HELLSLAVE : Project Z-Treme 0.361

[vbt]

@XL2 is ready for next SAGE contest :

 

[XL2]

Here it is, early for you guys : The Sage 2020 demo of the game!
Thanks to many people here on Segaxtreme for their help and contribution!
I fixed the 4 players spawnpoints, so it should be enjoyable if you have a multitap and somehow have 3 other friends around who also want to play Saturn FPS games with you.

Edit : v.0.202 - Thanks to Faffling who found the bug, the enemies in Nightmare mode will now spawn correctly. Also fixed a teleporter not working while in splitscreen deathmatch.

Edit : v.0.203 - Fixed a bug where the flares didn't spawn in the easy mode. Also fixed a bug where you could kill torches, flags and other objects with some weapons.

 

[dibz]

It's looking pretty great XL2, I'll try and drop it on my fenrir for a spin later on.

 

[Ardiloso]

Is the game too dark to anybody else on real hardware? I tried on my saturn with RGB -> HDMI and everything is too dark, my sight was a bit tired after 20 minutes due to me constantly trying to see things. Those screenshots are much brighter than on my saturn. XL2 maybe consider up the brightness a bit, or add more light sources to the rooms.
Anyway, really impressive work it's fun, excellent controls and good challenge.

 

[XL2]

Is the game too dark to anybody else on real hardware? I tried on my saturn with RGB -> HDMI and everything is too dark, my sight was a bit tired after 20 minutes due to me constantly trying to see things. Those screenshots are much brighter than on my saturn. XL2 maybe consider up the brightness a bit, or add more light sources to the rooms.
Anyway, really impressive work it's fun, excellent controls and good challenge.

I know that when I try to play Quake on my TV (s video, 4K TV) it's nearly unplayable because it's too dark, but on my computer screen it's fine.
Maybe your TV auto adjusts the brightness?

 

[nando]

Every game on the Saturn to me seems to be too dark on an HDTV. I have the Retrovision component cable and I had to crank up the brightness of my TV to be able to play anything - that definitely wasn't the case with a CRT (which I don't have anymore, unfortunately).

 

[Ardiloso]

I know that when I try to play Quake on my TV (s video, 4K TV) it's nearly unplayable because it's too dark, but on my computer screen it's fine.
Maybe your TV auto adjusts the brightness?

It's in game mode with everything disabled. Only this game is darker, every other one is like the ssf. Dunno, I will boot Quake to remember how it looks.
Maybe a simple bright slider ingame should be enough?

 

[fafling]

That could be a problem of a full RGB signal incorrectly considered as limited and expanded by the display or some intermediate video device. That makes dark areas completely black and oversaturates saturated areas.
For example, OSSC outputs a full RGB HDMI signal, so the TV should be set to full RGB to display it correctly. OSSC has a YCbCr444 output option that removes the need to set the display correctly.
As for the Retrovision cable, it could be this :

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

Is the game too dark to anybody else on real hardware? I tried on my saturn with RGB -> HDMI and everything is too dark, my sight was a bit tired after 20 minutes due to me constantly trying to see things. Those screenshots are much brighter than on my saturn. XL2 maybe consider up the brightness a bit, or add more light sources to the rooms.
Anyway, really impressive work it's fun, excellent controls and good challenge.

Hey , i have been also playing it on real sega saturn hardware and the colours look fine and vibrant for me.... maybe it could be your set up?? I also wanted to congratulate XL2 on the amazing work he has done. The effects and lighting are stunning and every time you do an update it truly amazes me what you are able to do with the sega saturn hardware. keep up the fantastic work and thank you.

 

[XL2]

It's in game mode with everything disabled. Only this game is darker, every other one is like the ssf. Dunno, I will boot Quake to remember how it looks.
Maybe a simple bright slider ingame should be enough?

I could add a slider or something, but I first need to rework the whole menu UI

 

[Ardiloso]

That could be a problem of a full RGB signal incorrectly considered as limited and expanded by the display or some intermediate video device. That makes dark areas completely black and oversaturates saturated areas.
For example, OSSC outputs a full RGB HDMI signal, so the TV should be set to full RGB to display it correctly. OSSC has a YCbCr444 output option that removes the need to set the display correctly.
As for the Retrovision cable, it could be this :

I'm using a cheap chinese scart cable, maybe it could be the cause too since the scart to hdmi looks fine with other consoles.

 

[XL2]

The SAGE page is now live : SAGE 2020 - Demo - HELLSLAVE : Project Z-Treme
It includes credits to those who contributed and the game's "story" (ahem)
It won't be super popular since most people there will be looking for plateformers, but that's normal

 

[randori_humar]

Amazing work XL2! Sure, the 2D platformers are popular, but your demo feels like you are rewriting history. I am simply blown away!

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

Hey, just sharing my trailer for XL2'S excellent fps game for saturn. I did this in a different style to my usual trailers as XL2 already did a great trailer for his sage demo release and i wanted to mix it up abit/ try something new. The game is amazing and i want to thank XL2 for all he does for the saturn community, it is unbelievable to be getting games of such a high quality for saturn in 2020. i also tried the game using the mouse which works really well and is very accurate. if you watch the video the scene were i look round from the water to the sky/ planets in a curved motion is me utilising the mouse. i have played the game in 2 player split screen, which me and me son loved and also put it in 4 player. However, there was only two of us playing in the 4 player mode, but still played really well and fun. Hoping to get 4 people together to do a video in death match mode in the future. thank you to xl2 and look forward to more updates.

 

[XL2]

Hey, just sharing my trailer for XL2'S excellent fps game for saturn. I did this in a different style to my usual trailers as XL2 already did a great trailer for his sage demo release and i wanted to mix it up abit/ try something new. The game is amazing and i want to thank XL2 for all he does for the saturn community, it is unbelievable to be getting games of such a high quality for saturn in 2020. i also tried the game using the mouse which works really well and is very accurate. if you watch the video the scene were i look round from the water to the sky/ planets in a curved motion is me utilising the mouse. i have played the game in 2 player split screen, which me and me son loved and also put it in 4 player. However, there was only two of us playing in the 4 player mode, but still played really well and fun. Hoping to get 4 people together to do a video in death match mode in the future. thank you to xl2 and look forward to more updates.

Thanks
Glad you enjoyed it!
The game did very poorly at SAGE sadly, so it's always good to know when people enjoy it!
It might take a while before the next major update, but I hope to have even larger maps next time.

 

[Ardiloso]

Hey, just sharing my trailer for XL2'S excellent fps game for saturn. I did this in a different style to my usual trailers as XL2 already did a great trailer for his sage demo release and i wanted to mix it up abit/ try something new. The game is amazing and i want to thank XL2 for all he does for the saturn community, it is unbelievable to be getting games of such a high quality for saturn in 2020. i also tried the game using the mouse which works really well and is very accurate. if you watch the video the scene were i look round from the water to the sky/ planets in a curved motion is me utilising the mouse. i have played the game in 2 player split screen, which me and me son loved and also put it in 4 player. However, there was only two of us playing in the 4 player mode, but still played really well and fun. Hoping to get 4 people together to do a video in death match mode in the future. thank you to xl2 and look forward to more updates.

Really good trailer. This game deserves all the media it can get and more.

 

[XL2]

A "longplay" of version 0.204, which mainly improves texturing, with also the cool Vasectomy Software logo made by SaturnDave

 

[dibz]

Hahahaha I love the flag!

 

[protivakid]

I did some very limited testing w/ a Fenrir XL2, I should really test more combinations to single out what made it work, but...

• Latest "NO MUSIC" as-is froze at the Fenrir loading screen.
• Latest "NO MUSIC", converted to MODE1/2352 bin/cue froze at the Segata Sanshiro initial screen.
• Same MODE1/2352 bin from before, but with four music tracks and an adjusted cue...worked fine. Got in-game and played for a few minutes, only went as far as the second map before I shut it off though; didn't experience any issues.

I suspect your demo might check for those tracks at the Segata Sanshiro screen? Might have been a coincidence. For the record, my Fenrir uses the original cable and not a replacement often used to fix Fenrir issues.

Care to share how you tweaked the files to work on Fenrir? I too just get stuck at a black loading screen when trying Hellslave

 

[dibz]

Care to share how you tweaked the files to work on Fenrir? I too just get stuck at a black loading screen when trying Hellslave

I believe I just added music tracks per the instructions, and adjusting the cue was just regarding the track names. I could be wrong though since it was a bit ago, I don't believe it took much so let me know if that doesn't work for you and I'll take another look.

I see the problem, I downloaded the latest version which apparently includes music tracks now and it turns out they're in WAV format. As far as I know Fenrir doesn't support WAV format tracks, so that'd be the problem. Use something like CDmage to convert it to bin and it'll probably work fine I'd wager.

Right so, I was curious and actually tried opening it with CDmage and received an error about sector size not matching the length of a track, so I guess that won't work. I'll play with it later.