In "Kung Fu", the player character is a collection of background tiles instead of a sprite. And I've got a few questions about it:
1. Why was this done at all?
O.k., a character as the background means less wasted sprites. But would this actually have been an issue?
In this game, you usually have a maximum of three enemies on the screen. So, there are still more than enough sprites and flickering shouldn't be an issue either since three enemies and the player wouldn't exceep the eight sprites limit.
And colors: I guess nobody would have noticed anything strange if the player and the knife thrower had the same colors. Or if the knife thrower's palette was changed right before the boss apears.
As a result, they had to keep the background even simpler than the already simple arcade version.
2. How did they do this? Doesn't the player character as a background require three mid-frame splits?
One between the status bar and the top.
One between the top and the player.
One between the player and the bottom.
How was this done? Isn't "Kung Fu" one of those very basic mapper 0, standard ROM size games without any mappers etc.?
In my game, to implement parallax scrolling and a status bar, I had to abuse the nine sprites per row flag plus the regular sprite 0 split.
So, how did they manage to do three splits? Did they use a timer?
3. Are there any other games where the player character is part of the background? I know of some games where bosses are the background when they are very huge. But this is the only game I know that has the player character as the background.
1. Why was this done at all?
O.k., a character as the background means less wasted sprites. But would this actually have been an issue?
In this game, you usually have a maximum of three enemies on the screen. So, there are still more than enough sprites and flickering shouldn't be an issue either since three enemies and the player wouldn't exceep the eight sprites limit.
And colors: I guess nobody would have noticed anything strange if the player and the knife thrower had the same colors. Or if the knife thrower's palette was changed right before the boss apears.
As a result, they had to keep the background even simpler than the already simple arcade version.
2. How did they do this? Doesn't the player character as a background require three mid-frame splits?
One between the status bar and the top.
One between the top and the player.
One between the player and the bottom.
How was this done? Isn't "Kung Fu" one of those very basic mapper 0, standard ROM size games without any mappers etc.?
In my game, to implement parallax scrolling and a status bar, I had to abuse the nine sprites per row flag plus the regular sprite 0 split.
So, how did they manage to do three splits? Did they use a timer?
3. Are there any other games where the player character is part of the background? I know of some games where bosses are the background when they are very huge. But this is the only game I know that has the player character as the background.