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is there any software to make games for the sms without all the mumbo jumbo code , something easy like gamer maker or something?
that would be cool :P

Not aware of one myself - could be wrong though. My guess is that as every spare byte of memory and every spare cycle counts on a system as constrained as the SMS, most games are 'hand-crafted' in assembly.

It isn't so bad though - although I've never used any of the Z80 assemblers, I've started to get a real feel for the instruction set just from implementing it in software, and it seems refreshingly straight forward. May try my hand at a homebrew demo or two once my emulator is done ;-)

PhilPotter wrote

Not aware of one myself - could be wrong though. My guess is that as every spare byte of memory and every spare cycle counts on a system as constrained as the SMS, most games are 'hand-crafted' in assembly.

It isn't so bad though - although I've never used any of the Z80 assemblers, I've started to get a real feel for the instruction set just from implementing it in software, and it seems refreshingly straight forward. May try my hand at a homebrew demo or two once my emulator is done ;-)

nice one man! if u start developing a software studio to make games for the master system that would be sick!
im not a programmer myself but i would like to give my master system a try and even try and make a game without any knowledge of codes :p
i mean , this system is soooo old and with todays technology it should be a piece of cake i guess.

I suppose it would be doable - I'd need to be a lot more experienced to be the one to do that though ;-) Thing about programming this kind of gear is its harder in my experience - everything is abstracted so much these days, and there is so much abundance in terms of memory and processor power that you don't have to really worry about memory usage and cycle counts as much.

SMS and other hardware from that era though require more bare metal programming. It'd be a lovely project though, and could certainly increase the visibility of the SMS scene as a whole. For now I'm still only half way through the Z80 core, which I've been working on for about 3 months whenever I get a spare moment :-p When I've got the VDP working and I can see Sonic waving his finger on the title screen it will have all been worthit :-p

PhilPotter wrote

I suppose it would be doable - I'd need to be a lot more experienced to be the one to do that though ;-) Thing about programming this kind of gear is its harder in my experience - everything is abstracted so much these days, and there is so much abundance in terms of memory and processor power that you don't have to really worry about memory usage and cycle counts as much.

SMS and other hardware from that era though require more bare metal programming. It'd be a lovely project though, and could certainly increase the visibility of the SMS scene as a whole. For now I'm still only half way through the Z80 core, which I've been working on for about 3 months whenever I get a spare moment :-p When I've got the VDP working and I can see Sonic waving his finger on the title screen it will have all been worthit :-p

good luck with it man , it certainly is a great project to bring up the sms scene alive and many new games coming up for the sms aswel :)
if in a near future if u need donations regarding this software let us know , im sure many people here and sms fans would certainly support you.

I hope to have the emulator somewhat usable in the next month or two - I don't get a lot of free time to work on it sadly. Once it is playable though, I'm hoping some of the fine chaps/chappettes from the SMS Power scene will be willing to test it for me.

You best bet to get started is Haroldhoop Basic compiler+librairies settings. Nothing good will come without the effort tho, it would still require some technical involvement and has a learning curve that's much much higher that you'd get with GameMaker.

It would be possible to make a PC tool to setup behavior and that would create native code but I think it is beyond what the development community has to offer right now and it wouldn't lead to great games anyway because the constraints running on a SMS are really difficult to satisfy without handcrafted code and data.

Bock wrote

You best bet to get started is Haroldhoop Basic compiler+librairies settings. Nothing good will come without the effort tho, it would still require some technical involvement and has a learning curve that's much much higher that you'd get with GameMaker.

It would be possible to make a PC tool to setup behavior and that would create native code but I think it is beyond what the development community has to offer right now and it wouldn't lead to great games anyway because the constraints running on a SMS are really difficult to satisfy without handcrafted code and data.

maybe a specific program that allows to develop demos mainly for the master system would be something cool , dunno just an idea , with the sms specifications , memory etc , whats the max memory that a cartridge can take , 2 meg?
i can't believe that a console with so many years now and with the mega technology of todays this console is still hard to program oO
if its still hard to make something like that for the master system then is a hard bastard of a beast heh

masterblaster wrote

i can't believe that a console with so many years now and with the mega technology of todays this console is still hard to program oO
if its still hard to make something like that for the master system then is a hard bastard of a beast heh

Keep in mind that game maker software for the PC is only possible in part because PC hardware has gotten better over the years that the sloppy code they generate will still work great on any computer.

SMS hardware by comparison hasn't changed one bit, it's still seriously underpowered with not much memory and very tight timing requirements, writing a universal system for a machine that requires per game specific tuning is a tough task indeed.

If a game maker project was to be attempted, a simpler approach would be to choose an existing game and make an editor for it.

A game like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap would be perfect for such a project, because the graphics in the game are not compressed, and the game has a wide variety of features. You could make almost any kind of 2d platformer using it as a base. It would basically just need a decent level editor and you can use Tile Layer Pro to change all the graphics.

I mean think about it, WB III has everything, from different types of main characters (even flying and swimming), to power ups that you pick up, shops with purchasable items, a variety of projectiles, and the list goes on all in one of the smoothest 2d engines on the master system.

You could make anything from an Ecco the Dolphin style game to an Alex the Kidd style game.

Just a thought ;)

It's not smooth and it's not 8-way-scrolling. Does it have slopes? I think not.

I don't think a game maker type project would be impossible, but to get really much out of the sms you need different engines for different type of games.

Quote

It's not smooth and it's not 8-way-scrolling. Does it have slopes? I think not.

It doesn't have slopes, but it does have flying and swimming which I consider to be incredibly smooth. No, you couldn't make a sonic clone with it.

Anyway, my wonder boy bias aside, the idea would be to create a game editor for an existing game that has decent features, un-compressed graphics etc. so that new games can be made based on existing tech. I suggested WB III, but I am sure there would be a few other candidates out there.

It was just an idea, as the reality of a game maker ever being created is quite small.

Yes, the concept of a game maker for SMS seems to be doable, as long as one limits the kinds of games that would be supported, as others already mentioned above. The idea of simply making an editor for an existing game could also work, as long as it isn't only limited to level and graphics editing; being able to edit game events, weapon and monster behaviour would be a must.

Another, maybe less ambitious idea, would be to make more specialized game making tools, like a shoot-em-up maker (see SEUCK for the C64), or some RPG making tool (see Dante for the MSX), etc. One step above that would be making a single tool that could make different types of games by using a set of semi-specialized "kernels" to handle each supported genre. Batari Basic, a compiler for making games for the Atari 2600, works more or less that way, though it does still require some amount of programming skill.

I just saw this project at NESDev:
http://playpower.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/49273378/beta2.rar

Basically, it's a version of Scratch modified for compiling into NES ROMs. It does give one some inspiration, doesn't it? ;)

Original forum post

I think you can make SMS game engines for certain "Genres" that are easily modified by non programmers. Like someone said above, shoot-em-ups, beat-em-ups, etc.

The biggest problem I think with a generic engine is the 8 sprite per line issue on SMS. It just really hammers home you have to do some fancy stuff to get decent playable games. To take advantage of the SMS to the greatest extent we need cart hardware that allows us to write to the VRAM at the highest speed possible, and with this comes the possibility of a generic engine which doesn't use the sprite engine to have movable characters. If you could modify all possible pixels on the SMS display every frame developers would be free to do some cool things. :)

Unfortunaely, due to the way SMS's hardware is set up, you can't really pump data directly from the cartridge to the VDP without the aid of the CPU.

...

As an aside, the GG does have pins on the cartridge port to feed a TV signal directly to the LCD, so you could, in theory, put a GPU in the cartridge and use it in place of the VDP, but, while it could be a nice project if done just for the lolz, there wouldn't be much of a point to it, from a retrogaming perspective: it just wouldn't be retro hardware anymore; I mean, you could just as well jam a complete modern smartphone hardware inside the cartridge. =P

The export cartridge slot has BUSREQ/BUSACK pins, right? (The Japanese one doesn't appear to, sadly.) It also appears to have the IORQ pin and RD/WR pins, so I think you could hog the bus and then bash everything back through the cartridge slot (unless of course Sega shoved a bunch of diodes in).

I think see what you mean; maybe it would be doable, then. Of course, there's the question of how much custom hardware should be actually added to a cart without making it lose value as a retro platform; the limitations are part of the charm of developing for an old console.

haroldoop wrote

I think see what you mean; maybe it would be doable, then. Of course, there's the question of how much custom hardware should be actually added to a cart without making it lose value as a retro platform; the limitations are part of the charm of developing for an old console.

Not really, since "cart DMA" was already happening on the NES and also happened later on Sega systems with Sega Mega Drive.

It's like saying, if you had unlimited resources to build a cartridge users could stick into the real Sega Master System, what could we do. Provided you don't have things like "audio/video" out on the actual cartridge itself (to bypass the SMS VDP and PSG) I think it's valid and helps you extend the system.

The NES wouldn't have as many good games as it did without some cool features in the cart hardware. Unfortunately outside of save ram the SMS had pretty much nothing.

Cart DMA wouldn't add anything to the SMS. The only time you can "blast" data to the vram is the vertical blank. The rest of the time, you have to use delays between stores or you lose data. Even during the vblank, if the SEGA figures are right, the Z80 is barely slow enough on the repeat block move to avoid losing data. Using faster DMA would probably either result in lost data, or a speed up that's completely negated by the amount of time it would take to setup the DMA hardware on the cart to do the DMA.

What would be better is just a HUGE cart... many games you can get around limits by simply throwing memory at the problem. Make your own mapper that allowed 128MB of cart space.

Ok so I was talking with Haroldhoop about this on the other topic so here it goes:

A Master System game maker would be nice to make things easier with all them sorts of tools to develop a game , drawing sprites , backgrounds and all sorts of tricks.

Something like pick the style of the game you want to make would be cool and then have all sorts of tools needed to develop a game in the style you want.

If such program would exist it should also include things like intros , cut scenes and stuff , maybe a diagram showing the order that the game should take like

power on -> intro -> main screen-> game start or demo (if buttons not pressed-> game start->cutscene one (or not) ->stage one and etc etc etc etc

You seem to be failing to understand the problem here. Making a game engine (the "code mumbo jumbo" bit) is really hard. Making a generalised game engine that can bend to all sorts of game styles is a ridiculously hard; making it do that without side effects is basically impossible.

Making a general platform game engine, for example, is more feasible but will still struggle if it doesn't restrict you on things like metatile sizes, level size limits, special effects, sprite sizes, enemy counts, animation frames, and much more. So the engine is an integral part of the game, it defines the possibilities, the special features of the game, and in many ways the way it plays and feels.

Simply editing the levels, intro, title screen etc is still hard - but absolutely has to be limited by the engine it will run on. You can't belittle the difficulty of making a game engine, let alone a content editor. A diagram to show the game flow is really trivial compared to the real work of making a game.

Maxim wrote

You seem to be failing to understand the problem here. Making a game engine (the "code mumbo jumbo" bit) is really hard. Making a generalised game engine that can bend to all sorts of game styles is a ridiculously hard; making it do that without side effects is basically impossible.

Making a general platform game engine, for example, is more feasible but will still struggle if it doesn't restrict you on things like metatile sizes, level size limits, special effects, sprite sizes, enemy counts, animation frames, and much more. So the engine is an integral part of the game, it defines the possibilities, the special features of the game, and in many ways the way it plays and feels.

Simply editing the levels, intro, title screen etc is still hard - but absolutely has to be limited by the engine it will run on. You can't belittle the difficulty of making a game engine, let alone a content editor. A diagram to show the game flow is really trivial compared to the real work of making a game.

Yeah Maxim , i never said it was easy because it's not.
I understand that to come with such a piece of software will probably be impossible because as you said , which i agree , mostly when a game is made everything is customized from start to finish and maybe that's what you're trying to say , hence the difficulty of making a game.

Maxim wrote

A diagram to show the game flow is really trivial compared to the real work of making a game.

This is true,unfortunately the majority of people don't understand that.

Realistically, given the hardware limitations, it would really be better to make separate engines for each type of game.

Either separate engines for each type of game. Or editors like KiddEd and Twee2Sam, which i think, with the current batch of releases (including DukeNukem, 1969 and Bay Third) has proven that is possible to create a good game out of an existing engine.

But, since i know the huge amount of work that goes into creating these editors and programs, instead of complaning about what we don't have, why not use what we do have? Limitations are part of what make the SMS so charming. And trying to work around them, is the fun part of creating a game for old hardware.

Author	Message
masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	game maker master system Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:06 am
masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	is there any software to make games for the sms without all the mumbo jumbo code , something easy like gamer maker or something? that would be cool :P

PhilPotter Joined: 08 Nov 2011 Posts: 82 Location: United Kingdom	Game maker Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:53 am
	Not aware of one myself - could be wrong though. My guess is that as every spare byte of memory and every spare cycle counts on a system as constrained as the SMS, most games are 'hand-crafted' in assembly. It isn't so bad though - although I've never used any of the Z80 assemblers, I've started to get a real feel for the instruction set just from implementing it in software, and it seems refreshingly straight forward. May try my hand at a homebrew demo or two once my emulator is done ;-)

masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:29 pm
masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	PhilPotter wrote Not aware of one myself - could be wrong though. My guess is that as every spare byte of memory and every spare cycle counts on a system as constrained as the SMS, most games are 'hand-crafted' in assembly. It isn't so bad though - although I've never used any of the Z80 assemblers, I've started to get a real feel for the instruction set just from implementing it in software, and it seems refreshingly straight forward. May try my hand at a homebrew demo or two once my emulator is done ;-) nice one man! if u start developing a software studio to make games for the master system that would be sick! im not a programmer myself but i would like to give my master system a try and even try and make a game without any knowledge of codes :p i mean , this system is soooo old and with todays technology it should be a piece of cake i guess.

PhilPotter Joined: 08 Nov 2011 Posts: 82 Location: United Kingdom	Modern tech Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 1:08 pm
	I suppose it would be doable - I'd need to be a lot more experienced to be the one to do that though ;-) Thing about programming this kind of gear is its harder in my experience - everything is abstracted so much these days, and there is so much abundance in terms of memory and processor power that you don't have to really worry about memory usage and cycle counts as much. SMS and other hardware from that era though require more bare metal programming. It'd be a lovely project though, and could certainly increase the visibility of the SMS scene as a whole. For now I'm still only half way through the Z80 core, which I've been working on for about 3 months whenever I get a spare moment :-p When I've got the VDP working and I can see Sonic waving his finger on the title screen it will have all been worthit :-p

masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 1:31 pm
masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	PhilPotter wrote I suppose it would be doable - I'd need to be a lot more experienced to be the one to do that though ;-) Thing about programming this kind of gear is its harder in my experience - everything is abstracted so much these days, and there is so much abundance in terms of memory and processor power that you don't have to really worry about memory usage and cycle counts as much. SMS and other hardware from that era though require more bare metal programming. It'd be a lovely project though, and could certainly increase the visibility of the SMS scene as a whole. For now I'm still only half way through the Z80 core, which I've been working on for about 3 months whenever I get a spare moment :-p When I've got the VDP working and I can see Sonic waving his finger on the title screen it will have all been worthit :-p good luck with it man , it certainly is a great project to bring up the sms scene alive and many new games coming up for the sms aswel :) if in a near future if u need donations regarding this software let us know , im sure many people here and sms fans would certainly support you.

PhilPotter Joined: 08 Nov 2011 Posts: 82 Location: United Kingdom	Thanks :-) Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:21 pm
	I hope to have the emulator somewhat usable in the next month or two - I don't get a lot of free time to work on it sadly. Once it is playable though, I'm hoping some of the fine chaps/chappettes from the SMS Power scene will be willing to test it for me.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8649 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:07 pm
	You best bet to get started is Haroldhoop Basic compiler+librairies settings. Nothing good will come without the effort tho, it would still require some technical involvement and has a learning curve that's much much higher that you'd get with GameMaker. It would be possible to make a PC tool to setup behavior and that would create native code but I think it is beyond what the development community has to offer right now and it wouldn't lead to great games anyway because the constraints running on a SMS are really difficult to satisfy without handcrafted code and data.

masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:14 pm
masterblaster Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 20	Bock wrote You best bet to get started is Haroldhoop Basic compiler+librairies settings. Nothing good will come without the effort tho, it would still require some technical involvement and has a learning curve that's much much higher that you'd get with GameMaker. It would be possible to make a PC tool to setup behavior and that would create native code but I think it is beyond what the development community has to offer right now and it wouldn't lead to great games anyway because the constraints running on a SMS are really difficult to satisfy without handcrafted code and data. maybe a specific program that allows to develop demos mainly for the master system would be something cool , dunno just an idea , with the sms specifications , memory etc , whats the max memory that a cartridge can take , 2 meg? i can't believe that a console with so many years now and with the mega technology of todays this console is still hard to program oO if its still hard to make something like that for the master system then is a hard bastard of a beast heh

thatawesomeguy Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Posts: 730 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 6:50 am
	masterblaster wrote i can't believe that a console with so many years now and with the mega technology of todays this console is still hard to program oO if its still hard to make something like that for the master system then is a hard bastard of a beast heh Keep in mind that game maker software for the PC is only possible in part because PC hardware has gotten better over the years that the sloppy code they generate will still work great on any computer. SMS hardware by comparison hasn't changed one bit, it's still seriously underpowered with not much memory and very tight timing requirements, writing a universal system for a machine that requires per game specific tuning is a tough task indeed.

Logbomber Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 207	Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:42 am
Logbomber Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 207	If a game maker project was to be attempted, a simpler approach would be to choose an existing game and make an editor for it. A game like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap would be perfect for such a project, because the graphics in the game are not compressed, and the game has a wide variety of features. You could make almost any kind of 2d platformer using it as a base. It would basically just need a decent level editor and you can use Tile Layer Pro to change all the graphics. I mean think about it, WB III has everything, from different types of main characters (even flying and swimming), to power ups that you pick up, shops with purchasable items, a variety of projectiles, and the list goes on all in one of the smoothest 2d engines on the master system. You could make anything from an Ecco the Dolphin style game to an Alex the Kidd style game. Just a thought ;)

Martin Joined: 04 Nov 2004 Posts: 273	Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 2:12 pm
Martin Joined: 04 Nov 2004 Posts: 273	It's not smooth and it's not 8-way-scrolling. Does it have slopes? I think not. I don't think a game maker type project would be impossible, but to get really much out of the sms you need different engines for different type of games.

Logbomber Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 207	Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:03 pm
Logbomber Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 207	Quote It's not smooth and it's not 8-way-scrolling. Does it have slopes? I think not. It doesn't have slopes, but it does have flying and swimming which I consider to be incredibly smooth. No, you couldn't make a sonic clone with it. Anyway, my wonder boy bias aside, the idea would be to create a game editor for an existing game that has decent features, un-compressed graphics etc. so that new games can be made based on existing tech. I suggested WB III, but I am sure there would be a few other candidates out there. It was just an idea, as the reality of a game maker ever being created is quite small.

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 874 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 2:39 am
	Yes, the concept of a game maker for SMS seems to be doable, as long as one limits the kinds of games that would be supported, as others already mentioned above. The idea of simply making an editor for an existing game could also work, as long as it isn't only limited to level and graphics editing; being able to edit game events, weapon and monster behaviour would be a must. Another, maybe less ambitious idea, would be to make more specialized game making tools, like a shoot-em-up maker (see SEUCK for the C64), or some RPG making tool (see Dante for the MSX), etc. One step above that would be making a single tool that could make different types of games by using a set of semi-specialized "kernels" to handle each supported genre. Batari Basic, a compiler for making games for the Atari 2600, works more or less that way, though it does still require some amount of programming skill.

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 874 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 3:06 pm
	I just saw this project at NESDev: http://playpower.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/49273378/beta2.rar Basically, it's a version of Scratch modified for compiling into NES ROMs. It does give one some inspiration, doesn't it? ;) Original forum post

RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:43 am
RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	I think you can make SMS game engines for certain "Genres" that are easily modified by non programmers. Like someone said above, shoot-em-ups, beat-em-ups, etc. The biggest problem I think with a generic engine is the 8 sprite per line issue on SMS. It just really hammers home you have to do some fancy stuff to get decent playable games. To take advantage of the SMS to the greatest extent we need cart hardware that allows us to write to the VRAM at the highest speed possible, and with this comes the possibility of a generic engine which doesn't use the sprite engine to have movable characters. If you could modify all possible pixels on the SMS display every frame developers would be free to do some cool things. :)

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 874 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 11:12 am
	Unfortunaely, due to the way SMS's hardware is set up, you can't really pump data directly from the cartridge to the VDP without the aid of the CPU. ... As an aside, the GG does have pins on the cartridge port to feed a TV signal directly to the LCD, so you could, in theory, put a GPU in the cartridge and use it in place of the VDP, but, while it could be a nice project if done just for the lolz, there wouldn't be much of a point to it, from a retrogaming perspective: it just wouldn't be retro hardware anymore; I mean, you could just as well jam a complete modern smartphone hardware inside the cartridge. =P

thematrixeatsyou Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 37 Location: Wellington, New Zealand	Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 7:55 pm
	The export cartridge slot has BUSREQ/BUSACK pins, right? (The Japanese one doesn't appear to, sadly.) It also appears to have the IORQ pin and RD/WR pins, so I think you could hog the bus and then bash everything back through the cartridge slot (unless of course Sega shoved a bunch of diodes in).

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 874 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:16 pm
	I think see what you mean; maybe it would be doable, then. Of course, there's the question of how much custom hardware should be actually added to a cart without making it lose value as a retro platform; the limitations are part of the charm of developing for an old console.

RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:51 pm
RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	haroldoop wrote I think see what you mean; maybe it would be doable, then. Of course, there's the question of how much custom hardware should be actually added to a cart without making it lose value as a retro platform; the limitations are part of the charm of developing for an old console. Not really, since "cart DMA" was already happening on the NES and also happened later on Sega systems with Sega Mega Drive. It's like saying, if you had unlimited resources to build a cartridge users could stick into the real Sega Master System, what could we do. Provided you don't have things like "audio/video" out on the actual cartridge itself (to bypass the SMS VDP and PSG) I think it's valid and helps you extend the system. The NES wouldn't have as many good games as it did without some cool features in the cart hardware. Unfortunately outside of save ram the SMS had pretty much nothing.

Chilly Willy Joined: 23 Jan 2011 Posts: 65 Location: The Land of Enchantment	Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 1:29 am
	Cart DMA wouldn't add anything to the SMS. The only time you can "blast" data to the vram is the vertical blank. The rest of the time, you have to use delays between stores or you lose data. Even during the vblank, if the SEGA figures are right, the Z80 is barely slow enough on the repeat block move to avoid losing data. Using faster DMA would probably either result in lost data, or a speed up that's completely negated by the amount of time it would take to setup the DMA hardware on the cart to do the DMA. What would be better is just a HUGE cart... many games you can get around limits by simply throwing memory at the problem. Make your own mapper that allowed 128MB of cart space.

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:39 pm
	Ok so I was talking with Haroldhoop about this on the other topic so here it goes: A Master System game maker would be nice to make things easier with all them sorts of tools to develop a game , drawing sprites , backgrounds and all sorts of tricks. Something like pick the style of the game you want to make would be cool and then have all sorts of tools needed to develop a game in the style you want. If such program would exist it should also include things like intros , cut scenes and stuff , maybe a diagram showing the order that the game should take like power on -> intro -> main screen-> game start or demo (if buttons not pressed-> game start->cutscene one (or not) ->stage one and etc etc etc etc

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14740 Location: London	Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 6:41 pm
	You seem to be failing to understand the problem here. Making a game engine (the "code mumbo jumbo" bit) is really hard. Making a generalised game engine that can bend to all sorts of game styles is a ridiculously hard; making it do that without side effects is basically impossible. Making a general platform game engine, for example, is more feasible but will still struggle if it doesn't restrict you on things like metatile sizes, level size limits, special effects, sprite sizes, enemy counts, animation frames, and much more. So the engine is an integral part of the game, it defines the possibilities, the special features of the game, and in many ways the way it plays and feels. Simply editing the levels, intro, title screen etc is still hard - but absolutely has to be limited by the engine it will run on. You can't belittle the difficulty of making a game engine, let alone a content editor. A diagram to show the game flow is really trivial compared to the real work of making a game.

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 6:45 pm
	Maxim wrote You seem to be failing to understand the problem here. Making a game engine (the "code mumbo jumbo" bit) is really hard. Making a generalised game engine that can bend to all sorts of game styles is a ridiculously hard; making it do that without side effects is basically impossible. Making a general platform game engine, for example, is more feasible but will still struggle if it doesn't restrict you on things like metatile sizes, level size limits, special effects, sprite sizes, enemy counts, animation frames, and much more. So the engine is an integral part of the game, it defines the possibilities, the special features of the game, and in many ways the way it plays and feels. Simply editing the levels, intro, title screen etc is still hard - but absolutely has to be limited by the engine it will run on. You can't belittle the difficulty of making a game engine, let alone a content editor. A diagram to show the game flow is really trivial compared to the real work of making a game. Yeah Maxim , i never said it was easy because it's not. I understand that to come with such a piece of software will probably be impossible because as you said , which i agree , mostly when a game is made everything is customized from start to finish and maybe that's what you're trying to say , hence the difficulty of making a game.

OmegaPrime Joined: 18 Dec 2014 Posts: 95 Location: Canada	Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 8:37 pm
	Maxim wrote A diagram to show the game flow is really trivial compared to the real work of making a game. This is true,unfortunately the majority of people don't understand that.

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 874 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 11:00 pm
	Realistically, given the hardware limitations, it would really be better to make separate engines for each type of game.

tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 294	Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:55 pm
tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 294	Either separate engines for each type of game. Or editors like KiddEd and Twee2Sam, which i think, with the current batch of releases (including DukeNukem, 1969 and Bay Third) has proven that is possible to create a good game out of an existing engine. But, since i know the huge amount of work that goes into creating these editors and programs, instead of complaning about what we don't have, why not use what we do have? Limitations are part of what make the SMS so charming. And trying to work around them, is the fun part of creating a game for old hardware.

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