Kiko Klyde

@Kiko

I'm so cool

She/Her

trans girl with a little bit of autism busts is down silly style, is she goated with the SwawS?
also vicously watching #deep-rock-galactic , green beards feel free to come say hi

Discord:MewtKiko#5911

Kiko Klyde @Kiko8/23/2023, 1:03 AM

X @xkeeper

X @xkeeper8/22/2023, 11:03 PM

@sharc asked:

are there technical reasons why the overworld in link's awakening uses single-screen scrolling, instead of trying to emulate link to the past's free-scrolling regions? or do you think it's more of a stylistic choice to hew closer to the first game

my assumption is that it was ~~a stylistic choice~~ both, really, but also just simpler to do. link's awakening's room format is object based, and link's awakening's rooms neatly fit into this, being 10x8

every object is just two (or three) bytes: the x and y position are one, then the type itself (and length/orientation). some of lttp's areas are much larger, so you'd need accordingly more memory for that, and the gb at the time wasn't offering you snes-levels of space

there's also the motion blur aspect to consider. movement on the original gb was pretty blurry and fuzzy, so constantly scrolling on move would've left you with a lot of ghosting. focusing on making every room fit into a single screen meant that wasn't as much of an issue.

and, honestly, it just works better. consider the oracle games where every dungeon room is more or less "full size": it's just not as good. you get more space, sure, but now you also have to design around things just not being on screen.

#ask

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in reply to @xkeeper's post:

Irenes (many)@ireneista8/22/2023, 11:10 PM

yeah we assume it was a RAM restriction first and foremost, as you suggest. we'd also note that Link's Awakening has more unique set-pieces than LttP (in our vague memory... correct us....) and those things tend to need rendering hacks or whatever that don't play well with having a whole area around them.

X @xkeeper8/22/2023, 11:54 PM

there's probably enough space for extra room data if you really want (it takes up 12x10 bytes currently around C700 or D700, i think? i forget), and you could always just render things outside the view area on demand, but it's a lot more complex

Irenes (many)@ireneista8/23/2023, 12:20 AM

hmmm yeah, fair enough :)

X @xkeeper8/23/2023, 12:26 AM

it is interesting to think about what other games did this sort of arbitrary four-way scrolling, though; super mario land 2 is an easy example to think of.

you might find the way link's awakening's tilesets (and some other things) are configured interesting: for the overworld, they're defined by 2x2 rooms (so, an 8x8 grid over the entire island), with special areas dedicated to "any" used for transitioning between them that don't use any unique features (or ones shared between all neighbors)

Irenes (many)@ireneista8/23/2023, 1:01 AM

oh yeah we think we saw your write-up of that some time ago, now that you mention. it is very interesting!

Irenes (many)@ireneista8/23/2023, 1:02 AM

like it's particularly cool because that's the kind of detail that, playing things as kids, seems to be a sort of rule of some sort but it's hard to tease out what's technical limitation and what's graphical convention

noah @noahtheduke8/22/2023, 11:23 PM

and, honestly, it just works better

I deeply love the Oracle games but you’re totally right. The limits imposed by single screens really made LA sing.

X @xkeeper8/22/2023, 11:53 PM

the real eye-opening thing was watching other people play through them and seeing them miss shit that is obvious if you can simply see the full room, or get hit by off-screen things

it's reversed compared to lttp, too; lttp had a lot of overworld spaces that were multiple screens large, but most dungeon areas were self-contained to one screen or scrolled in one direction, the really big rooms were pretty uncommon.

the oracle games made all outdoor areas and some indoor ones single-screen, but every dungeon one larger.

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