VirtualChris wrote:
Thanks. Now if there was only a way to make sprites appear bigger when they are under it. That would be really cool.

That’s what Affine mode is for, but it’s pretty tricky to use. As an alternative, you could just as well replace the fighter’s sprite with a pre-drawn magnified version when under the magnifying glass.

BTW, should you ever consider to make me a hidden character in the game, I want the magnifying glass to be my fatality, please! 😉

This is what I meant (the green circle in the attached image), that part is not present in the original image, so the converter must have some kind of algorithm to fill in missing pixels. So cool, I am looking forward to read about your tools when you get around to write about them, thunder.

VBmills wrote:
Thunder you made the news at retro collect.

http://www.retrocollect.com/News/konamis-cult-classic-snatcher-ported-to-nintendo-virtual-boy.html

Plus a few dozen other sites following the retrocollect post. 🙂

thunderstruck wrote:
Well, the current demo still fits on a regular flashboy. Since I compressed the music and the images a bit there is still space left for more. We will see how far I can get with that.

What kind of compression did you use? I recently talked about image compression with jorgeche and we came to the conclusive guess that it’s not practical on the VB. I’d love to hear how you managed to compress your images. 🙂

thunderstruck wrote:
I intend to release the game in 2mb parts as well so that everyone can play it. I will have to see how I do the transition between roms.

That’s a great thing to do. You could release the parts one by one, each one when it’s done, like an episodic release. Since the FlashBoy Plus’ SRAM is not touched by the flasher, each part can simply pick up the savegame of the previous part and continue from there.

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Since the game has never been available in any other languages than Japanese and English, have you thought about a multilingual release? Would be awesome to play this in German. 🙂

It’s nothing fancy, I will happily share my multilanguage code if this is of any help.

thunderstruck wrote:
There is actually one easteregg in the Jordan computer because I forgot to take it out.

Easteregg hunt, everybody! 😀

thunderstruck wrote:
The image conversion is a half automated process. The conversion to redscale vb images happens automatically, but I need to draw a depth map for the stereoscopic images. I got quite fast at drawing those with photoshop. My converter uses the depthmap to generate a stereo SBS image.

Really cool that you write your own specialized tools for all kind of purposes! I assume the converter still needs some post-processing in cases where the stereo conversion generates gaps? Or does some kind of magic algorithm fill up those missing pixels?

Too bad I don’t have the time right now to play though the complete demo but I definitely need to reserve an evening soon.

But wow, the 10 minutes or so I just played were really cool. That’s some amazing sound quality! And some of the best stereo backgrounds since Virtual Bowling, did you 3D-fy them by hand?

I was a bit surprised though that Jordan didn’t have anything on file when I entered “Thunderstruck”. 😉

I wish Red Metal could’ve played this in his lifetime, I am sure he would have totally loved your version!

So, literally, the VB finally appears on the 3DS. 😉

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VN90000057[5] ext w/rectangle usa retail??? Under investigation

That one is very interesting, can you provide a photo?

Hi and welcome!

To solve this ancient riddle ;-), M.K. kindly provided his SRAM access code. I haven’t tested this yet, but apparently, the trick is to mask the return value.

u16* const SAVERAM = (u16*)0x06000000;

// write (0 < x < 8191)
SAVERAM[x] = value;    //8bit value

// read
value = SAVERAM[x] & 0xFF; 

Haha, now that was a hot candidate for the funniest self-introduction ever. Besides the good laugh, there’s not really any necessity for that precaution message, though, since your English is very good!

Welcome to the community, One Punch Man!

That’s great, Ben, thanks! Gotta add those to the games section. 🙂

Ben: http://www.mobygames.com/company/itc

Yet another great video, Protoman! :thumpup:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
By the way… have you ever learned of what ITC stands for and, thus, know what game company it refers to?

I don’t have the slightest clue. 🙁

Hey Ben, I have a translation of that page here, which was made a few years ago by a professional translator from Germany now living in Japan. I don’t remember the exact details, but we were thinking of paying him for the translation of some Japanese magazines and he was so kind to translate this page as a sample. For some reason the contact broke afterwards. Anyway, here’s the translation:

(first right side with blue background, then left side with green background)

Ask the makers!! Virtual Boy survey

What companies are making games for VB? With what kind of feelings are they making VB games? We asked simple questions like that.

Are you making games for VB?
The number of game companies stating clearly that they’re making games for VB is unexpectedly low. Many are still playing wait-and-see.
■Making games (16 companies)
ITC, I’MAX, Asmik, Atlus, Coconuts Japan Entertainment, J-Wing, POW, VAP, Hudson, Banpresto, BPS, Hect, Bottom Up, Right Stuff, and 2 more companies.
■Planning to make games (9 companies)
Epoch, Angel, Naxat, Namco, Bandai, and 3 more companies
■Not planning to make games (5 companies)
■Under consideration (11 companies)
Activision Japan, Enix, Square, Starfish, Tokuma Shoten, Magifact, Masaya, and 4 more companies

What kind of games do you think will come out?
A lot of the answers said “shooting games.” But there were also various other opinions.
“Simulations”, “ports”, “games that can be played for short durations”, “games with simple contents” etc.

Please give us some comments on the VB.
The opinions about the VB were mainly split into 2 groups: approval and slight disapproval.
“Might be able to capture new layers of games;” “I’m anticipating the possibilities;” “The games’ contents might become one-sided;” “I wonder how it looks to our eyes that are used to colored images” etc.

Virtual Boy Release Calendar
July 21 (Friday): Virtual Boy release day
★Nintendo♣ 15,000 Yen (tax not included)

July 21: Red Alarm
★T&E Soft♣ tba

July 21: Galactic Pinball (tentative title)
★Nintendo♣ 4900 Yen (tax not included)

July 21: Teleroboxer
★Nintendo♣ 4900 Yen (tax not included)

July 21: Mario’s VB Tennis (tentative title)
★Nintendo♣ 4900 Yen (tax not included)

July: Vertical Force
★Hudson♣ tba

August: Virtual Pro Baseball ’95 (tentative title)
★Kemco♣ tba

August: Virtual Double Yakuman
★Vap♣ tba

August: Tobidase! Panibon
★Hudson♣ tba

September: Jack Bros. (tentative title)
★Atlus♣ tba

September: Mario Clash
★Nintendo♣ tba

September: Virtual Fishing (tentative title)
★Pack-in-Video♣ tba

September: Faceball (tentative title)
★BPS♣ tba

Release date tba: Virtual Bowling (tentative title)
★Athena♣ tba

Release date tba: Doraemon (tentative title)
★Epoch♣ tba

Release date tba: Intercept (tentative title)
★Coconuts Japan Entertainment♣ tba

Release date tba: Sunday’s Point (tentative title)
★Coconuts Japan Entertainment♣ tba

Release date tba: Space Squash (tentative title)
★Coconuts Japan Entertainment♣ tba

Release date tba: Proteus Zone (tentative title)
★Coconuts Japan Entertainment♣ tba

Release date tba: Virtual LABO
★J-Wing♣ tba

Release date tba: T&E Virtual Golf
★T&E Soft♣ tba

Release date tba: V-Tetris
★BPS♣ tba

Release date tba: Virtual Battle Ball
★Hect♣ tba

COMING SOON!!

$50,000 is a hefty sum and most likely way beyond what this small community would be able to raise. Unfortunately, it would be the absolute minimum for a team of two to work on a game for a whole year instead of doing another job. One year would not even be enough for more complex games like a MetroidVania, with all those assets to produce and the careful planning that’d be necessary.

Choosing a game type with a smaller scope would be wise for a first campaign, it seems.

Lester Knight wrote:
if a physical copy was not included in any tier than the digital release would need to be FB+ compatible or i would not even consider backing it.

true

HoMenace wrote:
I feel it is absolutely necessary to include either a digital or physical copy with any tier $50 and over. Otherwise this would basicly be a donation and I dont see large enough funds being generated to make this happen.

I think that’s what everybody’s understanding of a fundraising campaign should be, though. It’s not online shopping. Instead we’d donate to a development team to allow them to bless us all with another great homebrew title in the future.

DogP wrote:
Just out of curiosity… are there any developers out there that’d even consider this? $50K is a lot of money for a small group to raise (I doubt we could find 50 people to give $1000, or 100 to give $500, or any combination to add up to $50K), but assuming that we could do it… that’s not much to live off of, assuming that there’s more than one person involved in this.

I mean… maybe some of you hate your job, are currently between jobs, still in college, or just so well off that you don’t need your job… but I can’t imagine even considering leaving my job to do this. It’d be a fun and interesting experience for sure, but surely there are MUCH better ways to make a living.

Another possibility would be freelance developers who could just see this as a regular job. A badly paid, but very exciting one. 🙂

For my part, I am permantly employed as a web developer and it’s not like I hate my job or not earning enough. But working full time on a Virtual Boy game with other skilled developers sounds way too good to me to not consider doing it, as long as I’d be able to pay the bills for another year or two while doing so. The freedom to put my heart and soul into my own project, working when I want to, while being surrounded only by people I like, means that much to me, that I’d have no problem with earning much less than I could.

Ah! It’s great to finally have a source for the shipment numbers.

Also, Flying Henry sounds pretty fun. Interesting to see that it was so far into development.

Thanks again Ben, the boredom of your workplace really is a blessing! 😀

Why is it all about money nowadays? I don’t get it.

There are dozens of finished homebrew games for the Virtual Boy that you can download for free and play on an emulator or on real hardware with a FlashBoy Plus: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/games/?hg

Here’s a list of games that (I think) are finished:

3D Battlesnake
3D Crosswords
Advanced Pasta Cooking Simulator
BLOX
BLOX 2
Castle of Doom
Channel Sweeper
Fishbone
Flappy Cheep Cheep
GameHero
GoSub
GoSub 3D
Hyper Fighting (Demo)
Lights Out
Mario Combat
Real Danger
Simon!
Snowball Wars
Soviet Union 2010
Soviet Union 2011
Super Bounce
Tic Tac Toe
Tic-Tac-Toe ‘Ten
Tron
VB Racing
Virtual Pong
VUE Snake

If it’s about supporting the authors of these games, just ask them if they accept donations of some kind.

In a post-robocalyptic world without a single human being left, there’s a lot of robotic waste! (and, in the beginning, a lot of human waste. :-D)

Well, thanks for clearing that up! So the writing can stay like it is. Maybe get a little more tear or so…

If I made this game, I’d need to read up on Asimov as well I think. Might give me some good story ideas. His Laws of Robotics would definitively see a reference, that has been part of the plan already. 🙂

[KR155E]

Thanks guys! In case anyone’s interested in creating more mockups, background graphics, enemies, level designs, story ideas, coding, or whatever, get in touch. Who knows what might come out of it. 🙂

RunnerPack schrieb:
I want to play this just so I can find out what “robotic waste” is 😀

You tell me, it’s your native language! But seriously, I guess that’s not how solid or liquid remains of robots after being scrapped are called. 😀

• This reply was modified 11 years, 4 months ago by KR155E.

Unnamed MetroidVania

Here’s a mocked-up scene from an action platformer I have been conceiving lately. I envision something Metroid-esque, gritty, story-driven with a few stealth elements, full of hand-drawn 3D environments.

I might follow this one further and have been thinking about creating a little playable demo of that scene you see here. It took me like two weeks to only create this little mock-up, though, so I am gonna take a break first. 😉

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