Mega Wing: A Mega Drive / Genesis shmup - dev thread

[mice]

Long time no posting here! Been on non-shmup adventures the past few years...stupid of me.

The game is tentatively named Mega Wing. I mean, the name really has to be used already for a shmup, right? Can't find any, though. \o/



It got some readability issues at the moment, but those will be sorted.
Have yet to figure out all of the fun stuff, like score system and power up mechanic. Got a few ideas that I'm testing out. Fun times ahead!

I've made a map editor that exports to a format (with game implementation) that allows me to switch backgrounds and palettes on the fly as well, that kind of thing will make the game look more varied than I managed doing in my last mega drive game Tänzer.
Planning on doing a Kickstarter for it, just as I did with Tänzer (https://megacatstudios.com/products/tan ... 8987971618).

Game is made using SGDK by Stephane Dallongeville (https://www.patreon.com/SGDK/overview) which I highly recommend.

Cheers!

[EmperorIng]

I saw some screens of this in motion on your twitter and I'm really impressed at the size and number of some of the sprites on display. The boss duo design looks very cool. A number of enemy designs have a neat Toaplan inspiration in them.

I'm curious: as a technical question is there a way to prioritize which sprites have flickering and which don't? It seems like in the boss footage, even though the bosses have a little flicker, the bullets appear stable. Which is really the most important thing.

[mice]

The order in which the sprites are drawn decides it. First drawn will appear on top of the others as well. And since bullets should appear on top of everything else the flickering issue gets sorted automatically.

[Noisepurge]

looks great and can't have enough MD shmups do you have someone making the music already? I can recommend a fellow swede Waveshaper who recently composed a few tracks for Furi, i'm sure he would be all up in composing something with the FM Synth hardware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrm_kb1d-Xc

[mice]

Some dev-thread...not being updated at all.

Still having a blast with the MD. Wonderful machine, but I wish everyday that there were more palettes than 4 to play around with.

Decided on the basic score mechanics, I thnk. You collect stars and fill a meter. When meter is full you gain a score multiplier and a smart bomb. Using a smart bomb will decrease the multiplier as well. The multiplier steps are 2x, 4x and 8x (max).
On top of this I was thinking of using a pickup-system along the lines of Gradius and V-V, with: power-up, shield, drone, smart bomb-type, weapon-type and a few connected to score.

The two player simultaneous play will most likely need to go as well. The MD is on its knees quite a few times already. Will try to come up with a 2 player mode by alternating and/or some sort of tag team thing.
Has alternating been made without checkpoints? Bet there is some way of doing it?

Som more pics:

[S20-TBL]

From the videos I've seen on Twitter, the spritework is good enough that 4 palettes isn't so bad. Heck this game has that classic Sonic 1 graphical vibe to it if you know what I mean.

Also, mannequin bomb.

[mice]

From the videos I've seen on Twitter, the spritework is good enough that 4 palettes isn't so bad. Heck this game has that classic Sonic 1 graphical vibe to it if you know what I mean.

But 4 is just ridiculous. I mean, you'd like a palette for just the "enemy get hit flash" but that's impossible now. Neo geo has 256 palettes, which is way too many, I'd settle for 8 or 16.
Maybe I should do a NG version as well, with simultaneous 2 player? And use all of the gazillion palettes! Muahahahaaa!

Also, mannequin bomb.

For the win!
I see I forgot to add that as a screen shot here.

[mice]

looks great and can't have enough MD shmups do you have someone making the music already? I can recommend a fellow swede Waveshaper who recently composed a few tracks for Furi, i'm sure he would be all up in composing something with the FM Synth hardware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrm_kb1d-Xc

I totally missed your post, sneaked in while I was posting my long due update...sorry about that. :-/
I'm going to use the same composer as for Tänzer, although he's occupied with getting married at the moment.

[heli]

How do you make a game for old game consoles ?
Is it legal ?

[Zwarteziel]

That looks really amazing! Can I ask what's involved in developing for a console of this generation? E.g.: what kind of language and enviroment do you program in and how do you transfer data to the cartridges?

[Krushal]

How do you make a game for old game consoles ?
Is it legal ?

In this case, as mentioned, he's using the SGDK devkit. It allows for C programming, but ASM is probably used for critical parts of the code.

Perfectly legal with an unofficial devkit.

[heli]

It is nice to know this exists, i dont have my megadrive anymore.
You can buy empty shell cartridges at ali-express.
Curious what chips go in ?, can they be DIP ?

[mice]

That looks really amazing! Can I ask what's involved in developing for a console of this generation? E.g.: what kind of language and environment do you program in and how do you transfer data to the cartridges?

Sorry for the late answer, I've put the game on hold while I'm doing ZPF for the MD with Rozyrg!! \o/

As Krushal said, I mainly program in C, using stefs SGDK: https://github.com/Stephane-D/SGDK
During most of the dev phase I use an emulator to test the ROM with. But every now and then I transfer it onto a SD card and use an everdrive to run on a real machine.
And sometimes I even burn a ROM and test it for real.

It is nice to know this exists, I don't have my megadrive anymore.
You can buy empty shell cartridges at ali-express.
Curious what chips go in ?, can they be DIP ?

The ones from ali is seldom used for homebrew. They're made of brittle plastic and they're not screwed together but rather clipped. I get mine from dragonbox.de, for instance. All for the "authenticity".
And the 32mbit chips used are old-school DIP m27c322.

[6t8k]

This looks really nice!

Will the ship movement speed be changeable?

[mice]

This looks really nice!

Will the ship movement speed be changeable?

Wasn't thinking that, no.
In the ZPF game it is, though.

[Arino]

I want this