VOGONS


First post, by gaffa2002

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Hey everyone,
This is a kind of market research of sorts, basically I've started a new project for creating a new game for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, something I was wanting to do for quite a while now.

Right now I'm trying not to think too much about selling or making money out of it yet and focusing in making a good game with realistic goals for a single person project. Here is what I have in mind:
* Space themed (with aliens and such)
* A platform game with fixed screens instead of scrolling ones (like in Prince of Persia, Blackthorne, Flashback, Another World, etc.)
* Characters using very small sprites (8x8 pixels, the smallest you can have in a Genesis game), you'll get more screen space for the level. Something like the I Wanna be the Guy game, where the character is small so you can have more stuff going on
* Shooter elements, character will have weapons like pistols, shotguns, etc. Using hitscan instead of sprites for projectiles
* Quite a lot of blood and violence
* Split in Episodes, like PC games from the 90s
* Some backtracking inside a level (i.e. key cards to collect, switches to press, etc). A bit like 90s shooters like Doom/Duke 3d, where you have to reach an exit.

The main idea is to make something not very common in the console's library as huge sprites with scrolling screens were the norm. Not to mention violence was also avoided in all home consoles at the time.

So, what is your opinion on this? Would you be interested in downloading such a ROM if it ever existed? Would you consider buying the ROM or even a physical copy if the game was good enough?

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

Reply 1 of 8, by keropi

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there is always demand for good games - megadrive included
there are several new commercial ones released over the last few years and I have even bought several of them - it seems to me they were a success
I say go for it!

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 2 of 8, by gaffa2002

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keropi wrote on 2024-05-02, 19:01:

there is always demand for good games - megadrive included
there are several new commercial ones released over the last few years and I have even bought several of them - it seems to me they were a success
I say go for it!

Thanks for replying!
As a matter of fact, I already went for it... the game already has some foundations set (I already have the character jumping on screen and coliding with the level). A lot of the graphics were already drawn, too.

Now I'm on a point were I have to decide if I go for something simpler (i.e. a single screen arcade game), or something more complex like the idea I mentioned in the first post.

Note: The character will hold a gun at some point, plus some colors are off... the conveyor belt and the slime pool at the bottom are using the wrong palette for now.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

Reply 3 of 8, by Tiido

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As long as it plays well there will be people who want it. I definitely don't mind seeing new games although I don't play much anymore and in many cases the real deciding factor will be quality of the music since I spend a lot of time in sound tests of the games that have one or just listening the soundtrack in alternative ways...

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 4 of 8, by gaffa2002

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Tiido wrote on 2024-05-02, 20:35:

As long as it plays well there will be people who want it. I definitely don't mind seeing new games although I don't play much anymore and in many cases the real deciding factor will be quality of the music since I spend a lot of time in sound tests of the games that have one or just listening the soundtrack in alternative ways...

Sound and music is something I’ll definitely need help with as I’m no musician, much less one that is proficient with music trackers. Mega drive music is made of a mix of FM synth, PCM samples and a square wave generator (PSG), if anyone is interested in helping with that part, I’ll be glad.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

Reply 5 of 8, by Tiido

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I'm intimately familiar with how the sound works on MD, having made music and tools for this purpose for the machine in 2007...2010 or so timespan 🤣. If you encounter a TmEE somewhere on the old forums, that is me 🤣.

You can find music people from places like "Battle of the Bits", which is basically a site full of people who make impressive things with all the sound chips found in various consoles and computers. It is also worth asking in actual dedicated forums although Spritesmind, one of the oldest remaining MD dev forums, is kinda dead since basically everyone are using Discord nowdays...

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 6 of 8, by gaffa2002

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Tiido wrote on 2024-05-03, 05:00:

I'm intimately familiar with how the sound works on MD, having made music and tools for this purpose for the machine in 2007...2010 or so timespan 🤣. If you encounter a TmEE somewhere on the old forums, that is me 🤣.

You can find music people from places like "Battle of the Bits", which is basically a site full of people who make impressive things with all the sound chips found in various consoles and computers. It is also worth asking in actual dedicated forums although Spritesmind, one of the oldest remaining MD dev forums, is kinda dead since basically everyone are using Discord nowdays...

That’s impressive! There are a lot of contributions you made for the community!
How I’m glad I have started this thread because the first two people responding are no less than the guys creating a freaking expansion card for the Mega PC 😁.
Is there any tracker /driver you suggest that I could use for my game? I know you created both, are they still relevant?
Maybe I could give a try in music composing, just for fun.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

Reply 7 of 8, by Tiido

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I'm only here because Keropi showed this thread 🤣. I don't end up on this part of these forums very often on my own...

Nowdays people use a tracker called Furnace and music is often done by VGM conversion to a format called XGM that SGDK supports. I don't really know what the situation about sound effects are. For getting music done you will have to ask around in some music places, there will surely be people willing to try or even wanting to although no clue about the terms of doing so. You'll have to figure things out yourself on this regard.

My old actual MD specific tracker is a MS-DOS based thing that works on MIDI, I was in my late teens when I made it and didn't know a thing about emulation yet 🤣. The sound engine on MD side is a bit f a mess and doesn't support things like vibrato or freq slides for example. Maybe one day I'll return to MD dev and make something proper... but right now I'm all about hardware stuff and will do as little software as I can.

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 8 of 8, by gaffa2002

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Tiido wrote on 2024-05-03, 11:42:

I'm only here because Keropi showed this thread 🤣. I don't end up on this part of these forums very often on my own...

Nowdays people use a tracker called Furnace and music is often done by VGM conversion to a format called XGM that SGDK supports. I don't really know what the situation about sound effects are. For getting music done you will have to ask around in some music places, there will surely be people willing to try or even wanting to although no clue about the terms of doing so. You'll have to figure things out yourself on this regard.

My old actual MD specific tracker is a MS-DOS based thing that works on MIDI, I was in my late teens when I made it and didn't know a thing about emulation yet 🤣. The sound engine on MD side is a bit f a mess and doesn't support things like vibrato or freq slides for example. Maybe one day I'll return to MD dev and make something proper... but right now I'm all about hardware stuff and will do as little software as I can.

Thanks for the tips, will probably use XGM for the sound engine, then. I’m using plain assembly for development but I see that SGDK source code includes standalone tools as well as the z80 driver. I’m assuming my m68k program just needs to copy the z80 program to z80’s memory and start it.

Played a bit with Furnace, too and it really makes me want to try making some tunes myself. I plan to take my time with this project so it is a good opportunity to learn some music skills.

Let’s hope one day it becomes a full fledged game.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD