Hello!
I'd like to announce a new NES homebrew project. It's a puzzle game called Lucky Penguin.


Lukasz Kur (from recent Oliver Twins NES releases) is the programmer and I'm doing the graphics.
My favorite thing about the visuals is that I'm using flickering on backgrounds (to create illusion of more shades/colors on screen). But you can turn off this effect in case you want a traditional NES look.

Flicker ON vs. Flicker OFF:


I think that all graphics and sounds are already finished. But there's still things to be tested/adjusted related to programming. All screenshots are still WIP - but I think they're already very close to their final version. Feel free to ask any questions about this project. Hope you like it!

Love the font! Lukasz is a pretty good programmer too - I'd love to see this game in action

Looks similar to Kickle Cubicle one of my favorite puzzle games. Is it anything like that?

I concur. Great pallette too

Colors are amazing for an NES game.

Can you explain how the background flickering works?

edit: I was so curious about the flickering I forgot to say that it looks great and I'm excited to see more puzzle games on the NES.  

Absolutely gorgeous.

Of course. Every background tile is in fact 2 background tiles (yes, you'll need 2 times more space for this crazy idea).
Background 1 will give place to background 2 (and vice-versa) as fast as NES can. These tiles are very similar - but their differences will create an optcial illusion of more color shades on screen than NES actually can handle.

You can see/download literally dozens of NES flickering experiments at my blog: http://mcbremakes.blogspot.com/...
I always wanted to test it in a real game - and Lukasz was nice enough to give me artistic freedom to use it in Lucky Penguin.

  Thank you! That's exactly what I wanted (to make a "more colorful than usual" NES game).

  Not really. The Penguin *sort* of moves like Pac-Man (he doesn't stop when you stop pressing the D-pad). And you also can't change directions while he's walking - so you need to think well about every move. I believe Lukasz will finish a demo soon so you'll be able to see it for yourself.

  Thank you! In fact it's a very standard 8x16 font - but I've added shadow and a pseudo-antialising on it.
And I also placed texts in "wrong screen positions" (on purpose) sometimes - to make fonts use 2 palettes instead of one.

  Thanks M-Tee. You know how much I admire your work - so it's always good to read a compliment from you!


 

Really cool idea.  

Looks amazing. When is it coming out?

Puzzle Game!!!! Yes! Love it already.

Very nice!

LURDRURUDLDLULU

Level solved

I've always been a sucker for games with penguins in them. Neat technical feature too!

I'm ready to get lucky. Looks rad.

I love this game.

How fast is this flickering happening? Is it in anyway noticeable to the human eye ?

Wondering the same. I read your explanation to Kevin, but I'm still a bit lost. Are you loading up 2 nametables and then just switching nametables each frame?

I don't know exactly how Lukasz is doing (I'm just making the graphics) - but I think this is how it works.
Or maybe it's just one nametable and it call different graphics all the time, can't say for sure (sorry). But I'll ask him.
I know I've made 2 banks for in-game graphics: One for flickered game and a separate one for traditional (non-flickering) version.

  Background graphics changes every frame.
I've heard all sorts of different opinions (about how noticeable it is) over the years. Some people don't even notice it unless I mention it exists, others simply hate this trick (that's why you can turn it off at title screen).

In my opinion, it's noticeable but perfectly acceptable.
I notice that screen is blinking (pretty much like when you watch anything at 480i) but I think it's a big visual improvement - enough to make me choose flickered version of the game every time I play it.

I'll post 2 random Roms featuring the same flickering tricks I'm using in Lucky Penguin. If you like/tolerate it on these tests, you'll like it in Lucky Penguin as well.
If you don't like it you can always turn it off.

Predator Title Screen Remake by Macbee v2.0.zip


Battletoads Arcade Snake by Macbee v2.0.zip

  Thank you! I don't know yet - but I believe we'll be releasing a demo in a few days.

Wow! Very cool idea. Can't wait to play this beauty.

Nice! Looks really cool - I like the color choices.

We made adjustments on some screens to avoid problems with overscan.
This is the new credits screen:


And this is old X new title screen (I like the original title screen but the old menu seems misplaced when image is displayed - and cropped - on CRT):

Sorry for the double post but it's for a good reason: Demo was just released!
http://volvosoftware.com/heavy/Lucky%20Penguin%20Demo.zip

We still have to fix a couple of things (like in-game texts position to avoid overscan). These remaining problems won't exist in final game.
Have fun!

 

As I said in your NesDev thread, I absolutely love the animation. I can't wait to see what packaging artwork you come up with. I'd proudly add this to my very selective shelf of games.

Very nice! I just blew through the demo and it was a lot of fun! At least in the emulator, the flicker was very noticeable but not annoying. I think it looked great.