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Tom wrote

To be honest, I don't get all this hate for the Game Gear, what's wrong with it? I do apologise in advance for what I'm about to say, but, seriously, instead of being happy that someone is working on a new amazing game, every other post in here is "baw, why isn't it Master System". Like, don't do that, please? It's like you win a car at a lottery, and you say "sure it's a nice car, but I wanted it in a different color, so I'm not going to drive it". You're lucky I'm not the programmer here, because this attitude would lead me to drop the project on the spot, cireza is being WAY too kind to acknowledge all these unwarranted and undeserved complaints.

Again, I'm sorry if this is harsh, but it had to be said.

It's a general trend today which will only end in discouraging future developments.

I've designed an adapter to play Colecovision games on the Master System and the first questions were:
1) Does it support the Super Game Module (which was NEVER an official product, only a prototype never released)? => No
2) Does it support OG Colecovision controllers? => No as pinout is different (1 pin must be rerouted requiring a second adapter that plugs into the controller ports).
3) Does it work on a Megadrive through a Power Base Converter? => No because the MD in MS mode doesn't support legacy modes.
4) Does it work on the GG with a Master Gear adapter? => From a software point of view yes (the adapter is able to initialise the palette to the closest SG-1000/Colecovision ones), from a hardware one no, cause the adapter draws too much current for the tiny power board inside the GG.

That's a lot of NOs people aren't ready to accept...
1) I could probably embed all that's needed inside the adapter. On a side note the SGM sells form $90, my adapter I'm aiming $60... Combine the two and look at price skyrocketing.
2) I could also design an adapter (but Colecovision controllers are terrible... Yes worse than the MS ones).
3) Nothing I can do here.
4) Only solution would be to design a beefier power board for the GG. There's too little slack with the OG one to remotely think of a lower power consumption design for the adapter.

kusfo wrote

the Hand Helds were really poor choices for RPGs.

And yet, the Pokémon games have been amongst the most successful ones on the other 8-bit handheld. This game is inherently different, but it does have a similar feeling.

Once again, I'm sorry if I raised my voice, but having been a Game Gear owner, I'll admit I'm a bit partial to it. Most other homebrew productions target the Master System, it saddens me to see this apparent unappreciation a rare time the Game Gear gets some love for once.

I don’t really want to derail this topic any further, but I think that the GG tends to be underappreciated, because (compared to the other handheld) relatively few people did actually have one back in the day, so there’s little emotional attachment, and getting one in working condition in more recent years takes considerable effort not everyone is willing to invest.

On the other hand, lots of people have Master Systems and/or Mega Drives, so if they don’t want to play via emulation, I can kind of understand them asking for a version that works on what is available to them, especially since the hardware is so similar.

To be honest, I probably would have been among them just a couple of years ago. That only changed when I got my Mega SG. I really do enjoy playing GG games on it and thus have found a whole new appreciation for the system. I do believe it offers an interestingly different experience compared to the Master System.

That said, any developer should be free to do what he wants, and I, for one, will welcome any new GG game just as much as a new SMS release.

kusfo wrote

I was mentioning it's a pity as the Hand Helds were really poor choices for RPGs.

I wanted to react to this, because I strongly disagree. My very first SEGA console was a Master System and I love this console (still own it). I was lucky enough to be French on that regard, and Europe had amazing support this console.

That being said, the Game Gear is by far my favorite handheld console of all time. Not because of its original blurry LCD, you guessed it. But because in terms of hardware, I find it incredibly capable and well thought.

It most certainly is only a Master System with lower resolution, more colors and stereo sound. But this changes everything actually. MS is limited to 64 sprites at once, and 8 per line. Honestly, this is pretty low when you take into account the high number of pixels pushed on screen (256x192 to 240). It makes the system not well suited for displaying several big characters, which applies in Fighting Games or BTA for example.

Drop the resolution to 160x144 and suddenly, filling this screen efficiently becomes much easier, and games can be super impressive. I believe most of you have played GG Aleste 2, for example ? It also makes Fighting Games much more feasible. I highly recommend playing both Ninku games, they are excellent.

Another huge gain is the VRAM : it is still the same amount, but since you have to fill a much smaller screen, you have all the room you need to push super pretty visuals and pictures that are composed of entirely different tiles. You are never struggling that much to achieve your visuals. Combined with the excellent color palette of 4096, no wonder a lot of games on the GG could pass for 16 bits games. Even the Neo Geo Pocket (great console !) was still stuck with 4 colors per tile.

I love this console and its library. It had a pretty long life in Japan and eventually got some excellent late games, such as Sylvan Tale, Lunar, Royal Stone or Moldorian to name a few adventure/RPG games. Also the three Shining Force games, Final Conflict being excellent. SF games though are a bit limited in terms of colors because of technical constraints.

Personally, I find that 160x144 is plenty for a RPG, and for any game as long as you go with small characters to keep a good field of view. This is also why some MS to GG ports were not ideal, such as Dragon's Trap, because they retained the scale of the visuals for the TV. But any game developed with the GG in mind is perfectly playable (Batman Returns, GG Shinobi etc...). Scrolling does not need a black bar to the left either, and you can stream in VRAM with bigger tiles than 8x8 which helps quite a bit (and developers did this).

There are many ways to play GG games. You can have an original console (recapped) and simply change the backlight, so you keep the original screen and ratio. Or you can opt for a new LCD. You will lose the pixel ratio (which is a bummer) but will gain a lot in clarity. I believe the Analog Pocket can take GG games as well. And a personal favorite way to play GG games is the Wii U Gamepad, excellent for any retro game.

My game does not scroll at all, so blur should be minimal even on the original screen, and there is an option to have some space between each letter, to make texte easier to read. I hope you will give it a try :)

Excellent post! I knew you didn't need me to advocate for you, but I just couldn't avoid to take your side. I promise I won't step out of line again.

Also...

Kagesan wrote

That said, any developer should be free to do what he wants.

Amen to that.

The fact is that I actually agree with most of your comments, although I have only enjoyed GG properly in emulation. I've a recapped one, but it's really hard to play with the original screen.

My phrase about hand held being a poor choice for RPGs refer especially to the original hardware. For instance, I played Pokemon in 1999 in an original GB and It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. I still remember how hard was to read the text on that screen! (Although I saw the game in a GBC, and it was a very different story). For Shining Force games (as I'm a fan), I've played most of them in emulation, as when I tried on the real machine the text was also so blurry it was very hard to read with my 40 years old eyes.

In any case, I favour giving love to the hand helds from developer perspective. We published Chain Break for the GB (https://tuxedogamedevs.com/#chainbreak), and I was actually doing a GG version of Gotris, but I have it parked as I was using 4x4 pieces instead of 8x8 and I was founding the result very blurry in the real machine. I have to think the best way to adapt the graphics.

(And my new game, an Alter Ego port, it's also hard to adapt to GG, but I 'll think to do it)

LCD mod is the way to go. Again, not perfect because you lose the pixel-perfect ratio, but you can mitigate it to only have the issue vertically (as 320 pixels is exactly 2x 160) with a different mode and can also put vertical scanlines. And you help keeping a Game Gear alive :)

See my Mc Will Game Gear attached.

Picture taken from my French test of Moldorian : https://www.sega-mag.com/test/test-moldorian-10814

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cireza Game Gear

Yes, I want to mod it, but I'm a bit afraid as a friend of mine tried to install the mod and the console died (we still don't know the reason).

For GB, I use a Chinese GB Boy that's has a quite good screen.

There is no hate here about being a Game Gear game. We all love 8-bit Sega games and consoles. I own two Game Gear consoles: one recapped and with the original screen, and the other one with the McWill mod installed. I prefer the second one for playing games.

My favorite console is the SMS. I believe it is more popular, and I think more people could enjoy your game if you make a port for it. You gave all the reasons in your last post. As I mentioned before, your game for the SMS would be fantastic.

I am a native Spanish speaker living in Spain. If you consider making your game multilingual, I would be happy to help with all the Spanish text.

The more languages, the more people will enjoy your game.

Regards from Spain.

Tom wrote

To be honest, I don't get all this hate for the Game Gear, what's wrong with it? I do apologise in advance for what I'm about to say, but, seriously, instead of being happy that someone is working on a new amazing game, every other post in here is "baw, why isn't it Master System". Like, don't do that, please? It's like you win a car at a lottery, and you say "sure it's a nice car, but I wanted it in a different color, so I'm not going to drive it". You're lucky I'm not the programmer here, because this attitude would lead me to drop the project on the spot, cireza is being WAY too kind to acknowledge all these unwarranted and undeserved complaints.

Again, I'm sorry if this is harsh, but it had to be said.

You completely misunderstood our statments.We everybody want @cireza finish the game dont matter if GG. But he could port it for SMS. Like "Cool! You could also do it for SMS?"

Currently implementing the final chapter of the game.

Here is a little teasing with a new background ;)

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Really nice project :) I can't wait to try it!

I am currently in testing phase for the game on real hardware (the game is complete). No big issue detected, everything is going smoothly. I am editing a few lines of text, and adjusting a little bit the world map. Only one real bug detected so far, but I had thoroughly tested everything during development anyway.

For fun, I have been experimenting on a layout for battles in a RPG, if I decide to make another game once this one is complete.

I am not announcing anything here, this is simply for fun and to study a little bit the constraints.

Since I am not as good as "real" developers from the past, I don't think that I can merge in real time characters over backgrounds, my code will never be fast enough. So I ended up with a layout that would work by avoiding this issue, reserving sprites for enemies and spells, while characters are included in the background over the BG color.

There is an example on GG and one on MS. I did my best around the MS palette, and wanted to put all three characters at once, so each have 2 dedicated colors. Others are common.

On GG, only one character at the time. Yes, GG has an awesome color palette (4096, but you already know it). I really love it. Still quite happy with the result on MS.

Any good reason to go with 256x224 instead of 256x192 ? I saw that some European games use x224 (Code Masters games).

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224 line mode is only compatible with later SMSes, but for PAL region it makes a significant reduction of the size of the border area which is quite helpful.

Maxim wrote

224 line mode is only compatible with later SMSes, but for PAL region it makes a significant reduction of the size of the border area which is quite helpful.

Thank you for the clarification. To avoid any incompatibilities, it should be 256x192 as I understand it.

cireza wrote

To avoid any incompatibilities, it should be 256x192 as I understand it.

Yes. This way it can run on any SMS model, on any Game Gear and on any MegaDrive/Genesis with an adapter. Conversely, it would run only on some SMS models and on any Game Gear, but wouldn't run on any MegaDrive/Genesis.

Having tried to run some of Codemasters' games on my Power Base Converter, it does pedantically run ... it's just that all the sprites are in the wrong place.

lidnariq wrote

Having tried to run some of Codemasters' games on my Power Base Converter, it does pedantically run ... it's just that all the sprites are in the wrong place.

Yes. Setting one of the SMS II modes on a Genesis/MegaDrive is just ignored, so you'll get 256×192 instead - but the game will presume differently of course. Also there's a difference in how the sprites are handled which likely result in missing / misplaced sprites.
You would get the same issues running those games on an SMS I (one with the 'original' VDP, I mean)

Some random thoughts about shadows and elements to be displayed above characters.

I am experimenting with the SMS palette and making some futuristic dungeon graphics. There is a picture of my current work, meant to try out everything I have drawn.

I wanted to have characters 2 squares high (32 pixels). I also wanted to have some things displayed on the ceiling above them, and that they would pass under.

My understanding is that this is possible to do with bg tiles, and that the only color that will be behind the sprites is the BG color. All others will be above. Thus, I need a 1 color floor, and use other colors for the beam.

This should probably work if you look at my screen.

Then comes the problem of having the character against the wall, and under the beam. If the character is indeed 32 pixels high, then his head should be in front of the wall but behind the beam : this won't work with bg tiles only.

Here are the options I see :
- give up on beams (too bad, I like the effect and the shadow)
- make 16 pixels characters (smaller) so that they are never in front of a wall (on TV, I think that 32x16 is a must)
- put sprites for the beam over the wall, but this means I have to reserve the right colors in the sprite palettes (might be the only solution ?)

Not too sure what I want to do.

Any thoughts about this ? Or maybe examples to share ? Thanks.

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If the beams are 8px wide then they can just be in front of the sprites all the time with no need for masking.

cireza wrote

Some random thoughts about shadows and elements to be displayed above characters.

I am experimenting with the SMS palette and making some futuristic dungeon graphics. There is a picture of my current work, meant to try out everything I have drawn.

I wanted to have characters 2 squares high (32 pixels). I also wanted to have some things displayed on the ceiling above them, and that they would pass under.

My understanding is that this is possible to do with bg tiles, and that the only color that will be behind the sprites is the BG color. All others will be above. Thus, I need a 1 color floor, and use other colors for the beam.

This should probably work if you look at my screen.

Any thoughts about this ? Or maybe examples to share ? Thanks.

You've misunderstood how tile priority works, it's on a tile by tile bases, so the beam can be high (above the sprites) the wall can be low (below the sprites) at the same time.
All working in your favour.

The issue is when the forced perspective puts player sprites between the beam and the wall. I've drawn in two yellow 16x32 rectangles to represent the cases here, where the beam above the floor can have priority but the beam visually in front of the wall can't.

However, it is indeed an 8px beam, so it could be aligned to the tile grid to solve it. Obviously that doesn't work for any other shape.

Unrelated, but I think the shadows are a bit inconsistent. If the beam casts a shadow across the wall at an angle then so should the shadows from the walls at the left side; but then the floor shadows imply a light source at the upper left, which is a bit hard to reconcile. I'm no pixel artist but I guess it must be necessary to decide on a light direction and then try to make everything consistent with it? Then again, this is just a work in progress.

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Currently the beam is centered in two tiles. It is indeed a good idea to simply shift it by 4 pixels and use a single tile, this solves the issue. No need for "masking" as you call it (I will remember the wording). Which means I can make more elaborated ground if I want.

About the shadows being inconsistent on the walls, I had already thought about it and was going to fix it. The shadow should go back against the wall, in the same way that it does for the beam. The intended light source is South-West. I will adjust other elements as well.

Edit : gave more thought about lighting and shadows.

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Small update. I have been working these last days, trying to improve colors and also draw more elements to have everything required to draw several dungeons. Here I am sharing the progress, for the curious eyes.

I have also studied a little bit the MS memory, to set a target in terms of tiles for the background, as text will be displayed over the field as well as a portrait. For text, I would like to implement variable width with letters that will be 16x8 at most. For TV play, it seems like a good idea. Reserving 3 lines of text takes a lot of room in memory, but the results should be nice on screen.

I don't have a ton of room left, so planing on the story will become a necessity to think about the specific elements I will have to add at some point.

Edit : maybe I should put this in a separate thread or rename this thread ?

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All these new graphics look great! I'm already envisioning a Phantasy Star II kind of game!

I think this deserves its own thread. Probably Maxim can split the topic

There’s a few tricks you can use for the variable width text part but it can get quite technical.

1. If you can afford the palette space, you can use each tile twice by drawing tiles with the regular and sprite palette and then using one bitplane for each version of the text. This costs four palette entries in each palette, presumably set to black and white, which you probably need anyway - but it’s still a reduction.

2. You can switch to a legacy video mode in a line interrupt. This means you can’t have the text in a nice window, but instead you get true 1bpp video memory use and also as a side effect the legacy part is immune to vertical scrolling. However it can be hard to manage the video memory use between multiple active modes.

3. As an extension to #2, the legacy text mode gets you 6x8 fixed width fonts. This may or may not be useful - more text on screen than 8x8 but it’s still difficult to balance character widths.

I’ll also mention https://damieng.com/typography/zx-origins/ which may inspire you to abandon variable width fonts entirely because the fonts all look so awesome :)

Good, Maxim! How much reduction cireza can get with these tricks? A nood question: Using same tile for characters/letters, for example 0 and O can reduce more or is irrelevant?

For VWF there's no gain to share glyphs. The issue is that the VRAM tiles need to be drawn into and thus to show 232x32px of text area (2 rows of 16px text in the screen-safe area), you need 116 tiles out of your maximum ~440, which is a lot. You can halve that if you use the bitplanes trick. The legacy mode data would be approaching a quarter of that but with other difficulties/consequences.

On another note, the shadows still seem kind of inconsistent to me :)

I can split the thread if you can identify where you'd like to split it from.

If that's good for you, I think the topic can be split at my post with the battle screens PoCs.

Concerning the various suggestions you made, I understand the 1 one like this: it reminds me of what Traveller's Tale did for the SEGA logo in Sonic 3D.

For point 2, I understand that there is another display mode that uses less memory. Probably related to older "SG" games ? I suppose these were 8 colors only.

I appreciate the suggestions, however if I want to achieve something, I want to try to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible. Switching video modes on the fly (with an interrupt I suppose) is not really what I wanted, especially as I envisioned the text and portraits on top of the map. It would have been pretty to do this.

There are indeed some very nice 8x8 fonts in the link, but part of the fun is drawing things myself :) And I am dead set on doing that 8x16 variable font. I will see if I go with 2 or 3 lines of text on screen, or have a smaller window.

Finally for the shadows, I used real life tests to decide on what I should do (as seen in the picture). I was thinking on making them smaller though, because I find that taking a full 16x16 square makes the overall map too dark. Probably going to go with only 8 large in the end.

Realistic shadows already generated a lot of additional tiles. Games very rarely used realistic shadows because of this. PSII has none and PSIV is very basic. Still want to do it, but some choices will need to be made.

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cireza wrote

I am dead set on doing that 8x16 variable font. I will see if I go with 2 or 3 lines of text on screen, or have a smaller window.

I believe you should aim for a small window, and have some border around it, so that the actual 'bitmap' you'll have inside isn't too huge. It eats your VRAM pretty quickly (say your window is 192×32, this is 96 tiles in VRAM...)

sverx wrote

I believe you should aim for a small window, and have some border around it, so that the actual 'bitmap' you'll have inside isn't too huge. It eats your VRAM pretty quickly (say your window is 192×32, this is 96 tiles in VRAM...)

Right now with 3 lines I would be locking 156 tiles. It can fit, depending on how many tiles I want for my backgrounds. Window size will definitely be the adjustment parameter here.

I have moved on planning my world and game-design. Once this is done, I will know all the chipsets I have to produce, and when this will be done, I will also know how much memory I have to reserve for the tiles of these chipsets. You pretty much have to put the entirety of your game on paper before developing with these old consoles.

Another thing that eventually became evident to me is that I need horizontal and vertical scrolling for the worldmap, otherwise it won't give a proper sense of scale. As I do not want to give the feel of moving between small regions, but really a sense of navigating a planet.

Dungeons and towns will be screen by screen, it will provide a "room" by "room" effect which feels appropriate to me. I will be able to remove the 8px vertical bar and I think I can do a nice vertical scroll effect for elevators. Sounds like a good idea at least. That's the problem right now, I have to sort out tenths of ideas that come in my mind... Might make another GG game, I am not totally set on the MS game. I am forcing myself into studying properly MS and see the constraints. Obviously memory is a lot more constrained on MS because of the greater resolution.

Well, I guess these are the firsts steps towards a ton of work... Once again ! Definitely going for something much more complicated here. I will have to setup by workspace with makesms, because this is going to be more than 32 KB of code for sure.

Quick update on my next game, I made quite a bit of progress and sorted out a lot of things.

The game-design is basically complete on paper, I know the amount of things I have to draw and started doing so.

Worldmap code including scrolling is done and working. Dungeon/Town navigation on a screen by screen basis is also coded. I need to tackle the battles presentation now, and I decided to change my layout. It will be easier to display pretty things this way.

Worldmap is entirely drawn and the map is pretty much finalized. Dungeon visuals are ready, I have to build the maps. Towns are not started.

Three musics are ready as well.

There are still a lot of things to do !

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Its so amazing and inspiring to see wonderful sprite art and oldskool new games being made like this!! :)

cireza wrote

segarule wrote

Excellent graphics! You could port it for Master System?

Thanks :)

To make a proper port I think that everything should be redrawn with the target resolution of the console. So that would be a lot of work.

For now it is a GG project only.

Edit : also added the adventure music track in this post

Im very happy it is a dedicated GG project. We dont get enough of those!! Amazing :D

segasonicfan wrote

Im very happy it is a dedicated GG project. We dont get enough of those!! Amazing :D

Thank you for the support.

Actually the Game Gear game, titled the Sword of Stone, is complete and if everything goes well, should be available next year !

The current project is a RPG project and I moved to Master System, in order to expand a bit my horizon. This will also give me visibility on how GG et SMS games compare in terms of reception.

Maybe I should have made another thread to avoid confusion.

There will always be a possibility, if I decide to, to port a GG game to SMS and vice-versa. But we are talking about years before this happens, as it is a pretty involved task as you have to redraw almost everything (graphics + maps) and this already takes a very large part of making a game. And I wish to complete my current project first, and also already have an idea for a third game.

cireza wrote

segasonicfan wrote

Im very happy it is a dedicated GG project. We dont get enough of those!! Amazing :D

Thank you for the support.

Actually the Game Gear game, titled the Sword of Stone, is complete and if everything goes well, should be available next year !

The current project is a RPG project and I moved to Master System, in order to expand a bit my horizon. This will also give me visibility on how GG et SMS games compare in terms of reception.

Maybe I should have made another thread to avoid confusion.

There will always be a possibility, if I decide to, to port a GG game to SMS and vice-versa. But we are talking about years before this happens, as it is a pretty involved task as you have to redraw almost everything (graphics + maps) and this already takes a very large part of making a game. And I wish to complete my current project first, and also already have an idea for a third game.

are you using the extra pallette for the GG? I always thought it made a big difference for games visual appeal :)

and yeah, I'd recommend a new thread for a different game. To save confusion and get more support! You can always link back to previous projects too

segasonicfan wrote

are you using the extra pallette for the GG?

Yes, all the backgrounds, maps and artworks use the extended palette. Sprites, portraits and monsters use a common palette, and only the light beige would not be possible to approximate on SMS.

There are screenshots in the first post of the topic.

Looks awesome, when are you hoping to have it finished?

8BitBoy wrote

Looks awesome, when are you hoping to have it finished?

The Sword of Stone (the GG game) should be available next year.

The current SMS game which is untitled probably has full year of development required before being considered for a physical release.

Author	Message
Apocalypse Joined: 26 Feb 2021 Posts: 155	Posted: Thu May 11, 2023 8:48 pm
Apocalypse Joined: 26 Feb 2021 Posts: 155	Tom wrote To be honest, I don't get all this hate for the Game Gear, what's wrong with it? I do apologise in advance for what I'm about to say, but, seriously, instead of being happy that someone is working on a new amazing game, every other post in here is "baw, why isn't it Master System". Like, don't do that, please? It's like you win a car at a lottery, and you say "sure it's a nice car, but I wanted it in a different color, so I'm not going to drive it". You're lucky I'm not the programmer here, because this attitude would lead me to drop the project on the spot, cireza is being WAY too kind to acknowledge all these unwarranted and undeserved complaints. Again, I'm sorry if this is harsh, but it had to be said. It's a general trend today which will only end in discouraging future developments. I've designed an adapter to play Colecovision games on the Master System and the first questions were: 1) Does it support the Super Game Module (which was NEVER an official product, only a prototype never released)? => No 2) Does it support OG Colecovision controllers? => No as pinout is different (1 pin must be rerouted requiring a second adapter that plugs into the controller ports). 3) Does it work on a Megadrive through a Power Base Converter? => No because the MD in MS mode doesn't support legacy modes. 4) Does it work on the GG with a Master Gear adapter? => From a software point of view yes (the adapter is able to initialise the palette to the closest SG-1000/Colecovision ones), from a hardware one no, cause the adapter draws too much current for the tiny power board inside the GG. That's a lot of NOs people aren't ready to accept... 1) I could probably embed all that's needed inside the adapter. On a side note the SGM sells form $90, my adapter I'm aiming $60... Combine the two and look at price skyrocketing. 2) I could also design an adapter (but Colecovision controllers are terrible... Yes worse than the MS ones). 3) Nothing I can do here. 4) Only solution would be to design a beefier power board for the GG. There's too little slack with the OG one to remotely think of a lower power consumption design for the adapter.

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1347 Location: italy	Posted: Thu May 11, 2023 9:54 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1347 Location: italy	kusfo wrote the Hand Helds were really poor choices for RPGs. And yet, the Pokémon games have been amongst the most successful ones on the other 8-bit handheld. This game is inherently different, but it does have a similar feeling. Once again, I'm sorry if I raised my voice, but having been a Game Gear owner, I'll admit I'm a bit partial to it. Most other homebrew productions target the Master System, it saddens me to see this apparent unappreciation a rare time the Game Gear gets some love for once.

Kagesan Joined: 01 Feb 2014 Posts: 823	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 5:28 am
Kagesan Joined: 01 Feb 2014 Posts: 823	I don’t really want to derail this topic any further, but I think that the GG tends to be underappreciated, because (compared to the other handheld) relatively few people did actually have one back in the day, so there’s little emotional attachment, and getting one in working condition in more recent years takes considerable effort not everyone is willing to invest. On the other hand, lots of people have Master Systems and/or Mega Drives, so if they don’t want to play via emulation, I can kind of understand them asking for a version that works on what is available to them, especially since the hardware is so similar. To be honest, I probably would have been among them just a couple of years ago. That only changed when I got my Mega SG. I really do enjoy playing GG games on it and thus have found a whole new appreciation for the system. I do believe it offers an interestingly different experience compared to the Master System. That said, any developer should be free to do what he wants, and I, for one, will welcome any new GG game just as much as a new SMS release.

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 6:59 am
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	kusfo wrote I was mentioning it's a pity as the Hand Helds were really poor choices for RPGs. I wanted to react to this, because I strongly disagree. My very first SEGA console was a Master System and I love this console (still own it). I was lucky enough to be French on that regard, and Europe had amazing support this console. That being said, the Game Gear is by far my favorite handheld console of all time. Not because of its original blurry LCD, you guessed it. But because in terms of hardware, I find it incredibly capable and well thought. It most certainly is only a Master System with lower resolution, more colors and stereo sound. But this changes everything actually. MS is limited to 64 sprites at once, and 8 per line. Honestly, this is pretty low when you take into account the high number of pixels pushed on screen (256x192 to 240). It makes the system not well suited for displaying several big characters, which applies in Fighting Games or BTA for example. Drop the resolution to 160x144 and suddenly, filling this screen efficiently becomes much easier, and games can be super impressive. I believe most of you have played GG Aleste 2, for example ? It also makes Fighting Games much more feasible. I highly recommend playing both Ninku games, they are excellent. Another huge gain is the VRAM : it is still the same amount, but since you have to fill a much smaller screen, you have all the room you need to push super pretty visuals and pictures that are composed of entirely different tiles. You are never struggling that much to achieve your visuals. Combined with the excellent color palette of 4096, no wonder a lot of games on the GG could pass for 16 bits games. Even the Neo Geo Pocket (great console !) was still stuck with 4 colors per tile. I love this console and its library. It had a pretty long life in Japan and eventually got some excellent late games, such as Sylvan Tale, Lunar, Royal Stone or Moldorian to name a few adventure/RPG games. Also the three Shining Force games, Final Conflict being excellent. SF games though are a bit limited in terms of colors because of technical constraints. Personally, I find that 160x144 is plenty for a RPG, and for any game as long as you go with small characters to keep a good field of view. This is also why some MS to GG ports were not ideal, such as Dragon's Trap, because they retained the scale of the visuals for the TV. But any game developed with the GG in mind is perfectly playable (Batman Returns, GG Shinobi etc...). Scrolling does not need a black bar to the left either, and you can stream in VRAM with bigger tiles than 8x8 which helps quite a bit (and developers did this). There are many ways to play GG games. You can have an original console (recapped) and simply change the backlight, so you keep the original screen and ratio. Or you can opt for a new LCD. You will lose the pixel ratio (which is a bummer) but will gain a lot in clarity. I believe the Analog Pocket can take GG games as well. And a personal favorite way to play GG games is the Wii U Gamepad, excellent for any retro game. My game does not scroll at all, so blur should be minimal even on the original screen, and there is an option to have some space between each letter, to make texte easier to read. I hope you will give it a try :)

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1347 Location: italy	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 7:10 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1347 Location: italy	Excellent post! I knew you didn't need me to advocate for you, but I just couldn't avoid to take your side. I promise I won't step out of line again. Also... Kagesan wrote That said, any developer should be free to do what he wants. Amen to that.

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 859 Location: Spain	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 8:08 am
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 859 Location: Spain	The fact is that I actually agree with most of your comments, although I have only enjoyed GG properly in emulation. I've a recapped one, but it's really hard to play with the original screen. My phrase about hand held being a poor choice for RPGs refer especially to the original hardware. For instance, I played Pokemon in 1999 in an original GB and It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. I still remember how hard was to read the text on that screen! (Although I saw the game in a GBC, and it was a very different story). For Shining Force games (as I'm a fan), I've played most of them in emulation, as when I tried on the real machine the text was also so blurry it was very hard to read with my 40 years old eyes. In any case, I favour giving love to the hand helds from developer perspective. We published Chain Break for the GB (https://tuxedogamedevs.com/#chainbreak), and I was actually doing a GG version of Gotris, but I have it parked as I was using 4x4 pieces instead of 8x8 and I was founding the result very blurry in the real machine. I have to think the best way to adapt the graphics. (And my new game, an Alter Ego port, it's also hard to adapt to GG, but I 'll think to do it)

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 8:15 am
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	LCD mod is the way to go. Again, not perfect because you lose the pixel-perfect ratio, but you can mitigate it to only have the issue vertically (as 320 pixels is exactly 2x 160) with a different mode and can also put vertical scanlines. And you help keeping a Game Gear alive :) See my Mc Will Game Gear attached. Picture taken from my French test of Moldorian : https://www.sega-mag.com/test/test-moldorian-10814 Moldorian-1.jpg (243.19 KB) cireza Game Gear

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 859 Location: Spain	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 8:35 am
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 859 Location: Spain	Yes, I want to mod it, but I'm a bit afraid as a friend of mine tried to install the mod and the console died (we still don't know the reason). For GB, I use a Chinese GB Boy that's has a quite good screen.

Aranya Joined: 02 Mar 2011 Posts: 163 Location: Valencia,Spain.	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 8:54 am
	There is no hate here about being a Game Gear game. We all love 8-bit Sega games and consoles. I own two Game Gear consoles: one recapped and with the original screen, and the other one with the McWill mod installed. I prefer the second one for playing games. My favorite console is the SMS. I believe it is more popular, and I think more people could enjoy your game if you make a port for it. You gave all the reasons in your last post. As I mentioned before, your game for the SMS would be fantastic. I am a native Spanish speaker living in Spain. If you consider making your game multilingual, I would be happy to help with all the Spanish text. The more languages, the more people will enjoy your game. Regards from Spain.

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 384	Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 9:41 am
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 384	Tom wrote To be honest, I don't get all this hate for the Game Gear, what's wrong with it? I do apologise in advance for what I'm about to say, but, seriously, instead of being happy that someone is working on a new amazing game, every other post in here is "baw, why isn't it Master System". Like, don't do that, please? It's like you win a car at a lottery, and you say "sure it's a nice car, but I wanted it in a different color, so I'm not going to drive it". You're lucky I'm not the programmer here, because this attitude would lead me to drop the project on the spot, cireza is being WAY too kind to acknowledge all these unwarranted and undeserved complaints. Again, I'm sorry if this is harsh, but it had to be said. You completely misunderstood our statments.We everybody want @cireza finish the game dont matter if GG. But he could port it for SMS. Like "Cool! You could also do it for SMS?"

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Sat May 20, 2023 2:16 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Currently implementing the final chapter of the game. Here is a little teasing with a new background ;) Capture.PNG (73.63 KB) the_sword

drunkensnake92 Joined: 18 Apr 2023 Posts: 9	Posted: Thu May 25, 2023 8:21 am
drunkensnake92 Joined: 18 Apr 2023 Posts: 9	Really nice project :) I can't wait to try it!

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2023 10:04 am
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	I am currently in testing phase for the game on real hardware (the game is complete). No big issue detected, everything is going smoothly. I am editing a few lines of text, and adjusting a little bit the world map. Only one real bug detected so far, but I had thoroughly tested everything during development anyway. For fun, I have been experimenting on a layout for battles in a RPG, if I decide to make another game once this one is complete. I am not announcing anything here, this is simply for fun and to study a little bit the constraints. Since I am not as good as "real" developers from the past, I don't think that I can merge in real time characters over backgrounds, my code will never be fast enough. So I ended up with a layout that would work by avoiding this issue, reserving sprites for enemies and spells, while characters are included in the background over the BG color. There is an example on GG and one on MS. I did my best around the MS palette, and wanted to put all three characters at once, so each have 2 dedicated colors. Others are common. On GG, only one character at the time. Yes, GG has an awesome color palette (4096, but you already know it). I really love it. Still quite happy with the result on MS. Any good reason to go with 256x224 instead of 256x192 ? I saw that some European games use x224 (Code Masters games). Capture2.PNG (81.17 KB) MS_layout_POC 2d0aabc72440dd30ca205af6d301e670e8edf9da.png (7.37 KB) GG_layout_POC Capture3.PNG (79.96 KB) MS_layout_POC2 Capture4.PNG (48.93 KB) GG_layout_POC2

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14564 Location: London	Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2023 1:24 pm
	224 line mode is only compatible with later SMSes, but for PAL region it makes a significant reduction of the size of the border area which is quite helpful.

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2023 6:05 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Maxim wrote 224 line mode is only compatible with later SMSes, but for PAL region it makes a significant reduction of the size of the border area which is quite helpful. Thank you for the clarification. To avoid any incompatibilities, it should be 256x192 as I understand it.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3587 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2023 8:53 am
	cireza wrote To avoid any incompatibilities, it should be 256x192 as I understand it. Yes. This way it can run on any SMS model, on any Game Gear and on any MegaDrive/Genesis with an adapter. Conversely, it would run only on some SMS models and on any Game Gear, but wouldn't run on any MegaDrive/Genesis.

lidnariq Joined: 24 Mar 2021 Posts: 114	Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2023 6:03 pm
lidnariq Joined: 24 Mar 2021 Posts: 114	Having tried to run some of Codemasters' games on my Power Base Converter, it does pedantically run ... it's just that all the sprites are in the wrong place.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3587 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 7:50 am
	lidnariq wrote Having tried to run some of Codemasters' games on my Power Base Converter, it does pedantically run ... it's just that all the sprites are in the wrong place. Yes. Setting one of the SMS II modes on a Genesis/MegaDrive is just ignored, so you'll get 256×192 instead - but the game will presume differently of course. Also there's a difference in how the sprites are handled which likely result in missing / misplaced sprites. You would get the same issues running those games on an SMS I (one with the 'original' VDP, I mean)

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2023 8:44 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Some random thoughts about shadows and elements to be displayed above characters. I am experimenting with the SMS palette and making some futuristic dungeon graphics. There is a picture of my current work, meant to try out everything I have drawn. I wanted to have characters 2 squares high (32 pixels). I also wanted to have some things displayed on the ceiling above them, and that they would pass under. My understanding is that this is possible to do with bg tiles, and that the only color that will be behind the sprites is the BG color. All others will be above. Thus, I need a 1 color floor, and use other colors for the beam. This should probably work if you look at my screen. Then comes the problem of having the character against the wall, and under the beam. If the character is indeed 32 pixels high, then his head should be in front of the wall but behind the beam : this won't work with bg tiles only. Here are the options I see : - give up on beams (too bad, I like the effect and the shadow) - make 16 pixels characters (smaller) so that they are never in front of a wall (on TV, I think that 32x16 is a must) - put sprites for the beam over the wall, but this means I have to reserve the right colors in the sprite palettes (might be the only solution ?) Not too sure what I want to do. Any thoughts about this ? Or maybe examples to share ? Thanks. Capture.PNG (64.55 KB) dungeon_poc

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14564 Location: London	Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2023 9:19 pm
	If the beams are 8px wide then they can just be in front of the sprites all the time with no need for masking.

Emrabt Joined: 17 Aug 2021 Posts: 79	Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 3:20 am
Emrabt Joined: 17 Aug 2021 Posts: 79	cireza wrote Some random thoughts about shadows and elements to be displayed above characters. I am experimenting with the SMS palette and making some futuristic dungeon graphics. There is a picture of my current work, meant to try out everything I have drawn. I wanted to have characters 2 squares high (32 pixels). I also wanted to have some things displayed on the ceiling above them, and that they would pass under. My understanding is that this is possible to do with bg tiles, and that the only color that will be behind the sprites is the BG color. All others will be above. Thus, I need a 1 color floor, and use other colors for the beam. This should probably work if you look at my screen. Any thoughts about this ? Or maybe examples to share ? Thanks. You've misunderstood how tile priority works, it's on a tile by tile bases, so the beam can be high (above the sprites) the wall can be low (below the sprites) at the same time. All working in your favour.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14564 Location: London	Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 7:43 am
	The issue is when the forced perspective puts player sprites between the beam and the wall. I've drawn in two yellow 16x32 rectangles to represent the cases here, where the beam above the floor can have priority but the beam visually in front of the wall can't. However, it is indeed an 8px beam, so it could be aligned to the tile grid to solve it. Obviously that doesn't work for any other shape. Unrelated, but I think the shadows are a bit inconsistent. If the beam casts a shadow across the wall at an angle then so should the shadows from the walls at the left side; but then the floor shadows imply a light source at the upper left, which is a bit hard to reconcile. I'm no pixel artist but I guess it must be necessary to decide on a light direction and then try to make everything consistent with it? Then again, this is just a work in progress. Image2.png (15.3 KB)

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 8:19 am
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Currently the beam is centered in two tiles. It is indeed a good idea to simply shift it by 4 pixels and use a single tile, this solves the issue. No need for "masking" as you call it (I will remember the wording). Which means I can make more elaborated ground if I want. About the shadows being inconsistent on the walls, I had already thought about it and was going to fix it. The shadow should go back against the wall, in the same way that it does for the beam. The intended light source is South-West. I will adjust other elements as well. Edit : gave more thought about lighting and shadows. Capture2.PNG (7.68 KB) beam_shift_4pixels Capture.PNG (65.66 KB) adjustments Capture.PNG (46.99 KB) adjustments2

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 6:03 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Small update. I have been working these last days, trying to improve colors and also draw more elements to have everything required to draw several dungeons. Here I am sharing the progress, for the curious eyes. I have also studied a little bit the MS memory, to set a target in terms of tiles for the background, as text will be displayed over the field as well as a portrait. For text, I would like to implement variable width with letters that will be 16x8 at most. For TV play, it seems like a good idea. Reserving 3 lines of text takes a lot of room in memory, but the results should be nice on screen. I don't have a ton of room left, so planing on the story will become a necessity to think about the specific elements I will have to add at some point. Edit : maybe I should put this in a separate thread or rename this thread ? Capture.PNG (47.93 KB) 1 Capture2.PNG (50.02 KB) 2 Capture3.PNG (35.09 KB) 3 Capture4.PNG (52.91 KB) 4

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 859 Location: Spain	Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 9:15 pm
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 859 Location: Spain	All these new graphics look great! I'm already envisioning a Phantasy Star II kind of game! I think this deserves its own thread. Probably Maxim can split the topic

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14564 Location: London	Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:13 am
	There’s a few tricks you can use for the variable width text part but it can get quite technical. 1. If you can afford the palette space, you can use each tile twice by drawing tiles with the regular and sprite palette and then using one bitplane for each version of the text. This costs four palette entries in each palette, presumably set to black and white, which you probably need anyway - but it’s still a reduction. 2. You can switch to a legacy video mode in a line interrupt. This means you can’t have the text in a nice window, but instead you get true 1bpp video memory use and also as a side effect the legacy part is immune to vertical scrolling. However it can be hard to manage the video memory use between multiple active modes. 3. As an extension to #2, the legacy text mode gets you 6x8 fixed width fonts. This may or may not be useful - more text on screen than 8x8 but it’s still difficult to balance character widths. I’ll also mention https://damieng.com/typography/zx-origins/ which may inspire you to abandon variable width fonts entirely because the fonts all look so awesome :)

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 384	Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 9:44 am
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 384	Good, Maxim! How much reduction cireza can get with these tricks? A nood question: Using same tile for characters/letters, for example 0 and O can reduce more or is irrelevant?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14564 Location: London	Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 11:30 am
	For VWF there's no gain to share glyphs. The issue is that the VRAM tiles need to be drawn into and thus to show 232x32px of text area (2 rows of 16px text in the screen-safe area), you need 116 tiles out of your maximum ~440, which is a lot. You can halve that if you use the bitplanes trick. The legacy mode data would be approaching a quarter of that but with other difficulties/consequences. On another note, the shadows still seem kind of inconsistent to me :) I can split the thread if you can identify where you'd like to split it from.

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 6:29 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	If that's good for you, I think the topic can be split at my post with the battle screens PoCs. Concerning the various suggestions you made, I understand the 1 one like this: it reminds me of what Traveller's Tale did for the SEGA logo in Sonic 3D. For point 2, I understand that there is another display mode that uses less memory. Probably related to older "SG" games ? I suppose these were 8 colors only. I appreciate the suggestions, however if I want to achieve something, I want to try to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible. Switching video modes on the fly (with an interrupt I suppose) is not really what I wanted, especially as I envisioned the text and portraits on top of the map. It would have been pretty to do this. There are indeed some very nice 8x8 fonts in the link, but part of the fun is drawing things myself :) And I am dead set on doing that 8x16 variable font. I will see if I go with 2 or 3 lines of text on screen, or have a smaller window. Finally for the shadows, I used real life tests to decide on what I should do (as seen in the picture). I was thinking on making them smaller though, because I find that taking a full 16x16 square makes the overall map too dark. Probably going to go with only 8 large in the end. Realistic shadows already generated a lot of additional tiles. Games very rarely used realistic shadows because of this. PSII has none and PSIV is very basic. Still want to do it, but some choices will need to be made. 20230705_201622_resized_1.jpg (479.83 KB) shadow

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3587 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 1:16 pm
	cireza wrote I am dead set on doing that 8x16 variable font. I will see if I go with 2 or 3 lines of text on screen, or have a smaller window. I believe you should aim for a small window, and have some border around it, so that the actual 'bitmap' you'll have inside isn't too huge. It eats your VRAM pretty quickly (say your window is 192×32, this is 96 tiles in VRAM...)

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 6:18 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	sverx wrote I believe you should aim for a small window, and have some border around it, so that the actual 'bitmap' you'll have inside isn't too huge. It eats your VRAM pretty quickly (say your window is 192×32, this is 96 tiles in VRAM...) Right now with 3 lines I would be locking 156 tiles. It can fit, depending on how many tiles I want for my backgrounds. Window size will definitely be the adjustment parameter here. I have moved on planning my world and game-design. Once this is done, I will know all the chipsets I have to produce, and when this will be done, I will also know how much memory I have to reserve for the tiles of these chipsets. You pretty much have to put the entirety of your game on paper before developing with these old consoles. Another thing that eventually became evident to me is that I need horizontal and vertical scrolling for the worldmap, otherwise it won't give a proper sense of scale. As I do not want to give the feel of moving between small regions, but really a sense of navigating a planet. Dungeons and towns will be screen by screen, it will provide a "room" by "room" effect which feels appropriate to me. I will be able to remove the 8px vertical bar and I think I can do a nice vertical scroll effect for elevators. Sounds like a good idea at least. That's the problem right now, I have to sort out tenths of ideas that come in my mind... Might make another GG game, I am not totally set on the MS game. I am forcing myself into studying properly MS and see the constraints. Obviously memory is a lot more constrained on MS because of the greater resolution. Well, I guess these are the firsts steps towards a ton of work... Once again ! Definitely going for something much more complicated here. I will have to setup by workspace with makesms, because this is going to be more than 32 KB of code for sure.

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:16 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Quick update on my next game, I made quite a bit of progress and sorted out a lot of things. The game-design is basically complete on paper, I know the amount of things I have to draw and started doing so. Worldmap code including scrolling is done and working. Dungeon/Town navigation on a screen by screen basis is also coded. I need to tackle the battles presentation now, and I decided to change my layout. It will be easier to display pretty things this way. Worldmap is entirely drawn and the map is pretty much finalized. Dungeon visuals are ready, I have to build the maps. Towns are not started. Three musics are ready as well. There are still a lot of things to do ! fc71a9467af32194936992136797d64d5a3398dd.png (88.8 KB) worldmap_poc all-portraits.png (11.43 KB) faces Capture.png (40.22 KB) battle_poc battle_ashla_exp.png (2.3 KB) animation_1

segasonicfan Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 370 Location: USA	Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 8:22 am
	Its so amazing and inspiring to see wonderful sprite art and oldskool new games being made like this!! :)

segasonicfan Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 370 Location: USA	Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 9:27 am
	cireza wrote segarule wrote Excellent graphics! You could port it for Master System? Thanks :) To make a proper port I think that everything should be redrawn with the target resolution of the console. So that would be a lot of work. For now it is a GG project only. Edit : also added the adventure music track in this post Im very happy it is a dedicated GG project. We dont get enough of those!! Amazing :D

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 11:48 am
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	segasonicfan wrote Im very happy it is a dedicated GG project. We dont get enough of those!! Amazing :D Thank you for the support. Actually the Game Gear game, titled the Sword of Stone, is complete and if everything goes well, should be available next year ! The current project is a RPG project and I moved to Master System, in order to expand a bit my horizon. This will also give me visibility on how GG et SMS games compare in terms of reception. Maybe I should have made another thread to avoid confusion. There will always be a possibility, if I decide to, to port a GG game to SMS and vice-versa. But we are talking about years before this happens, as it is a pretty involved task as you have to redraw almost everything (graphics + maps) and this already takes a very large part of making a game. And I wish to complete my current project first, and also already have an idea for a third game.

segasonicfan Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 370 Location: USA	Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 8:12 pm
	cireza wrote segasonicfan wrote Im very happy it is a dedicated GG project. We dont get enough of those!! Amazing :D Thank you for the support. Actually the Game Gear game, titled the Sword of Stone, is complete and if everything goes well, should be available next year ! The current project is a RPG project and I moved to Master System, in order to expand a bit my horizon. This will also give me visibility on how GG et SMS games compare in terms of reception. Maybe I should have made another thread to avoid confusion. There will always be a possibility, if I decide to, to port a GG game to SMS and vice-versa. But we are talking about years before this happens, as it is a pretty involved task as you have to redraw almost everything (graphics + maps) and this already takes a very large part of making a game. And I wish to complete my current project first, and also already have an idea for a third game. are you using the extra pallette for the GG? I always thought it made a big difference for games visual appeal :) and yeah, I'd recommend a new thread for a different game. To save confusion and get more support! You can always link back to previous projects too

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2023 4:00 pm
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	segasonicfan wrote are you using the extra pallette for the GG? Yes, all the backgrounds, maps and artworks use the extended palette. Sprites, portraits and monsters use a common palette, and only the light beige would not be possible to approximate on SMS. There are screenshots in the first post of the topic.

8BitBoy Joined: 15 Aug 2019 Posts: 239 Location: Lancashire UK	Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2023 11:25 am
	Looks awesome, when are you hoping to have it finished?

cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2023 11:30 am
cireza Joined: 27 Feb 2023 Posts: 108 Location: France	8BitBoy wrote Looks awesome, when are you hoping to have it finished? The Sword of Stone (the GG game) should be available next year. The current SMS game which is untitled probably has full year of development required before being considered for a physical release.

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