Last year I had a little side project going where I would do a quick update to Dragons of Rage. At first I just wanted to fix the colors and animation glitches, but (no offense to Kingherb meant), the further I went, the more issues I found. Pretty soon it turned into a whole rework, and honestly after a while I just lost interest in it.
However, it does serve as a nice demo of some of the many things you can do with sub-screens. In this case, custom HUDs.
The important part is @01:04. Notice that as enemies are defeated, their icons fade away, then others to the right and below slide in to fill any blank spots. In actuality, each player's and each enemy's HUD is its own small sub-screen. The icons and life blocks are calculated first, then drawn to the screen. Then I added some little touches like a sine wave color graduation (i.e. the life blocks constantly fade brighter/darker).
Now, you could draw items like this directly to the display, but screens give several advantages. The first, is that I can apply drawmethods both to the sprites IN the screen, and then TO the screen, and control them separately. So, that gives me the ability to have the aforementioned sine color life blocks, while also fading the entire thing away on defeat. The second is location. Sprite position within a sub-screen is relevant to the sub-screen. That means instead of having to work the positioning math for all those sprites separately, I just figure out where I want them in the screen, then move the screen where I want it to go.
This is just the tip of the iceberg with what sub-screens can do. When I get a chance, I'll try and post a full tutorial on how to put it all together.
DC
However, it does serve as a nice demo of some of the many things you can do with sub-screens. In this case, custom HUDs.
The important part is @01:04. Notice that as enemies are defeated, their icons fade away, then others to the right and below slide in to fill any blank spots. In actuality, each player's and each enemy's HUD is its own small sub-screen. The icons and life blocks are calculated first, then drawn to the screen. Then I added some little touches like a sine wave color graduation (i.e. the life blocks constantly fade brighter/darker).
Now, you could draw items like this directly to the display, but screens give several advantages. The first, is that I can apply drawmethods both to the sprites IN the screen, and then TO the screen, and control them separately. So, that gives me the ability to have the aforementioned sine color life blocks, while also fading the entire thing away on defeat. The second is location. Sprite position within a sub-screen is relevant to the sub-screen. That means instead of having to work the positioning math for all those sprites separately, I just figure out where I want them in the screen, then move the screen where I want it to go.
This is just the tip of the iceberg with what sub-screens can do. When I get a chance, I'll try and post a full tutorial on how to put it all together.
DC
