Genesis Wars

[Edge-`]

I've restarted my Genesis Wars project for anyone interested in its progress in the past and future. I'm redoing everything from scratch with better methods (and a better understanding and compiler) with the hopes I don't get frustrated this time .

My new genesis development site is here: genDEV.

Here are some quick screenshots:

 

[racketboy]

wow -- sounds awesome.

AW is one of my all-time favorites.

Keep us posted on your progress!

 

[Whitesnake]

You know i've always been interested in Genesis Wars progress

 

[Kaneda]

Here here here!!

I want more Genesis Wars news!!

 

[fonzievoltonov]

OMG, Yeppeee!

 

[Edge-`]

Here are some more screens (granted a lot of this stuff is just retracing my steps before, but its going much better this time)

Kaneda, what do you use to convert your images to tiles these days? I'm still using your wonderful BMP2Tile. I ask because I was wondering if you fancied updating it sometime to maybe export XGCC compad asm. I mean its really no problem removing the comments, the '_' and changing the $ to 0x, but it would be neat. Or if there is something better you reccomend I'd love to know . I'm spending more time messing with images, and less programming.

 

[LocalH]

That looks awesome, I'd love to see it on real hardware. Too bad there aren't any public releases yet, or I would =P

 

[Edge-`]

Originally posted by LocalH@Wed, 2005-11-30 @ 12:29 AM

That looks awesome, I'd love to see it on real hardware. Too bad there aren't any public releases yet, or I would =P

[post=142071]Quoted post[/post]​

Thanks for the encouragement, good to see so many gen devers still here at SX too. Right now there's not much to release. Just the intro screens and menus and a game field that you can run a little soldier all over the place (with the idle and run animation).

I also feel a bit weird about releasing it as the art is obviously not mine, but taken from Advanced Wars 2 (and then modified to work on the Genesis). Maybe soon I'll start requesting art help to make all the graphics custom.

But anyway, since its for the genesis, it probably doesn't matter . As soon as I have something fun to play (might just make a 1 on 1 demo release as a milestone point).

Speaking of demos, are there any contests going on that a genesis game may be entered into?

 

[Kaneda]

For the GFX, i still use B2T to convert to TLE

then GSS to create sprite or MMM to create map (of tiles)

these 2 tools export XGCC compatible asm

good luck!

 

[Edge-`]

Cool, I'll give that a go. Thanks for all your contribution and time Kaneda. Maybe we'll have to team up for a project sometime.

 

[Kaneda]

unfortunatly I'm not on Genny as much as before...

My free time is still for Genny but I have less and less "free time"

perhaps I'll come back to release the 3 current projects I worked on

 

[fonzievoltonov]

Kaneda> héhé

Some projects require tons of tools (item, character, script, map editors) and lot of msdos tools to convert gfx to appropriate format...

Here, if you generate map randomely, thats perfect... Good shot to do this kind of game, will be very fun to play and certainely interesting to code .

Btw, nice artwork... looks even better than the original 256c.

 

[it290]

I think a random map generator would be cool, but not as the only option. Advance Wars kind of needs premade maps in order for certain CPU-controlled opponents to pose a challenge.

 

[LocalH]

Originally posted by Edge-`@Wed, 2005-11-30 @ 01:14 PM

Thanks for the encouragement, good to see so many gen devers still here at SX too. Right now there's not much to release. Just the intro screens and menus and a game field that you can run a little soldier all over the place (with the idle and run animation).

I also feel a bit weird about releasing it as the art is obviously not mine, but taken from Advanced Wars 2 (and then modified to work on the Genesis). Maybe soon I'll start requesting art help to make all the graphics custom.

[post=142126]Quoted post[/post]​

I'm just a junkie for running homebrew stuff on my Genesis - having an SMD sure is nice =P Matter of fact, I even enjoyed your ATHF "demo", even though it was nothing technically impressive from a coding or visual standpoint - it's just awesome running homebrewed code on the real thing, and it's ultimately why I have an interest in coding for the Genesis in the first place. It's entirely up to you, but I bet that would look awesome on hardware. I could even take hardware screenshots (RF only, but I plan to have my Genny modded for S-Video in the coming months) if you were to send me a version that runs in interlace mode 1 - just turn on bit 1 of VDP reg $0c, and for completeness make sure that bit 2 is off (unless you're intending to use the 448 line mode with 8x16 cells).

 

[fonzievoltonov]

Wow, good progesss.

"I've been constantly fighting with the joypad reading/animation timing (too many presses being read or not being read at all)"

Strange... are you sure you're always doing while(1){wait_vsync();joypad_read();/*Do some stuff*/}

Because... If you check the joy more than once per vint, its very dangerous.

Well, i never had any joypad problem... so i really want to help you about this (i mean, you shouldn't be slowdowned in your project cause of that).

My personnal advice for menues is doing this kind of thing (hold/release synch):

//menu code start

while(1)

{

fvr_wait_sync();

fvr_joypad_read();

if(fvr_joypad_result[1]==BUTTON_A)

{///}

else if(fvr_joypad_result[1]==BUTTON_B)

{Break;}

while(fvr_joypad_result[1]!=0)

{fvr_wait_sync();fvr_joypad_read();}



}

Bye

Fonzie

 

[Kaneda]

I personnaly read joypad while VInt and got a delay var to say something like "reset this button state if it has not changed in <delay> refresh"

easily modable for turbo or press one only

 

[Edge-`]

I'll give some of those methods a try, thanks guys.

Quick question. I have all the terrain tiles on Plane B. When I select a unit, I'd like to highlight the colors somehow on Plane A (which is otherwise empty, to show where a unit may move). How would I go about enabling highlight mode for plane a, and then making those tiles highlighted (and then turning the mode off). Any ideas?

 

[LocalH]

Rather than using highlight, it might be easier to temporarily make the rest of the screen shadowed, allowing the selectable tiles to be shown normally. All you have to do is set up your nametable however you wish to (for example, you can use actual pattern data to augment the highlighting, or you can just leave it full of transparent tiles), and set the priority bit on the tiles you don't want to be shadowed. Then set bit 3 of VDP reg $0C for the duration of the highlight effect.

If you actually want to use highlight mode and leave the rest of the screen normal intensity, you'll probably be best off using sprites that use pallet indices $30-$3F, with pixels of color $3F in areas that you want highlighted (this option also gives you the capability to do shadow as well, with pixels colored $3E).

 

[fonzievoltonov]

YEah, good idea.

Here is one method more, far more impressive:

Games like Langrisser2 just have two palettes for background, one is perpetualy fading in/out very smoothly, the other one is static...

So, you draw tiles of background using the fading palette to show character path and the other tiles in static palette.

It simply waste a palette (since the fading one is a clone of the fixed one) ;D

Also, its harder to implement this method because u need to redraw planeB a lot ...

A advantage is that u can use planeA for other things (like rain, clouds, snow...) since its still free...

Bye

Fonzie

 

[Edge-`]

Thanks again LocalH and Fonzie. Thanks to LocalH's info and other research through the "sega2.doc" or the official dev manual, I have a good understanding of the highlight/shadowing now (never did know about that before ). Though after thinking about it and playing around with stuff I think I am going to use the method Fonzie mentioned. The only problem is that my palettes were pretty booked as is (1 palette for Player 1 colors, 1 for Player 2 colors, 1 for the Player display which was the most wasteful, and one for terrain/backgrounds/arrows). The 'andy' palette being the most wasteful, I decided to turn off the score display when the units are moving (which is nice anyway as it shows more of the battlefield) and use that palette to do the fading effect on movable tiles. I love the way Shining Force II's tiles are shown, and after looking at it, it appears that it does it the way fonzie described. The movable tiles use the fading palette.

Anyway, I am still working on this . Been sidetracked on real life a bit, but am still motivated. I also started another project: A Zookeeper/bejeweled type clone (Zookeeper is a addictive little puzzle game that you can find the flash version floating around on the web. It was ported to cell phones, the GBA, PS2 and DS). I want to make it two player, etc.

Thanks as always for your help and interest! I'll have updated screenshots up shortly after the holidays.

If anyone knows of any contests coming up that MD/Genesis games can go towards, let me know. I'm sure it may motivate me a bit to keep going as well.