More homebrew on Nintendo DS ?

Lobo · **Reply #60 on:** April 07, 2018, 12:50:18 pm

Oh, totally understood, that part with 'carefree' is the one I'm thinking of the most. That plus just how much you're willing to compromise, hard to decide sometimes. I would at best keep working on original (DS in your case) and slowly figure out just how to approach to downscaled version without too much grief.

But, yes, the flow you expect will likely not be there at least not until you get used to what limits you have and the colors in your case are as problematic as they would be for most of the games out there.

Here's to illustrate what I could do on Warhawk Next versus DS version. The left is DS and these two levels I wanted to recreate somehow for Next and here you can compare and see just how hard it was to get what was very easy flow on DS (I remember HK giving me a tool to count unique tiles and seeing like 40 free with ability to flip them was like 'MAN, I can do anything' moment) compared to a lot of restructuring and major ass compromise to get it in some way on the Next (the level on the right, I changed all the colors on that one 4 times but I could never get those metallic blue shades as they simply don't exist in Next palette). So, yeah it takes a lot of improvisation to get that 'feel' as right as possible.

Quote from: spacefractal on April 07, 2018, 09:29:46 am

Howover the Titan Overdrive demo im named previous also show what the machine also can, even its will far too big to use it in a game.... but its a demo anyway and its on purpose in any demo.

All earlier machine have some sort of limits of course.

Just saw that demo, it is brilliant but...as you said, demo is demo and game is something else (game perhaps

). When you have specific thing in mind, say superman drawing, but the blue and red are missing from palette then you're screwed and have to go with alternative universe superheroes and make his costume pikachoo yellow instead which might be more than you're willing to compromise, although, I have this Japanese Batman of yore and Buddha be blessed I don't want to see him in any other way ever again!

spacefractal · **Reply #61 on:** April 07, 2018, 01:52:34 pm

Hehe batman was blue in the NES game, due limited palette.

Also superman was awful to Nintendo 64, while the Ps2/gamecube works great. Also for some reason I liked the atari 2600 superman game and could been fun to remake that. Even the game is limited, it's was fun to fly around. What that let out game down is the confusion map. But I'm do use two subway screen to get to either the jail with a cruck or fix the bridge screen.....

Yes... Some ports change the palette quite a lots in a game.

Lobo · **Reply #62 on:** April 07, 2018, 02:38:46 pm

Quote from: spacefractal on April 07, 2018, 01:52:34 pm

Hehe batman was blue in the NES game, due limited palette.

Also superman was awful to Nintendo 64, while the Ps2/gamecube works great. Also for some reason I liked the atari 2600 superman game and could been fun to remake that. Even the game is limited, it's was fun to fly around. What that let out game down is the confusion map. But I'm do use two subway screen to get to either the jail with a cruck or fix the bridge screen.....

Yes... Some ports change the palette quite a lots in a game.

Funny you mentioned that Atari Superman as I was playing it like last week with some other games and its not bad, I even fondly remember the C64 (1983 or so) Superman which was somewhat baffling in gameplay but zapping that green goblin or whatever the heck was that was somewhat strangely fun.

Tho..I did reminded myself that seriously, all nostalgia aside, 99 out of 100 Atari games were inexcusable trash.

I swear, I would look at the box and there would be Dragons, Knights, Spaceship, you put that cart and bloody hell..like yellow square goes from left to green square on the right and is killed instantly by a superb collision detection, like..wtf, where be dragons?

Tho, I did fondly kept those blister inducing joysticks for longest time until Combat School on C64 killed them all.

But yes, palette wise, unless you're thinking like Japanese, you'll be in trouble while porting one thing to another.

spacefractal · **Reply #63 on:** April 07, 2018, 02:48:46 pm

hehe. im did remember im actuelly got completed Combat School on C64 (and that suparman game, but did have a quit every solid joystick. Im also remember that Superman game on C64 was also nice too, even its does have various bugs.

Im also played some Atari 2600 games using the Atari port adapter im just got last some weeks with a C64 joystick. Most graphics, if not all was designed by the programmer. Like me, im is also not as a greatest artist out here (hehe). Limited palette is all the fun when doing old stuff, 8 or 16bit. DS is a newer machine with full palette.

Lobo · **Reply #64 on:** April 07, 2018, 03:09:40 pm

Quote from: spacefractal on April 07, 2018, 02:48:46 pm

hehe. im did remember im actuelly got completed Combat School on C64 (and that suparman game, but did have a quit every solid joystick. Im also remember that Superman game on C64 was also nice too, even its does have various bugs.

Im also played some Atari 2600 games using the Atari port adapter im just got last some weeks with a C64 joystick. Most graphics, if not all was designed by the programmer. Like me, im is also not as a greatest artist out here (hehe). Limited palette is all the fun when doing old stuff, 8 or 16bit. DS is a newer machine with full palette.

I did complete the CS as well..on the expense of like 4 joysticks killed, I mean..who the hell thought it was a good idea to design a software around destroying hardware? I swear, haha, the joystick manufacturers paid some of these guys back in the day to make games which destroy joysticks so they can sell more.
OK, JK..but yea, that was blistering barnacles time, all in all.

Atari tho, its not the graphics but it is more about games that utterly have no gameplay, I swear, majority is totally unplayable or rely on 'go left or right till collision kills you' concept. It's like 'Hey we have another game with a yellow box going left, there's only about 500 of them already on the market, what do we do...(other guy) hmmm...let's put a dragon on the cart!'.

And..I know it wasn't the machine to push something superb on it and programmers were probably as baffled as anyone else just why the hell is there another 'yellow box goes left' game so its not them to blame but most of them seriously never even bloody tried. If you look at what people do with Atari homebrew nowadays, yep, totally most of those guys back then didn't even bother.

spacefractal · **Reply #65 on:** April 07, 2018, 03:21:26 pm

the best company for me for Atari 2600 was property Activation (also in its time). They released many well designed games to Atari 2600. My favorit is of course HERO, but im also liked River Raid very much. Just sad its released very late on its life, when the game industry crashed.

Also.... Its same coder that did Superman, which much code actuelly came from Adventure. Im did my self really newer liked that game.

Lobo · **Reply #66 on:** April 07, 2018, 03:43:48 pm

Quote from: spacefractal on April 07, 2018, 03:21:26 pm

the best company for me for Atari 2600 was property Activation (also in its time). They released many well designed games to Atari 2600. My favorit is of course HERO, but im also liked River Raid very much. Just sad its released very late on its life, when the game industry crashed.

Also.... Its same coder that did Superman, which much code actuelly came from Adventure. Im did my self really newer liked that game.

Activision, yea..almost like the only company back then.

River Raid was OK and HERO is not bad either, I guess there was about...6 games that were good (breakout included).

flash · **Reply #67 on:** April 11, 2018, 06:49:49 pm

Quote from: Lobo on April 07, 2018, 03:43:48 pm

HERO is not bad either

HERO was and is an awesome game

Lobo · **Reply #68 on:** April 11, 2018, 10:33:10 pm

Don't tell that to SF, besides Space Taxi that is all he plays.

spacefractal · **Reply #69 on:** April 12, 2018, 05:30:52 am

hehe, last time was "Except you to Die" in VR. and, yes, HERO is a awesome (property my favorit from the time released) and yes control is a bit heavy, until you get used for it. im even did a little remake of it, back in 2009, using both original levels as well one area with own level. Im cant even play the Space Taxi remake anymore im did eailer, about around 16-17 years ago, so all java games is now removed from my webpage. Im do hope im can convert it to html5/JavaScript (checking sites about it) a day to play it again, but the original game used various webpages as well.

Sokurah · **Reply #70 on:** April 12, 2018, 07:52:54 am

Quote from: Lobo on April 11, 2018, 10:33:10 pm

Don't tell that to SF, besides Space Taxi that is all he plays.

Lobo · **Reply #71 on:** April 13, 2018, 01:42:47 pm

Quote from: spacefractal on April 12, 2018, 05:30:52 am

Im do hope im can convert it to html5/JavaScript (checking sites about it) a day to play it again, but the original game used various webpages as well.

Dunno are there any wrappers for java to make either a desktop executable or html5 friendly but for what's worth you're probably better off doing it from the scratch for whatever platform you intended it. Now looking at HERO, you might reuse baggers code knowledge supersystem to even try to get Next version out of it. Both Spicy Taxi and Hero could do this way methinks.

spacefractal · **Reply #72 on:** April 13, 2018, 02:58:27 pm

Cave Heroes still works nicely for Windows. But im have no donny clue why the download from my website newer worked in some years? No clue here, but its back again with full source (even mac and Linux downloads worked fine). So im have no plans to do a another HERO remake for Windows. Im do allways loved that game for sure.

btw we have talked a bit too much offtype, sorry about that. Howover for the palette debate, its same issue we will see on Next as we will see on Megadrive. So the Warhawk compare is fully valid. Its does require some planning with limited palette.

Lobo · **Reply #73 on:** April 15, 2018, 06:06:26 pm

Quote from: spacefractal on April 13, 2018, 02:58:27 pm

Cave Heroes still works nicely for Windows. But im have no donny clue why the download from my website newer worked in some years? No clue here, but its back again with full source (even mac and Linux downloads worked fine). So im have no plans to do a another HERO remake for Windows. Im do allways loved that game for sure.

btw we have talked a bit too much offtype, sorry about that. Howover for the palette debate, its same issue we will see on Next as we will see on Megadrive. So the Warhawk compare is fully valid. Its does require some planning with limited palette.

Yar, it will always be a struggle regardless, I mean DS is bloody powerful so going back from that to late 80s and trying to refit some things is really a big jump and possibly 'tears in rain' inducing as well.

Tho..would like to see more of SMS/Genesis homebrew, saw one recently which was crazy as hell, I think they put it on the cart as well, must find as I have forgotten the title but it was like 2 people fighting zombies with coffee pots, I mean..just my kinda game right there.

sverx · **Reply #74 on:** April 16, 2018, 09:32:36 am

Coffee Crisis I bet

Also, speaking of SMS, check this: Galactic Revenge

Lobo · **Reply #75 on:** April 17, 2018, 01:02:19 am

Quote from: sverx on April 16, 2018, 09:32:36 am

Coffee Crisis I bet

Also, speaking of SMS, check this: Galactic Revenge

Ahaha, that's the one!

Will check that Galactic Revenge now, there's a couple more in there looking rather interesting, gonna try that Mecha-8 thingie next.

Oooh, that Cimmerian too, let's see if there's a goblin in there but looks awesome from here!

PypeBros · **Reply #76 on:** November 07, 2018, 08:02:17 pm

over 120 days, but if you still have a DS linker, you may like to know that there is a new School Rush release around
- because if you've mastered the game, it now features a counter so that you can do time attacks (personnal best time so far 10:58 to the secret-true-ending)
- and if you haven't mastered the game yet, it has a 1-UP mechanics that will help you progress.

And I got end-of-game sceneries too. It was about time !

Meanwhile, I did a few contributions to SimianZombie's titles Professor Sinister (GBA) and Amy Zing. I hope I can motivate him enough to get a Professor Sinister on NDS, too

And I just tried Pushing_DS by c_boy

PypeBros · **Reply #77 on:** December 01, 2018, 07:05:01 pm

final version (direct link).

After 5 years of development, I'm finally done with it.

headkaze · **Reply #78 on:** December 04, 2018, 01:06:39 am

Quote from: PypeBros on December 01, 2018, 07:05:01 pm

final version (direct link).

After 5 years of development, I'm finally done with it.

An amazing accomplishment! Well done!

sverx · **Reply #79 on:** December 17, 2018, 12:07:30 pm

I remember trying that a few years ago... I guess it's time to download that again and give it another go!

headkaze · **Reply #80 on:** December 19, 2018, 08:14:53 pm

Have you guys seen Micro Mages: A new game for the NES? It has successful Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns. Raised €151,167 and €164,533 respectively. I know people have distributed carts for GBA before but wouldn't it be nice if we could get funding to sell Warhawk, MMLL, DetectiveDS and PypeBros on a DS cart?

sverx · **Reply #81 on:** December 21, 2018, 03:14:20 pm

A DS multigame on a cart? Why not?
I wonder if AceKards et similia still exists...

PypeBros · **Reply #82 on:** December 26, 2018, 08:52:42 am

I've been asked a couple of time whether I'd do a phyiscal release of Bilou:* games. To be honest, I consider I haven't enough contents to make that viable so far, but a multi-game cart with other action games could make sense. It would be like an "R4 mini".

To what extent Nintendo would let that happen is of course an unknown. we can easily claim that the NES is a dead platform by now. Most people do not even have a screen to user their NES anyway. I wouldn't risk my right to run my website on a similar assumption for the NDS.

I'd favour an approach where we put together the NDS games source code re-compiled with an NDS emulator (for the graphics and sound hardware alone, but without the CPU part) and get that running e.g. as an official switch game.