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SNES dynamic split-screen demo's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Hardware | #11 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Theme | #14 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
| Graphics | #14 | 1.750 | 1.750 |
| Overall | #14 | 1.950 | 1.950 |
| Gameplay | #14 | 1.500 | 1.500 |
| Sound | #15 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- It's more of a technical demo, but the effect works really well. Too bad there are still a few graphic glitches (when we press a button)... Animated tiles and even minimal interaction with the cities would have enhanced the evaluation, I think...
- Indeed, as you rightly pointed out, this isn’t actually a game. So unfortunately, it’s very hard for us to properly rate it. It’s just a technical demo. So apologies if our rating seemed a bit harsh — we evaluated it as if it were a full game, not just a technical demo. Anyway, thank you for taking part.
- Not a game but very cool, it's like the screen splitting effect in the DBZ Super Butoden Trilogy. I hope you will utilize it for a game, maybe a board game type of concept?
- Nice demo, would like to see more of this and what to do with it.
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Comments
This is an interesting tech demo! Did you have a game concept you were planning to utilize this, or was the plan to always just focus on the effect?
I'd love to know how you plan to build on this :)
Thanks!
I had the very loose concept of trying coop game mechanics, hence the need to share an environment but let each player explore it separately. Or was it just an excuse to try my hand at dynamic split-screen? :'-) Unfortunately I quickly lost motivation and barely touched it after mid-june.
I'm honestly not sure if I'll try to make a real game from it, but I've already had an interesting discussion on discord which pointed at promising improvements in the way the effect is done.
It made me think of modern games by Hazelight Studios such as Split Fiction or It Takes Two. Neither of those had a dynamic split-screen to my knowledge, but both are excellent co-op games that benefit from exploring separately together. I'm more engineer than game designer, but I'd be interested to see where this could go on retro hardware!
These are definitely my inspiration! I would have sworn they used that kind of split-screen... 😅
Indeed, as you rightly pointed out, this isn’t actually a game. So unfortunately, it’s very hard for us to properly rate it. It’s just a technical demo. So apologies if our rating seemed a bit harsh — we evaluated it as if it were a full game, not just a technical demo. Anyway, thank you for taking part.
Nice effect, thanks for taking the time to implement it!
Thanks for taking the time to try it out !
Hopefully next time I can submit an actual game :-)
I've updated the ROM to showcase another HDMA configuration that allows displaying a visible split-screen separator. Press A/B/X/Y/L/R to switch modes.
This is pretty cool! It reminds me of that Dragon Ball game that does something similar. Have you considered making a version that uses Mode 0? That way, you could have two standard overlapping parallax layers for each view.
I was recently thinking about how fun it would be to make a Mario-style platformer like that, where each player can completely wander off on their own. The screen would split when they move far enough apart in any direction, and with 2bpp visuals, I think it might even be possible for them to enter entirely different levels—all while staying within VRAM limits for tiles and other resources. With some clever use of row and line scrolling for extra faux parallax, it could look really impressive, too.
Of course, it wouldn’t have to be a Mario-style game—it could just as easily be a run-’n-gun, a horizontal shmup, or something entirely different. Mario was just the first example that came to mind.
Just putting the idea out there. :)
Thanks!
That's right I stumbled on that Dragon Ball game while looking for similar effects on the SNES. The game has a really nice implementation, I like how it switches from left to right for instance. Also it's much more advanced, with parallax and all the bells and whistle.
I see no reason to exclude mode 0. I think we could also achieve parallax effect with a single background per player, controlling bg scroll with HDMA. Split-screen only uses a single HDMA channel.
The challenge with multiple levels would be determining the relative positions of players, I guess. VRAM wise, each player would have a dedicated tileset. Also, I was able to cut corners (see the look-up tables) by assuming a 512x512 area.
One challenge that I didn't address would be sprites moving from one screen to the other (enemies, projectiles, ...). Since we have the HDMA table at hand, I guess we could just compare sprites positions with the split-point to hide them before they cross the line, but that could be computationally heavy.