the NES can do that people don't know about! Not much of it is applicable to games (except really limited ones like puzzle games or JRPG battle screens), but I still really respect the demoscene's accomplishments.

 

[SriK]

Thanks to the people who pledged from this topic! We've had a great launch so far. Right now we're at 16% funded, having collected ~$1300 across the last 1 and a half days.

That being said, we still have a long way to go, and any help you can give (sharing our project page, retweeting/reblogging our Twitter/Tumblr announcements, etc.) helps a lot. Every bit counts!

And like I said, if anyone has any questions about the game then feel free to ask!

 

[Usobuko]

Backed.

First project of 2015.

 

[Aeana]

You'll have people argue this still, but at least it actually looks like an NES game rather than looking like an SNES (2D PS1/Saturn at an extreme!) and claimed to look 8-bit. Or just being highly pixelated but clearly too colorful to have been an NES title, and too smooth to have possibly been on a PC using that resolution too.

Well, they're clearly taking some liberties (for instance, I'd be surprised if the NES could handle the screen swipe where the background completely changes from one to another as in this GIF, although I'd love to be proven wrong because it's pretty sweet), but frankly I don't think it's important to adhere strictly to the limitations. Adhering to them in spirit and taking the most important ones to the system's "identity" to heart is good enough for me. Similar to what Shovel Knight did.

 

[charlequin]

Welp, I backed this pretty fast.

You'll have people argue this still, but at least it actually looks like an NES game rather than looking like an SNES (2D PS1/Saturn at an extreme!) and claimed to look 8-bit. Or just being highly pixelated but clearly too colorful to have been an NES title, and too smooth to have possibly been on a PC using that resolution too.

I don't really care about this from a purely technical standpoint (that's neat, but if someone's truly interested in following the real technical barriers the best way is probably to build real custom NES ROMs...) What I appreciate about games that take this approach is that there's a unique aesthetic to NES titles that's hard to capture without the palette and sound restrictions. Shovel Knight feels way more like an NES title than any other "8-bit" retro game I'd ever played for that exact reason, and this game seems to follow a very similar aesthetic approach.

 

[Hero]

Hey, I'm Sri, the programmer and composer for Steel Assault! Glad you guys seem to like it so far. If anyone has any questions about the game, feel free to ask!

Also, I'm glad you found that thread CamHostage, ahah. I was going to post about it and other NES demos in a campaign update, there's a surprising amount of stuff the NES can do that people don't know about! Not much of it is applicable to games (except really limited ones like puzzle games or JRPG battle screens), but I still really respect the demoscene's accomplishments.

Looks awesome! Backing for sure. I know you vaguely commented on it on the KS page but how realistic are goals for PS4/XB1/WiiU going to be?

 

[PixyJunket]

NES throwbacks, my greatest weakness.

Backed.

 

[Voliko]

Sounds like my kind of game. All or nothing, one shot to beat the entire game, that's great. Love the emphasis on "tension." I hope they deliver.

 

[daegan]

Gave $20 just from listening to the sample tracks at the bottom my GOD

 

[Randomizer]

Ohh!! I would love to play this at 240p on my PVM.

 

[SriK]

I'd be surprised if the NES could handle the screen swipe where the background completely changes from one to another as in this GIF, although I'd love to be proven wrong because it's pretty sweet.

Totally can! Maybe not with those specific backgrounds (in a reasonable amount of cartridge space), but it can handle the general effect. Lemme explain how, in as simple terms as I can, and with lots of GIFs. Let's start from the beginning:

A Primer on NES Parallax

The way things work on the NES is that both the background and the foreground of a "level" are all combined together, on one single plane (like having a single layer in Photoshop). At first glance, it seems like this setup would make any sort of parallax impossible, since you only have one layer and all you can do is change the camera's offset within that. Indeed, a lot of NES games don't have any sort of parallax, even ones with backgrounds that seem like they'd benefit from it! Look at Little Samson:

The clouds are moving along with the grass, like it's doing a static pan across a painting (or photograph) rather than a 3D scene with depth.

But with a bit of programming trickery, you can time it so that you're scrolling different parts of the NES's image layer individually, on different vertical parts of the screen. Then, you can achieve cool effects like this example from Shatterhand:

...where different parts of the background move at different speeds, so that there's a greater sense of depth as the player moves horizontally. One thing you might notice that the foreground and background are completely vertically distinct. The level is structured like this:

...so that the "background" and "foreground" parts of the plane don't overlap vertically, ever. And almost all advanced parallax you see on the NES does the exact same thing. Megaman VI, Vice: Project Doom, Ninja Gaiden III, if you look closely they're all separated like this.

But the full story actually isn't that simple. If you look around enough, you'll notice that some very select games on the NES seem to break this rule. One of the clearest examples off the top of my head is the first stage of Batman: Return of the Joker:

Here's the corresponding "map", like the above Shatterhand example:

Da fuq? The background and foreground are mixed up all over the place! You can see the sky through the building! How are they doing that?

Because they're not actually scrolling the background, they're scrolling the tiles that make up the background. If you open up a ROM of this game, you'll find dozens of variations of those little sky tiles, all just offsetted 1 or 2 pixel off from each other! Something like this:

And the game is cycling through all of those, changing which tiles are being used every single frame, to give the illusion that the background is scrolling and the NES has multiple image layers. This is basically the Inception-level of NES effects, and as you might expect, it can take up TONS of cartridge space.

If you take this concept to its extreme, you get Sword Master's first stage, which looks almost like an early Genesis game:

So, with all that being said. How does this apply to Steel Assault's metro background in that GIF Aeana linked?

Well, you just have two sets of these shifted tiles -- one for the "before" background, and one for the "after" background. Cycle through the tiles, like in the Batman example above, and insert a few regular tiles inbetween to make the transition look better. Tada, screen wipe!

I hope everyone was able to follow this post and found it informative! I'm not that good at explaining technical stuff. I'm probably going to elaborate and turn it into a campaign update later, along with an earlier one on NES demos and its demoscene (or maybe reverse the two? I dunno yet).

 

[SriK]

Also, thanks to all of the new backers!

Looks awesome! Backing for sure. I know you vaguely commented on it on the KS page but how realistic are goals for PS4/XB1/WiiU going to be?

To be honest we're not fully sure about this yet, it's something we still have to look into (and with running this campaign and other stuff going on I haven't had very much time to). Console ports would be really, really awesome, though.

 

[Aeana]

I really appreciate the explanation! I was aware of how the standard parallax was done, but I didn't know about the tricks used for the more impressive implementations. Pretty neat stuff.

 

[sixteen-bit]

Looks cool. Definite Shatterhand vibes

 

[AcceptableGhost]

Sounds awesome.

 

[finch]

This is really cool and it's awesome to see all this information, Sri! Backing as much as i'm able.

 

[RedSwirl]

I'm just going to take this opportunity to mention Oniken again. Very similar taste, but basically nobody bought it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/252010/

 

[AcceptableGhost]

I'm just going to take this opportunity to mention Oniken again. Very similar taste, but basically nobody bought it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/252010/

I dunno about no one. That team is working on a new game called Odallus, which did have a successful IndieGoGo.

 

[RedSwirl]

I dunno about no one. That team is working on a new game called Odallus, which did have a successful IndieGoGo.

I'm just saying. Nobody talks about this game or Odallus, and both look very good for the same reasons as this and Shovel Knight.

 

[epmode]

This should really be getting more attention. Looks great.

 

[georgetheplushie]

This looks great. Backed. And wow, that soundtrack. Really excited to see this come to fruition.

 

[Faustek]

Backed!!

But man dies it look like they are farting fire during that "extended" jump animation.

 

[SriK]

Thanks again to all the people who backed from this thread! GAF is blowing up my Kickstarter dashboard, it's responsible for 12% of the pledges so far (the most out of any single source other than Kickstarter itself).

Now get virt to do a track.

Oh man, a virt track would be awesome. Something more in the style of FX4 might fit really well (one of the best chiptune albums ever IMO).

But man dies it look like they are farting fire during that "extended" jump animation.

Uhh... I'll ask Daniel about that? >_>

I'm just going to take this opportunity to mention Oniken again. Very similar taste, but basically nobody bought it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/252010/

I only ever played the demo of Oniken, but it seemed a little bit on the easy side (health fully refills after every area) and weirdly paced (the hoverbike intro to the second mission was harder than anything else in the demo, by far). The graphics were a bit too gaudy for my taste (as well as the music especially). Was decently fun anyway, though. Odallus seems super dope, can't wait to see how that'll be!

Haven't played Jet Gunner, that's another cool looking retro title that came out recently. I did play Shovel Knight and thought it was pretty good, here were my impressions from another forum:

I bought this and played a few hours yesterday, I'm at around the halfway point I think (7 stages in). Decent game (probably WayForward's best lolol).

The retro graphics are awesome, and it's really refreshing to see a "NES-style" retro game done with actual competence and respect for the system's limitations. The soundtrack is undoubtedly polished and well-done as well, but for some reason not much is really sticking in my head. The best music in the game is in the best level (so far), Treasure Knight's underwater level (with the campfire music coming second). In addition, I really enjoyed the addition of the Monster World-esque villages and bizarre NPCs, which is one of those little touches that modern retro games seem to lack -- super charming and funny.

The level design is the weak link here, specifically how long and drawn-out all the stages seem to be. This is actually aggravated if you play by smashing the checkpoints, as I've been doing (smashing all of the checkpoints in each level except the one directly before the boss). The game does a pretty good job of keeping it fresh by introducing new environmental gimmicks, enemies, and minibosses as you go further into each stage (and some of these are actually really creative!), but in the end it still feels like many levels are 1.5x to twice as long as they should be. (It also doesn't help that the game seems to have full health powerups after every major obstacle, making it feel like a disconnected series of encounters rather than a cohesive stage.) The checkpoint system could be a great idea when implemented with tighter levels, however, and it's definitely something I'll have to think about stealing for lower difficulty modes.

The bosses aren't very good either. They LOOK impressive and do impressive-looking things, but I think I've beaten half of them so far in the first 1 to 4 tries by just bouncing on their head with my shovel whenever I can and disregarding any damage I took (without having to learn any of their patterns). Maybe this changes when you go further into the game, though. There was a cool Megaman 2-inspired fish miniboss in Treasure Knight's stage which I was looking forward to fighting again (after I died later on), but it disappeared forever after I beat it

(Also, Spectre Knight's stage might be the worst designed platformer level I've played in, idk, a year. Who on the design team thought it would be a good idea to make the player, enemies, and foreground of the level basically invisible for half a stage?)

It's definitely a good game though, just not a really good or great one as the hype's been suggesting. I like this more than I liked Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV. 3/5

 

[georgetheplushie]

Uhh... I'll ask Daniel about that? >_>

I think the animation is fine. The fire effect may be a little too pronounced or just placed a little too low depending on how you look at it. It seems to start closer to the back but trails off closer to the butt.

I only ever played the demo of Oniken, but it seemed a little bit on the easy side (health fully refills after every area) and weirdly paced (the hoverbike intro to the second mission was harder than anything else in the demo, by far). The graphics were a bit too gaudy for my taste (as well as the music especially). Was decently fun anyway, though. Odallus seems super dope, can't wait to see how that'll be!

I impulse bought Oniken after reading a Hardcore Gaming 101 article on it and never played past the third level because I just couldn't get into it. It's hard to explain why; it's a lot about how the game feels to play. Odallus looks better than that, but I still think I'd take issue with it.

 

[SriK]

I think the animation is fine. The fire effect may be a little too pronounced or just placed a little too low depending on how you look at it. It seems to start closer to the back but trails off closer to the butt.

Yeah, moving the trail of the fire effect a little bit up seemed to fix the problem. Now it looks more like a jetpack lol.

I impulse bought Oniken after reading a Hardcore Gaming 101 article on it and never played past the third level because I just couldn't get into it. It's hard to explain why; it's a lot about how the game feels to play. Odallus looks better than that, but I still think I'd take issue with it.

Oh yeah, I wonder if the HG101 guys would appreciate this! I'll have to post about this on there at some point soon.

P.S. We're almost at $2,000!

 

[Lord British]

I'm just saying. Nobody talks about this game or Odallus, and both look very good for the same reasons as this and Shovel Knight.

I can confirm that Oniken is brilliant.

Not quite sold on Steel Assault yet... I don't like the sound of the "one life" thing. Even old-school games didn't generally have one life.

I do hope it reaches its goal though, and I voted for it on Greenlight.

 

[superNESjoe]

Yeah, moving the trail of the fire effect a little bit up seemed to fix the problem. Now it looks more like a jetpack lol.



Oh yeah, I wonder if the HG101 guys would appreciate this! I'll have to post about this on there at some point soon.

P.S. We're almost at $2,000!

Congrats, the game looks awesome! We did something very similar artistically with GunWorld. I love seeing other devs make NES style games.

Long live the 80s!

 

[SriK]

Thanks, superNESjoe! And thanks for the Greenlight vote, Lord British!

Not quite sold on Steel Assault yet... I don't like the sound of the "one life" thing. Even old-school games didn't generally have one life.

It's going to be carefully balanced around the one-life concept. For example, there aren't going to be any instakill lasers or enemies; even "bottomless" pits are just going to teleport you back to a safe spot in the level, with a bit of health loss. In addition, you have a fairly large healthbar. This is a similar setup as some early arcade brawlers.

Also, lower difficulty modes are probably going to have multiple/infinite lives with checkpoints. The one-life battle-to-the-death setup is just for the hardest difficulty mode (which this game is initially going to be designed around).

I should release an update clarifying all of this on the KS page (I've been planning to make one about the game's control scheme and HUD/weapons, and this goes along with that). I feel like some other people have been confused by this too.

 

[RedSwirl]

Oniken[/i], but it seemed a little bit on the easy side (health fully refills after every area) and weirdly paced (the hoverbike intro to the second mission was harder than anything else in the demo, by far). The graphics were a bit too gaudy for my taste (as well as the music especially). Was decently fun anyway, though. Odallus seems super dope, can't wait to see how that'll be!:

I guess it varies. Maybe I suck.

The beginning isn't that hard but later levels were for me. I died probably like 100 times on the final boss.

 

[@MUWANdo]

One of the Oniken/Odallus devs tweeted a link to your KS, so there's definitely a little camaraderie there.

My suggestion: you really need to start talking about (and showing, preferably) the game design a lot more than you have been, The novelty of the "Famicom-style" aesthetic wears off pretty quickly and the more time you spend explaining it or rationalising the parts that stand out, the more people are gonna wanna pick holes in it.

 

[Tansut]

Is anyone else kind of surprised that there never was a NES game called Steel Assault?

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

This sounds pretty badass. I think this is the first kickstarter project to get my attention after Volgarr; hopefully this is as good as that!

 

[Haunted]

Thanks again to all the people who backed from this thread! GAF is blowing up my Kickstarter dashboard, it's responsible for 12% of the pledges so far (the most out of any single source other than Kickstarter itself).



Oh man, a virt track would be awesome. Something more in the style of FX4 might fit really well (one of the best chiptune albums ever IMO).



Uhh... I'll ask Daniel about that? >_>



I only ever played the demo of Oniken, but it seemed a little bit on the easy side (health fully refills after every area) and weirdly paced (the hoverbike intro to the second mission was harder than anything else in the demo, by far). The graphics were a bit too gaudy for my taste (as well as the music especially). Was decently fun anyway, though. Odallus seems super dope, can't wait to see how that'll be!

Haven't played Jet Gunner, that's another cool looking retro title that came out recently. I did play Shovel Knight and thought it was pretty good, here were my impressions from another forum:

While I'm a fan of pixel art styles that are updated with modern techniques and standards, I totally respect the developer's decision to adhere to the limitations of the era. It's certainly no small feat!

Also appreciate the explanations and your posts in this thread, interesting stuff! Best of luck to your KS campaign.


edit: Jet Gunner is... a bit sloppy. You can tell it was made by one of the first efforts by on guy. Certainly doesn't have the same amount of polish as professionally produced games like Oniken or Shovel Knight. But it definitely has its heart in the right place!

 

[Shaneus]

As much as I dig newly-made Famicom-styled titles, I'm still hoping for an MD/Genesis renaissance of the same ilk.

Having said that, this does look badarse.

 

[BocoDragon]

As much as I dig newly-made Famicom-styled titles, I'm still hoping for an MD/Genesis renaissance of the same ilk.

Having said that, this does look badarse.

Well.. There is Freedom Planet.

 

[Shaneus]

Well.. There is Freedom Planet.

A single title do not a renaissance make. It's exactly what I'm looking for though, just want more of it

 

[Yuterald]

This looks pretty rad, so I just backed it. Like what I'm seeing and hearing. Interesting impression/critique on Shovel Knight though. I thought that game had relatively good stage design with interesting ideas properly layered/built-upon, etc. I didn't think they were too long either and I played through the game without checkpoints on my first run too. Definitely not a case of long-level syndrome compared to some other more recent "throwback" games (see Freedom Planet, ugh). Steel Assault's stages better be tight and condensed as shit then, haha!

 

[Ninja Scooter]

snip.

Holy shit man awesome post. I had no idea it was that complex.