Jaguar Homebrew VS Megadrive / Genesis Homebrew

[mdkdue]

1 hour ago, phoboz said:

It's all in the eye of the beholder, some say that they like what they see in Hammer of the Gods (WIP):

We will get the coolest looking games for the Jaguar, just wait...

 

Again, they use copyrighted assets to make their games look good (you cannot neglect the number of man-years it takes to make graphics like that by artists) This is unfair competition, and remember what happened to AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake), it was banned by Nintendo even if it was a free game. Because it used so much copyrighted graphics, and it was a no brainer to get it banned.

I must say this does look awesome, and I totally get the time involved in creating assets. 

 

Is this getting close to a release soon? 
 

[phoboz]

3 hours ago, mdkdue said:

I must say this does look awesome, and I totally get the time involved in creating assets. 

 

Is this getting close to a release soon? 
 

A lot more gorgeous looking assets has been made for this game (including bosses). Still quite some work remaining on the programming side, so a release in not imminent.

[phoboz]

3 hours ago, mdkdue said:

I must say this does look awesome, and I totally get the time involved in creating assets. 

 

Is this getting close to a release soon? 
 

You may also like this project by the same artist?

PS. Sorry for the choppy scrolling in this video. I captured it using an emulator, but someone told me that my PC in not powerful enough to give the game justice when both emulating the game, and capturing video on the same device. You get an impression about the visuals though.

Edited January 7, 2023 by phoboz

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, phoboz said:

You may also like this project by the same artist?

PS. Sorry for the choppy scrolling in this video. I captured it using an emulator, but someone told me that my PC in not powerful enough to give the game justice when both emulating the game, and capturing video on the same device. You get an impression about the visuals though.

Which emulator did you use, and what are the PC specs?

[+Gemintronic]

Some developers choose to make games they want to play.  If their tastes are slightly cracked you get intentionally low fi graphics and odd gameplay.  That applies to Genesis or Jaguar.  So, maybe graphic fidelity isn't the best yardstick for what's "good".

[phoboz]

42 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Which emulator did you use, and what are the PC specs?

I used the Project Tempest emulator and a laptop like this one:

https://meshok.net/item/268708468_HP_Compaq_Evo_n600c_мать_рабочая

 

I used Linux as the operating system instead of Windows. I ran Project Tempest using the Linux Windows emulator (wine)

 

PS. I recently got a new laptop like this. I hope it will give a better capture next time using BigPEmu?

(now I have Windows, but emulate Linux in Virtual Box)

Edited January 7, 2023 by phoboz

[+Stephen]

OK - I am thinking BigPEmu may give better results.  I haven't tried it on my laptop though, so I can't really compare.  It's said to be quite low as far as requirements though.

[Clint Thompson]

Why make games for a system with a user base of maybe 1k active people when you can easily reach a target base of users 20x+ that?

 

Clearly the ones who continue to develop for the Jaguar are sick in the head fumes but there's definitely a passion behind it and that's why they do.

 

Jaguar can easily do everything shown in those videos though, no problem.

Convince some of the Genesis guys to come over to the Jag and see what they say.

[phoboz]

14 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Why make games for a system with a user base of maybe 1k active people when you can easily reach a target base of users 20x+ that?

 

Clearly the ones who continue to develop for the Jaguar are sick in the head fumes but there's definitely a passion behind it and that's why they do.

 

Jaguar can easily do everything shown in those videos though, no problem.

Convince some of the Genesis guys to come over to the Jag and see what they say.

There is also different aspect, for example several professional and semi professional development studios are developing games for the Genesis. This also means greater competion between the developers, thus it's harder to get attention on your game.

Even worse if you attempt to release a game on Steam, there are so many other games coming out, it's close to impossible to stand out. Even if 80% of the games are bad, it's still a challange to break trough the noise of constant new releases.

 

Still the Jaguar scene get only a few new unique games per year, and a handful of Atari ST ports. So the completion for the attention among the potential byuers is not huge at the moment.

[+CyranoJ]

Why does it always have to be about the monies? As I previously said, if that's your primary motivation for making games, please leave. 

[Jag_Mag]

4 hours ago, phoboz said:

There is also different aspect, for example several professional and semi professional development studios are developing games for the Genesis. This also means greater competion between the developers, thus it's harder to get attention on your game.

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by Jag_Mag

[phoboz]

9 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Why does it always have to be about the monies? As I previously said, if that's your primary motivation for making games, please leave. 

What about attention?

😊

Edited January 9, 2023 by phoboz

[agradeneu]

On 1/7/2023 at 9:35 AM, phoboz said:

 

 

What has helped the Jaguar homebrew scene to get a little bit out of the 8-bit looking art is some emerging artists like: @Eternal-Krauser, @agradeneu and @SlidellMan who are willing to support the Jaguar homebrew scene just out of pure dedication.

 

Lets not forget to credit some fantastic pixel artists on itch.io like Szadi Art or Pita who provide professionally made tilessets and designs for reasonable prices. There are plenty of gorgeous looking tilesets for RPGs and sidescollers.  

They make the Jaguar shine.   

[phoboz]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

 

Lets not forget to credit some fantastic pixel artists on itch.io like Szadi Art or Pita who provide professionally made tilessets and designs for reasonable prices. There are plenty of gorgeous looking tilesets for RPGs and sidescollers.  

They make the Jaguar shine.   

If you are lucky enough to find everything you need from the same artist, otherwise you may need to design a game based on what was made available by the artist.

 

I would have loved to add twice as many monsters types to Kings of Edom, but Pita couldn't tell me when he was going to continue working on the monster pack I bought.

 

If you use art from different artists, some may have opinions about inconsistent looking art in the game.

 

The best option is of course to team up with a specific artist for your game, then it's also guaranteed that you game will have unique art.

[+CyranoJ]

4 minutes ago, phoboz said:

If you are lucky enough to find everything you need from the same artist, otherwise you may need to design a game based on what was made available by the artist.

 

Or.. pick a nice large set of artwork first... and design the game around that?

[Fadest]

On 1/6/2023 at 3:07 PM, agradeneu said:

Some of the originals, like Demons of Asteborg, would be great picks for ports from Genni to Jag. Very feasable!

I am keeping asking Simon to do it everytime I meet him, but Neofid is a professional structure, with paid developers, and commissionned artists & technical experts, so they have to commit to their business plan

For them, it is logical that the next step after a Genesis game is to port it on steam/modern consoles, not other obsolete hardware.

 

But maybe one day, an Genesis team will have have a Jag fan inside that will push for a jag port, or ask CJ/phoboz to make a conversion, who knows ?

[+Gemintronic]

1 hour ago, Fadest said:

But maybe one day, an Genesis team will have have a Jag fan inside that will push for a jag port, or ask CJ/phoboz to make a conversion, who knows

 

Sadly, the only Genesis and Jaguar crazed developer I know is making low fi, oddball ports between platforms.  *cough*

 

[agradeneu]

4 hours ago, phoboz said:

 

 

If you use art from different artists, some may have opinions about inconsistent looking art in the game.

 

The best option is of course to team up with a specific artist for your game, then it's also guaranteed that you game will have unique art.

 

That is a matter of art direction. When working with different artists, the art director should make sure it looks somewhat coherent. Of course, it helps if the art director understands game artwork and has some skills in that field as well.

 

I think Wyvern Tales 2 is a nice example for that: it uses artworks from different artists but looks mostly coherent. Ninjabba directs the art/look of the game and he is good doing that.  

Of course it helps that there is plenty of stuff in "JRPG style" available.

BTW I think WT2 looks already on par or better than the Mega Drive RPG in the video above (which looks pretty nice too). 

 

For JAS my job is to create new artwork based on the  coherent look I have in mind. So far it is successful, the sprites complement the tilsets very nicely. 

Other than GM, I adapted a more pixelart style that matches the art of the tiles.

 

Making graphics more coherent and polished needs more time and you need to put art direction in control of an artist. 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, Fadest said:

I am keeping asking Simon to do it everytime I meet him, but Neofid is a professional structure, with paid developers, and commissionned artists & technical experts, so they have to commit to their business plan

For them, it is logical that the next step after a Genesis game is to port it on steam/modern consoles, not other obsolete hardware.

 

But maybe one day, an Genesis team will have have a Jag fan inside that will push for a jag port, or ask CJ/phoboz to make a conversion, who knows ?

I think we must do it, if there was a chance.

[Fadest]

One day I will see one of them drunk, and they will give me their approval

 

Seriously, I think that if someone manage to showcase that a conversion from a Genesis homebrew source code in C to Jag can be done "quite easily" (please note the ""), it may open some doors.

But it would probably require someone that has a great knowledge of SGDK (the main C library for Genesis) and JagStudio/Removers lib, and that can write tools or method to ease the conversion...

[Fadest]

24 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

 

Sadly, the only Genesis and Jaguar crazed developer I know is making low fi, oddball ports between platforms.  *cough*

Funny how I find the Spectrum look appealing right now, while in the 80's I would probably never have considered a game that looks like this after 1985...

[+Gemintronic]

20 minutes ago, Fadest said:

One day I will see one of them drunk, and they will give me their approval

 

Seriously, I think that if someone manage to showcase that a conversion from a Genesis homebrew source code in C to Jag can be done "quite easily" (please note the ""), it may open some doors.

But it would probably require someone that has a great knowledge of SGDK (the main C library for Genesis) and JagStudio/Removers lib, and that can write tools or method to ease the conversion...

 

BasiEgaXorz and SecondBASIC are just as valid gateways to RB+ BASIC for ports.  Already demonstrated with Barbarian:

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/271608-my-start-with-rb-barbarian-project-need-help/

 

[Fadest]

Yes of course, but the biggest Genesis games I am aware (the one I already talked with devs in fact) are made with SGDK : Demons of Asteborg, Astebros, TCK, Irena Metal Fury...
Seems the lib is very good as unleashing Genesis power for C coder.

Hum, this sentence reminds me something on Jag

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, Gemintronic said:

 

BasiEgaXorz and SecondBASIC are just as valid gateways to RB+ BASIC for ports.  Already demonstrated with Barbarian:

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/271608-my-start-with-rb-barbarian-project-need-help/

 

SGDK Genesis games are coded in C I think. And those Genesis games which are in Basic, did not perform too well. 

 

However, Jagstudio supports C like the Removers libraries. 

 

For tilemap games, Jagstudio looks to be really a step up, the last update with a demo of 4 tilemaps scrolling individually split screen was impressive.

Edited January 9, 2023 by agradeneu

[+Gemintronic]

53 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

SGDK Genesis games are coded in C I think. And those Genesis games which are in Basic, did not perform too well. 

 

However, Jagstudio supports C like the Removers libraries. 

 

For tilemap games, Jagstudio looks to be really a step up, the last update with a demo of 4 tilemaps scrolling individually split screen was impressive.

 

Second Dimension eats their own dog food with SecondBASIC.  Already has "Retail" quality games and an upcoming RPG Affinity Sorrow.  I haven't heard of major complaints with JagStudio BASIC compared to its assembly and C support so I'm still hopeful.