Something Classic Games

16-bit characters are a lot of fun to write for and direct. They always get their lines correct, never go off on self-indulgent tangents, and will repeat a scene however many times it takes to get it correct. They are the perfect actors for the micro-managing control freak in all of us… except for a few minor drawbacks like having zero to only a few facial expressions to convey emotion, a limited number of gestures, and spoken lines read as text, lacking the nuance of a real human voice.

Far from stifling 16-bit RPGs as a creative works, such limitations combine together to create a unique and expressive medium all their own. Over the years, people who make such games have come up with a variety of measures to deal with the unique problems created by these limitations, and over the course of my next few blogs I’d like to offer some of my thoughts on these problems and the techniques used to address them as well as how some of them have been used in Shadows of Adam.

The first technique I’d like to discuss is….

The Hop

Freeze a character’s animation and move them up and then back down quickly. This move is “the hop.” Initially, the hop was banned from Shadows of Adam for being “too cheesy” and let me tell you, I was hopping mad about this because I adore this move. It’s a simple technique that offers so much!

Need a character to jump in surprise, in pain, or epiphany? Use the hop! This is especially helpful if you’ve got a huge cast of characters and don’t have the time, energy, or budget to create a fitting animation. The hop is also great for showing excitement.

But none of these reasons was good enough for my compadres. It wasn’t until we faced a very special problem that I finally convinced them that we needed to get some character’s hoppin’. What was that problem? An angry mob.

Long story short, we had a scene with a big crowd of people, and in order to express their irritation many of the mob were given speaking parts. The idea was to have our poor hero assailed from all sides by angry accusations. The first time I saw the scene I cringed. As the text plopped down on the screen you couldn’t tell who was talking. Worse, almost nobody was moving. The scene was dead on arrival.

Enter the hop.

The hop is fantastic at focusing a player’s attention on a particular character. So for a crowd of characters with speaking parts, it’s an ideal way to shift attention to each speaker. You just have that character hop then deliver the line. Boom! Suddenly the mob was brought to life.

I’ve been doing some caving recently. No, not caving into peer pressure or my desire for a huge bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream! I’m talking about creating a cave dungeon for Shadows of Adam.

Caves are a mainstay of classic 16-bit JRPGs. They are basically omnipresent. Quick, in under 10 seconds, name a JRPG from the 90s without any caves! … Could you do it? If so, post the name of the game in the comments and color me impressed.

One thing that I’ve seen countless times when it comes to cave dungeons is a certain awkward boxiness. The graphics look like cave walls, but the environment is boxier than the breakfast cereal aisle at your grocery store.

To combat this, a variety of measures can be taken, but one of my favorites is the use of what I call “seams.” What’s a seam? A picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go.

The above could have easily been a flat wall. Notice the effect this creates. It broadens the extent of the cavern and gives it a more natural, gnarly form without increasing the playable area.

Using a system of seams can really enhance the look of cave level, and given the ubiquity of caves in RPGs, I want to do all I can to give such a level some extra flair.

See you next time!

So you’ve got big dreams of making the ultimate RPG dungeon. Your art director hires some hot shot pixel artists to whip up the graphics and when you see them your eyes light up like the Fourth of July. Oh, the things you’re going to do with those beautiful pixels. That lava is looking hot!

Yeah, yeah, yeah… You’re young, idealistic, and think you’re invincible. We get it. The first stirrings of the dreaded CTS “virus” have yet tickle the soft underbelly of your vernal palms. That’s carpal tunnel syndrome for the new guys and gals in the room.

But there’s another problem. The tileset didn’t come with a user guide or any example level to look at. The pixel artist just whipped it out and sent it over. Maybe if you had planned ahead and mocked up all the tiles ahead of time this wouldn’t have happened. But that’s a lot of work and might infringe of the artist’s creative genius. God forbid you ruin their flow with your pedantic strictures and doom your game to a sub-standard set of connect-the-dot tiles!

Sure, some of the relationships between the tiles are obvious. But not all. The master pixel artist has many tricks. Some tiles you may stare at for hours, perhaps days, mumbling under your breath to yourself, “What… is your… purpose?!” until this escalates into a full-on existential crisis. Delightful.

So, like the great Leonardo da Vinci and countless other artists, you study your subjects (the tiles, not corpses) carefully and begin to learn their ways. However, there is a little devil on your shoulder (especially for tilesets evoking fiery hellscapes) telling you to just jump right in and start making a level. “It will turn out all right!” he says, poking you with his all-too-cute mini-pitchfork.

No. You must stay the course. Start with small structures. Learn how they fit together. Create the templates (if in your mind only) from which you will base your master models.

It’s the seams, the joining together of the larger wholes that is tricky. At first, this tileset is every bit the fiery hell to work with that it visually represents.

Yet upon further reflection, you wonder: Is it possible that even hell might be beautiful to its maker?