"Dracula X PC Port Project" (status: abandoned)

PCEngineFX · 03/04/2006, 02:10 AM

I have been hard at work on a secret Turbo/PCE to PC port project over the last week, and am currently about 50% done creating the game engine. As soon as I can shake out all of the bugs (and they seem to NEVER end...) the rest should come together nicely. Unfortunately, due to programming constraints and lack of time, one gameplay mechanic had to be changed which at this point shouldn't change the playability much.

Now comes the fun part..... can anyone guess what game I'm working on? I will give you one hint - it wasn't released for the US NEC consoles.

rolins · 03/04/2006, 02:40 AM

Thats a tough guess. What genre does the game belong to?

esteban · 03/04/2006, 04:32 AM

Hmmmm.... I'm assuming it won't be PC-FX...

If you were to do another shooter (thus building off of your experience with Lords of Thunder --> PC project), I'd say CORYOON! (I'm saying this because I like cute-em-ups).

But, then I thought to myself, "Aaron might want to do a different genre, for fun..."

And this is where it's tough... what is worthy? A rare but great game? An expensive but great game? HuCard? CD?
Mizobaku... (sp??? The Bubble Bobble 4 game, you know what I'm talking about)
Valis IV
Shububinman 3

Then I realized what IT HAD TO BE:

Dracula X

I'll stop there.

PCEngineFX · 03/04/2006, 01:28 PM

If I give you any more hints, it will pretty much give it away............. but I'm on the verge of posting up sprites from the game so............

rolins · 03/04/2006, 01:35 PM

I doubt it will be Dracula X. Aaron might get sued by Konami.

I thought about it more and it might be a game from Hudson. The company that was the backbone of the PCE. So the game might be Bonk, Bomberman, Super Star Soldier, or Soldier Blade.

Its Super Star Soldier, right?

PCEngineFX · 03/04/2006, 01:45 PM

Ok here is your hint (this will pretty much give it away).

/temp/Stage_01_fire_poles.gif

Keranu · 03/04/2006, 08:02 PM

Haha, it's Dracula X alright! I guessed it could've been Dracula X once I started reading Steve's clever post. Well you never though, it might not be Dracula X, but perhaps he just used that sprite from Dracula X instead!

Now porting Dracula X to PC is actually a pretty good idea, because this will allow new gamers to the scene to have easier access to try out a PCE CD game and Dracula X is a nice game to use because of how well made it is. Lords of Thunder port was also a good idea because it's one of those top catchy games for the Duo that new comers would love to try out as well. Lets hope this stuff works

.

Dark Fact · 03/08/2006, 12:55 PM

Nice! I really would love to see Dracula X on my PC (besides the aid of MagicEngine)! Keep the project going, Aaron!

And Rolins, I doubt Konami would go after Aaron for a game they stupidly passed up for U.S. release on the Tduo.

Besides, the SNES version doesn't hold ground.

PCEngineFX · 03/09/2006, 04:03 PM

I have decided to post up an early version of the project for all to try out. Please note that this has only been in development for a few weeks and thus is an EXTREMELY early build with LOTS of bugs and no optimization (so initial loading may take long). Only the 1st part of Stage 01 is available, and you can only whip the fire poles (no enemies are present in this build).

Feel free to leave me your comments...it has been a bug-infested few weeks and I'm happy the game engine is where it's at right now. This has been much harder than the LoT project as each time I fix a bug, 3 new ones pop up

And speaking of bugs, as you can see I have removed the stairs from the level and replaced them with platforms. Having Richter recognize and align himself to walk up stairs was beyond my current ability and probably won't be put in due to time concerns.

DraculaX_v04.exe (10MB)
(note, runs at 800x600 in a window)

Keranu · 03/09/2006, 04:28 PM

Nice new font.

esteban · 03/09/2006, 08:46 PM

!!!

rolins · 03/09/2006, 10:06 PM

Very cool stuff Aaron.

When is the backflip going to be implemented?

Are you planning have voice-overs and redrawn cutscenes?

TurboXray · 03/09/2006, 10:57 PM

Nice! What did you write the code in?

NightWolve · 03/10/2006, 03:08 AM

Holy... What the?? Man Aaron, that's fantastic! I don't believe it. How far are you gonna go with this?

--

Ah darn, no workie for me. I'll try another Windows partition and see if it behaves better than on my XP.

Seldane · 03/10/2006, 04:40 AM

Two questions:

One. Where's the pipe?

And two -- gimme the pipe.

Seriously though. Did you make it in Game Maker? Seems like it.

And the game doesn't work in XP Media Center 2005 English (at least not for me). I had to use Windows 98 Compatibility Mode.

Edit: Oh, and the game looks good so far. Good work!

PCEngineFX · 03/10/2006, 01:41 PM

Quote from: "rolins"Very cool stuff Aaron.

When is the backflip going to be implemented?

Are you planning have voice-overs and redrawn cutscenes?

I have put the backflip move on my low-priority list due to the movement code involved. Not as hard as stairs, but hard none-the-less.

As for the cutscenes, I'd like to try to do either the opening narration intro, or the intro to Stage 00...we will see.

PCEngineFX · 03/10/2006, 01:44 PM

Quote from: "Bonknuts"Nice! What did you write the code in?

It was created with Game Maker v6 - you can check out the program and demo over at http://www.gamemaker.nl . I used about 75% "drag-and-drop" code and the rest was "real" code. Half-way though, I had to re-write the entire engine when I found a better way to do things so that took another week :\

PCEngineFX · 03/10/2006, 01:50 PM

Quote from: "NightWolve"Holy... What the?? Man Aaron, that's fantastic! I don't believe it. How far are you gonna go with this?

--

Ah darn, no workie for me. I'll try another Windows partition and see if it behaves better than on my XP.

How far will I go? Hmm. Well, I think once I get the basic engine free of bugs, I can go as far as I pretty much want. At this point, I'd like to get Stage 00, Stage 01 and Stage 02 complete. Then after that, I'd like to re-visit Lords of Thunder PC Port and get the entire 1st level done.

What version of XP you running NightWolve? I have only tested it on XP Pro SP2.

And to all - thanks for your comments! There isn't much meat to the demo, so I'm glad everyone likes it so far.

NightWolve · 03/11/2006, 03:29 AM

Yeah, same here. XP Pro with latest SP2 also. Auto-update feature is always on, so I keep it up-to-date.

Details, if it helps: I load it up, click enter twice to get passed the load and help screens, then on the first stage right when you can see Richter, I get this:

Seldane · 03/11/2006, 11:21 AM

Quote from: NightWolveYeah, same here. XP Pro with latest SP2 also. Auto-update feature is always on, so I keep it up-to-date.

Details, if it helps: I load it up, click enter twice to get passed the load and help screens, then on the first stage right when you can see Richter, I get this:

Very odd. That's a common problem with Game Maker programs (when you make mistakes), but it works for everybody else but you. Which is strange, since that is a program error and shouldn't work for anybody.

Did you try to re-download the program? I can't believe you get that error!

NightWolve · 03/11/2006, 01:56 PM

I just played it on my Win98 partition. The load time is almost bearable there. Anyway, that's a trip seeing this kind of work done.

OldRover · 03/12/2006, 12:07 AM

It runs pretty horribly here...but then again, this is the second GameMaker game I've run on this system, and neither ran very well anyways.

Aaron, if you get the time, you should perhaps try coding this with a proper compiler...might take a bit longer but the results are definately worth it.

PCEngineFX · 03/16/2006, 05:08 PM

NightWolve,

I totally agree with Seldane - you shouldn't have seen that error at all if it is working for other people....that is extremely strange. I will be doing major cleanup work of the code in the next build and so may work better for you then.

nodtveidt,

I'd LOVE to code this in something else, but I'm using Gamemaker for a reason...I don't know any coding languages and don't really have a desire to learn any either (other than what Gamemaker provides). Another big reason is that I really don't have the time, so GM is the next best thing for something like this.

Squaresoft74 · 03/17/2006, 02:37 AM

Héhé so you made the project public.

Keep up the great work Aaron.

motdelbuort · 03/26/2006, 12:52 AM

Unfortunately it ran like mollasses for me, using XP PRO SP 2 but with a 1.14 GHz processor and 256 MB RAM.

Best of luck though! It's really unfortunate Konami never slapped this game on a compilation disc.

Aksx · 03/27/2006, 08:40 AM

I think you are right guys!

CosMind · 05/26/2006, 09:37 PM

very slick. you're the first cat i've seen rocking console game ports with the gm toolset.

can't wait until you complete this project.

PyroX · 06/29/2006, 09:41 PM

Hello i think this is a great project hell ive been wanting to play this game for a long time since iplayed SOTN and i can programm and i may be 14 But im good Lol working on a FF7 re make myself but ill put that aside For this!!!!
my e mail is BlackRose_Cloud@yahoo.com so if you want my hellp just e mail me ttyl

maf · 08/05/2006, 09:45 AM

Hi. Has there been any more progress on this PC version of Dracula X? The WIP screens look very good.

I have the PC Engine CD version, but I'm interested to see this homebrew released for general consumption

Cheers!

Dark Fact · 11/23/2006, 12:32 PM

I've had the privilege of testing this out the other day and it looks pretty good for a start. However, you weren't kidding about all the bugs, Aaron, and boy howdy were there plenty.

-For instance, when I hold down up+right or any other movement key combo, Richter just stays in one place while it shows him walking. You'll need to look into that.
-No items were given out from the pyres. That'll need to be worked on.
-Only one screen so far. It doesn't even show any transition to the next screen when Richter goes all the way to the right hand side of the screen. If you haven't put up any new screens for the next part of the level, you may end the game with a placeholder after Richter walks off the right hand side of the screen saying "Thanks for trying out the demo. More developments coming soon!" or something like that.

PCEngineFX · 12/05/2006, 07:24 PM

Wow man...I've not worked on this in ages...but thanks for trying it out. Just creating the demo that far was a huge amount of work. I'd like to go back to one of these projects - probably my LoT PC Project as it was somewhat easier and is actually possible to finish a level (with alteration).

Windancer · 10/07/2008, 02:55 AM

Quote from: Pcenginefx on 12/05/2006, 07:24 PMWow man...I've not worked on this in ages...but thanks for trying it out. Just creating the demo that far was a huge amount of work. I'd like to go back to one of these projects - probably my LoT PC Project as it was somewhat easier and is actually possible to finish a level (with alteration).

I know how you feel man! I made megapop and it kinda consumed me for a while and I still wasnt happy with the final result. it could have used some more work but I just released when I was at wits end. Tough stuff! in the words of Forrest Gump you know what I found out about programming?(shrimpin) Programming is rough...........even with a easy to use programming system

10/31/2023: Localization News - Dead of the Brain 1!

"Dracula X PC Port Project" (status: abandoned)