Rex Nobilis, an upcoming bullet hell for the SNES

[KulorXL]

I'm making an SNES game! Will post updates in this thread.

 

[Kirk_Johnston]

Although I actually hate bullet hell games, I have to give credit to what you've achieved on a technical level with the SNES here. If I recall correctly, in the top example it's 512x448i mode, lots of colours (despite I think some people believing RPM Racing looked as crap as it did because of some huge colour limitations of Mode 5), three parallax layers even in Mode 5 (one faked with smart use of the window/shape masks), a crap-load of enemies and bullets on-screen, and running at a solid 60Hz, etc. And same with the bottom example but just in a different background mode with normal resolution mode. I'm guessing Mode 2 [or possibly Mode 4, although I can't tell if it's in 512x448i mode] to allow what looks like column scrolling there (along with the line scrolling). It's all technically very impressive. And I know there's even more of the SNES' background modes and stuff you're pushing in cool ways too, such as the Mode 7 level with what looks almost like 3D textured terrain with actual height and depth. I expect for people who do love bullet hell games, they're very exited right about now.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Tanooki]

In a rare occasion have to admit with kirk, not a fan of bullet hell, it requires so much memorization I'd never accomplish anything in it --- YET...that looks stunning, utterly amazing.  I can only wait to see when it comes out, if anything, for a certain someone to use it to make more, if SNES can do this, what else is possible mock ups.

 

Seriously though there is some non-chip helping it limits to the SNES out there people have yet to tease, you're one of the few, and that shows it.  I can't wait to see a long play of that just to watch where that one goes in blowing out the walls of stock SNES capabilities in those modes.

[Punisher5.0]

Looks great! Cant wait to see more and possibly play some day.

[SlidellMan]

WOW! This looks promising and I bet Shmup Junkie and @Dire 51 would love this.

[Dire 51]

Indeed. I'm certainly intrigued.

[+Biff Burgertime]

That's frankly unbelievable Kulor, I can honestly say I've never seen a SNES game that looked anything like that before. I'll be following the project with great interest.

 

By now I figured I'd seen it all, given that I grew up w/NES & SNES as a kid, then spent the bulk of my adult years scouring the internet for interesting info on the consoles of my generation - and my bar for "interesting" is pretty low by this point!

 

Given that time is a finite resource, I'd expect (and prefer haha) that you prioritize your free time on evolving this project of yours. But at some point in the future, I'd love it if you'd also provide a nice write-up of your journey making this into a reality. I'm a hobby programmer at best, but have been scouring forums like this for long enough now that even I can wrap my head around enough of the most technical discussions to gain a better understanding, and better appreciation of the things involved in it.

 

In other words: I've love a technical explanation of what you've achieved in a way that's accurate, accounting for both the "cool features" you made use of, and the many technical limitations you had to navigate around. The latter is something I've found you can only gain an appreciation for once you've experienced limitations first-hand, a reality of working with machines of bygone eras - but much less today. It wasn't until I began lurking AA and reading the details of what fans were achieving on decades-old machines, and how they were doing it, that I truly appreciated the virtually-infinite amount of resources granted to me as a VB.net programmer writing tools for modern Windows machines.

 

<side rant>

If I had to name just one thing as the cause of Kirk's overly-optimistic idea of "up to SNES spec," it's that he's never experienced limitations. Those who have, tried explaining it to him until they're blue in the face but as it's such a foreign concept to him, he interprets it as a lack of creativity on the part of the developer, or even laziness. You'd think it would be obvious that if it was possible to make Skyrim work on a SNES, someone would've by now. Hell, look at Randy Linden! He made Doom work on a SNES, he made PS1 games work on a Dreamcast! The motivated geniuses are out there, but they aren't gods.

His post above is the perfect example: he blurts out a list of "cool features" (along with a few of the usual snide comments about past works). In his world, why did RPM Racing look like shit? Does he think that was a fucking design choice?!

All those times people told him how he'd never really understand this stuff until actually writing some code and working with the machine (a machine he doesn't even own), this is why! Until you actually sit down and try things, all you're going to see if a list of "cool features" that can be mixed and matched. 

</side rant>

 

So yeah, Kulor, if the mood ever strikes to discuss the in's & out's of your project in the future, I'm all ears.

 

I've always put it like this...

Few take on projects worth talking about. Fewer actually document their projects and share their experiences. Fewest achieve, document, and share their experiences in a way that's informative and entertaining.

[Tanooki]

I've love to have it explained how it was done too if you're willing as Biff asked.  I mean I'm no coder, I get the basics, so if this and that did this in Mode # combined with X and Y, I'd get that far, just not the mathematical logic of it.  It's all fascinated.

[Austin]

Looking forward to this myself, as a big fan of stgs and bullet hells. 👍

[KulorXL]

On 10/29/2023 at 9:51 PM, Biff Burgertime said:

So yeah, Kulor, if the mood ever strikes to discuss the in's & out's of your project in the future, I'm all ears.

I'd love to do something like that at some point. There are plenty of interesting effect ideas I started out with and ended up having to change, some that only barely managed to be possible by some miracle of the stars aligning perfectly, and plenty of completely random ideas that hit me along the way as well. Actually one of the more interesting things that I spent a lot of time on is a mode 7 effect that I haven't publicly showed off yet but that you've probably seen anyway because someone keeps sharing my WIP GIF of it despite me having asked him not to, which took a lot of time because somehow, despite there being thousands of "how to do mode 7" tutorials out there for all sorts of renderers, nobody had actually documented how to do one on the actual SNES before. I ended up basically having to deduce how to do the effect by playing with the SNES registers and comparing the output visually to a 3D scene in Unity.

I wrote up this tutorial on the effect so that nobody else might suffer as I had to: https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=281944

Edited October 31, 2023 by KulorXL
clarification

[Tanooki]

@KulorXL What a scumbag, first of me (us?) hearing you ask One Who Shall Go Unnamed being asked not to distribute not to do that, but fits the MO 100% to do that to suit their goals.  Good of you to share that, shame about the disrespect.

[KidGameR186496]

Just insane to see the SNES do this kind of Game but then again, the NES received Over OBJ by Little Sound (another bullet hell). Except Rex Nobilis is pulling out backgrounds and bullets whereas Over OBJ does not have backgrounds for obvious reason (the NES can only do so much at what it can compared to SNES). I am really looking foward to Rex Nobilis. Amazing work so far

 

Really makes you wonder if a port of DonPachi is possible on the SNES?

[JurassicDope]

A great eye for special fx, it brings the game to life, adorned by a mastery of tiled spaceships! It's a long shot, but did the art style happen to be inspired by the Snes F-Zero comic?

 

 

Either way it looks cool 😎 Based on the album work posted on the SGDK discord, I'm sure this game will be accompanied by a killer soundtrack 🔥

[KulorXL]

53 minutes ago, JurassicDope said:

did the art style happen to be inspired by the Snes F-Zero comic?

All the art is by the venerable klonoz: https://twitter.com/Klonoz

I have no idea what he was inspired by or what his special sauce is, but I'm really satisfied with the work he's done so far. I can't draw for shit, myself...!

[JurassicDope]

On 11/7/2023 at 9:59 PM, KulorXL said:

All the art is by the venerable klonoz: https://twitter.com/Klonoz

I have no idea what he was inspired by or what his special sauce is, but I'm really satisfied with the work he's done so far. I can't draw for shit, myself...!

Kudos to Klonoz! 👏 I've seen the progress of Rex Nobilis and every new update is fun, sometimes a big surprise special effect! Keep it up!👍🔥