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Just a simple demo of Lance Village from Ys II

There is FM+PSG music

You can walk around to scroll, but there's no obstacle detection, so you'll just walk through everything. The scrolling is still buggy, there's an off-by-one error that causes the graphics to mess up.

Next step would be to do the status pane. The way they did it in Ys I is quite clever... still need to look a bit more closely at how they did it.

ysii.png (3.72 KB)

screenshot

ysii.zip (17.82 KB)

rom

Love the graphics, great job!

Nice work, so far!

This is a really nice little demo.
The FM really comes in great at the start, memories of Ys 2 came flooding back.
Are you working from a base hacking Ys 1 or is this all custom?

Are you doing it in assembly or in C?

In any case, very good work!

If you need help, you can count with me. I am far from being good at Z80 assembly but I could give a shot. I am good, however, at documenting.

The code is written from scratch in assembly, so no hacking of Ys 1. But I am still looking at how to duplicate the Status pane of Ys 1. And still thinking about how to show MP, EXP, and Gold

The graphics are from the NES version, and the music is adapted from the Sharp X1 version.

I'm not sure how far I will be able to get with this, it's quite a long game, and rather maze-y

I am currently acquiring versions of Ys and Ys II. At this point I own a copy of the PC-E version, yesterday failed to get the Saturn one...

For Adol you could use the same sprite as SMS Ys, found here in the wiki. If I find a way to extract the sprites from any of the versions I have in collection, would you be interested?

From the MSX version it would be difficult, as found it uses pixel mode 7 to draw, nevertheless I could give it a try.

As for me I would be interested in making the intro cinematics. While I love this game as a whole, that part caused me a very good impression.

That would be great if you could do the intro cinematics. If you wanted to focus more on the graphics, I could try to convert the music.

At this stage, it's easier for me to just use the NES sprites. They can always be swapped out later on. I'd like to focus on getting a basic engine working, where you can talk to the towns-people and enter the shops and so forth.

Quote

I'm not sure how far I will be able to get with this, it's quite a long game, and rather maze-y

Well, in rare cases 1 dev do all thing in games. if you team up with others members i believe that your initial project can be great. For soundtracks i know 2 names very very qualified for service: Slogra and chirinea. For code and graphics i dont know if you can take both. I know a good member that have knowledge: lidnariq. Of course, i dont know if you want help and neither if they want or have time for help you. I hope that you can go ahead with this.

I just think that doing the mazes would drive me crazy...

But another idea I have is to do a "port" of Ys 3, but as a top-down RPG instead of a side-scroller. It's a much shorter game than 2, and there really aren't any mazes.

Anyway, just to get things started on the intro cinematics part, here is a preliminary rom of the 'To make the end of battle' music. The instruments still need to be fixed-up. It was converted from the Ys II Special port which used a YM3812.

So if anyone wants to supply the graphics/animation as a PNG or GIF, keeping in mind the palette limitations, either as individual frames or an animation, then I'd be able to convert that and add it to the rom.

And if anyone wants to redo the music, just post a VGM and I can include it in the rom.

ysii-intro.zip (26.65 KB)

rom

I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else.

I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me.

Ys_SMS_3x.gif (185.17 KB)

EnricoPallazzo wrote

But another idea I have is to do a "port" of Ys 3, but as a top-down RPG instead of a side-scroller. It's a much shorter game than 2, and there really aren't any mazes.

I haven't played it but I heard that's essentially what the newer game Oath in Felghana was meant to be.
(and another newer game was meant to be a canon replacement for the two Y's 4 games... or three games if the MD counterpart had been finished and released)

KingMike wrote

EnricoPallazzo wrote

But another idea I have is to do a "port" of Ys 3, but as a top-down RPG instead of a side-scroller. It's a much shorter game than 2, and there really aren't any mazes.

I haven't played it but I heard that's essentially what the newer game Oath in Felghana was meant to be.
(and another newer game was meant to be a canon replacement for the two Y's 4 games... or three games if the MD counterpart had been finished and released)

Not exactly, Oath In Felghana is more like an action RPG with isometric point of view (which is why you can't turn the camera around)

fx wrote

I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else.

I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the gif and post a rom

If you're interested in doing a Genesis version, the graphics from the MSX2 would match up well, since the palette is the same and it uses the 16-color mode (I think). Also, tile count shouldn't be a problem. I'm leaning towards the Genesis rather than the Master System because the PC88 music converts over easily.

I've attached a Genesis rom with the music and title screen.

ysii-intro.zip (51.93 KB)

genesis rom

fx wrote

I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else.

I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me.

I tried it too a few days ago. Same results when importing. I can provide some of the graphics I have ripped if you want. One of the most difficult ones it the one with scroll. As MSX uses the pixel mode instead of a character mode it is very difficult to obtain the graphics... if only I knew where they are stored in the program disk...

I am busy with another project at this same moment, but I will help as much as possible.

EnricoPallazzo wrote

fx wrote

I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else.

I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the gif and post a rom

If you're interested in doing a Genesis version, the graphics from the MSX2 would match up well, since the palette is the same and it uses the 16-color mode (I think). Also, tile count shouldn't be a problem. I'm leaning towards the Genesis rather than the Master System because the PC88 music converts over easily.

I've attached a Genesis rom with the music and title screen.

This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom.

For a possible Master System version, definitely using the likes of an 8 bit version (be any of the computer versions or the Famicom version, even taking things from the PC Engine CD version could do) would be the appropiate thing to do, but the Mega Drive could really benefit from Ys II Special much more than it would do from any of the original 8 bit versions.

Wesker wrote

EnricoPallazzo wrote

fx wrote

I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else.

I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the gif and post a rom

If you're interested in doing a Genesis version, the graphics from the MSX2 would match up well, since the palette is the same and it uses the 16-color mode (I think). Also, tile count shouldn't be a problem. I'm leaning towards the Genesis rather than the Master System because the PC88 music converts over easily.

I've attached a Genesis rom with the music and title screen.

This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom.

For a possible Master System version, definitely using the likes of an 8 bit version (be any of the computer versions or the Famicom version, even taking things from the PC Engine CD version could do) would be the appropiate thing to do, but the Mega Drive could really benefit from Ys II Special much more than it would do from any of the original 8 bit versions.

I mean...why not just release it on Mega CD at this point? Copy paste the PC Engine CD game, adjust the graphics and audio a little, and it's basically done

Here is a SMS rom of the intro with the GIF. The yellow title screen uses too many tiles so it's not included. The other parts of the music are not done either.

As far as I know, the Mega CD has the same palette limitations as the Genesis, while the PC-Engine has 32 16-color palettes, so I don't see any advantage of using the Mega CD. But the reason I like the Genesis in this case is the compatibility with the YM2203, and I don't like the use of samples, or voice acting, or FMV

ysii-intro.zip (50.23 KB)

sms rom

May I ask you more details about your audio engine?

I see you're supporting FM+PSG, and I read that you wrote the code from scratch, what I don't know is how you write music for your engine (which tools you use) and what format and features your engine supports...

I wouldn't call it an audio engine, it is too simplistic.

I'm mostly just converting VGM files. The file format is not too hard to parse, so I wrote a bunch of small programs to convert the different sound chips to something the YM2413/SN76489 can understand. Then the data is grouped into 'bytes to be written at the next vblank', and then the 'audio engine' simply sends the data to the FM or PSG chip.

This makes the roms kind of big, but it uses very little cpu. At some point some kind of compression will be necessary I think.

OK, so it seems to be pretty much the approach I used with PSGlib (VGM data, frame accurate instead of sample accurate, etc...) ... and Maxim's w.i.p. FMlib.

So, for instance, how much data is currently required for the song we hear?

Wesker wrote

This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom.

Do you happen to know if Ys II Special uses VGA (256-color) graphics?

sverx wrote

So, for instance, how much data is currently required for the song we hear?

For the intro song, it's a whopping 112184 bytes

For the Lance Village song, it's 55397 bytes

But these are sloppy conversions where I am doing too many register writes. For frequency changes in FM, the register writes can probably be cut in half, and for volume changes in PSG, the data can be cut in half as well.

I expected them to be pretty beefy - sure there's some improvement that can be made but the FM is anyway lots of data, as there's so many registers that might need to be updated, as opposed to PSG that has only 11.

EnricoPallazzo wrote

Wesker wrote

This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom.

Do you happen to know if Ys II Special uses VGA (256-color) graphics?

According to the game manual, yes.

IMG_2748.JPG (1.78 MB)

Wesker wrote

EnricoPallazzo wrote

Do you happen to know if Ys II Special uses VGA (256-color) graphics?

According to the game manual, yes.

The 256-colors might be problematic. . .

Here is another rom. I added a status pane and ability to talk to people. They are not animated yet though. This one is actually Promalock, so different background and music

It was pretty straightforward to add the status pane. All you have to do is set a raster interrupt for where you want it to appear. Then switch the nametable address to a completely black screen for 8 lines. Then switch it back to the original nametable. The status bars are drawn in the original nametable. After another 8 lines, switch the nametable address back to the alternate black screen for another 8 lines, then switch it back to the original again. Try to time it so that the nametable change occurs during the HBLANK, otherwise it will change in the middle of the line. Draw the "PLAYER" and "ENEMY" text using sprites. Every time you scroll a tile, simply redraw the status bars. Pretty simple.

The FM seems a bit static-y at higher volumes, it might be because of sloppy key-on/key-off writes, but I'm not sure

promalock.png (4.04 KB)

screenshot

promalock.zip (38.19 KB)

rom

EnricoPallazzo wrote

The 256-colors might be problematic. . .

Yeah, it would need to lower the assets' color count to suit the Mega Drive palette, but that approach would still give a nicer looking 16 bit game rather than using the assets of a 8 bit version. Ys II Special is really something, despite its obscurity because of being a Korean game.

Look for example what was done with the Mega Drive version of Ys III, which takes the assets of the X68000 version lowering the color count to suit the palette and looks pretty fine still, unlike the PC Engine CD version which takes the basis of the PC 88 version instead.

Anyhow, the approach of doing a Master System version using 8 bit assets (be any of the computer versions of the Famicom version) is very remarkable too and maybe the more logical step to follow first.

Author	Message
EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Lance Village demo Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2024 12:57 pm
	Just a simple demo of Lance Village from Ys II There is FM+PSG music You can walk around to scroll, but there's no obstacle detection, so you'll just walk through everything. The scrolling is still buggy, there's an off-by-one error that causes the graphics to mess up. Next step would be to do the status pane. The way they did it in Ys I is quite clever... still need to look a bit more closely at how they did it. ysii.png (3.72 KB) screenshot ysii.zip (17.82 KB) rom

baude Joined: 15 Dec 2015 Posts: 25	Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2024 12:21 pm
baude Joined: 15 Dec 2015 Posts: 25	Love the graphics, great job!

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 908 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2024 3:11 pm
	Nice work, so far!

Mark Tree SMS Joined: 11 Jul 2022 Posts: 18 Location: Sligo Ireland (and Wales)	Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2024 12:26 am
	This is a really nice little demo. The FM really comes in great at the start, memories of Ys 2 came flooding back. Are you working from a base hacking Ys 1 or is this all custom?

Bits Passats Joined: 14 Feb 2024 Posts: 31 Location: Andorra	Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2024 4:30 pm
	Are you doing it in assembly or in C? In any case, very good work! If you need help, you can count with me. I am far from being good at Z80 assembly but I could give a shot. I am good, however, at documenting.

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 1:27 am
	The code is written from scratch in assembly, so no hacking of Ys 1. But I am still looking at how to duplicate the Status pane of Ys 1. And still thinking about how to show MP, EXP, and Gold The graphics are from the NES version, and the music is adapted from the Sharp X1 version. I'm not sure how far I will be able to get with this, it's quite a long game, and rather maze-y

Bits Passats Joined: 14 Feb 2024 Posts: 31 Location: Andorra	Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 7:38 am
	I am currently acquiring versions of Ys and Ys II. At this point I own a copy of the PC-E version, yesterday failed to get the Saturn one... For Adol you could use the same sprite as SMS Ys, found here in the wiki. If I find a way to extract the sprites from any of the versions I have in collection, would you be interested? From the MSX version it would be difficult, as found it uses pixel mode 7 to draw, nevertheless I could give it a try. As for me I would be interested in making the intro cinematics. While I love this game as a whole, that part caused me a very good impression.

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 3:07 pm
	That would be great if you could do the intro cinematics. If you wanted to focus more on the graphics, I could try to convert the music. At this stage, it's easier for me to just use the NES sprites. They can always be swapped out later on. I'd like to focus on getting a basic engine working, where you can talk to the towns-people and enter the shops and so forth.

segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 460	Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2024 6:02 pm
segarule Joined: 23 Jan 2010 Posts: 460	Quote I'm not sure how far I will be able to get with this, it's quite a long game, and rather maze-y Well, in rare cases 1 dev do all thing in games. if you team up with others members i believe that your initial project can be great. For soundtracks i know 2 names very very qualified for service: Slogra and chirinea. For code and graphics i dont know if you can take both. I know a good member that have knowledge: lidnariq. Of course, i dont know if you want help and neither if they want or have time for help you. I hope that you can go ahead with this.

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2024 11:40 am
	I just think that doing the mazes would drive me crazy... But another idea I have is to do a "port" of Ys 3, but as a top-down RPG instead of a side-scroller. It's a much shorter game than 2, and there really aren't any mazes. Anyway, just to get things started on the intro cinematics part, here is a preliminary rom of the 'To make the end of battle' music. The instruments still need to be fixed-up. It was converted from the Ys II Special port which used a YM3812. So if anyone wants to supply the graphics/animation as a PNG or GIF, keeping in mind the palette limitations, either as individual frames or an animation, then I'd be able to convert that and add it to the rom. And if anyone wants to redo the music, just post a VGM and I can include it in the rom. ysii-intro.zip (26.65 KB) rom

fx Joined: 09 Sep 2001 Posts: 237 Location: Umeå, Sweden	Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2024 1:25 pm
fx Joined: 09 Sep 2001 Posts: 237 Location: Umeå, Sweden	I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else. I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me. Ys_SMS_3x.gif (185.17 KB)

KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 533	Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2024 6:07 pm
KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 533	EnricoPallazzo wrote But another idea I have is to do a "port" of Ys 3, but as a top-down RPG instead of a side-scroller. It's a much shorter game than 2, and there really aren't any mazes. I haven't played it but I heard that's essentially what the newer game Oath in Felghana was meant to be. (and another newer game was meant to be a canon replacement for the two Y's 4 games... or three games if the MD counterpart had been finished and released)

Cris1997XX Joined: 29 Jan 2023 Posts: 15	Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2024 6:49 am
Cris1997XX Joined: 29 Jan 2023 Posts: 15	KingMike wrote EnricoPallazzo wrote But another idea I have is to do a "port" of Ys 3, but as a top-down RPG instead of a side-scroller. It's a much shorter game than 2, and there really aren't any mazes. I haven't played it but I heard that's essentially what the newer game Oath in Felghana was meant to be. (and another newer game was meant to be a canon replacement for the two Y's 4 games... or three games if the MD counterpart had been finished and released) Not exactly, Oath In Felghana is more like an action RPG with isometric point of view (which is why you can't turn the camera around)

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2024 1:02 pm
	fx wrote I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else. I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me. Thanks, I'll take a look at the gif and post a rom If you're interested in doing a Genesis version, the graphics from the MSX2 would match up well, since the palette is the same and it uses the 16-color mode (I think). Also, tile count shouldn't be a problem. I'm leaning towards the Genesis rather than the Master System because the PC88 music converts over easily. I've attached a Genesis rom with the music and title screen. ysii-intro.zip (51.93 KB) genesis rom

Bits Passats Joined: 14 Feb 2024 Posts: 31 Location: Andorra	Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2024 5:41 pm
	fx wrote I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else. I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me. I tried it too a few days ago. Same results when importing. I can provide some of the graphics I have ripped if you want. One of the most difficult ones it the one with scroll. As MSX uses the pixel mode instead of a character mode it is very difficult to obtain the graphics... if only I knew where they are stored in the program disk... I am busy with another project at this same moment, but I will help as much as possible.

Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 162	Posted: Sun Nov 10, 2024 12:30 pm
Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 162	EnricoPallazzo wrote fx wrote I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else. I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me. Thanks, I'll take a look at the gif and post a rom If you're interested in doing a Genesis version, the graphics from the MSX2 would match up well, since the palette is the same and it uses the 16-color mode (I think). Also, tile count shouldn't be a problem. I'm leaning towards the Genesis rather than the Master System because the PC88 music converts over easily. I've attached a Genesis rom with the music and title screen. This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom. For a possible Master System version, definitely using the likes of an 8 bit version (be any of the computer versions or the Famicom version, even taking things from the PC Engine CD version could do) would be the appropiate thing to do, but the Mega Drive could really benefit from Ys II Special much more than it would do from any of the original 8 bit versions.

Cris1997XX Joined: 29 Jan 2023 Posts: 15	Posted: Sun Nov 10, 2024 4:03 pm
Cris1997XX Joined: 29 Jan 2023 Posts: 15	Wesker wrote EnricoPallazzo wrote fx wrote I've actually been toying with the idea of remaking the Ys 2 intro for the SMS in the past and after seeing this thread I decided to do some mockups. I've started converting the intro from the MSX2 version over to more suit the Master System. So far I haven't thought anything about optimizing tile usage, the title screen for example was over 700 tiles when I tried importing it into BMP2Tile so this is more of an early draft than anything else. I only added animation for the initial scene, after the title screen I've only added some stills captured from the MSX and converted to the SMS palette with some touch ups by me. Thanks, I'll take a look at the gif and post a rom If you're interested in doing a Genesis version, the graphics from the MSX2 would match up well, since the palette is the same and it uses the 16-color mode (I think). Also, tile count shouldn't be a problem. I'm leaning towards the Genesis rather than the Master System because the PC88 music converts over easily. I've attached a Genesis rom with the music and title screen. This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom. For a possible Master System version, definitely using the likes of an 8 bit version (be any of the computer versions or the Famicom version, even taking things from the PC Engine CD version could do) would be the appropiate thing to do, but the Mega Drive could really benefit from Ys II Special much more than it would do from any of the original 8 bit versions. I mean...why not just release it on Mega CD at this point? Copy paste the PC Engine CD game, adjust the graphics and audio a little, and it's basically done

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2024 12:48 pm
	Here is a SMS rom of the intro with the GIF. The yellow title screen uses too many tiles so it's not included. The other parts of the music are not done either. As far as I know, the Mega CD has the same palette limitations as the Genesis, while the PC-Engine has 32 16-color palettes, so I don't see any advantage of using the Mega CD. But the reason I like the Genesis in this case is the compatibility with the YM2203, and I don't like the use of samples, or voice acting, or FMV ysii-intro.zip (50.23 KB) sms rom

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3956 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2024 4:49 pm
	May I ask you more details about your audio engine? I see you're supporting FM+PSG, and I read that you wrote the code from scratch, what I don't know is how you write music for your engine (which tools you use) and what format and features your engine supports...

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:37 am
	I wouldn't call it an audio engine, it is too simplistic. I'm mostly just converting VGM files. The file format is not too hard to parse, so I wrote a bunch of small programs to convert the different sound chips to something the YM2413/SN76489 can understand. Then the data is grouped into 'bytes to be written at the next vblank', and then the 'audio engine' simply sends the data to the FM or PSG chip. This makes the roms kind of big, but it uses very little cpu. At some point some kind of compression will be necessary I think.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3956 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:54 am
	OK, so it seems to be pretty much the approach I used with PSGlib (VGM data, frame accurate instead of sample accurate, etc...) ... and Maxim's w.i.p. FMlib. So, for instance, how much data is currently required for the song we hear?

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:59 am
	Wesker wrote This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom. Do you happen to know if Ys II Special uses VGA (256-color) graphics?

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2024 11:06 am
	sverx wrote So, for instance, how much data is currently required for the song we hear? For the intro song, it's a whopping 112184 bytes For the Lance Village song, it's 55397 bytes But these are sloppy conversions where I am doing too many register writes. For frequency changes in FM, the register writes can probably be cut in half, and for volume changes in PSG, the data can be cut in half as well.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3956 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2024 9:37 am
	I expected them to be pretty beefy - sure there's some improvement that can be made but the FM is anyway lots of data, as there's so many registers that might need to be updated, as opposed to PSG that has only 11.

Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 162	Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2024 11:30 pm
Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 162	EnricoPallazzo wrote Wesker wrote This is just an idea proposal, but for a possible Mega Drive version, wouldn't be better to use the base and assets of Ys II Special instead? As those are much more fitting for a 16 bit game. Plus, the game is very expanded and fleshed out in that particular form, even if some things here and there detract from the original design by Falcom. Do you happen to know if Ys II Special uses VGA (256-color) graphics? According to the game manual, yes. IMG_2748.JPG (1.78 MB)

EnricoPallazzo Joined: 09 Sep 2024 Posts: 20 Location: New Zealand	Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 5:04 am
	Wesker wrote EnricoPallazzo wrote Do you happen to know if Ys II Special uses VGA (256-color) graphics? According to the game manual, yes. The 256-colors might be problematic. . . Here is another rom. I added a status pane and ability to talk to people. They are not animated yet though. This one is actually Promalock, so different background and music It was pretty straightforward to add the status pane. All you have to do is set a raster interrupt for where you want it to appear. Then switch the nametable address to a completely black screen for 8 lines. Then switch it back to the original nametable. The status bars are drawn in the original nametable. After another 8 lines, switch the nametable address back to the alternate black screen for another 8 lines, then switch it back to the original again. Try to time it so that the nametable change occurs during the HBLANK, otherwise it will change in the middle of the line. Draw the "PLAYER" and "ENEMY" text using sprites. Every time you scroll a tile, simply redraw the status bars. Pretty simple. The FM seems a bit static-y at higher volumes, it might be because of sloppy key-on/key-off writes, but I'm not sure promalock.png (4.04 KB) screenshot promalock.zip (38.19 KB) rom

Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 162	Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 2:55 pm
Wesker Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 162	EnricoPallazzo wrote The 256-colors might be problematic. . . Yeah, it would need to lower the assets' color count to suit the Mega Drive palette, but that approach would still give a nicer looking 16 bit game rather than using the assets of a 8 bit version. Ys II Special is really something, despite its obscurity because of being a Korean game. Look for example what was done with the Mega Drive version of Ys III, which takes the assets of the X68000 version lowering the color count to suit the palette and looks pretty fine still, unlike the PC Engine CD version which takes the basis of the PC 88 version instead. Anyhow, the approach of doing a Master System version using 8 bit assets (be any of the computer versions of the Famicom version) is very remarkable too and maybe the more logical step to follow first.

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