genesis quick adventure demonstration 1

[oompa loompa]

so what's everyone think of the latest sample game made with the adventure engine? if you haven't read the homepage, the link is here: devster.retrodev.com/pub/demo1.zip

there is a bug that i discovered while playing the game after i released it. sometimes if you stay in the title screen for a while, and then walk across the room to get to the next room, stuff would get messed up (a map tile on the upper left dissapears and the trapped moving npc dies). the second door roll-up is normal though, and is suppose to happen so that the player gets the knife. no clue why this bug happens since it's really random

the release also the first release that has fm music. it uses the new devster noise machine, and z80 driver. there are too many improvements of this newer driver compared form the last one:

- the driver size is only 187 bytes! the driver handles everything, like decoding the music data into note frequencies, determining wheter a channel should be keyed on or off, running extensions (like dac support, psg, instrument pathes, etc), doing delays, etc. - all in 187 bytes of code. the driver used in the sample game uses an older driver 211 bytes in size. the original devster noise machine driver used 247 bytes of memory, which is a huge improvement because the driver has to do even more now. i had to get to 187 bytes by optimizing the code heavily, and by heavily, i mean looking at the code for hours and optimizing every byte i could squeeze out while performing the intended functions
- play data is now 12 bits wide (you can stick 2 plays in 3 bytes of memory). before, it was 16 bits wide. with the reduced structure size, around 5300 notes/plays can be stored in the z80's memory without relying on the 68k! 5300 notes can play for around 10 minutes depending on how the music is written
- fixed key ons and key offs in the new driver, which makes music possible to write now!

[ScroGer]

Cool game Devster I especially like the music but there seems to be a bug after I get the knife and exit to the next screen I see the dead inmates then every time I exit that room I just get taken to the the same room over and over again.

But the game seems cool from what Iv seen ;D

BTW have you made any new games recently I like to see them

PEACE

[GiGaBiTe]

- play data is now 12 bits wide (you can stick 2 plays in 3 bytes of memory). before, it was 16 bits wide. with the reduced structure size, around 5300 notes/plays can be stored in the z80's memory without relying on the 68k! 5300 notes can play for around 10 minutes depending on how the music is written

Won't it degrade the sound quality when you change from 16 to 12 bits? And if the roms are mostly going to be played on emulators, can't you get a bit more creative with the code since you don't really have a memory limit..

[fonzzzz]

No news about this crazy project?
I was searching the project page on your site and did not find anyone

[oompa loompa]

i never made a project page for this one ! !

i should, and i should just release what i got because all i can remember, the last time i touched the generator, that it's practically finished. i think i need to add more small things like game saving, and make scripts easier to script, and use the built-in engine. this is tey another project that i've left alone for a long time

[MPN]

admin said:

i never made a project page for this one ! !

i should, and i should just release what i got because all i can remember, the last time i touched the generator, that it's practically finished. i think i need to add more small things like game saving, and make scripts easier to script, and use the built-in engine. this is tey another project that i've left alone for a long time

Here's a small thing i'm having trouble with in a game i've let alone for a while: How did you restrict sprite movement in this demo? Like, how can I stop my character going through walls or a diagonal line on a background image?

[oompa loompa]

to stop your character from going through walls or objects, you need to use collision detection (for the genesis, it's better to create your own system through software, eg: if(x>map_width) { stop moving; }).

as for my "genesis quick adventure engine," i still haven't written my resident evil/satam rpg yet . kinda dissapointed in myself

i'll need to work on this engine again, since i think it is "kick ass"

things to do though:
- incorperate fm music (probably will use the devster noise machine and even mvstracker port - only if it doesn't use any 68k resources for playing music)
- create a better universal scripting system, so that it will be easy to play these games unchanged on other consoles
- be able to play games unchanged on other consoles . it probably isn't possible to do because of major hardware differences. for instance: you won't be able to play a game made for the genesis, and then play it on the gameboy color because of the number of bits per color. it'd work perfectly, if i made the ultimatum that all games had to be made all black and white . i dunno, we'll see -> games will probably have to be modified, so that they'll run on other systems
- oh, and i need to make a saving/loading game progress menus for the genesis
- modify my game editor to use directx instead of windows gdi (yeah, i made the editor in visual basic too, since i needed a whole lot of gui things)

things that would be cool (but will probably never happen):
- for the pc/dreamcast version, have an online feature to play these games like mmorpgs

[Tom Maneiro]

- modify my game editor to use directx instead of windows gdi (yeah, i made the editor in visual basic too, since i needed a whole lot of gui things)

Why not SDL/OpenGL? You could port it quickly to Linux... Remember, Linux fans also do Genesis sometimes (like me ;D)

[oompa loompa]

i love sdl+opengl, but sorry, this is visual basic

linux is great, but i never use it as my "mainstream" os. i just use it mainly for application servers

[Tom Maneiro]

it remembers me my "anime audio recording box"... Windows does run like crap, but Knoppix deals nicely with such old hardware ;D

DirectX on VB is somehow wicked, but i have seen lots of examples around the web. The main problem is that VB can be slow sometimes when doing heavy work, so i would not write Doom IV on VB (neither VB6 nor VB.net)

[oompa loompa]

directx is the only way to go on windows though. i was actually surprised that visual basic can run pretty fast on windows (i mean, basiegaxorz runs fast, doesn't it? ). it's just that on visual basic, you cannot use very huge memory spaces. data needs to be streamed in, and then streamed back out (whatever that means), instead of holding lots of memory. i dunno how fast directx is under visual basic though, but it is a lot better than windows gdi for drawing things such as tiles. i think i have many screenshots of the actual "quick adventure" story editor on the forums somewhere

even the port of sdl on windows uses directx

edit: ah ha, sexie

[Tom Maneiro]

SDL is just a "wrapper" for the underlying graphics system: on Windows it uses DirectX, on Linux it uses Xlib/framebuffer, under Mac it uses Quartz...

Details: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer

BTW: i did not know that Quake 4 used SDL... Seems that the guys at id Software always had a strange love relationship with *nix boxes, eh? ;D

Nice shot Check your door, there may be a Nintendo lawyer behind it

[oompa loompa]

omg yea i defaced the zelda franchise with my evil muffihn

sdl is much nicer to use compared to directx. it can even be used on lower level languages (like plain c). diectx isn't possible on lots of lower languages because of the event calling i think

[jlf65]

Yeah, rewriting your stuff in C with SDL would really make it cross-platform. If you need widgets, consider WxWidgets as opposed to .Net. If you prefer something a little higher level than C, maybe look at python. Python/SDL/WxWdigets would be the ultimate in high-level, cross-compatible, tool programming.