Ninjabba Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Greetings fellow Atarians! Today marks exactly 10 years since I announced Wyvern Tales for the Atari Lynx! The development took much longer than anticipated and due to hardware constraints the final game was shorter than I envisioned. As a result, the original story that I was planning never made it into the original game and I had to cut a lot of corners to create the final game. I am here to announce the official prequel, Wyvern Tales Gaiden! This game will be more story focused than the previous entry and will focus events leading up to the original Wyvern Tales. I'm planning to reuse the original engine with minor tweaks and hopefully it'll take much less time to complete than the previous entry. Thank you for your attention! Ninjabba 18 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninjabba Posted November 27, 2022 Author Share Posted November 27, 2022 Coincidentally, there is another announcement here 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trew Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 HOTNESS! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+swlovinist Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Great news! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Very exciting! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFG 9000 Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 This is awesome. I avoided RPGs my whole life because I didn't care for the turn-based gameplay. But I love the Lynx, and I try to put some time into everything that comes out on it. Wyvern Tales is largely the game that reversed my attitude toward jRPGs. I played it to the end and loved it, and since then, I've finally been able to enjoy Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 1, Chrono Trigger, and (currently) Final Fantasy 7. To me, this announcement is amazing news (as is the announcement of Wyvern Tales 2). 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jgkspsx Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Super exciting! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agradeneu Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Great news, so happy there will be a second WT! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toaddio Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 I want to preorder! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WesleyrpgAust Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Excellent news! Can't wait for the release. Reminds me that i must start the original Wyvern Tales but i'm still waiting on the Cart adapters on the Analogue Pocket. I suppose i could go old school and play on original hardware, but i don't have a McWill screen! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted November 28, 2022 Share Posted November 28, 2022 2 hours ago, WesleyrpgAust said: Excellent news! Can't wait for the release. Reminds me that i must start the original Wyvern Tales but i'm still waiting on the Cart adapters on the Analogue Pocket. I suppose i could go old school and play on original hardware, but i don't have a McWill screen! Well, this is the right title for the original hardware -- McWill is certainly not required to play (and enjoy). I can't wait for Wyvern Tales Gaiden! I've been waiting years for a followup title. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninjabba Posted November 29, 2022 Author Share Posted November 29, 2022 On 11/27/2022 at 2:45 PM, PFG 9000 said: I played it to the end and loved it, and since then, I've finally been able to enjoy Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 1, Chrono Trigger, and (currently) Final Fantasy 7. This is really great to read! FF6 is my all-time favorite and the others on the list are amazing as well. I could also suggest Tactics Ogre, together with FF6 are my corner stones for endless inspiration; they recently did a new release (Tactics Ogre Reborn) which is available on all platforms these days. Thanks for the excitement everyone! I'm looking forward to share more details on this project. With the years of experience I feel like its all much more manageable this time around. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordKraken Posted November 29, 2022 Share Posted November 29, 2022 (edited) Great news! Just when I was thinking that the Lynx hype from the last few years was seriously slowing down... If I may ask, as a fellow programmer, I imagine that you will reuse WT engine, or at least part of it? In that event, will you consider: - to give the opportunity to choose between random or non-random encounters. As much as I like J-RPG, this is something that really gets on my nerve today - Giving the battleground backgrounds the revamp treatment? WT is a super cute game, but I always thought that the battlegrounds were a bit off, too "flat" maybe? But whether there will be some engine improvements or not, this will be high up on my waiting list!!! Edited November 29, 2022 by LordKraken 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninjabba Posted November 29, 2022 Author Share Posted November 29, 2022 I had a look to see how much it would take to port the original code to a newer template and quickly closed my editor once I saw the hexadecimal nightmare I created in the memory layout again. Everything that you would flag for improvements have been done for good memory reasons in the past.. the background is scaled up for example to allow it in memory within the battle module. In retrospect, maybe some loading/unloading of sprite data while rendering the scene could overcome this issue (never tried this), but then there is the hard limit of the 256kb ROM size to which I'm very close to already in the original state. My aim is to first create the story/maps/sprites and then see if I can make graphics/sfx and other improvements. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichelS Posted November 29, 2022 Share Posted November 29, 2022 256kb ROM... why not 512? Looking forward to this! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordKraken Posted November 29, 2022 Share Posted November 29, 2022 Quote Everything that you would flag for improvements have been done for good memory reasons in the past.. That's exactly where I'm at with Odynexus code at the moment Adding nightmarish code to save a few bytes here and there ^^ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninjabba Posted November 29, 2022 Author Share Posted November 29, 2022 2 hours ago, MichelS said: 256kb ROM... why not 512? Because I use a specific compiler with a specific template that was not made for 512kb ROM. It's not that straightforward (at least not to me) to update this. I've tried this in the past and failed miserably. 2 hours ago, LordKraken said: That's exactly where I'm at with Odynexus code at the moment Adding nightmarish code to save a few bytes here and there ^^ Good luck with that the nightmare code is what made me stay away for years from the enging 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted November 29, 2022 Share Posted November 29, 2022 (edited) Im hoping for a darker theme. A little more spooky in areas and in battles than the bright cheery. But whatever happens we're all excited. Edited November 29, 2022 by JagChris 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 You bet we are! (and I agree, a more "somber" approach to some areas and battles). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFG 9000 Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 On 11/29/2022 at 3:55 AM, Ninjabba said: I could also suggest Tactics Ogre, together with FF6 are my corner stones for endless inspiration; they recently did a new release (Tactics Ogre Reborn) which is available on all platforms these days. I've played an hour or two of the SNES Ogre Battle game, and I have Let Us Cling Together on the PSP. I can't really get I to them, but man, that artwork...the amazing art of the PSP game is what made me interested. I bought the art book even though the game itself isn't my thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlidellMan Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Maybe Karri could let you use his 2MB ROM chips for this one? Then again, that would be superfluous. On the other hand, a 2MB cart would be great for a two-in-one compilation. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninjabba Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 Not going to make any promises here but I will look into the possibilities Originally the story is actually really dark, but I'm afraid that will be mainly told on the Jaguar in the sequel. Not sure how much of that will be possible on the Lynx 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 (edited) On 11/29/2022 at 1:04 PM, Ninjabba said: Because I use a specific compiler with a specific template that was not made for 512kb ROM. It's not that straightforward (at least not to me) to update this. I've tried this in the past and failed miserably. 256KB vs 512KB is "just" a difference in the ROM blocksize and thus affects the offsets into the ROM to find the file you want to load to RAM. If nothing else, once you get to the point of having some binary ROM assets (code, music, story screens, etc.) which would feed into a directory layout for the ROM, you could get help repackaging that into the 512KB layout. For example, I use a Python script to insert binary ROM assets into the desired ROM location. For Quadromania, I used a Python script to change the ROM from a 128KB to 256KB layout without reassembling the source code (ROM hack only). Edited December 2, 2022 by Songbird 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninjabba Posted December 5, 2022 Author Share Posted December 5, 2022 On 12/2/2022 at 9:00 PM, Songbird said: 256KB vs 512KB is "just" a difference in the ROM blocksize and thus affects the offsets into the ROM to find the file you want to load to RAM. If nothing else, once you get to the point of having some binary ROM assets (code, music, story screens, etc.) which would feed into a directory layout for the ROM, you could get help repackaging that into the 512KB layout. For example, I use a Python script to insert binary ROM assets into the desired ROM location. For Quadromania, I used a Python script to change the ROM from a 128KB to 256KB layout without reassembling the source code (ROM hack only). Thanks for the tip Carl! I have never tried this, but when the time is right I'll start asking around 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fadest Posted December 5, 2022 Share Posted December 5, 2022 I don't know for Wyvern Tales, but for Critter Championship, you are already using 2kb blocksize, so the set up for a 512kb ROM, even if the lnx file is "only" 128kb Maybe you are already using a 512kb template in fact 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.