Lizardrive

SEGA Megadrive game development #5

Moving our character  

I wanted to allow our hero to move in only 4 directions in order to give a retro vibe to our game.

I also wanted to be able to keep track of a general direction when walking, even if another direction is pressed.  

Imagine you are walking toward the top of the screen, then decide to go to the left or to the right while still pressing up on your controller.  

Once you release left or right, you should still go up ...

SEGA Megadrive game development #4

Manage ZOrder

It is not because we work with top-down 2D elements that we cannot suggest there is depth.  

This is what ZOrder does:

This was achieved by defining a Z position for each visible sprite and using it in the following function:

As you can see, ...

Demo#2 - Detective song (early version)

Hi there! I worked on demo #2's song this morning.

I am not done, but this already sounds decent enough so I can share it.

At least I hope it does! :-D

SEGA Megadrive game development #3

Sprites structure

Even if C is not an object oriented language, I tried to structure my code in order to get close to this concept.  

By defining a sprite structure in sprites.h, I have the possibility to create enriched sprite objects which share common attributes.

Also, I decided to create a sprite array of 50 as I do not need many elements in my game. It allows ...

SEGA Megadrive game development #2

More about graphics

As we have seen previously, VDP’s VRAM is used to store graphics. This is done in order to offload 68000 processor.

We will now get a little bit more into details by reviewing essential notions for game development.

Palettes

Colors must be picked according to a set of 512 colors available (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...

SEGA Megadrive game development #1

An overview of  SEGA Megadrive game development

Introduction

SEGA メガドライブ / Megadrive / Genesis is a 30 years old console which recently regained interest thanks to the work of fans around the world as well as the official release of a « Mini » console.

This and following articles will focus on my game development relying on SGDK, an open source development kit initiated...

Quick news!

No news for a month? This is outrageous! :-x

This does not mean we did not work on our next demo, as you can see here https://twitter.com/iamgunpog/status/1227672936708005889 and there https://twitter.com/iamgunpog/status/1229159977270566914

I also tweaked our game engine in order to save s...

Artwork - Prince Perlin

Hello there! 

Here is an early artwork made by Gunpog (who is in charge of all our design stuff, including pixel art for Perlin & Pinpin.

I really hope you will dig the lining and colours the same I do! 

Would you like wallpapers to be made?

More soon (or later)! ;-)

ROM - (alpha) 3rd mini game finished

Hello there!

I finished coding our 3rd mini game this week. It will take place in a Dojo and consists on a sort of "simon game". I implemented various difficulty levels which will impact buttons and sequence's length.

Easy will rely on A,B,C only, medium on DIR buttons, hard on both A,B,C and DIR. I attached a ROM set to medium to illustrate this (UP=1, DOWN=2, LEFT=3, RIGHT=4). I will make another one with placeholders to make it more visual later on.

If you try the ROM, yo...

ROM - (alpha) 2nd minigame

Hello there!

Hope you enjoyed Christmas and have space left in your stomach for new year's eve!

I worked a bit there and propose you to try out the 2nd minigame.

The idea will be to enter a private detective's office in order to solve a (very minor) crime.

It's basically a 15 game which will contain 4*4 and 3*3 grids based on difficulty.

Our pixel artist is working on actual pixel art, don't pay too much attention to current GFX ;-)

...

Merry Christmas to you all!

We wish you to spend quality time with the people you love.

Eat and drink well! Relax and enjoy! :-)

Welcome Shane! -> Demo #1 updated

Shane joined the party, and he is also playing with SGDK!

You may check what he posts here: https://twitter.com/TheShaneOBrien

I therefore updated title screen.

Content wise, it's still what we posted last week, but I also integrated some changes in the code, hopefully making things faster and safer (a visual glitch was reported for a specific console on the word "press start").

<...

DEMO #1 is there!

Hello!

You can DL it at https://lizardrive.itch.io/perlin-and-pinpin-the-robin-tower

 It includes many reworked SFX, but VGM too. 

Hope you will like it, I can now resume what's next! ;-)

OST - mini game song .WAV

Hello there! 

I finished mini-game song today. 

I don't know what you think of it, but am for once satisfied with what I have done.

Getting better everyday! :-)

New supporter, new ROM :-)

Hello there!

Sean joined the party, so I added his name to thank you screen!

It's getting crowded there, thanks a lot!

I also decided to put the updated start screen right after boot screen.

This version also includes a minor tweak on Pinpin's sprite as well as after minigame dialogs.

I'll work on SFX and music again this week-end.

Cheers!

Updated ROM + news

Hello there! Here is an update to yesterday's demo. Indeed, I forgot to put something back, leading to an issue with the shooting watch game (wrong palette). The version attached to this post is much better (edit: I removed the tower animation, as this WIP is not yet impressive) ! Sorry! :-)

Stef (creator of glorious SGDK) may show our demo at RGC convention in France this week-end. This is quite a famous event in Europe, sometimes hosting people from other continents. Brando...

Updated ROM (full demo scope covered)

Hello there! :-D

I made numerous changes lately, which you may notice or not.

- All screens have been implemented (including thanks at startup)

- Random voices have been implemented (characters talk according to text displayed)

- Complete side quest implemented (to unlock hidden game)

- Several sprites reworked

- BIG bugfix (which no one noticed because it occurs after playing several levels)

You may give it a try already, or wai...

New ROM including mini quest

Hello there!

I cleaned my code a bit more this week, and decided to integrate to this ROM the "point & click" aspect we intend to develop for our game.

Idea is to offer various interactions at each and every level of the Robin Tower.

Some choices may allow you to do something but also prevent you from doing something else during one run.

This is why we defined a password system so you eventually unlock everything after playing several times!

Hope this is clea...

New character added

What have I done lately?

I removed +250 lines of code, making it more easy to read, and hopefully quicker to run.

I added @iamgunpog 's last character for this class. This one is not easy to find and will give you an idea of what we are aiming at with our game... ;-)

I updated animation engine as there were frames skipped under specific circumstances.

Our engine is starting to look good and works on a large variety of consoles so far!

That's it, thank you for you...

Beta ROM updated

Hello there!

You will find an updated version of the beta ROM enclosed.

I fixed some bugs here and there and added some content (sound and easter eggs).

I still need to add more tracks and better sound effects before releasing the official demo (with you guys credited ;-)).

Hope you will like it anyways! :-)

EDIT: new character added

Beta Rom updated to SGDK 1.41+

Hello there!

We switched from SGDK 1.34 to its latest version this week-end.

This version provides various improvements, most interesting one for us being picture compression. You can see it for yourself by checking rom's size attached to this post.

More space on the cartridge means more content, so life is good! :-)

We also experienced some funny glitches on a MD PAL VA6 switchless (...

Updated beta rom!

Hello there, and thanks a lot for your support!

Here is a revised version including the interaction with the rabbit as well as a small bugfix.

Someone (ShiningBZH) established an all time high in the hidden minigame: 108!

Try finding this game and beating his score! :-D

(My personal one is 73... )

Beta demo rom!

Hello there!

Here is a beta demo rom for you. You may try it on your console or using an emulator.

This demo does not contain sound as well as all interactions which will be in the official demo.

Feel free to try it (or not, in case you want to keep the surprise for later)!

Cheers!

EDIT: before I forget, I trimmed things here and there, making the rabbit problematic. Don't talk to this little guy unless you want to be stuck! ;-p

This stays between us!

Hello there!

Here is a sneek peak of an additional mini game we will include in the demo and random places later.

Introducing: THE BLEEP BIRD! Or the CLICK BIRD? Or something else?

Please note that if you come out with an interesting idea, we will copyright it and then send you our best army of attorneys! :-D

As you may have understood, the objective is to hit button A as fast as possible during 10 seconds. You may do it for fun, or for earning special stuff...

#sneakpeek More refinements!

Hello there!

We did some more work behind the curtains to improve FPS as well as game's look and feel. This will hopefully be visible in the 720p (change settings if needed) video attached to this post! 

Some more characters already made by our pixel artist have yet to be integrated, but we prefer to make the backbone sturdy before going further. 

Megadrive can handle quite a lot, but better safe now than sorry later! ;-)

#sneakpeek updated GUI!

Long time not posting an update... Sorry about that! 

This time we will show you our updated GUI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz8d05H0t8c (720p may take a while to be available on youtube).

As you can see we added some animation and elements which will hopefully give a better look and feel to the game.

Based on player's answer, and the moment he gives it, you can see that Clockman's ...

#sneekpeak strikes back!

This (poorly recorded) video shows our game running on an Analogue Mega SG.

This is an FPGA console which reproduces the behaviour of a regular SEGA Genesis / Megadrive.

Everything runs fine so far!

#sneekpeak again!

In this video, you will see:

- a talking European Red Robin

- our updated animated textbox 

- some dust randomly flying

We intend to use this scenery as an introduction to our upcoming demo.

#sneekpeak

In this video, you will see our updated animation engine and event manager.

Animation engine allows us to easily define animation frames' sequence and duration for each and every character and situation. 

Event manager allows to define various interactions with characters and other elements. In this video, we show various discussions, constituted of several sentences. You can see that our text manager allows to prevent any word from being cut. 

That's it...

A quick introduction

Some things you do not know about our game yet: 

- it's an RPG* (this does not stand for role playing game) running on Sega #Megadrive / #Genesis 

- The action takes place in a yet to be named kingdom

- Its hero is a handsome and brave prince named Perlin  2019-05-05 18:29:48 +0000 UTC View Post