Hypothetical PCE port :: Flame Zapper Kotsujin

[Michirin9801]

Some of you may already be familiar with this phenomenal PC-98 Doujin Shmup, personally it's one of my favourites in the genre, easily my No. 1 on the system (not like there's much competition)
For those who aren't, here's a little video of it:

So, since the PCE is the king of shmups, it would only make sense for me to imagine what would this game look, sound and play like on the system right?
Well, anybody who's listened to my album (Which btw can be found here: https://michirin9801.bandcamp.com/releases) already has kind of an idea what this game could sound like on the PCE, but then there's the whole rest...

As far as I'm aware, the PC-98 is even more limited than the PCE in terms of parallax scrolling, the thing can't even smoothly scroll a background horizontally, it has to do that tile by tile, or do some witchcraft like C-Lab and Melody did when they were making Rusty, Totsugeki Mix and Night Slave, that said though, the system has no issues with vertical scrolling, most likely because it was meant to scroll text... It also only has 1 BG layer btw, and its "sprite layer" isn't technically a "sprite layer" per-se, it's complicated and I don't know the specifics...

Anyway, with that in mind, this game pulls off loads of parallax scrolling on the system, which is a bit of a rarity in case you couldn't tell by the aforementioned limitations! Well, being able to show a whole load of sprites on-screen without flickering does help it pull that off, but you know, I was wondering how that could be done on the PCE, because well, the limited amount of sprites on-screen and per-scanline would certainly bottleneck what you could do without flickering... As you can see in the video, this game throws bullets and enemies at you like there's no tomorrow, add the BG sprites on top of that and it will certainly flicker, but still, I'd really like to see the PC engine doing something like that...

The parallax isn't the only thing I've been thinking of though, but also about the resolution, you see, this game runs on a mode on the PC-98 that cuts the horizontal resolution to 448 pixels as opposed to the usual 640, and that allows this game to run at 60fps, or at least I'm assuming it does, because every PC-98 game I've ever seen running at 60fps uses this mode (Rude Breaker and Touhou come to mind) but you can still display still graphics and text on the unused horizontal resolution which is nice and is how they did the HUD for this game (and for Touhou too), so I was thinking of different ways we could port the graphics, parallax aside, to the PC engine, and I have 2 ideas:

1 - We could use the 512 pixel mode to do a near-perfect port of the game's graphics (side-bar HUD aside, unless you'd be okay with making it only 64 pixels wide, which honestly, isn't enough), but well, I don't think that would be the best idea, because that would mean more flickering and we'd only be using 16 colours for the graphics, which honestly, sounds like a complete waste of the system's colour potential, not like we need to make it hyper colourful or anything, but with just a few extra colours we could make the PCE version look even better than the PC-98 one at half the resolution, which leads me to:

2 - Use the 320 pixel mode, remake the graphics to better suit the PCE (but still keep them somewhat close to the original) why the 320 pixel mode and not the 256 one you ask? Because that way we'd be working with exactly half the PC-98's horizontal resolution, so we could make the gameplay take place on a 224 pixel play field on the left and have a 96 pixel side-bar with the HUD on it on the right, so it would look just like the original! That bar would of course be rendered as a vertical stripe of the BG and no sprite would ever be on top of it, that way we'd be able to cover the entire horizontal length of the 'background' with only 7 sprites, not that it would be needed very often, but still...

I imagine you could also flicker some sprites by priority, like for example stars behind the BG, they wouldn't be missed too much in case of there being too many sprites on the same scanline, and of course, we'd have to tone down the amount of bullets some enemies throw at you, and the number of 'floors' the buildings in stage 2 have, (the ones in stage 4 and the end of stage 3 could be done with vertical BG stripes) there are also some clever zooming and rotation effects that could be done by moving different vertical stripes of the BG apart from one another and moving sprites around respectively...

Back on the topic of sound, this game has 2 versions of the soundtrack, there's the MONO version for the YM2203 (OPN) soundchip, and the Stereo version for the YM2608 (OPNA), and some of the compositions are actually different depending on which version you pick, and even the ones that aren't sound pretty different depending on the soundchip, so I was thinking, wouldn't it be awesome if this theoretical PCE port also had 2 versions of the soundtrack?
Like, we could do PSG covers of the MONO version for the regular old PCE, and covers of the Stereo version for systems with CD attachments and the DUOs, those would take advantage of the ADPCM channel to play percussion and free up a channel to do some phasing, reverb or play a triad instead of a power chord! But of course, both versions of the soundtrack would be in Stereo, so the versions would need to be renamed "PSG" and "CD" as opposed to "MONO" and "Stereo", also yes, we'd do this on a Hu-Card... (There goes my dream of making a Hu-Card game with support for sampled percussion on the CD ADPCM again)

I think I've already rambled for long enough, keep in mind this is all hypothetical, it's probably never gonna happen, and even if it did happen it would most likely be just a 1 stage demo, this is all just some food for thought, but yeah, I like to imagine what this game would be like on the PCE...

[elmer]

As far as I'm aware, the PC-98 is even more limited than the PCE in terms of parallax scrolling, the thing can't even smoothly scroll a background horizontally, it has to do that tile by tile, or do some witchcraft like C-Lab and Melody did when they were making Rusty, Totsugeki Mix and Night Slave, that said though, the system has no issues with vertical scrolling, most likely because it was meant to scroll text... It also only has 1 BG layer btw, and its "sprite layer" isn't technically a "sprite layer" per-se, it's complicated and I don't know the specifics...

A quick look around shows ...

http://island.geocities.jp/cklouch/column/pc98bas/pc98disphw_en.htm

The PC98 display is just a 16-color planer (4-plane) 640x400 bitmap, with 2 pages (i.e. a back-buffer) if you're targeting the 1986+ EGC models (which I presume that Kotsujin is).

There's no hardware scroll, so you're pretty screwed when it comes to horizontal scrolling, but you can change the start-address on a 16-pixel-word boundary, and vertical scrolling is possible.

BUT ... when you're displaying that much data on-screen, the vertical scroll is pretty-much pointless for games, because you've got to rewrite the whole display area anyway in order to draw over the last frame's "sprites".

The huge sidebar is there to cut down the amount of data that you have to write each frame so that they can keep that 60fps.

It was a common trick on computers to help mask the fact that your machine isn't powerful-enough to do full-screen scrolling.

Anyway, with that in mind, this game pulls off loads of parallax scrolling on the system, which is a bit of a rarity in case you couldn't tell by the aforementioned limitations! Well, being able to show a whole load of sprites on-screen without flickering does help it pull that off, but you know, I was wondering how that could be done on the PCE, because well, the limited amount of sprites on-screen and per-scanline would certainly bottleneck what you could do without flickering.

It's got no sprites, so there's no sprite-flicker.

It's just like an Atari ST, but running at a higher resolution, and with a faster processor.

So I imagine that they're drawing the entire game-area of the screen in software, in RAM, and then copying the completed image into VRAM.

What model/specs of PC98 was needed to run the game? 80386 @ 16MHz?

.. As you can see in the video, this game throws bullets and enemies at you like there's no tomorrow, add the BG sprites on top of that and it will certainly flicker, but still, I'd really like to see the PC engine doing something like that...

I suspect that you'll have a hard time persuading any programmer to work on something that's going to look flickery and compromised "by-design". 

Poor old fragmare still hasn't got anyone to work on Xymati, and AFAIK that's actually been designed to match up to the strengths of the PCE.

P.S. I don't really understand why you want to keep the sidebar instead of putting the info at the top or bottom of the screen (since the PC98 is only 400-high anyway, which would drop to 200-high on the PCE). 

[FraGMarE]

Lol, yea, I was going to say... I'm sure the PCE could give you a near 1:1 port (or maybe even enhanced) of FZK.  The problem is finding somebody to code it.

[Michirin9801]

As far as I'm aware, the PC-98 is even more limited than the PCE in terms of parallax scrolling, the thing can't even smoothly scroll a background horizontally, it has to do that tile by tile, or do some witchcraft like C-Lab and Melody did when they were making Rusty, Totsugeki Mix and Night Slave, that said though, the system has no issues with vertical scrolling, most likely because it was meant to scroll text... It also only has 1 BG layer btw, and its "sprite layer" isn't technically a "sprite layer" per-se, it's complicated and I don't know the specifics...

A quick look around shows ...

http://island.geocities.jp/cklouch/column/pc98bas/pc98disphw_en.htm

The PC98 display is just a 16-color planer (4-plane) 640x400 bitmap, with 2 pages (i.e. a back-buffer) if you're targeting the 1986+ EGC models (which I presume that Kotsujin is).

There's no hardware scroll, so you're pretty screwed when it comes to horizontal scrolling, but you can change the start-address on a 16-pixel-word boundary, and vertical scrolling is possible.

BUT ... when you're displaying that much data on-screen, the vertical scroll is pretty-much pointless for games, because you've got to rewrite the whole display area anyway in order to draw over the last frame's "sprites".

The huge sidebar is there to cut down the amount of data that you have to write each frame so that they can keep that 60fps.

It was a common trick on computers to help mask the fact that your machine isn't powerful-enough to do full-screen scrolling.

Anyway, with that in mind, this game pulls off loads of parallax scrolling on the system, which is a bit of a rarity in case you couldn't tell by the aforementioned limitations! Well, being able to show a whole load of sprites on-screen without flickering does help it pull that off, but you know, I was wondering how that could be done on the PCE, because well, the limited amount of sprites on-screen and per-scanline would certainly bottleneck what you could do without flickering.

It's got no sprites, so there's no sprite-flicker.

It's just like an Atari ST, but running at a higher resolution, and with a faster processor.

So I imagine that they're drawing the entire game-area of the screen in software, in RAM, and then copying the completed image into VRAM.

What model/specs of PC98 was needed to run the game? 80386 @ 16MHz?

.. As you can see in the video, this game throws bullets and enemies at you like there's no tomorrow, add the BG sprites on top of that and it will certainly flicker, but still, I'd really like to see the PC engine doing something like that...

I suspect that you'll have a hard time persuading any programmer to work on something that's going to look flickery and compromised "by-design". 

Poor old fragmare still hasn't got anyone to work on Xymati, and AFAIK that's actually been designed to match up to the strengths of the PCE.

P.S. I don't really understand why you want to keep the sidebar instead of putting the info at the top or bottom of the screen (since the PC98 is only 400-high anyway, which would drop to 200-high on the PCE). 

That sure was a load of interesting info!

You know, I'd prefer to keep the side bar not only for the sake of being close to the original, but also because of having to render less sprites as parts of the BG horizontally than the game would otherwise need, and also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, you can only divide the BG layer in stripes in one orientation, either vertical or horizontal, and it would be better for a vertical scrolling shmup to have vertical BG stripes (would be pretty useful in the 2nd half of stage 4) so if you'd render the HUD as part of the BG layer you'd only be able to do it in a vertical stripe, hence why a side-bar would be a better idea...

Lol, yea, I was going to say... I'm sure the PCE could give you a near 1:1 port (or maybe even enhanced) of FZK.  The problem is finding somebody to code it.

The PCE already has a shmup that's even better and more impressive than Kotsujin, it's Soldier Blade, but Kotsujin sure would be a worthy addition to the system's library wouldn't it? ;3
It would feel right at home~

Honestly though, this is all just food for thought and imagination, if I were to actually go and make a shooter for the PCE I'd want to make an original one...

[elmer]

1 - We could use the 512 pixel mode to do a near-perfect port of the game's graphics (side-bar HUD aside, unless you'd be okay with making it only 64 pixels wide, which honestly, isn't enough), but well, I don't think that would be the best idea, because that would mean more flickering and we'd only be using 16 colours for the graphics, which honestly, sounds like a complete waste of the system's colour potential, not like we need to make it hyper colourful or anything, but with just a few extra colours we could make the PCE version look even better than the PC-98 one at half the resolution, which leads me to:

Why does the 512-pixel mode limit you to 16 colors? 

Have I missed something ... I thought that we still had all of our palettes in that mode. 

But what I'm definitely not sure about, is whether running in 10MHz pixel mode actually affects our ability to write to VRAM during the frame.

P.S. I don't really understand why you want to keep the sidebar instead of putting the info at the top or bottom of the screen (since the PC98 is only 400-high anyway, which would drop to 200-high on the PCE). 

Another look at some of the Kotsujin screenshots shows that the game is only running at half-height, i.e. 200 pixels.

So we could run the game at 448x200, and still have space underneath for the status panel.

Perhaps something like this ...



Now ... running in 512-pixel mode would gut the PCE's capability to draw enough sprites to fill the screen ... but ... we do have a solution ... the SuperGrafx! 

The SuperGrafx should be able to do a pretty-much pixel-perfect, and color-enhanced version of Kotsujin.

Getting a 1996 game running in hi-res on a 1989 console, and potentially showing the SuperGrafx's superiority over the SNES and the Megadrive, that could be ... interesting. 

[elmer]

You know, I'd prefer to keep the side bar not only for the sake of being close to the original, but also because of having to render less sprites as parts of the BG horizontally than the game would otherwise need, and also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, you can only divide the BG layer in stripes in one orientation, either vertical or horizontal ...

I think that you're confusing us with the Megadrive.

The vertical-scroll registers are one of the few nice things about the Megadrive, and allow it to do that side-by-side split-screen thing.

We don't have that hardware capability on the PCE (IIRC the SNES doesn't have it, either).

For us ... you'd want the status bar on the top or bottom.

Displaying a 448-wide playfield on a 512-wide graphics mode would give a nice vertical shmup feel to the game.

[elmer]

The PCE already has a shmup that's even better and more impressive than Kotsujin, it's Soldier Blade, but Kotsujin sure would be a worthy addition to the system's library wouldn't it? ;3
It would feel right at home~

Honestly though, this is all just food for thought and imagination, if I were to actually go and make a shooter for the PCE I'd want to make an original one...

One big problem with making your own is to generate enough assets for it to look really good.

I'm a little surprised that nobody has suggested converting Tyrian over to the PCE, especially since the code is open-source, and the graphics are all available, and lo-res ... and pretty.

http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/04/free-game-graphics-tyrian-ships-and.html

<edit>

Although, personally, I'm more fond of a shmup that makes you think-and-panic rather than just a bullet-hell (timecode 5:10 if the link doesn't work properly).

[Michirin9801]

1 - We could use the 512 pixel mode to do a near-perfect port of the game's graphics (side-bar HUD aside, unless you'd be okay with making it only 64 pixels wide, which honestly, isn't enough), but well, I don't think that would be the best idea, because that would mean more flickering and we'd only be using 16 colours for the graphics, which honestly, sounds like a complete waste of the system's colour potential, not like we need to make it hyper colourful or anything, but with just a few extra colours we could make the PCE version look even better than the PC-98 one at half the resolution, which leads me to:

Why does the 512-pixel mode limit you to 16 colors? 

Have I missed something ... I thought that we still had all of our palettes in that mode. 

It doesn't, I've only suggested the 512 pixel mode so that we could use the same assets as the original game, and said assets only use 16 colours so... Yeah...

You know, I'd prefer to keep the side bar not only for the sake of being close to the original, but also because of having to render less sprites as parts of the BG horizontally than the game would otherwise need, and also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, you can only divide the BG layer in stripes in one orientation, either vertical or horizontal ...

I think that you're confusing us with the Megadrive.

The vertical-scroll registers are one of the few nice things about the Megadrive, and allow it to do that side-by-side split-screen thing.

We don't have that hardware capability on the PCE (IIRC the SNES doesn't have it, either).

For us ... you'd want the status bar on the top or bottom.

Displaying a 448-wide playfield on a 512-wide graphics mode would give a nice vertical shmup feel to the game.

So you're telling me that you can't divide a BG vertically on the PCE? Only horizontally?
If that's the case then...

So we could run the game at 448x200, and still have space underneath for the status panel.

Perhaps something like this ...




Now ... running in 512-pixel mode would gut the PCE's capability to draw enough sprites to fill the screen ... but ... we do have a solution ... the SuperGrafx! 

The SuperGrafx should be able to do a pretty-much pixel-perfect, and color-enhanced version of Kotsujin.

Getting a 1996 game running in hi-res on a 1989 console, and potentially showing the SuperGrafx's superiority over the SNES and the Megadrive, that could be ... interesting. 

I suppose that works too, but you know, the fun part would be seeing how we could potentially do this on the less powerful system if you get what I mean >w>

Here's an idea, what if there was a colour-enhanced 256 (or 320) pixel version on the PCE running on a 224 pixel playfield, and a pixel-perfect SuperGrafx version running on a 448 pixel playfield?

[touko]

We don't have that hardware capability on the PCE (IIRC the SNES doesn't have it, either).

The snes has it, but it's by tile(you can see it for exemple in the aladdin's snake level) , not an entire (16 pixels wide,aka 2 tiles) column like MD .

Even on SGX,a pixel perfect conversion of FZ is not feasible,there is too many things on screen IMO .
But you can do a very close one .

[Michirin9801]

We don't have that hardware capability on the PCE (IIRC the SNES doesn't have it, either).

The snes has it, but it's by tile(you can see it for exemple in the aladdin's snake level) , not an entire (16 pixels wide,aka 2 tiles) column like MD .

So I take it that the SNES can do it even better than the MD? ;3

[touko]

We don't have that hardware capability on the PCE (IIRC the SNES doesn't have it, either).

The snes has it, but it's by tile(you can see it for exemple in the aladdin's snake level) , not an entire (16 pixels wide,aka 2 tiles) column like MD .

So I take it that the SNES can do it even better than the MD? ;3

Yes but it takes more cpu to do, you needs to set each tile, and it has a better granularity (8 pixels columns) .

It's more flexible, but also more complicated .

[Michirin9801]

We don't have that hardware capability on the PCE (IIRC the SNES doesn't have it, either).

The snes has it, but it's by tile(you can see it for exemple in the aladdin's snake level) , not an entire (16 pixels wide,aka 2 tiles) column like MD .

So I take it that the SNES can do it even better than the MD? ;3

Yes but it takes more cpu to do, you needs to set each tile, and it has a better granularity (8 pixels columns) .

It's more flexible, but also more complicated .

I see... Well that makes sense!

[elmer]

It's more flexible, but also more complicated .

Hmmm ... I can't be bothered to check the SNES documentation, but ...

That whole effect on that Aladdin background isn't exactly complex. We could do exactly the same on the PCE with a few animated tiles.

Perhaps there are better examples out there.

Even on SGX,a pixel perfect conversion of FZ is not feasible,there is too many things on screen IMO .
But you can do a very close one.

IMHO, the big thing that you'd really need the SGX for are those full-screen "bomb" effects.

They're such an important part of the overall look of Flame Zapper Kotsujin, that butchering them with massive sprite-flicker or background drop-out, would leave you with a poor-quality conversion.

Yes ... there are PCE games that do full-screen weapon effects by writing into the background (GunHed's lightning) ... but those effects are specifically-designed to work that way. The ones in Flame Zapper Kotsujin aren't.


I'd be worried about dropping the resolution down to 224-horizontal, even though that would definitely make things easier.

You could possible get away with it, because a lot of the practical-use of the higher resolution in the PC98 game is as stippling to provide some extra shades on the sprites.

On the PCE we could just use real colors at a lower resolution to achieve the same effect (and probably look nicer).

But there are definitely some cases where details in the sprites would be lost.

The obvious sprite(s) to do as a test case would be the Red Bomb skull animations.

If those can be made to look really good at the 224-horizontal resolution, in PCE colors, then the whole conversion might look decent, even at lo-res.

[touko]

Super turrican do it too (on big worms)

IMHO, the big thing that you'd really need the SGX for are those full-screen "bomb" effects.

Yes if you can accept some flickering .
I thing you are over the 64 pce's sprites on screen and most sprites are 32x32 pixels .

That whole effect on that Aladdin background isn't exactly complex

You're right, it was only to show that snes can do it, it's more complicated on snes because you must set each tiles individualy, and not a Vscroll entry in a table like on MD .

[esteban]

This damn thread raised my hopes.

Then dashed them.

Suddenly, a flicker of hope appeared....

Smothered.

[Michirin9801]

The obvious sprite(s) to do as a test case would be the Red Bomb skull animations.

If those can be made to look really good at the 224-horizontal resolution, in PCE colors, then the whole conversion might look decent, even at lo-res.

I did a quick and dirty edit here of just that, it could be better and less dithery if I put more time into it but here's what I got:

This damn thread raised my hopes.

Then dashed them.

Suddenly, a flicker of hope appeared....

Smothered.

Sorry >w>
Well, I did put "Hypothetical" in the title, I didn't want to get people's hopes up after all...

[elmer]

I did a quick and dirty edit here of just that, it could be better and less dithery if I put more time into it but here's what I got:

Wow, that's much nicer that I expected! Great job! 

I was going to complain about the resolution for a while, and then I realized that you'd drawn it in 2x2 pixels. 

OK ... so it that graphic can look that good (there's a small loss in the outline shape, but nothing significant, and the colors [/i]do[/i] make up for it IMHO), then a lo-res port would probably be possible.

The next issue is screen-overdraw.

That's where touko is pointing out that 64 sprites are nowhere near enough for the overdraw that's going on in FZK.

I agree ... I really can't see how to make that game work on a PCE, even with dynamic drawing into the background, without causing a ton of flicker.

As he said ... even the SGX would be pushed at times (IMHO), but in the case of the SGX, we'd use the 2nd background plane to create those full-screen bomb effects, which would save the extra SGX sprites for other things ... like some of the parallax or layered enemies.

But you really don't seem to like the SGX proposal.

No problem ... I understand that I'm one of the few people that really love that PCE variant.

I just can't see how you can get that particular game to look decent on a standard PCE.

Maybe I'm just not being creative-enough.

Back-in-the-day, it was all about doing what-you-could with the hardware that was out-there.

And so compromises were inevitable, and expected, and part-of-the-job.

But these days ... for someone like me anyway, it's all about the quality of the end-result. And I'm just too damned stupid to figure out how to make Kotsujin look really *good* on a regular PCE. 

[Michirin9801]

I did a quick and dirty edit here of just that, it could be better and less dithery if I put more time into it but here's what I got:

Wow, that's much nicer that I expected! Great job! 

I was going to complain about the resolution for a while, and then I realized that you'd drawn it in 2x2 pixels. 

OK ... so it that graphic can look that good (there's a small loss in the outline shape, but nothing significant, and the colors do make up for it IMHO), then a lo-res port would probably be possible.

The next issue is screen-overdraw.

That's where touko is pointing out that 64 sprites are nowhere near enough for the overdraw that's going on in FZK.

I agree ... I really can't see how to make that game work on a PCE, even with dynamic drawing into the background, without causing a ton of flicker.

As he said ... even the SGX would be pushed at times (IMHO), but in the case of the SGX, we'd use the 2nd background plane to create those full-screen bomb effects, which would save the extra SGX sprites for other things ... like some of the parallax or layered enemies.

But you really don't seem to like the SGX proposal.

No problem ... I understand that I'm one of the few people that really love that PCE variant.

I just can't see how you can get that particular game to look decent on a standard PCE.

Maybe I'm just not being creative-enough.

Back-in-the-day, it was all about doing what-you-could with the hardware that was out-there.

And so compromises were inevitable, and expected, and part-of-the-job.

But these days ... for someone like me anyway, it's all about the quality of the end-result. And I'm just too damned stupid to figure out how to make Kotsujin look really *good* on a regular PCE. 

I'd be fine with a SGX version so long as it wasn't the only version because, you know, that would really limit the amount of people who can play it >w>

You see, I REALLY LOVE the idea of pushing the weaker hardware and getting as much out of it as possible! Heck, one of the biggest reasons why I love the PCE so much _{(other than the sound, and the really fun games it has)} is because I know (or at least have an idea of) how limited its hardware is, especially in comparison to its contemporaries, and yet I see it pulling off mind-blowing stuff both with and without the CD add-on that compares with, and sometimes _(often?) even surpasses its more technically advanced competitors!

So making a good-enough port of a 1996 computer game into a 1987 console, without any add-ons, but taking advantage of some of the add-on features if detected, is a VERY attractive idea to me, not only because it would show off what the system can do, but also because it would maximise the amount of people who could experience it!
Personally I wouldn't mind having less bullets on-screen, or less enemies, or a little bit of flickering here and there, so long as we could somehow capture the essence of the game and put it on a system that I love and where it would feel right at home~♥

Also, I didn't draw at 2x2 pixels, I just took a screenshot at 2x resolution and put it on my sta.sh because I find it easier to look at that way >w>
Oh and, I did this a few months back:

[Dicer]

I did a quick and dirty edit here of just that, it could be better and less dithery if I put more time into it but here's what I got:

Wow, that's much nicer that I expected! Great job! 

I was going to complain about the resolution for a while, and then I realized that you'd drawn it in 2x2 pixels. 

OK ... so it that graphic can look that good (there's a small loss in the outline shape, but nothing significant, and the colors do make up for it IMHO), then a lo-res port would probably be possible.

The next issue is screen-overdraw.

That's where touko is pointing out that 64 sprites are nowhere near enough for the overdraw that's going on in FZK.

I agree ... I really can't see how to make that game work on a PCE, even with dynamic drawing into the background, without causing a ton of flicker.

As he said ... even the SGX would be pushed at times (IMHO), but in the case of the SGX, we'd use the 2nd background plane to create those full-screen bomb effects, which would save the extra SGX sprites for other things ... like some of the parallax or layered enemies.

But you really don't seem to like the SGX proposal.

No problem ... I understand that I'm one of the few people that really love that PCE variant.

I just can't see how you can get that particular game to look decent on a standard PCE.

Maybe I'm just not being creative-enough.

Back-in-the-day, it was all about doing what-you-could with the hardware that was out-there.

And so compromises were inevitable, and expected, and part-of-the-job.

But these days ... for someone like me anyway, it's all about the quality of the end-result. And I'm just too damned stupid to figure out how to make Kotsujin look really *good* on a regular PCE. 

I'd be fine with a SGX version so long as it wasn't the only version because, you know, that would really limit the amount of people who can play it >w>

You see, I REALLY LOVE the idea of pushing the weaker hardware and getting as much out of it as possible! Heck, one of the biggest reasons why I love the PCE so much _{(other than the sound, and the really fun games it has)} is because I know (or at least have an idea of) how limited its hardware is, especially in comparison to its contemporaries, and yet I see it pulling off mind-blowing stuff both with and without the CD add-on that compares with, and sometimes _(often?) even surpasses its more technically advanced competitors!

So making a good-enough port of a 1996 computer game into a 1987 console, without any add-ons, but taking advantage of some of the add-on features if detected, is a VERY attractive idea to me, not only because it would show off what the system can do, but also because it would maximise the amount of people who could experience it!
Personally I wouldn't mind having less bullets on-screen, or less enemies, or a little bit of flickering here and there, so long as we could somehow capture the essence of the game and put it on a system that I love and where it would feel right at home~♥

Also, I didn't draw at 2x2 pixels, I just took a screenshot at 2x resolution and put it on my sta.sh because I find it easier to look at that way >w>
Oh and, I did this a few months back:

Perfectly stated...

[Michirin9801]

Perfectly stated...

Thanks ^^

[elmer]

Oh and, I did this a few months back:

Excellent, that looks great! 

Also, I didn't draw at 2x2 pixels, I just took a screenshot at 2x resolution and put it on my sta.sh because I find it easier to look at that way >w>

I know, I never thought that you did. But it did take a bit to figure-out that you were showing a 2x2 magnified PCE image against a 2x4 magnified PC9801 original, for some reason.

Something like this would have been a lot more useful, because it's so much easier to see what you've gained in color, and lost in resolution ...

You see, I REALLY LOVE the idea of pushing the weaker hardware and getting as much out of it as possible! Heck, one of the biggest reasons why I love the PCE so much _{(other than the sound, and the really fun games it has)} is because I know (or at least have an idea of) how limited its hardware is, especially in comparison to its contemporaries, and yet I see it pulling off mind-blowing stuff both with and without the CD add-on that compares with, and sometimes _(often?) even surpasses its more technically advanced competitors!

That's a wonderful goal to have! I really hope that you get to do it someday! 

But you're going to need to find a programmer that's willing to do a lot of custom-coding for each-and-every level and on-screen effect, which will take them far, far longer than the art side is going to take you, only to have something that's (IMHO) going to compare rather poorly with the original game.

I took another look at the video, trying to figure out just how many of the effects and "sprites" could actually be dropped down into dynamic-tiles, and at-the-end-of-the-day, "yes", I believe that you could do *something* on the PCE that would look approximately like FZK.

If you reserve some colors in the palette of each background tile, then you could draw each bomb effect into the background as it happened on-screen.

That would be one way to avoid having all the sprites flicker like mad or just disappear.

But it comes with its own costs.

Perhaps someone will want to take on the challenge someday.

Personally, I agree with the idea of pushing the limits of the PCE (or SGX) ... but to me that means doing something that's actually going to look good on the systems, which means deeply understanding those limits, and then taking advantage of every opportunity.

IMHO, the basic design of FZP just breaks a few too many of those limits to actually get a good end-result.

Hopefully someone will come along, program the game, and show me that I'm wrong.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Hopefully someone will come along, program the game, and show me that I'm wrong.

It's coming right after Xymati and PC Gunjin, lol.


I think this game would be an exercise in insanity simply due to the sprite limitations.   On a PC-98, you don't really have that.  You can blit around as many things as you want until the framerate starts to take a shit. 

On a PCE, you lose this luxury and life sucks a bit on the programming side.

Admittedly, I think the majority of the game's charm is the sound and the giant skeleton boom, but we have Tatsujin for that.  The gameplay isn't providing anything spectacularly different from the boatload of shooters we already have. 

I think you'd lose a lot of the charm switching to the PCE because you'd lose the FM bell sound.


The layered scrolling effects aren't really hard.   Other games already do that.   It's just the sprite limitations that will really make this a royal pain in the ass.   You'd either have epileptic flickering, or a SuperGrafx only game that will still flicker, only less often.


This sort of thing is also why PCE as a whole didn't really get graced with bullet hell games.  Touhou stuff would've been great but you need like 9000 sprites to deal with the bullets.   

[Michirin9801]

Admittedly, I think the majority of the game's charm is the sound and the giant skeleton boom, but we have Tatsujin for that.  The gameplay isn't providing anything spectacularly different from the boatload of shooters we already have. 

I think you'd lose a lot of the charm switching to the PCE because you'd lose the FM bell sound.

But this music is exponentially better than the music in Tatsujin >o<';
And so is the gameplay if you ask me, and with that I mean that it's difficult but not damn-near-impossible...

Also, yeah, we couldn't do an FM bell like that on the PCE, but who's to say we couldn't do something just as good?

[Arkhan Asylum]

Admittedly, I think the majority of the game's charm is the sound and the giant skeleton boom, but we have Tatsujin for that.  The gameplay isn't providing anything spectacularly different from the boatload of shooters we already have. 

I think you'd lose a lot of the charm switching to the PCE because you'd lose the FM bell sound.

But this music is exponentially better than the music in Tatsujin >o<';
And so is the gameplay if you ask me, and with that I mean that it's difficult but not damn-near-impossible...

Also, yeah, we couldn't do an FM bell like that on the PCE, but who's to say we couldn't do something just as good?

Tatsujin on PCE is gooned up and plays hard as if you've beat and looped it.   

You can get sort-of-FM-bells on PCE.   

I think ultimately, the inability to barf that many sprites in a reasonable manner for all the bullets basically screws it all up.

If that sort of thing were functionally doable, I would rather see a Touhou game, I think. 

You could do the game, but would basically have to cut down on "amount-of-bullets" which would impact the gameplay and probably make it too easy, and boring.

If you cut all the screen effects, downsize some sprites, and cram it together a bit, it'd maybe work.

but then you'd have to wonder if that also impacts the gameplay.

damn bitmapped screen modes.

[Michirin9801]

Tatsujin on PCE is gooned up and plays hard as if you've beat and looped it.   

You can get sort-of-FM-bells on PCE.   

I think ultimately, the inability to barf that many sprites in a reasonable manner for all the bullets basically screws it all up.

If that sort of thing were functionally doable, I would rather see a Touhou game, I think. 

You could do the game, but would basically have to cut down on "amount-of-bullets" which would impact the gameplay and probably make it too easy, and boring.

If you cut all the screen effects, downsize some sprites, and cram it together a bit, it'd maybe work.

but then you'd have to wonder if that also impacts the gameplay.

damn bitmapped screen modes.

Touhou is fine and all, but I like Kotsujin better, I can't pin-point why exactly though, I just really love that game!

You know, Kotsujin isn't really that hard, I mean, I'm not THAT good at shooters and I've managed to beat it on normal using continues, I can't even beat Soldier Blade (although I can get to the final boss, I just haven't beaten the final boss, but to be fair, I kind of haven't tried hard enough) and that's because Soldier Blade is the 2nd easiest in the series (the only one that's easier is Star Parodier which I also beat)
So that's proof enough that the PCE can make shooters that are much harder than Kotsujin coughTatsujinCough so I wouldn't worry about the game becoming too easy...

Personally, I wouldn't mind if the stages were "re-arranged" and/or "re-orchestrated" somewhat (or something like that) to better accommodate for the PCE's limitations, I mean, I know for a fact that I'm not gonna get that many bullets on-screen on the PCE, but so long as the gameplay was the same, the music and the challenge were still there, and the bomb effects were similar enough, I'd be satisfied...

But once again, this port is probably never gonna happen... If _{(read: "When")} I am to work on a PCE shooter, I'd prefer to make an original game, and that's only really gonna happen after I'm done with that Mega Drive project that's in development hell at the moment because college is taking all of my free time away...
Also, don't worry about assets, by the time I'm even remotely ready to beg for programmer help I'll already have all the assets done >w>

[Arkhan Asylum]

Tatsujin is harder for different reasons, though.  Other harder PCE games are hard for other reasons too, like the general enemy patterns, speeds of enemies, and stuff like that.

Kotsujin to me kind of relies on the bullet spray dodging for difficulty.  If you have to water them down, I don't know that it would be as engaging.  It would be playable, but I suspect it would get boring.

Making a new game tailored to the PCE would be a better idea, I think.
 
Even if you rip off the art and music and just repurpose it so it almost feels like Kotsujin, lol.

[Michirin9801]

Tatsujin is harder for different reasons, though.  Other harder PCE games are hard for other reasons too, like the general enemy patterns, speeds of enemies, and stuff like that.

Kotsujin to me kind of relies on the bullet spray dodging for difficulty.  If you have to water them down, I don't know that it would be as engaging.  It would be playable, but I suspect it would get boring.

Making a new game tailored to the PCE would be a better idea, I think.
 
Even if you rip off the art and music and just repurpose it so it almost feels like Kotsujin, lol.

Yeah, that's a good idea...

[elmer]

Kotsujin to me kind of relies on the bullet spray dodging for difficulty.  If you have to water them down, I don't know that it would be as engaging.  It would be playable, but I suspect it would get boring.

Making a new game tailored to the PCE would be a better idea, I think.
 
Even if you rip off the art and music and just repurpose it so it almost feels like Kotsujin, lol.

Yeah, that's a good idea...

Yep ... I think that you've shown that you can make the artwork look great at the lower resolution, and you've definitely shown that you can make the music sound excellent on the PCE! 

If you can just redefine the gameplay away from being a total bullet-hell then it might work.

IMHO, even the SGX would be hard-pushed to recreate the large amount of screen-overdraw from all of those bullets and enemies.

And I don't see the SNES or the Megadrive really having much chance of doing it ... they don't have enough sprites, and neither do they have the upload-to-VRAM bandwidth to draw enough elements into the background.

[touko]

I agree elmer the SNES and MD cannot have any chance too,and the sgx is the best candidate for sure to do this game at a decent level and keep most parts intact.

[Michirin9801]

IMHO I don't see the SNES or the Megadrive really having much chance of doing it ... they don't have enough sprites, and neither do they have the upload-to-VRAM bandwidth to draw enough elements into the background.

I agree elmer the SNES and MD cannot have any chance too,and the sgx is the best candidate for sure to do this game at a decent level and keep most parts intact.

C'mon, even the Game Boy Advance or the X68000 wouldn't have enough sprites to do that game, and both of which could do twice the sprites that the SGX can, I mean, have you ever seen a bullet hell on the X68000? I know I haven't, but to be fair, I haven't played nearly enough X68000 games to know... But still, that game could only be done on the PC-98 because it doesn't flicker, the same way Touhou could only be done on the PC-98 back in the day...
Unless you're capable of doing that whole "draw bullets to the BG layer" thing, in that case it might just work...

You know, changing the gameplay to a non-bullet-hell shooter but keeping the graphics and music was exactly the kind of compromise that I had in mind when I proposed a PCE port of this game, and personally, I think it would be better than an attempt to a 1:1 recreation, just think back to Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu, the NES and PCE versions have similar gameplay graphics and music compositions, but the level design of each stage is completely different, and so are many of the bosses, and I think that was a great thing, because once I beat the NES version I hadn't run out of JCAKF to play, because the TurboGrafx version gives me a different and yet still familiar experience to play through! I wasn't just playing through the same game again with better graphics, I was playing through what felt like a sequel or re-imagining of the same game, it played the same, which is nice, but I was experiencing new and different stages with the same themes!

Now apply that to Kotsujin, the graphics, music and themes of the stages would be similar, but you'd be playing through a different game with the same controls, one more tailored to suit the PCE's hardware and just as challenging as the original! (In other words, about as hard as Soldier Blade)
So if you had already played and beaten Kotsujin on the PC-98, you wouldn't be playing a watered-down version of the same game with more colours and slightly different music, you'd be playing a game that looks, sounds and feels like Kotsujin, but with different "level design" so you'd be experiencing new but still familiar stages! In my head that's perfect...

[elmer]

Unless you're capable of doing that whole "draw bullets to the BG layer" thing, in that case it might just work...

I believe that you're thinking of each bullet as a different sprite ... and IMHO, that's just not how you'd make the game work on a sprite-and-tile-background console like the SGX.

Instead, for those bullet-heavy parts, which occur mostly on specific enemies, you create "lanes" of non-overlapping sprites on the screen, and you either draw the bullets into those sprite-lanes dynamically, just like you'd draw them into background tiles, or you create pre-drawn composite sprites, since the bullet-patterns are known and not random.

That just needs a reasonably-fast CPU, and some good main-RAM-to-VRAM upload bandwidth.

The SGX actually has a fast-enough CPU, with the right TSB & TRB instructions, that you might actually be able to pull it off with enough custom-coding of the software-drawing routines.

You could definitely pull it off if you pre-draw stuff, it'll just cost you memory.

The GBA has a fast CPU, but I've never actually looked to see if it has the same awful VRAM bandwidth limits as the SNES.

The X68000 has a potential *chance* with all of those bitmapped background layers, but I no real idea of the programming limitations on that system.

[Michirin9801]

I believe that you're thinking of each bullet as a different sprite ... and IMHO, that's just not how you'd make the game work on a sprite-and-tile-background console like the SGX.

I was...

Instead, for those bullet-heavy parts, which occur mostly on specific enemies, you create "lanes" of non-overlapping sprites on the screen, and you either draw the bullets into those sprite-lanes dynamically, just like you'd draw them into background tiles, or you create pre-drawn composite sprites, since the bullet-patterns are known and not random.

Do you know any examples where that's being done?

The SGX actually has a fast-enough CPU, with the right TSB & TRB instructions, that you might actually be able to pull it off with enough custom-coding of the software-drawing routines.

You could definitely pull it off if you pre-draw stuff, it'll just cost you memory.

You mean extra RAM or extra ROM? Would this require a Super System Card and a CD or could it be done on a HuCard?

[elmer]

Do you know any examples where that's being done?

I can't remember where I heard about the technique ... but I'm sure that there was beer involved. 

At the very-least, animating the initial introductions of any bullet-spray should be a pretty-obvious technique to you, and you can see lots of paired-bullets throughout the game.

See ...

You mean extra RAM or extra ROM?

Either or both, depending upon how much drawing-into-sprites you can get away with, and how many pre-animated frames you have, and whether they're stored compressed (and decompressed just before that pattern is fired).

Basically, it would be a massive juggling-act.

Would this require a Super System Card and a CD or could it be done on a HuCard?

Well, on the PC98, as-far-as-I-can-see, the game is over 4MB compressed, and requires 1MB of extended memory.

AFAIK, nobody is even making 1MB HuCards yet, let alone 4MB!

I suspect that anyone crazy-enough to attempt to do the project, would be advised to target a TED v2.

That would give you plenty of memory for predrawn animations, you could load each level from the SD card, and it would be one heck of a lot cheaper and more "universal" than requiring a SuperCDROM drive (plus maybe an Arcade Card).

[Michirin9801]

Would this require a Super System Card and a CD or could it be done on a HuCard?

Well, on the PC98, as-far-as-I-can-see, the game is over 4MB compressed, and requires 1MB of extended memory.

AFAIK, nobody is even making 1MB HuCards yet, let alone 4MB!

I suspect that anyone crazy-enough to attempt to do the project, would be advised to target a TED v2.

That would give you plenty of memory for predrawn animations, you could load each level from the SD card, and it would be one heck of a lot cheaper and more "universal" than requiring a SuperCDROM drive (plus maybe an Arcade Card).

I was thinking we could shave off some of that memory because the graphics would take up half the memory they do on the PC-98 given that they'd be half the resolution, but I don't know if or how much the extra colours would add...
But then I remembered that I wanted to do 2 versions of the soundtrack, just like the original game, one of which would involve percussion samples which would play on the CD ADPCM channel so that means they'd be higher quality than regular-old PCE samples and would take up a lot more memory...

Yeah TED v2 FTW >w>

[kazekirifx]

I love FZK! Can't imagine it running very well on PCE, though. Even on PC-98, you need to have a PC-98 with a pretty fast CPU in it to run it well.

I mean, have you ever seen a bullet hell on the X68000? I know I haven't, but to be fair, I haven't played nearly enough X68000 games to know...

Does Cho Ren Sha 68k not count as a bullet hell? I'd say it's pretty close at least. The game actually reminds me a bit of FZK.

[elmer]

I mean, have you ever seen a bullet hell on the X68000? I know I haven't, but to be fair, I haven't played nearly enough X68000 games to know...

Does Cho Ren Sha 68k not count as a bullet hell? I'd say it's pretty close at least. The game actually reminds me a bit of FZK.

Haha ... yep, that looks like bullet-hell to me! 

[FraGMarE]

It's coming right after Xymati and PC Gunjin, lol.

I just draw the graphics and design the levels, dude.  I can't help it if people flake out on the coding.  You're welcome to code 'em, if you want.  ;)

[FraGMarE]

Me waiting for somebody to code Xymati lol

[Michirin9801]

Does Cho Ren Sha 68k not count as a bullet hell? I'd say it's pretty close at least. The game actually reminds me a bit of FZK.

Close enough...

Me waiting for somebody to code Xymati lol

That's pretty sad actually >w>

[elmer]

Me waiting for somebody to code Xymati lol

That's pretty sad actually >w>

Yep, extremely sad after all of these years! 

There just aren't that many programmer-types around here, and even when there are people with free-time, they've actually got to have the passion (and skill) to want to create the same type of game.

[FraGMarE]

Me waiting for somebody to code Xymati lol

That's pretty sad actually >w>

Yep, extremely sad after all of these years! 

There just aren't that many programmer-types around here, and even when there are people with free-time, they've actually got to have the passion (and skill) to want to create the same type of game.

Lol you'd think a Nexr clone and a run-n-gun game would garner some genuine interest at some point, but whatever.  If there's one thing I've learned here, it's that people will blow all kinds of smoke up your ass, but at the end of the day you can't depend on people for shit.  And if you want something done, you're probably better off just doing it all yourself... ZING 

[Arkhan Asylum]

lol yeah, the problem is those games are a large undertaking and were made *professionally* by a team.

Expecting like one dude to do it in free time is a great way for it to never get done.

and even if we all coordinated, it'd still take forever because time zones and varied free time.

You'd need a bunch of people with similar schedules and close living proximity, I think.

That's why I don't go for anything crazy.   

[FraGMarE]

Expecting like one dude to do it in free time is a great way for it to never get done.

Depends entirely upon the determination of said individual.

[elmer]

Expecting like one dude to do it in free time is a great way for it to never get done.

Depends entirely upon the determination of said individual.

I'm sorry Fragmare, I absolutely love the music that you've been doing, and the artwork that you've created ... but that's just a bit out-of-line.

I don't share Arkhan's perspectives on quite a few things, and we have, and almost-certainly will continue in the future, to butt-heads on various subjects.

But he's 100% correct on this one.

You can't force your passion for own project down someone else's throat.

Programming a game on these old-machines (PCE/MSX/Genesis/whatever) is a *LOT* of work.

Asking someone to do that after a hard-day's-effort-at-their-job, week-after-week, long-after all the fun-and-challenging aspects have been conquered, and the 50%+ of hum-drum coding starts, followed by the 30%+ of terminally-dull get-it-finished coding begins ...

... then determination isn't enough. It's going to take either "passion", or a large paycheck.

And nobody here is offering that "paycheck".

Arkhan has done what a lot, a huge lot, of people haven't ... he's finished things, and he's pushed the whole "scene" forward.

That's incredibly difficult, and one heck of an accomplishment.

I'm going to have to side wtih him on this one.

[FraGMarE]

Expecting like one dude to do it in free time is a great way for it to never get done.

Depends entirely upon the determination of said individual.

I'm sorry Fragmare, I absolutely love the music that you've been doing, and the artwork that you've created ... but that's just a bit out-of-line.

I don't share Arkhan's perspectives on quite a few things, and we have, and almost-certainly will continue in the future, to butt-heads on various subjects.

But he's 100% correct on this one.

You can't force your passion for own project down someone else's throat.

Programming a game on these old-machines (PCE/MSX/Genesis/whatever) is a *LOT* of work.

Asking someone to do that after a hard-day's-effort-at-their-job, week-after-week, long-after all the fun-and-challenging aspects have been conquered, and the 50%+ of hum-drum coding starts, followed by the 30%+ of terminally-dull get-it-finished coding begins ...

... then determination isn't enough. It's going to take either "passion", or a large paycheck.

And nobody here is offering that "paycheck".

Arkhan has done what a lot, a huge lot, of people haven't ... he's finished things, and he's pushed the whole "scene" forward.

That's incredibly difficult, and one heck of an accomplishment.

I'm going to have to side wtih him on this one.

Lol what, exactly, is out of line?  Saying if you want something done around here, you might as well do it all yourself?  That's no exaggeration.  Fuck, I think you could probably dig up a quote of Arkhan's on this forum that's almost verbatim to that, said to me in regards to Xymati, no less.  This "scene" is generally full of doe-eyed, eagerly anticipating ingenues and overly gung-ho guys that start 9239847 projects simultaneously, but finish 0.  Not saying there aren't exceptions;  Meteor Blaster DX, Mysterious Song, Arkhan's Retrocade pack, Ys IV translation, etc.... but the general rule around here is: SHIT DOESN'T GET FINISHED.  Some kind of community GitHub like system COULD work, if there's a person directing the show and deciding what to keep/trash.  But that brings out the whiners when they're goofball, left-field idea doesn't get included.

Or was it saying it depends on the determination of the individual working on the project?  I'm telling you, in all seriousness, that if I had started learning HuC6280 ASM 10+ years ago when ideas for Xymati started getting tossed around, I'd probably have a playable version of it by now, drawn, designed and coded by yours truly.  It's not about slaving at your day job and then coming home and slaving on some other project until you're bleary eyed... it's about chipping away at it when you can, over years, and until you've created something masterful... think of a bonsai tree or a car restoration.  Hell, man, I'm a single dad with two kids i raise BY MYSELF, have a day job and occasional night job and i still find the time for PCE dev.  What I am saying is, one person, given enough determination, patience and time, CAN make it happen... even if it takes years.  If you disagree, then I'm sorry, you don't really understand the drive one person can have when they want something bad enough.

I'm honestly considering saying fuck making any more chiptunes or pixel art after the Super Raiden 25th Anniversary release and just concentrating on learning more HuC6280 ASM... that's really about the only sure-fire way Xymati would ever get finished, that I see.  Might take another decade, but fuck it... what's another few years?

I mean, i know you had kind of openly offered to maybe code Xymati when you have the time.  And believe me, you're more than welcome to.  Knock yourself out, dude.  But, quite frankly, I've heard it all before and I don't really know you all that well yet, so I just kind of file it under the "Yea ok, we'll see..." folder.  ;)  No offense.

[spenoza]

Fragmare, if you have the passion to do this, then you may be able to see it through. I think this is really about semantics. I think your argument that determination is enough is being read by others here as, "if someone would just work harder this would get done," and they naturally see this as a flawed assertion. You clearly have a passion for your project, and passion is a motivator far more powerful than simple determination ("Just work harder, dude!").

You can't rely on someone else to have the same passion about your project that you do. That doesn't mean you can't rely on others to help you make it happen, but in hobbyist scenes like this where everyone has a home life and their own projects, you can't rely on someone else to carry the torch for your project. When you're talking about programming an entire game, no, you can't rely on someone else to program your game for you, not unless you can make them care about your game more than their own or anyone else's.

And given the size of the hobbyist scene for this underdog console, I think there are quite a few projects that have gone to completion. The PCE homebrew scene is actually relatively productive.

[FraGMarE]

Fragmare, if you have the passion to do this, then you may be able to see it through. I think this is really about semantics. I think your argument that determination is enough is being read by others here as, "if someone would just work harder this would get done," and they naturally see this as a flawed assertion. You clearly have a passion for your project, and passion is a motivator far more powerful than simple determination ("Just work harder, dude!").

You can't rely on someone else to have the same passion about your project that you do. That doesn't mean you can't rely on others to help you make it happen, but in hobbyist scenes like this where everyone has a home life and their own projects, you can't rely on someone else to carry the torch for your project. When you're talking about programming an entire game, no, you can't rely on someone else to program your game for you, not unless you can make them care about your game more than their own or anyone else's.

And given the size of the hobbyist scene for this underdog console, I think there are quite a few projects that have gone to completion. The PCE homebrew scene is actually relatively productive.

If people want to misconstrue what I say and get offended in the process, then I can't really help that.  I'm not saying somebody "just needs to work harder".  I'm saying somebody needs to show some fucking RESOLVE, stick with the goddamn project when they say they are going to, and not flake out and go MIA, then come back later and start 28 other projects lol.  And it has become clear, long ago, that the only person that's going do that is ME

Trust me... any future projects I might start, I will make it a point to NOT ask for help from ANYBODY here for ANYTHING.  Why?  Because, from my experience, no... you CAN'T rely on help from others.  Not in this scene, anyway.  ;)

[spenoza]

I can understand how your own experiences have lead you to feel that way. But I'm glad SamIam and Elmer don't share that attitude, because their partnership is very close to giving us translated Xanadu I and II. They have found a great working relationship, which is awesome. Sounds like Rover and Sarumaru have found that as well. I hope you get your Xymati, because it looks like it might be awesome. But you're basically throwing shade on the entire community, despite evidence that the community isn't fundamentally broken. You've had some bad experiences, but others have not.

(And yes, you absolutely CAN help how people construe your words. What you meant to say is that you don't CARE how people misconstrue your words.)

[FraGMarE]

I can understand how your own experiences have lead you to feel that way. But I'm glad SamIam and Elmer don't share that attitude, because their partnership is very close to giving us translated Xanadu I and II. They have found a great working relationship, which is awesome. Sounds like Rover and Sarumaru have found that as well. I hope you get your Xymati, because it looks like it might be awesome. But you're basically throwing shade on the entire community, despite evidence that the community isn't fundamentally broken. You've had some bad experiences, but others have not.

(And yes, you absolutely CAN help how people construe your words. What you meant to say is that you don't CARE how people misconstrue your words.)

Yay, good for them.  *thumbs up*   And you're right, I definitely don't care.

[Gredler]