Fix-It Felix, Jr. Replica (Finished)

[meyer980]

Not sure if this has been posted anywhere else yet, looks like Disney just put it up yesterday. I didn't see it on the blu-ray or anything. Sort of a documentary on the fake history of Fix it Felix hi-scores. I enjoyed it. Not a lot of shots of the game so don't know if it'll help Sjaak but interesting none the less!

[Jumpman64]

Heh, funny stuff.  I like how they used the line graphs from King of Kong.  It was a bit long, though.

[Slydsho]

Does anyone have a clear picture of the block of bricks/wall that drops down in the higher levels? Or maybe someone who can photoshop a better picture?

not sure how much to saturate or desaturate the color, hopefully this works for you

[Slydsho]

been a really long time since i did pixel-art, here's my attempt at this pile of bricks


below is a sample in one of your screen shots Sjaak

[Slydsho]

Not sure if this has been posted anywhere else yet, looks like Disney just put it up yesterday. I didn't see it on the blu-ray or anything. Sort of a documentary on the fake history of Fix it Felix hi-scores. I enjoyed it. Not a lot of shots of the game so don't know if it'll help Sjaak but interesting none the less!

after watching this video it appears that the pile of bricks Sjaak is asking for actually doesn't fall in higher levels but stands as an obstacle of some sort.

[georgevaccaro]

I just got a hard error when completing the first board with the March 1 build.  It's a DRM issue, likely on the song or sound you are playing for the board transition.  Sound about right?

I'm running a pretty non-standard setup, using Windows 7 under Virtual Box on Ubuntu Linux.

[Bag of Magic Food]

Nah, the pile of bricks does fall, but then it lands on a certain ledge and stays there until Felix trips over it.  I know TheOldschoolBrotha recorded a lot of the later levels, if you need more references for how it goes in those.

I took the liberty of snapping some shots from the mockumentary in HD whenever it showed the brick piles, and then I uploaded them here.  (I don't know why the first image is a duplicate of the third image. It was supposed to upload only nine images.  Oh, and these free uploaders appear to reduce the size a little, from 1280x720 down to 1024x576. Sorry.)

I guess the first thing to figure out for this graphic is how many colors it contains.  I know it's got to be at least three, since that brick embedded in the darkness on the left is always darker than all the others, and the bricks in the middle look shinier on their left sides.  There's a good chance it's more than three colors, though, since many other sprites in the game fail to follow such 1982-style limitations.

Then you want to make sure that the pixels in your brick-pile graphic are all lined up with the pixels in the background in the same ways.  Slydsho, that pixel-art you made is of a higher resolution than the background, which was doubled in width and height so that every cluster of four pixels represents one pixel.


The funny thing about the mockumentary is that the game shown is the real thing, but the scores are bogus.  Even a Disney employee who once had hours of free time to spend point-pressing wasn't able to reach three hundred thousand due to the kill screen, let alone clear Garlan's first score.  If you're still planning on making a "movie-accurate" version, you could take this as a sign that the movie's game doesn't end so soon... except this is from a reality where the game really is thirty years old, yet Wreck-It Ralph is still just a movie they're making based on it. 

[Sjaak]

I just got a hard error when completing the first board with the March 1 build.  It's a DRM issue, likely on the song or sound you are playing for the board transition.  Sound about right?

I'm running a pretty non-standard setup, using Windows 7 under Virtual Box on Ubuntu Linux.

This is not actually a drm problem. Usually this has to do with a faulty installation of windows media player.

Then you want to make sure that the pixels in your brick-pile graphic are all lined up with the pixels in the background in the same ways.  Slydsho, that pixel-art you made is of a higher resolution than the background, which was doubled in width and height so that every cluster of four pixels represents one pixel.

I scaled down the graphic from Slydsho and I think this comes pretty close to the game version...

[Neosubu]

Hey Sjaak,

When checking the video Meyer put up, it seems that the version you have is a bit different than the game's version.
I took a screenshot of it and fixed the angle using the window next to the bricks, but you can see it has 4 bricks on the left top instead of random rubble.



Keep up the great work!

Greetings from the Netherlands

[Bag of Magic Food]

Yes, it's only "blobby" in the sense that the left side is dominated by a mass of dark red.  The bricks on top are just at an angle.

Now I'm pretty sure the lightest red is used both on the left edges of those middle bricks and on the top corners of the uppermost bricks.  The trick is to decide whether such things are 1 pixel or 2 pixels wide, as it's hard to judge when they're smeared across CRT grain.

[meyer980]

I just got a hard error when completing the first board with the March 1 build.  It's a DRM issue, likely on the song or sound you are playing for the board transition.  Sound about right?

I'm running a pretty non-standard setup, using Windows 7 under Virtual Box on Ubuntu Linux.

Haven't seen that error either, I've played on two seperate Windows 7 computers. One 32bit the other 64bit with very different specs internally. If Sjaak is right about the Media Player issue, wonder if it could have something to do with Virtual Box?

[georgevaccaro]

I just got a hard error when completing the first board with the March 1 build.  It's a DRM issue, likely on the song or sound you are playing for the board transition.  Sound about right?

I'm running a pretty non-standard setup, using Windows 7 under Virtual Box on Ubuntu Linux.

Haven't seen that error either, I've played on two seperate Windows 7 computers. One 32bit the other 64bit with very different specs internally. If Sjaak is right about the Media Player issue, wonder if it could have something to do with Virtual Box?

Thanks for the ideas.  I'll mess around with VB and see what I can figure out.  I had a feeling it must be specific to my setup.  Odd that they give such a definitive and specific error message.  MS .

g

[georgevaccaro]

Well that fixed it.  I didn't have WMP installed at all.  I made it to and then past level 3 but then it crashed.  Is that expected or maybe another unique to me configuration thing? 

I also noticed some minor things, I'm not sure how much you care about details like this but I'll just post them in case.  This is a beta after all.

1. At the end of each level, the medal starts out big and then gets scaled down to Felix size.  I'm not 100% sure but I think you're scaling using the high resolution of our modern displays vs. the 8-bit resolution of old times.  It's subtle for sure, and not that important.  I guess it depends on what level of authenticity you are going for.
2. When you complete a level, after fixing the last window, you are immediately taken to the "you fixed it board".  Again, not huge, but in the old arcade games I remember more of a freeze with a small delay.  Some games I think even did some sort of flashing thing (I'm thinking of pacman).  Otherwise the transition feels too abrupt.  Maybe even some audio confirmation would be good.  Then again I haven't played the "real" Disney game.
3. Felix feels a little disconnected from the controls.  Sometimes I press right or left while he's fixing and the keypress is eaten.  This is normal for some games, I have a gauntlet machine and you can either shoot or move but not both at the same time.  But for some reason in this type of game it feels a little weird.  Like perhaps it should queue the move and do it when Felix is done fixing rather than just eat the event.  Maybe with a real joystick this wouldn't matter.
4. This could be a function of my VM, the sounds are just a hair behind the movement, so when I tell Felix to go up or down the sound is a bit delayed.
5. No Felix dies sound.  You can probably grab this from the movie itself when Ralph barges into the party and the roof falls on Felix.  I can grab the sound for you if you'd like.  I understand, ideally it would be the sound from the cabinets, if anyone has access to that.

I have to say, there is just something cool about playing this.  It's a mix of old nostalgia (though imaginary since this was never a real game) and new nostalgia for the imaginary land we witness in the movie.  I haven't loaded this on a system with a joystick, but as soon as I do I'm going to let the little guy have at it and see what he thinks.  Thanks for your hard work on this Sjaak! 

I really think Disney missed a big opportunity by not making real Fix it Felix Jr., Sugar Rush and Hero's duty games for release to arcades and movie theaters (aside from the promo ones).  Maybe it's the bad economy.  I would just think that it's got to be less expensive now than ever to create games like this.  Especially FiFJr since the hardware requirements are so small.  Even Hero's Duty and Sugar Rush would have had reduced costs since the 3D models were already paid for.

After playing your version, I just get the feeling this would have been a great long term driver of the fan base and likely of blu-ray sales.  They did it with Tron 30 years ago.  I think if only for the brand they should have done it.  It would have been really impressive.

Thanks again!

[meyer980]

Sjaak would know more than I of course but I'm guessing the crash you get later is just because of the memory leaks and I think he's waiting to address those until later. I say this because on my computer with 2 gigs of RAM it seemed to crash around level 7 or 8. On my computer with 8 gigs I think I got to level 11 or 12.

Could be wrong though!

[Slydsho]

the sprites for death sequence facing both directions at original size i worked on and to scale (i think)

[Bag of Magic Food]

georgevaccaro, have you played the online games of Fix-It Felix, Jr. that Disney made in Flash?  It's funny that I've found your first four complaints are also true of the Flash ports.  In the real arcade game, the medal is redrawn at just a few different sizes in order to shrink onto Felix, as a real 1980's game would have to.  But the second Flash version uses a smooth scaling effect, since I suppose that's easier to do in Flash than to go rip the additional graphics.  (The game now featured on the main homepage is based on an earlier version.)  I don't know if the fade-outs from that scene would work, either; I guess it depends on how palettes are done in whatever system we're imagining this to run on.

It is true that the real arcade game ends every screen with C major chord, E major chord while Ralph pumps his fists again, even just before the "You fixed it!" screen.  I rather like the abruptness of the Flash version, though; it makes the game more fast and fluid and fun overall for me.  In the movie there doesn't appear to be much of a pause after the last window is fixed, either, but you could argue that it was skipped over in a camera cut.  I don't know if the movie's game would eventually have a second screen where you'd repair the huge chunk missing from the bricks before getting to all the windows, or if what we saw was just how it worked in the demo, or what.

It's interesting that when the games were updated last fall, the Flash version received new music ripped from the real arcade version (albeit horribly compressed), while the smartphone version received sound effects ripped from the movie for its cutscenes, along with finally adding the golden rings around Super Felix.  If you have the phone version from before they added the "I'm gonna wreck it!" soundbite, a Game Over actually plays the entire death and resurrection noises from the party, including the jump noise and the eerie whine of the hammer at the end, so you might be able to rip some fairly clean sound effects from that.  But yeah, whichever death music you choose, there should at least be a "whoosh" noise first when Felix gets hit.  Also, this "Wreck-It Rumble" game may be a good source for the "bonk" sound of Felix's hammer.

At least in the Flash version, having all arrow key input get eaten while Felix swings his hammer makes sense, since Felix's movement is instantaneous, so the only limiting factor to speedy level completion is how long Felix spends swinging the hammer.  It means you have to get into a rhythm where you push the next arrow key just after the duration of the hammer swing so that you don't accidentally waste time swinging at an unbroken window.  And the way the power-up pie works keeps getting changed with every new port of the game they make, but the second Flash version honestly seems the truest to the movie: You fix 2 windowpanes at a time when before you only fixed 1, each fix takes less time, and hey, your motion was already instantaneous, so you can fix a majority of the windows at a speed close to that shown in the movie.  I think if you were imitating the movie's Super Felix, just rip the spinning animation and make each spin take a single frame so that Felix completes a spin-jump to the next window in less time than it takes the average person to push the joystick over again, unless you believe the idea is more that Felix moves forward unstoppably like Pac-Man and you just have to hold the joystick in the right directions to win.

Ah, I just now saw Slydsho's latest post!  Those sprites are from the Flash version, which didn't bother to import the face Felix makes for his final death but instead simply rotated the sprites from his falling death.  I think the smartphone version got the correct ones, though; I'll see if I can locate them later tonight.

[Slydsho]

i found some footage of it on youtube, its a bit blurry so i took a stab at pixel art again... hopefully it looks good...

[RABID]

incredible work! registered just for this thread!

[Sjaak]

1. At the end of each level, the medal starts out big and then gets scaled down to Felix size.  I'm not 100% sure but I think you're scaling using the high resolution of our modern displays vs. the 8-bit resolution of old times.  It's subtle for sure, and not that important.  I guess it depends on what level of authenticity you are going for.
2. When you complete a level, after fixing the last window, you are immediately taken to the "you fixed it board".  Again, not huge, but in the old arcade games I remember more of a freeze with a small delay.  Some games I think even did some sort of flashing thing (I'm thinking of pacman).  Otherwise the transition feels too abrupt.  Maybe even some audio confirmation would be good.  Then again I haven't played the "real" Disney game.
3. Felix feels a little disconnected from the controls.  Sometimes I press right or left while he's fixing and the keypress is eaten.  This is normal for some games, I have a gauntlet machine and you can either shoot or move but not both at the same time.  But for some reason in this type of game it feels a little weird.  Like perhaps it should queue the move and do it when Felix is done fixing rather than just eat the event.  Maybe with a real joystick this wouldn't matter.
4. This could be a function of my VM, the sounds are just a hair behind the movement, so when I tell Felix to go up or down the sound is a bit delayed.
5. No Felix dies sound.  You can probably grab this from the movie itself when Ralph barges into the party and the roof falls on Felix.  I can grab the sound for you if you'd like.  I understand, ideally it would be the sound from the cabinets, if anyone has access to that.

srarcade made this video especially for this project. In this video you can see what the game is going to be like. For example, there is a short animation before the I fixed it screen and there are more sounds. This video is my main guideline.

[Bag of Magic Food]

Wow, nice job!  I can keep searching for non-blurry videos if you think it'll help; I'm not sure if Felix's face should be completely outlined like that, for instance, and I think you ought to be able to see his eyebrows and fingers.

Now I'm curious as to what algorithm is to be used to register when the final window is fixed.  I know from experience that the Flash version contains a glitch where if you manage to fix a window at the exact same time one of Ralph's bricks happens to break that same window, the game won't ever realize you've fixed them all, and you'll just be stuck on that level forever.  I'm guessing what happens is the game needs to increment a "windows remaining" counter when one is broken and decrement the counter when you fix it, but having these events happen simultaneously makes the program skip the latter process, so you never get credit for fixing the window that's just been re-broken.

My other gripe about the Flash version is that on the floors with 3 ducks in play at the same time, it's possible for all three to appear at roughly the same X-coordinate, making it impossible to avoid them as they fill all three rows.  The arcade version only ever has two ducks which are always at opposite ends of the screen and which shouldn't spawn in the bottom row, since they're already active once Ralph starts climbing.  They also teleport back to their start positions every time you get killed by one, which seems a little unnecessary, but hey...  I think it's a little boring that they don't increase in speed or number the higher you go, though.  The mobile versions seem to just spawn a new duck on a random row on a random side every so often, so there it's just chaos with ducks appearing anywhere all throughout a level and sometimes passing through each other.

In the older Flash versions, the big danger is that Ralph's bricks can easily take out whole columns of windows just as you're running out of time.  In this event I might take a death (which stops the timer during the fall animation in this version) just to get some invincibility so I can fix those windows even as bricks pass them, but this runs the risk of triggering the unwinnable level bug, rrrrrr!  I think if you add a timer to your game, don't just make it instant Game Over when it runs out, but do something crazy like suddenly add ducks to all rows and make Ralph do his hyper-punch while slowly homing in on you, so that if the problem was only that you needed just a bit more time, you can still try to win with your remaining lives.   

By the way, I like how the official Game Over sign uses inconsistent resolutions: The starbursts coming out of the fists are done with single-pixel increments without regard for the 2x2 scale-up the rest of the game graphics use, while the fists themselves are blown up to 3x3 pixels for whatever reason, and the font for the Flash version is stretched out or something.

[Sjaak]

I know from experience that the Flash version ........
My other gripe about the Flash version........
In the older Flash versions,.....
and the font for the Flash version is stretched out or something.

This game will be completely rewritten by reverse engineering the youtube video's of the arcade version. I'm not even looking at the flash versions because they are nothing like the arcade version.

[EssexMame]

I've not seen Wreck-it-Ralph, from what I can gather this is the game in that film, that replaces Wreck-it-Ralph? It comes from a real arcade game? Is that game in Mame, and called Fix-it-Felix/Fix-it-Felix Jr?

[Sjaak]

I've not seen Wreck-it-Ralph, from what I can gather this is the game in that film, that replaces Wreck-it-Ralph? It comes from a real arcade game? Is that game in Mame, and called Fix-it-Felix/Fix-it-Felix Jr?

In the movie named 'Wreck It Ralph', Ralph is the bad guy in a video game 'Fix It Felix Jr'. In the movie the game was created in 1982, but in real life the game 'Fix It Felix Jr' never existed.

But last year Disney created an arcade cabinet 'Fix It Felix Jr' with the actual arcade game which is based on the game in the movie.

And no, the game does not exist in mame. It only exists in the 100 promotional cabinets that Disney made.

[StrykersArcade]

Great work. Joined the forum just to follow the progress!

[georgevaccaro]

srarcade made this video especially for this project. In this video you can see what the game is going to be like. For example, there is a short animation before the I fixed it screen and there are more sounds. This video is my main guideline.

Ah, not sure how I missed that.  Great, so it seems like you don't need that type of feedback then, since you have a pretty good spec already .

Nice work so far!
g

[sandheaver]

What are you guys using to create the game?

Woodworking for the cabinet & XNA for the game.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA

[Slydsho]

Hey Sjaak,

When checking the video Meyer put up, it seems that the version you have is a bit different than the game's version.
I took a screenshot of it and fixed the angle using the window next to the bricks, but you can see it has 4 bricks on the left top instead of random rubble.



Keep up the great work!

Greetings from the Netherlands

Revised Brick pile in accordance to the video Sjaak is using

[Bag of Magic Food]

Hey, I'm just trying to come up with pitfalls the official ports fell into so that you can keep your game from looking like as cheap a clone as what Disney put online.   

Okay, now that I look again, Ralph doesn't swing his fists again on the last screen of a level even in the arcade version, though you still have to wait for the tones to play.  I also just began to notice that the arcade version is the only one where Felix keeps his hammer out the entire time you're playing.  The mobile app has Ralph climb away on the last screen as the Nicelanders pop out again to say "You've fixed it!", and it has Felix pull out his hammer every time he jumps only to put it away when he lands. 

So I spent the last few hours squinting at a couple of videos to try to guess what the actual pixels were in the first frame of Felix's final death, and this is what I settled on.

Mainly I couldn't be satisfied with the shape of the hat, as I'm never too sure how wide it should be at any given point. Under Felix's chin gets a little iffy, too. And basically any time there isn't a high contrast between adjacent colors, I don't know exactly when the next color should begin or if it even is a new color if there's too little of it.

I caught one more frame from the death animation that was missing from Slydsho's sheet, and from the smartphone version, apparently.  Felix's legs flip up during the process of falling flat again.

In one video of the arcade version, it looked as if they added a few light pixels down one column of the hat to suggest the emblem on this sprite, but I can't be sure it wasn't just glare or something.  I suppose you have to own the cabinet to look at with your own eyes to see these things for sure.


That brick pile is starting to look good.  Now I wonder whether there shouldn't be any black pixels in the graphic, since most other things in the game don't use outlines if they can get away with it.

[Slydsho]

That brick pile is starting to look good.  Now I wonder whether there shouldn't be any black pixels in the graphic, since most other things in the game don't use outlines if they can get away with it.

I was debating that quietly to myself as well....
heres another revision..

[BUCKETHEAD]

Good job on the Sprites Guys!

[Sjaak]

This is great, I'll make sure the Felix dead animation is in the next version...

I was debating that quietly to myself as well....
heres another revision..

Nice one

[yotsuya]

Excellent graphic work, Shydsho!

[RogerDelmar]

Cool!~

[Bag of Magic Food]

Yup, that brick pile is starting to look presentable.  I keep wanting to say that some of the bricks on the right are a little too high, or the other corners should be pointier, but I don't know if those fixes could be done without distorting the whole shape, so I might just be seeing things.  We can always go back and check the exact dimensions later.

Now, this morning I was thinking of working on the next frame of Felix's death animation where he spins (and possibly correcting the shoulders on what I had already done--it doesn't help that my eyes can hardly distinguish pink from blue), but then something in the arcade videos caught my attention.

It's not just the light streak down Felix's cap that was added to the arcade version's graphic of him lying flat.  The whole shape of the face is different, with space for the forehead between the closed eye and the cap, and the mouth is now a smooth slope down from the nose instead of a dark dot.  Those might be different colors on the eyelid and nose too, but I can't be sure.  Felix's arm seems to have been adjusted so that now his neck is visible, the flower looks higher on his chest to the right of his hand, and the hand appears to overlap the belt by at least a pixel.  Then it looks as if Felix's legs taper going down to the ankles, though it's possible some of this is a result of distortion from the camera angle and the glow of the surrounding pixels.  Maybe the cap is a different shape too, but that's one of those things where it's hard to make out all the columns of pixels from a video anyway.  I only hope that flower is the same shape, since it doesn't show up well against that window.  Altogether, I don't believe this sprite can possibly be the same one from the home versions of the game, meaning we have more guesswork to do in copying this off the arcade screens.  They must have updated the fallen Felix graphics after sending them off to the people making the PC and mobile ports. 

[nipsmg]

Hey Sjaak,

When checking the video Meyer put up, it seems that the version you have is a bit different than the game's version.
I took a screenshot of it and fixed the angle using the window next to the bricks, but you can see it has 4 bricks on the left top instead of random rubble.



Keep up the great work!

Greetings from the Netherlands

Revised Brick pile in accordance to the video Sjaak is using

So I admittedly suck at pixel art, but one thing that's been bothering me about the brick piles is the very faint deliniation of the bricks on the top of the stack..  Now my pile doesn't look nearly as good as everyone else's, but I think the black (dark) deliniating lines are a little closer to the actual video, no?

[sandheaver]

until we get a lossless screen capture of a few full games, this is all academic.  It will be virtually impossible to get a perfect, bit-for-bit copy, and it's a waste of time to try.

if that sounds like an attack, i apologize; it is not meant as anything like that.

[nipsmg]

until we get a lossless screen capture of a few full games, this is all academic.  It will be virtually impossible to get a perfect, bit-for-bit copy, and it's a waste of time to try.

if that sounds like an attack, i apologize; it is not meant as anything like that.

I agree with you, there's no way we're going to get perfect, but we can iteratively get closer by working together on it I think.

[micahman33]

This whole thing is phenomenal. I havent been on the forums in a bit, but I remember following your last build on the pacman battle royale and I have to say I was impressed. This game looks awesome. I got on my machine with my wife last night playing some bubble bobble so I decided to check back here to see how everyone was doing on their new builds. Keep up the good work

[mrsinistar]

Hey Sjaak, do you need help with any more sound effects?  Let me know what you need and I'll be more than happy to work on it.

[mrsinistar]

I'm noticing that some of the notes are off in the second arpeggio in the main song.  I know it's not a big problem, but yeah, just wanna let you know.  Also, I got the DVD and I'm planning on ripping some of the sound effects from the beginning of the movie to see if we can finally get some clean sounds.