Forums

Sega Master System / Mark III / Game Gear
SG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV
Home - Forums - Games - Scans - Maps - Cheats - Credits
Music - Videos - Development - Hacks - Translations - Homebrew

View topic - [Coding competition 2020] Sunny the Mermaid (Intro) by Kagesan

Reply to topic

Rate this entry!

1 (Terrible) 0% 0%
2 5% 5%
3 5% 5%
4 5% 5%
5 10% 10%
6 15% 15%
7 5% 5%
8 26% 26%
9 26% 26%
10 (Excellent) 0% 0%
This poll has expired.
Author Message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 08 Jul 2001
  • Posts: 8644
  • Location: Paris, France
Reply with quote
[Coding competition 2020] Sunny the Mermaid (Intro) by Kagesan
Post Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2020 7:59 pm
https://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/SunnyTheMermaid-SMS



Quote
Here's a little sneak preview of what I'm working on. There's not much of a game yet, so for now, the intro sequence and title screen have to suffice. Once again, the title screen changes when played on a japanese unit, albeit only slightly. Oh, and FM sound is supported where available. Enjoy!


  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 12 Aug 2016
  • Posts: 86
Reply with quote
Please more
Post Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 3:05 pm
Great intro and promises a good game.
Please, a few more like 1 level.
I´m imaging a Ecco the dolphin but upgraded with more colors and best playability
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 28 Jan 2017
  • Posts: 546
  • Location: Málaga, Spain
Reply with quote
Perfect
Post Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:47 pm
Ummm....

Everything here is perfect. Perfect the graphics, the music, the font (!!!), the logo.... i am loving that characters and the history behind then.

If i had half the talent and attention to details of kagesan... I think i could not finish any game! Want to see the game finished (but please, do not make anything based on ecco!)

Kind regards my friend!
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 05 Sep 2013
  • Posts: 3763
  • Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:48 pm
Love the way you're putting Master System's dual BG palette to great use... two images on screen each one with his own perfect palette, fade-in of the second image's palette, greatly coupled with h-scroll of the upper part of the screen.

Now you locked yourself in a corner. With such an amazing intro, the game shouldn't really be anything less than your greatest ever, you know...
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 01 Feb 2014
  • Posts: 849
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 6:50 am
Thank you all.

sverx wrote
Now you locked yourself in a corner. With such an amazing intro, the game shouldn't really be anything less than your greatest ever, you know...

LOL, that's what I'm aiming for every time I start a new project. ;)

On a more serious note, after Pigarus I really wanted to do something less taxing where I ddidn't have to count cycles just to keep the FPS up. Instead I decided to do some other 'firsts', by having a cinematic intro, Ninja Gaiden style, and most importantly by supporting FM sound for the first time. Getting it to run was a bit of a hassle, but now that it works, exploring these sound possibilities is great fun. (You can actually hear both FM modes in that short demo, the intro uses all 9 channels while the title screen uses 6 channels + drums.) As a nice side effect, the FM tunes also encourage me to make my PSG versions sound better. I've never put as much care in the sound design (as opposed to just the composition) of the PSG side before.

The game itself started out as a remake of Mermaid Madness, a game which I fondly remembered from my childhood. Only when I re-played it recently to take notes, I found out that the game is actually terrible and no fun to play at all.

So I abandoned the remake idea. Now I'm only keeping the original game's back story (chubby mermaid saves trapped diver), and build a completely new game upon it. It's going to be an action adventure style game with many screens to explore and puzzles to solve. Imagine Metroid without jump physics or a sideview underwater Zelda, and you get the idea.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 29 Mar 2012
  • Posts: 879
  • Location: Spain
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:13 am
I haven't had time to review most of the entries, but the first one I tried is this (I always look for the Kagesan Seal of Quality). I'm craving for seeing more of this game! :-D

Just in a side note, how are you using FM? own library? which tracker do you use?
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 19 Feb 2017
  • Posts: 79
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:02 am
An incredible intro, I'm very curious to see the game.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 01 Jan 2014
  • Posts: 331
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 10:42 am
Wonderful graphics and music as expected. The fullness of the intro music is really striking, has a real wow factor to it.

Eagerly awaiting more.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 01 Feb 2014
  • Posts: 849
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 11:22 am
Thanks again.

kusfo wrote
Just in a side note, how are you using FM? own library? which tracker do you use?

I use Moonblaster via OpenMSX. The emulator lets you treat folders as disks, so you can easily take the resulting binary files and use them in your SMS ROM. The tracker has many idiosyncrasies and limitations that make it difficult to use the YM2413 to its fullest, but they help keeping the cpu load of the replayer in check, and with a little experimentation, you can work around them.

For the replayer, I did what Zipper (who helped me a lot with this) had already done a while ago: I ported the MSX replayer to run on the Master System. For reasons that still evade me, I was unable to get Zipper's original version to run, so I just started from scratch. I'm sure there's still room for improvement (especially when it comes to RAM usage), but the version I have now runs quite well and is fairly fast.
I also added a kind of rudimentary support for FM sound effects to be used on Mark III with FM unit, as that set-up can't play PSG sound effects alongside the FM music.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 29 Mar 2012
  • Posts: 879
  • Location: Spain
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:53 pm
Ah! Zipper kindly shared his code some time ago, and I tried to do a C wrapper but I was stuck as the player was not working, and I didn't understand the code perfectly. I need to retake this effort...
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 01 Feb 2014
  • Posts: 849
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:58 pm
kusfo wrote
Ah! Zipper kindly shared his code some time ago, and I tried to do a C wrapper but I was stuck as the player was not working, and I didn't understand the code perfectly. I need to retake this effort...

If you can wait a bit, I plan on releasing my version eventually, and I took some effort to comment the code thoroughly, so it should be possible to get an idea of what is going on. I just want to make a better version of my sfx converter before sharing the code, so I can distribute it alongside the player.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
  • Posts: 14688
  • Location: London
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:01 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
I did a little print of the intro music...



Very unusual to see 9-channel FM. Love that bass flute :)
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 29 Mar 2012
  • Posts: 879
  • Location: Spain
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:02 pm
Kagesan wrote
kusfo wrote
Ah! Zipper kindly shared his code some time ago, and I tried to do a C wrapper but I was stuck as the player was not working, and I didn't understand the code perfectly. I need to retake this effort...

If you can wait a bit, I plan on releasing my version eventually, and I took some effort to comment the code thoroughly, so it should be possible to get an idea of what is going on. I just want to make a better version of my sfx converter before sharing the code, so I can distribute it alongside the player.


That will be awesome, I'm not on a hurry, as in my current projects I'm not including a fm ost :-D
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 28 Jan 2017
  • Posts: 546
  • Location: Málaga, Spain
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:25 pm
That would be great!
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 18 Mar 2020
  • Posts: 33
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 10:26 pm
Kagesan wrote
Thank you all.
So I abandoned the remake idea. Now I'm only keeping the original game's back story (chubby mermaid saves trapped diver), and build a completely new game upon it. It's going to be an action adventure style game with many screens to explore and puzzles to solve. Imagine Metroid without jump physics or a sideview underwater Zelda, and you get the idea.


I'm really impressed by the demo! So much attention to details everywhere (but that's not surprising from a talented creator like you!). The intro is gorgeous and the music set a very "atmospheric" mood. Like everyone, I'm really eager to see the game itself now!

On an loosely related note, this year Nesdev competition had a an "underwater metroidvania" entry, Böbl, that is absolutely mind-blowing too if you need inspiration: https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19718

But they are using jump physics. So I'm really curious to see a game solely based on a "swimming" mecanic!
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 12 Oct 2015
  • Posts: 183
  • Location: Ireland
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 7:59 pm
Great job Kagesan! You should make some blog / vlog posts on how you did this incredible work... super smooth graphics... and some really neat effects... Awesome!
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 02 Mar 2011
  • Posts: 165
  • Location: Valencia,Spain.
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2020 2:02 pm
Incredible work, I've just tryied your game and I don't find a word in English(I'm studying it) to describe what I think, but I guess it would be PERFECT.

One more thing, thank you for trying to use FM sound, I really appreciate it.
  View user's profile Send private message
Reply to topic



Back to the top of this page

Back to SMS Power!