DUNGEONS & DOOMKNIGHTS: An 8-bit AdventureQuest for the NES
Created by Artix Entertainment, LLC
Battle through a new 8-bit "zeldavania" game in the world of AdventureQuest. Available on a real NES Cartridge and emulators.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Happy New Year 8-Bit Undead Slayers!
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Jan 01, 2020 at 12:53:25 AM
Happy New Year 8-Bit Undead Slayers!
On behalf of all of us working on Dungeons & DoomKnights, thank you for an incredible year. Get your retro controller bashing thumbs ready... 2020 is the year we finish and ship Dungeons & DoomKnights. Here is a sneak peak at the newly re-re-designed DoomKnight, Sepulchure!
The DoomKnight laughs at the idea that you will be able to beat him in single combat... but little does he know your controller had a turbo button. (Spoiler. It will not help)
Now... it is story time!
The year in Review
As we bravely march onward into a new decade... let us first take a moment to look at our video game making adventures together over the last year.
Artix & all of your friends here at the Secret Underground Lab
P.S. We have fireworks (well, technically invading party sneevils which explode into fireworks when you hit them) in AdventureQuest 3D along with a special gift you can pick up. Come on by and bring your 8-bit weapons & Daimyo. Second to fighting the evil undead... Daimyo loves fireworks.
Our game in the Washington Post!? Also, timeline update.
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 02:03:58 AM
We were in the Washington Post!?
Greetings 8-Bit Undead Slayers,
Dungeons & DoomKnights got a mention in the Washington Post! It was an article on developers making new games for the original NES. Check it out for yourself... and pay close attention to their header image :D
Massive cheers that 3 screenshots from our game were used in their promo image. It fills my armor covered heart with joy seeing 8-Bit Gravelyn in a major news publication XD
Time Line Update
I hate following up such good news with some bad, but it is the second week of December and it is painfully apparent that it will not be possible to have a 100% full game ROM ready for you by the end of the Month :(
Player: WHAT!? Noooooo! Why? I loved your plan of releasing the Beta ROM this year and shipping the carts in 2020 after everyone helped test it.
Artix: Yeah, me too.
Player: So what's the problem?
Artix: Not enough time left before New Years. We are making progress, but there is an overwhelming number of tasks to finish. Right now we are focusing on the early game experience. This combines core game play, dialog, power ups, save, and toggling between platformer and 2.5D walk around into a single release. I would like to take the rest of the month to finish and polish this early game experience, then post a ROM in January for you to play.
See you in the next update post.
Battle on!
Artix
Photos! The Carts & Boards just started arriving at our lab....
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 01:37:52 AM
Photos! The Carts & Boards just started arriving...
Greetings Undead Slayer,
I love this post. Because this is the post that will be positively remembered as the one where this game project definitively shifted in the minds of backers from "IF" to "WHEN"!
We just received all of our gray cartridges for Dungeons & DoomKnights.
That is a lot of carts!
If you ordered a Gray cart... one of these is yours XD
Twilly & Zorbak open this one to reveal....
72 Pin Circuit Boards & Flashers
In this photo, we see the soul of your cartridge... the legendary 72 pin boards which will hold the game. Mapper 30 boards with 512K of storage each and they will allow your NES to save your progress.
>_> Hey, that is my desk!
... and I have never gazed upon my desk with such extreme joy :D
This shipment also included a few flashers to program the boards with.
You may recall the previous posts where we obtained the golden carts for the collectors edition. The physical part of this project has gone extremely smooth. I am so grateful to Infinite NES Lives for their hard work and quality.
A glorious glimpse behind the scenes
We only have one more shipment of boards coming... then we will have all of the complicated bits in one place!
We do not expect assembling these to be easy. But we have a small army of devs, a good number of flashers, and plenty of extra parts.
This is my favorite part about this process. When we originally made this photo, we created it by using two of my favorite NES games and photoshopping our game's cart art on it. The next time we create this photo... I will get to hold two, real, 100% working Dungeons & DoomKnights carts.
As you may already know, I am very passionate about the creative process. I have built a lot of video games, action figures, plush, armor shirts, and interesting things... including a lot of one-of-a-kind oddities (Remember that A-B-Z book I made for Warlic's Daughter's 2nd Birthday? "i is for integer!"). Never... not once... has it been easy. I am sure you 100% understand what I mean when I say taking an idea that is in your head and turning it into a real thing takes relentless persistence. Because you must push through challenges, negativity, and a never ending stream of outta-no-where problems (how does the universe even come up with all of them!?)... and keep going until you reach your ultimate goal. Every single big thing we do requires this.
To the truly committed, it is never a matter of "IF"... is always a matter of "WHEN."
With the carts on my desk as a daily inspiration, we are in an all out assault to complete Dungeons and DoomKnights and send the BETA ROM to you if you would like to help test. We will need the help. Because we will only get once chance to flash those boards with a 100% complete, bug-free, undead-filled NES game!
See you in the next update post.
Battle on!
Artix
P.S. Those carts & boards should look pretty!
P.P.S. It is Thanksging, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Be sure to check out all the releases & stuff we have going on in our games at Artix.com & HeroMart.com
Dungeons & DoomKnights featured in Dev Cart Magazine!
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 01:24:16 AM
Woah! Our 8-Bit game was just featured in Dev Cart Magazine!
This issue also covers the NESMaker Byte-Off competition! So technically, we are in this issue twice... because our submission "Artix: Knight of the Living Dead" was in the ByteOff section too. A lot of my friends from the NESMaker community have screenshots of their game submissions featured in there. Way to go guys!
Carts & Boards on route!
I got a shipping notification today that our gray carts & half of our blank boards should be arriving tomorrow.
Thank you again
I just want to say, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart.... thank you for allowing me to build Dungeons & DoomKnights for the NES. Words can not express the joy this project has brought in my life. I am so excited and eager for the day when you sit down to play it.
"Neo, the M-ARTIX has you!"
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Nov 09, 2019 at 02:01:32 AM
Greetings 8-Bit Undead Slayer,
If you are like me, there is something you have been wondering for a while now. How many times can a pixel artist re-draw our 16x32 pixel main character? The answer might surprise you. And with your help... maybe we can get him to stop O_O
Do you remember the gag below from when we started this project together?
Well, while I was per-occupied with building our levers and new code, our pixel artist, Clarion, just... kept... going....
"This is not even my ultimate form!"
>_> Which I am assuming is the Michelin Man by the looks of the one on the far right
Honestly, I was so proud and impressed by Clarion's unrelenting dedication. We had a lot of back and forth... ultimately arriving at this fusion-ha of the best of both worlds.
The thicker armor, especially on the legs, really feels right. It is so true to the original art. But no one will ever really appreciate how much effort went into the placement of every pixel...
For example... these are 4 DIFFERENT versions!
These are actually 4 different versions
When I first got this image, I could not actually tell them apart. Then I noticed the subtle differences in the waist and neck-plate. It is insane the level of detail he went into.
He also did a new version of Daimyo... but after this animated GIF was taken, I fed him a lot of treats and his belly returned to normal size.
I know a few of our slayers are wondering, "Why not have all of the armors and let you upgrade as you go?" Which, would be AWESOME if we could do that. But our character texture atlas is already packed to the brim.
Our NES characters are made of 8x8 pixel bits which we can flip horizontally and vertically. This is what you would actually see in memory if you used your emulator's PPU viewer to peek at the graphics memory.
Wanna see what that looks like too?
The PPU Viewer in the Emulator FCEUX
I know some of you are experts at this stuff. But for those who are super curious, it is neat to see.
Here we have our hero standing outside the gates to the Vampire Castle. We can use the PPU Viewer (PPU = Picture Processing Unit) to see what is in memory. Yup, that little square contains ALL of the graphics that the NES can grab from when you are playing on a screen.
Since we are looking under the hood, want to talk about new features?
FEATURE UPDATE!
It has been a little while since we last talked. We have some exciting new stuff working. Mostly because of Dale Coops help. Our flow is... I get some grand new idea and try coding it. As a result the entire game ends up broken, and then Dale Coop uses his wizard powers to magically fix everything and make it even better.
Levers - You pull them. Stuff happens. Puzzles in-game got 60%+ more better-er!
Platformer Mechanics (Physics fixes) - This Zeldavania switches the game on you whenever it feels like it.
New Map Move System - To make Dungeons & DoomKnights work more like AQWorlds & DragonFable (behind the scenes that is), we inverted the way warp pads work. This was done both for my santity, and to add the ability to make new types of sneaky labyrinths.
Re-usable Cutscenes - There is EXTREMELY limited space in this game. So, I hacked a way to re-use dialog screens and save some space.
Return to Last Map - The re-unusable cutscenes caused a problem which was fixed by adding a way to warp back to the last screen and position you came from. Which, gave us another tool to create terrible puzzles with XD
Multi-NPCs? - I am not even sure what you call this. We are limited to 64 monsters / npcs in the game. Well, we WERE.... I found a sneaky way to hide multiple NPCs and Monsters into a single monster. This also let me do things like have a mutli-part snake monster where the head and body and tail are visually different.
Damage & Defense - This was added a while ago, but the game now supports increasing weapon damage, and the monsters have a defense value. I still need to add a unique sound that indicates you are hitting a monster who is not taking damage because their defense is too high.
Faster & Longer Axe Swing - Been tweaking and improving the regular axe attack... it now attacks farther and faster. It is fine to spam lesser monsters back into their graves. Smarter monsters using the AI thingy I made will have ways of dealing with that.
6types of Breakable Objects - Not sure if I mentioned this in a previous release, but you can now upgrade your axe with the ability to break different types of blocks, statues, and other objects.
Save System - Finally tested this on a cart and it works perfectly. You will be able to save your characters progress on the card just like that, uh... other game that starts with a Z. If you are playing a ROM, I *highly* suggest using the FCEUX Emulator because I think that is currently the only emulator that lets you save Dungeons and DoomKnights progress.
CARTS & BOARDS UPDATE!
We are scheduled to get our first (of two) shipments of boards here at the lab next week. Really looking forward to sending you a picture of them. Mostly because seeing them instills that ultimate level of confidence.
Finally....
Alice in Chains!
ALICE IN CHAINS!?
The band?
Yes, Alice in Chains the Band O_O
We are doing a Battle Concert with them in my other games. You should unsheathe those 8-bit items that came with your Dungeons & DoomKnights pledge and hop in this limited time mosh pit while you can. Available for 3 weeks only.
