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Here's a guy working on a FPS game similiar to Doom but that will run on an Amiga 500 or similairly specced Amiga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvRxpxVRdEg

This is a quite interesting effect, considering the hardware:

I imagine a similar-looking effect could be implemented on the SMS using a fixed 6 colors background image (one for each lane, plus the background), and using raster interrupts plus midscreen palette changes for faking the scrolling effect (that is, supposing the SMS VDP could change 5 palette entries per scanline).

Nope, I won't try implementing the idea. :P

This is a work in progress racing game that uses real-time rotation and FMV on the NES:
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/nl/amp/2008/05/news043.html?__twitter_impression=true

A fighting game for the MSX, with C source.

https://github.com/arcadenea/msxfighter

This guy built a working video card only using OTS parts.

Make sure to check the follow-up videos as well, in the third one he actually hooks up that video card with a computer he also built out of breadboards and stuff.

And there went my whole afternoon. My girlfriend is hating me right now, I wonder if I should tell her what I actually did, or if it's better if she thinks I'm cheating on her 😁

Being interested in niche things is weird.

I remember seeing (some of) those videos about the VGA a few months ago - they're amazing!

https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3

Quote

In this repository you'll find the fully reversed source code for GTA III (master branch) and GTA VC (miami branch).

It has been tested and works on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, on x86, amd64, arm and arm64.
Rendering is handled either by original RenderWare (D3D8) or the reimplementation librw (D3D9, OpenGL 2.1 or above, OpenGL ES 2.0 or above).
Audio is done with MSS (using dlls from original GTA) or OpenAL.

The project has also been ported to the Ni****do Switch, Playstation Vita and Ni****do Wii U.

There will be a game programming contest for retro hardware from march 13th to March 29th:

https://itch.io/jam/retro-hardware-jam?fbclid=IwAR12fFl_RWOHjqctzoBjI9IU-YLoowDK...

Genius weird synth:

Quote

Sassy is an audio spreadsheet. Or, as it stands, it's THE audio spreadsheet.

It's a spreadsheet. You can add values to cells, ask it to average a range.

It's a synthesizer. You can ask it to generate a sine wave based on time, and output it through your speakers. Add an ADSR envelope, modulate the frequency based on MIDI input note, put in some filters and hey, it's an actual instrument.

Sassy includes over 100 functions, including some that largely make sense in a spreadsheet way (like finding maximum value out of a range) and others that largely make sense in a synthesizer way (like high pass filter, various waveform generators, delays etc) as well as a whole lot that make sense in both (like trigonometry).

Absolute genius, I am totally in awe. Also completely useless, so I am doubly impressed.

Very off topic but also impressive and technical.

Spoiler alert: 7 years in and it’s not quite finished yet.

A c64 demo running on the floppy disk drive (which emits the video signal directly + audio using motors)

the cables cutting hurt me physically

I see... they're taking advantage of the fact that the C64 disk drive has its own microprocessor in order to bit-bang a video signal. Pretty creative, out-of-the-box solution.

Genesis/Megadrive´s SOTN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8WcbBsZSjg

"Elk is a tiny embeddable JavaScript engine that implements a small but usable subset of ES6. It is designed for microcontroller development. Instead of writing firmware code in C/C++, Elk allows to develop in JavaScript. Another use case is providing customers with a secure, protected scripting environment for product customisation.

Elk features include:

- Cross platform. Works anywhere from 8-bit microcontrollers to 64-bit servers
- Zero dependencies. Builds cleanly by ISO C or ISO C++ compilers
- Easy to embed: just copy elk.c and elk.h to your source tree
- Very small and simple embedding API
- Can call native C/C++ functions from JavaScript and vice versa
- Does not use malloc. Operates with a given memory buffer only
- Small footprint: about 20KB on flash/disk, about 100 bytes RAM for core VM
- No bytecode. Interprets JS code directly"

https://github.com/cesanta/elk

I guess it could be made to run on the SMS via SDCC, specially due to the low ROM/RAM requirements, plus the fact that it does not use malloc().

An impressive Sega Genesis demo using graphics from Street Fighter V:

The part explaining how the tank can move around a platform is pretty interesting.

Pretty interesting that they managed to perform 4 channel wavetable synthesis at 23 KHz on the ZX Spectrum beeper:

I wonder if a similar technique could be adapted to the SMS PSG?

A pretty interesting WIP port:

Why C64 need 256 kb of expansion for run this game. Not is much ram memory for a simple game?

Let me quote someone who knows more than me:

LocalH on Sonic Retro wrote

A stock C64 doesn't have the bandwidth to move color RAM around the way this game does. It doesn't really need the whole expansion RAM so much, as it does the 1-cycle-per-byte REU DMA chip (whereas moving data via pure 6502 would eat all of the available cycle time just for moving the data, over 19k cycles versus 2k via REU)

yeah like Sam's Journey does with NTSC, but any REU size would do in that case...

A very interesting digital phone dialer from the '80s that uses core rope memory. From the Soviet Union.

Tear down, how it works, testing, etc

An interesting tool that generates an entire tileset from a single tile:
https://mokatunprod.itch.io/one-tile-to-tileset

How Out of this World was developed for Amiga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iz9PJbs5rE

A tool for generating art using AI:

A small technical test of raster effect capabilities on SMS

While certainly off-topic, I'm not sure if this really qualifies as technical or if it wouldn't be better suited to the music subforum, but making a whole new thread for it seems a bit much.

Anyway, there's this YT channel I enjoy very much, called 8-bit music theory. To be honest, only a few of the videos are really about 8-bit stuff, but almost all of them are interesting and explain (sometimes rather complicated) aspects of music theory in the context of games soundtracks and in an easy to understand way.

The video abot Mega Man's music helped, in fact, shape the soundtrack of Flight of Pigarus. I also took some cues from the one about drum arrangements for the music of my current project.

Highly recommended!

wow, great channel Kagesan!, thanks for sharing

While this one is in Unity, it does explain some techniques that can be used to make platforming controls feel tighter:

Some cool effects in Nes, in special the reflection:

Not really techinically impressive, but still cool.
https://www.neowin.net/news/man-creates-entire-game-of-pong-inside-a-single-spri...

Interesting explanation of various tricks used on SNES games:

Not sure if it was mentioned here before, but Retro Game Mechanics Explained also has a lot of very insightful videos. After some months of silence he has posted 2 new videos.

Here is my favorite effect and video:

The irony is that it's not the beautiful background effect that is causing the slowdown, but the the (too) many sprites in front of it. The platforms are also sprites here.

I'm watching the new video about Castlevania Bloodlines now.

Author	Message
fx Joined: 09 Sep 2001 Posts: 236 Location: Umeå, Sweden	Doom clone for unexpanded Amigas Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 11:29 pm
fx Joined: 09 Sep 2001 Posts: 236 Location: Umeå, Sweden	Here's a guy working on a FPS game similiar to Doom but that will run on an Amiga 500 or similairly specced Amiga. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvRxpxVRdEg

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:43 pm
	This is a quite interesting effect, considering the hardware: I imagine a similar-looking effect could be implemented on the SMS using a fixed 6 colors background image (one for each lane, plus the background), and using raster interrupts plus midscreen palette changes for faking the scrolling effect (that is, supposing the SMS VDP could change 5 palette entries per scanline). Nope, I won't try implementing the idea. :P

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2021 10:24 am
	This is a work in progress racing game that uses real-time rotation and FMV on the NES: https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/nl/amp/2008/05/news043.html?__twitter_impression=true

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 10:09 pm
	A fighting game for the MSX, with C source. https://github.com/arcadenea/msxfighter

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1285 Location: italy	Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2021 4:58 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1285 Location: italy	This guy built a working video card only using OTS parts. Make sure to check the follow-up videos as well, in the third one he actually hooks up that video card with a computer he also built out of breadboards and stuff. And there went my whole afternoon. My girlfriend is hating me right now, I wonder if I should tell her what I actually did, or if it's better if she thinks I'm cheating on her 😁 Being interested in niche things is weird.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3118	Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2021 5:09 pm
sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3118	I remember seeing (some of) those videos about the VGA a few months ago - they're amazing!

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14096 Location: London	RE3 game engine from GTA3 disassembly Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 6:13 pm
	https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3 Quote In this repository you'll find the fully reversed source code for GTA III (master branch) and GTA VC (miami branch). It has been tested and works on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, on x86, amd64, arm and arm64. Rendering is handled either by original RenderWare (D3D8) or the reimplementation librw (D3D9, OpenGL 2.1 or above, OpenGL ES 2.0 or above). Audio is done with MSS (using dlls from original GTA) or OpenAL. The project has also been ported to the Ni**do Switch, Playstation Vita and Ni**do Wii U.

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:24 am
	There will be a game programming contest for retro hardware from march 13th to March 29th: https://itch.io/jam/retro-hardware-jam?fbclid=IwAR12fFl_RWOHjqctzoBjI9IU-YLoowDK...

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8448 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:13 pm
	Genius weird synth: Quote Sassy is an audio spreadsheet. Or, as it stands, it's THE audio spreadsheet. It's a spreadsheet. You can add values to cells, ask it to average a range. It's a synthesizer. You can ask it to generate a sine wave based on time, and output it through your speakers. Add an ADSR envelope, modulate the frequency based on MIDI input note, put in some filters and hey, it's an actual instrument. Sassy includes over 100 functions, including some that largely make sense in a spreadsheet way (like finding maximum value out of a range) and others that largely make sense in a synthesizer way (like high pass filter, various waveform generators, delays etc) as well as a whole lot that make sense in both (like trigonometry).

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14096 Location: London	Uppestcase and lowestcase letters Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 1:35 pm
	Absolute genius, I am totally in awe. Also completely useless, so I am doubly impressed.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14096 Location: London	Project Binky Posted: Sat May 08, 2021 7:38 pm
	Very off topic but also impressive and technical. Spoiler alert: 7 years in and it’s not quite finished yet.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8448 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:17 pm
	A c64 demo running on the floppy disk drive (which emits the video signal directly + audio using motors)

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3118	Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:33 pm
sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3118	the cables cutting hurt me physically

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:23 pm
	I see... they're taking advantage of the fact that the C64 disk drive has its own microprocessor in order to bit-bang a video signal. Pretty creative, out-of-the-box solution.

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2021 12:29 pm
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Genesis/Megadrive´s SOTN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8WcbBsZSjg

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:35 pm
	"Elk is a tiny embeddable JavaScript engine that implements a small but usable subset of ES6. It is designed for microcontroller development. Instead of writing firmware code in C/C++, Elk allows to develop in JavaScript. Another use case is providing customers with a secure, protected scripting environment for product customisation. Elk features include: - Cross platform. Works anywhere from 8-bit microcontrollers to 64-bit servers - Zero dependencies. Builds cleanly by ISO C or ISO C++ compilers - Easy to embed: just copy elk.c and elk.h to your source tree - Very small and simple embedding API - Can call native C/C++ functions from JavaScript and vice versa - Does not use malloc. Operates with a given memory buffer only - Small footprint: about 20KB on flash/disk, about 100 bytes RAM for core VM - No bytecode. Interprets JS code directly" https://github.com/cesanta/elk I guess it could be made to run on the SMS via SDCC, specially due to the low ROM/RAM requirements, plus the fact that it does not use malloc().

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:19 pm
	An impressive Sega Genesis demo using graphics from Street Fighter V:

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2021 7:18 pm
	The part explaining how the tank can move around a platform is pretty interesting.

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:27 am
	Pretty interesting that they managed to perform 4 channel wavetable synthesis at 23 KHz on the ZX Spectrum beeper: I wonder if a similar technique could be adapted to the SMS PSG?

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 9:51 pm
	A pretty interesting WIP port:

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 5:52 pm
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Why C64 need 256 kb of expansion for run this game. Not is much ram memory for a simple game?

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1285 Location: italy	Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 6:39 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1285 Location: italy	Let me quote someone who knows more than me: LocalH on Sonic Retro wrote A stock C64 doesn't have the bandwidth to move color RAM around the way this game does. It doesn't really need the whole expansion RAM so much, as it does the 1-cycle-per-byte REU DMA chip (whereas moving data via pure 6502 would eat all of the available cycle time just for moving the data, over 19k cycles versus 2k via REU)

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3118	Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 3:15 pm
sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3118	yeah like Sam's Journey does with NTSC, but any REU size would do in that case...

dink Joined: 09 Dec 2013 Posts: 220 Location: detroit	Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2021 10:54 pm
dink Joined: 09 Dec 2013 Posts: 220 Location: detroit	A very interesting digital phone dialer from the '80s that uses core rope memory. From the Soviet Union. Tear down, how it works, testing, etc

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2021 12:20 am
	An interesting tool that generates an entire tileset from a single tile: https://mokatunprod.itch.io/one-tile-to-tileset

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2022 6:39 pm
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	How Out of this World was developed for Amiga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iz9PJbs5rE

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:32 pm
	A tool for generating art using AI:

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:52 pm
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	A small technical test of raster effect capabilities on SMS

Kagesan Joined: 01 Feb 2014 Posts: 697	Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:04 am
Kagesan Joined: 01 Feb 2014 Posts: 697	While certainly off-topic, I'm not sure if this really qualifies as technical or if it wouldn't be better suited to the music subforum, but making a whole new thread for it seems a bit much. Anyway, there's this YT channel I enjoy very much, called 8-bit music theory. To be honest, only a few of the videos are really about 8-bit stuff, but almost all of them are interesting and explain (sometimes rather complicated) aspects of music theory in the context of games soundtracks and in an easy to understand way. The video abot Mega Man's music helped, in fact, shape the soundtrack of Flight of Pigarus. I also took some cues from the one about drum arrangements for the music of my current project. Highly recommended!

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 740 Location: Spain	Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:08 am
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 740 Location: Spain	wow, great channel Kagesan!, thanks for sharing

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 9:22 am
	While this one is in Unity, it does explain some techniques that can be used to make platforming controls feel tighter:

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2022 8:09 am
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 149	Some cool effects in Nes, in special the reflection:

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2022 10:15 am
	Not really techinically impressive, but still cool. https://www.neowin.net/news/man-creates-entire-game-of-pong-inside-a-single-spri...

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 727 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 5:01 pm
	Interesting explanation of various tricks used on SNES games:

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 236	Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 6:07 pm
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 236	Not sure if it was mentioned here before, but Retro Game Mechanics Explained also has a lot of very insightful videos. After some months of silence he has posted 2 new videos. Here is my favorite effect and video: The irony is that it's not the beautiful background effect that is causing the slowdown, but the the (too) many sprites in front of it. The platforms are also sprites here. I'm watching the new video about Castlevania Bloodlines now.

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