Sydney Hunter And The Caverns Of Death

[OldRover]

So I figured I should probably make an "official" thread for this, considering how far along it's come. This is a game originally developed by Studio Piña back in 2011 apparently as a homage to the MSX. I am not sure of the details of what happened between then and now, but somehow, Gregarious Games LLC picked it up, along with its artist, Keith Erickson. Anyway, I had been in contact with a gentleman named Anthony Di Masi, who was looking for a coder to work on a project. I agreed to do it, but he said that I would not be needed for some time, so I just went back to work on Lucretia for the time being. A few months ago, however, John Lester (some of you might know him as Gamester81) decided that Sydney Hunter needed a PCE port. Anthony had been working with John on another project, The Adventures Of The Tiny Knight, and recommended me to John to take up the reins of a PCE conversion. Well, we worked out a deal, they sent me the assets, and I started production. Originally, this was meant to be just a HuCard game, but John inquired about a possible CD version as well, using Benjamin Allen's arranged soundtrack. I told him that it should work, but that I was going to focus on the HuCard version first and then convert to CD.

So yeah, that's the backstory as far as my tired brain remembers it, hahah. Anyway, I have posted screenshots in an unrelated thread prior to this, but figured this needed its own thread as to not pollute other threads.

frozenutopia.com/hunter-0030.png
frozenutopia.com/hunter-0031.png
frozenutopia.com/hunter-0032.png
frozenutopia.com/hunter-0033.png
frozenutopia.com/hunter-0034.png

These are the shots I posted before; just reposting them here.

frozenutopia.com/hunter-0041.png

This is an actual gameplay image, as early as it is. There is no HUD nor any enemies or lighting effects yet... that all comes later once I have nailed down the player FSM and all collision algorithms, which so far have been 100% functional. One interesting thing about this game is that each room (yes, this is a screen-by-screen game) can have one of three different lighting schemes... fully-lit, half-lit, or dark. In fully-lit rooms, things are as you see in the above shot (though technically, that particular room should be half-lit). In half-lit rooms, all the areas outside of Sydney's torch range are dimmed. In dark rooms, all you can see is what's within the range of his torch. Rooms that have wall torches or lava flow are always fully-lit, and any room that was not previously fully-lit will become so if the lava flow reaches it.

frozenutopia.com/hunter-0042.png

This shot was taken a bit later, and I was using debug text for position checking. Climbable vines are everywhere in this game. Also, this game has a rather nifty feature, which is climbable ropes that extend between two uneven platforms. Sydney will climb across them when going up but slide on them with his boomerang when going down. Little touches like that make things more interesting, I think.

Now, this game is still a ways off, and I will be sure to post more screenies when they are available. Priority was given to the SNES and NES conversions, and that's what the Kickstarter campaign was based on, so I am pretty much on my own in regards to this conversion. The game engine I have developed for this game was built from scratch; I did not convert any of my previous game engines for it. That ended up being a good thing, as this has the most accurate collision routines I have ever coded, and also features variable jumping (jump height determined by how long you hold the jump button for, up to a max height), a feature missing from quite a few games from yesteryear (such as Exile). All in all, this is turning out to be a great little conversion. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to share demo builds with the community as per my contract with Gregarious Games, but it says nothing of screenshots or videos...

[esteban]

I love you.

<EXTENDED BEAR HUG>

[OldRover]

frozenutopia.com/hunter-0044.png

Sydney's in-game boomerang. Distance and whatnot will probably have to be tweaked at some point, but the system is so flexible that making small, or even large, adjustments is a breeze. This boomerang works way better than the one I coded for Jungle Bros.

[SignOfZeta]

I love what I see. Love it.

[MotherGunner]

Very very cool.

[blueraven]

 

[DeshDildo]

Awesome!  We're starting to have a nice little library of good game coming out for PCE in the future.  I love it.

[esteban]

<BONUS HUG>

[ParanoiaDragon]

Nice!  Since it's originally inspired by the MSX, I'll assume it's something like La Mulana, which I believe was made(initially) on the MSX, though, I pray this game is nowhere near as hard!   I played La Mulana on the PSTV, sheesh, cool game, but the difficulty challenged me to no end(& absolute frustration at times) so I did use a guide.....which made it so that I BARELY completed it! LOL

[TheClash603]

Very cool and I hope that your contract was favorable for you because you have put so much effort into your games.  However I do gotta ask, how far back do you think this will push Lucretia?

This looks really good and kudos to you for getting the engine running so smoothly...  but Lucretia looks phenomenal!

[OldRover]

Nando instructed me to go ahead with Sydney Hunter while he finishes off the last of the game sprites for Lucretia. It's not really pushing Lucretia back at all... real life does a fine enough job of that already.

[LostFlunky]

Great news!  It is looking good.

Guess it isn't an exclusive for the Coleco Chameleon then...

[o.pwuaioc]

Great news!  It is looking good.

Guess it isn't an exclusive for the Coleco Chameleon then...

You mean the SNES?

Looks solid Rover. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this develop further!

[Psycho Punch]

How many projects do you make concurrently? It looks great but it makes me worry about: Lucretia, Mysterious Song II

[esteban]

How many projects do you make concurrently? It looks great but it makes me worry about: Lucretia, Mysterious Song II

He is also working with me on Blodia Special (SCD).

[Gredler]

Looking as fantastic as expected from the home brew bar setter! Keep it up Rov, can't wait to play the finished product!!

[Dicer]

Love it...

[ParanoiaDragon]

real life does a fine enough job of that already.

Ugh, I hear that!

How many projects do you make concurrently? It looks great but it makes me worry about: Lucretia, Mysterious Song II

He is also working with me on Blodia Special (SCD).

It's been re-titled, it's now Blodia Extra le Speciale(CD) ver. 1.0

[NecroPhile]

Looks fun.  Good luck with 'er.

[Elder]

Looks great

[touko]

I love this game, a rick dangerous like, it remind me my good old amiga time ..
after, snes/dreamcast/coleco, it's good to see a PCe version ..

[elmer]

I love this game, a rick dangerous like, it remind me my good old amiga time ..
after, snes/dreamcast/coleco, it's good to see a PCe version ..

Ooooh ... now you've really got my attention, I'm a huge Rick Dangerous fan!

It's definitely great to see the PCE getting another new game, especially with The Old Rover doing it. 

[Bardoly]

This is great news!

I had planned to support the SNES Kickstarter, but I was broke at the time and couldn't afford to do it, so knowing that I can get the game on PCE works for me.

[OldRover]

frozenutopia.com/hunter-0045.png

So now the HUD mostly works, as does submap loading and screen transitions. This screen should have lava on the bottom, but that is not coded in just yet.

[OldRover]

frozenutopia.com/hunter-0047.png

Vine climbing has been partially implemented. The most important part of this is the fact that Sydney locks on to the vine and does not slip and slide all over it... once he grabs on, his X coordinate is corrected to the center of the vine, as it should be. Now... while on the vine, Sydney can throw his boomerang, as well as jump up or jump down (down + jump makes him let go of the vine and fall normally). There are many parts of the game where you have to jump from vine to vine... the vine lock-on algorithm makes doing this a hell of a lot easier.

[ginoscope]

Good job on the conversion so far the game looks great and I am looking forward to playing it. 

 I remember seeing footage of this game for the snes kickstarer and it looked pretty sweet.

[OldRover]

John Lester made a post on Facebook about it, showing the game running on real hardware.

EDIT: NES port actively being worked on, PC Engine cancelled ?

https://www.facebook.com/ElectricAdventures/posts/1877876192350427

Added pics:

[Gredler]

Rad, it looks really good in that shot man, nice job!

[NecroPhile]

I assume he's showing it on a test bench next to a scope to mock the VGS fucktard. 

[Dicer]

I wanna see it running on the scope instead...

[_Paul]

I assume he's showing it on a test bench next to a scope to mock the VGS fucktard. 

Needs more kitchen table

There's an Atari ST hidden inside that Turbo.

[esteban]

I assume he's showing it on a test bench next to a scope to mock the VGS fucktard. 

Needs more kitchen table

There's an Atari ST hidden inside that Turbo.

Wait! There's a Speccy hidden inside that ST!

[shubibiman]

Is it gonna be a Hucard release ?

[esteban]

Is it gonna be a Hucard release ?

Super HuCARD.

SADLY, I no longer have a SuperGrafx.

[OldRover]

Is it gonna be a HuCard release ?

HuCard and CD.

[shubibiman]

Is it gonna be a Hucard release ?

Hucard and CD.

Ok. Will you use Ichigobankai's Hucards or will you 3d print them ?

[OldRover]

Ok. Will you use Ichigobankai's Hucards or will you 3d print them ?

CollectorVision is in charge of that aspect... I have no idea how they are going to make the hucards, but John and Jean both told me that they have hucard fabrication in place already.

[mickcris]

I would guess they are going to be using the dee-bee card:
http://www.db-elec.com/home/products/debee-card

[Bardoly]

I would guess they are going to be using the dee-bee card:
http://www.db-elec.com/home/products/debee-card

I had not heard of this before.  It really looks great!

[glazball]

Looks great!  Any ideas yet what differences the Hucard and CD version will (or may) have?

[jlued686]

How did I miss this thread?

Awesome news, Rover! Great to see more games coming.

[OldRover]

Any ideas yet what differences the Hucard and CD version will (or may) have?

At the moment, it seems like the only difference will be the usage of Ben Allen's arranged soundtrack on the CD version. I am not sure if they want to make additional changes to the CD version, but we'll see when the time comes.

[NecroPhile]

Two versions kinda smells of a cash grab, but as a collectard sucker I'll buy both.

[esteban]

Any ideas yet what differences the Hucard and CD version will (or may) have?

At the moment, it seems like the only difference will be the usage of Ben Allen's arranged soundtrack on the CD version. I am not sure if they want to make additional changes to the CD version, but we'll see when the time comes.

If the CD-ROM allowed users to switch between chiptunes/Red Book, that would be nice.

[o.pwuaioc]

Any ideas yet what differences the Hucard and CD version will (or may) have?

At the moment, it seems like the only difference will be the usage of Ben Allen's arranged soundtrack on the CD version. I am not sure if they want to make additional changes to the CD version, but we'll see when the time comes.

Will we be able to sample both soundtracks beforehand to see which of the two we prefer?

[OldRover]

Two versions kinda smells of a cash grab, but as a collectard sucker I'll buy both.

It's possible, but this is out of my hands so I can't really comment on the intention here. It would have been wiser, IMO, to just stick to one platform or the other... but I'm not calling the shots this time so please don't shoot the messenger.

If the CD-ROM allowed users to switch between chiptunes/Red Book, that would be nice.

It's possible but it's up to the project lead whether or not this gets implemented.

Will we be able to sample both soundtracks beforehand to see which of the two we prefer?

Absolutely... videos will be released of the game at some point.

[brizio]

I would guess they are going to be using the dee-bee card:
http://www.db-elec.com/home/products/debee-card

It looks like this is now confirmed based on this FB post:

https://www.facebook.com/335391163273663/videos/864320143714093/

[OldRover]

Very likely then... maybe this is what they meant by hucard manufacturing capability. db's stuff is good quality so that's pretty cool.

[NecroPhile]

"Always show a working prototype #RetroVGS"

It's the gift that keeps on giving teh lulz. 

[shubibiman]

 

The db card looks much nicer in this video than on their website.