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Does anyone want to make an SMS game?
Post Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2000 7:59 am
Does anyone want to make an SMS game with me? I want to make an SMS game which will push the SMS to its limit, including making a 4mb rom, raster effects, etc...
 
Nyef
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2000 2:42 pm
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> Does anyone want to make an SMS game with me? I want to make an SMS game which will push the SMS to its limit, including making a 4mb rom, raster effects, etc...

Hrm... a 512k ROM that uses raster effects... How about Pong? I'm sure you can find a way to use a raster effect with it... Like, say, making the background use a flame effect or a plasma, and having an unadorned status bar at the bottom of the screen.

To make it use up 512k, add a short FMV sequence. That should do it.

(I'll just take this opportunity to point out that the only reason to use a 512k cart is for an RPG, and those generally don't use raster effects)

--Nyef
 
  • Joined: 24 Jun 1999
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2000 8:32 pm
Well, the idea behind is nice, still.
I'm with anyone who want to code anything on the SMS/GG, especially if it is something amazing!
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 6:11 am
When I said 4mb, as one would, I MEANT 4 MEGABYTES, which is 8 times bigger than 4 mega bit catridge.

And I thought maybe you could get some sort of scrolling effect, which would distort the tiles, as to get an isometric view. Could you turn
_ /
|_| into /

by push the square into a rhombus in the x direction, then pushing a bit of the rhombus up in the y direction, to nearly create a diamond, and an isometric view.

I am interested in creating an ultima like RPG (without 3d dungeons as they are totally crap.)

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> Hrm... a 512k ROM that uses raster effects... How about Pong? I'm sure you can find a way to use a raster effect with it... Like, say, making the background use a flame effect or a plasma, and having an unadorned status bar at the bottom of the screen.

> To make it use up 512k, add a short FMV sequence. That should do it.

> (I'll just take this opportunity to point out that the only reason to use a 512k cart is for an RPG, and those generally don't use raster effects)

> --Nyef
 
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Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists esp.
Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 6:14 am
Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists especially, please e-mail me, or msg the board. I would like to start making an SMS game soon. We would making a game in assembler, which is better and will get more power out of the system than c or C++

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> Well, the idea behind is nice, still.
> I'm with anyone who want to code anything on the SMS/GG, especially if it is something amazing!
 
  • Joined: 24 Jun 1999
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Re: Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists esp.
Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 7:45 am
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> Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists especially, please e-mail me, or msg the board. I would like to start making an SMS game soon. We would making a game in assembler, which is better and will get more power out of the system than c or C++

Ouch.
May I ask if you already have some experience with the system, or console programming, or programming in general ?
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Re: Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists esp.
Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 11:26 am

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> Ouch.
> May I ask if you already have some experience with the system, or console programming, or programming in general ?

Yes, I have 6 years of QBASIC experience, 4 years of VB experience, and 3 years of assembler experience, all for IBM PC. I know nearly everthing there is to know about how IBM compatible computers function at a low level...stuff like that.

Last december I downloaded some docs, and tought myself Z80 assembler, then tought myself how to program the SMS (which is relitivly simple compared to all those gameboy registers) in the period of three weeks.

So in answer to your question, yes I do have a bit of programming experience, plus I have been learning music for 8 years, but I'm no artist though.
 
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Re: Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists esp.
Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 3:59 pm
Oh that's good then.
I was wondering because of your comment saying like
"I will program the SMS in Assembler because C++ is not efficient enough".
You know a way to program for SMS in C++ ?
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 4:13 pm
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> When I said 4mb, as one would, I MEANT 4 MEGABYTES, which is 8 times bigger than 4 mega bit catridge.

Then don't say mb. In the context of ROM chips, it's megabits. And I have a very hard time seeing 4 megabytes of space being completely used up.

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> And I thought maybe you could get some sort of scrolling effect, which would distort the tiles, as to get an isometric view. Could you turn
> _ /
> |_| into /

> by push the square into a rhombus in the x direction, then pushing a bit of the rhombus up in the y direction, to nearly create a diamond, and an isometric view.

You can't really push the rhombus in the y direction with a raster effect. You could, however, draw the tiles to intersect in columns, and have the raster effect sort out the horizontal. Kinda a pain to have to do, though.

It might be easier just to draw the rhombus out normally, and throw some code at the problem of making them fit together at the edges. It's not like you're going to run out of space anytime soon, after all.

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> I am interested in creating an ultima like RPG (without 3d dungeons as they are totally crap.)

First, AFAIK, only the first 2 ultimas had 3d dungeons. Second, 3d dungeons can actually be good on a decent system (see Phantasy Star for 3d dungeons done right).

Hrm... Now I'm getting ideas for some code _I'd_ like to write. I suppose it's time for me to look for a decent devkit (or write one)...

--Nyef
 
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Re: Any programmers, musicians, graphic artists esp.
Post Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2000 4:15 pm
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> "I will program the SMS in Assembler because C++ is not efficient enough".
> You know a way to program for SMS in C++ ?

I don't know about C++, but I use a Z80 cross compiler for C at work. It could probably be coerced into targetting the SMS.

--Nyef
 
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Hi Nyef
Post Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2000 1:04 am
Now that i've got your attenion,
Yes, the first 2 ultimas had crummy wireframe 3d dungeons, but they weren't very good games. Ultima 6 & 7 (the best of the series) didn't have 3d dungeon, the dungeon was just treated like an ordinary tile map. You say you can't see 4Megabytes of rom getting used up. I would create a RPG where the 3d world was 1024 tiles by 1024 tiles, if you're just using the first 256 tiles, then it would take 1 megabyte to store the world, 1MB is more than most cartidges are. Then add video sequences (like on the beginning of Ultima 6 if you have ever played it) and about 2.5MBs are used up, then the remaining 1.5MB will be used on character tiles, music, and actual game code.

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> First, AFAIK, only the first 2 ultimas had 3d dungeons. Second, 3d dungeons can actually be good on a decent system (see Phantasy Star for 3d dungeons done right).
 
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Re: Hi Nyef
Post Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2000 5:56 pm
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> Now that i've got your attenion,
> Yes, the first 2 ultimas had crummy wireframe 3d dungeons, but they weren't very good games. Ultima 6 & 7 (the best of the series) didn't have 3d dungeon, the dungeon was just treated like an ordinary tile map. You say you can't see 4Megabytes of rom getting used up. I would create a RPG where the 3d world was 1024 tiles by 1024 tiles, if you're just using the first 256 tiles, then it would take 1 megabyte to store the world, 1MB is more than most cartidges are. Then add video sequences (like on the beginning of Ultima 6 if you have ever played it) and about 2.5MBs are used up, then the remaining 1.5MB will be used on character tiles, music, and actual game code.

I pity the fool who don't compress his tile-arrays!
 
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Mr. T is a fool
Post Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2000 2:09 am
It is fast to not compress them, and only RLE compression would be good, as the compression technique gif uses is
A. Too complex to do easily in assembler
B. Too maths entensive for a Z80
C. I couldn't uncompress the whole thing and store it in RAM, but I can store more of the tile-array in ROM, which means no compression. If I don't have the whole thing in memory, my routines will be more complex and will have to work out which bit to grab, and stuff like that etc...
D. I would be doing this stuff in the verticle and horizonal retrace periods, so it needs to be fast.

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> I pity the fool who don't compress his tile-arrays!
 
Johannes Holmberg
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Re: Mr. T is cool
Post Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2000 1:23 pm
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> It is fast to not compress them, and only RLE compression would be good, as the compression technique gif uses is

RLE is what I had in mind, but it is definitely not the only possible solution...

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> A. Too complex to do easily in assembler
> B. Too maths entensive for a Z80

I don't know what kind of compression the gif format uses, so I can't really comment on these two.

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> C. I couldn't uncompress the whole thing and store it in RAM, but I can store more of the tile-array in ROM, which means no compression. If I don't have the whole thing in memory, my routines will be more complex and will have to work out which bit to grab, and stuff like that etc...

I'm not sure I see what you mean. Of course the whole thing won't fit in the memory of the SMS, but compressing it means that you don't have to use as many rom banks.

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> D. I would be doing this stuff in the verticle and horizonal retrace periods, so it needs to be fast.

The actual decompressing of the tile-arraydoesn't need to be in the vertical retrace...

But then again, I might as well shut up since this is your project, not mine :)

/Johannes
 
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