Need your help to perhaps bring a new game to the Dreamcast

Discussion of topics related to licensed games, software hacking/modification, prototypes, and development kits belongs here. Includes topics related to emulating the Dreamcast console on your computer or on another gaming console. Discussion of Reicast should go in the Official Reicast Forum.
Post Reply
sakuragi
DCEmu Fast Newbie
DCEmu Fast Newbie
Posts: 17
https://www.artistsworkshop.eu/meble-kuchenne-na-wymiar-warszawa-gdzie-zamowic/
Joined: Thu Jan 27, 2005 6:43 pm
Location: France
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Need your help to perhaps bring a new game to the Dreamcast

Post by sakuragi »

Hello everybody !
I need your help to bring Tower 57 by Benitosub to the Dreamcast ! what is tower 57 ? It's a new kickstarter project similar to Chaos Engine from the Bitmap Brothers. Very nice 16 bits graphics, fast action and 2 players ready !

Kickstarter trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LH5DBtV7lM

Image

I have backed the game and talked to the developers, they are quite interested about my request to port the game over the Dreamcast but they don't know how to work on it. I'm here to ask your help about the dev on the Dreamcast, I have tell us about KallistIOS but if someone that have develloped something on the Dreamcast can bring more informations I will be grateful ! I can swap mails with the dev to help bringing the game on our beloved Dreamcast.

Here is the conversation between me and Benitosub :
Spoiler!
me :
Hello,
just have backed this very promising game. Beautifull graphics and nice retro gameplay ! What about a Dreamcast release of the game ? the console is still supported by indies dev like Duranik ( Sturmwind ) or Hucast ( Redux, Ghost Blade ). The console support keyboard + mouse for the gameplay, could be playable with the gamepad, the analog stick to aim and the buttons to move ( like Quake 3 ). I think a Dreamcast port could boost the pledge to a huge extended, Dreamcast still have many followers those days. Cyangmou I'm in love with your succubine art on Pixel Joint ! ; ) I'll post a new about your game on my website to give you some support. Really want to see this game made it to the reach goal ! hold on !

Benitosub :
that would be fantastic, however I'm completely unfamiliar with the Dreamcast scene, for example I wouldn't even know where to look to get my hands on a devkit, so it wouldn't seem fair to promise something which I have no idea whether we can deliver ^_^'

And rest assured we also really want this game to happen :) We will be fighting until the very last day, there are still updates coming every day until the end of the campaign, we will be tweeting gifs, we have some more YouTube videos being made and we contact new youtubers every day, next week we will be getting some Italian press, which is very nice because Italian gamers are also generally fond of retro games, next week there is an indie meet-up here in Berlin, hosted by Wooga, where I will be showing Tower 57, plus we're working on some more stuff, so as you can we are not dead yet, and have no intention of giving up!

Me :
You have KallistiOS that is a free BSD for the Dreamcast, KallistiOS has been used to create both freely available homebrew and commercial games such as Cryptic Allusion's Feet of Fury, S+F Software's Inhabitants, JMD's Maqiupai, Harmlesslion's Cool Herders, and NG:DEV.TEAM's Last Hope ( Source : http://segaretro.org/KallistiOS ). Dreamcast also have Windows CE embedded, maybe this could help for a port. Official Katana's Dev kits could be found on ebay time to time but I think you should give money to Sega to use it. If you interested in I could ask around to have more informations on Dreamcast Dev.

Benitosub :
it never hurts to look :) if you have more info could you PM me and we can swap emails? Also just a quick question: do most people still play on actual hardware, or has it moved to emulation? Thanks!

Me :
People play on real hardware, Dreamcast releases are physical. Please check here http://www.hucast.com/. Ghost Blade is very promising and will be out soon. Dreamcast Emulation is not perfect, What is very cool about the Dreamcast is that you can output 240 p, 480 I and even 480 p with the vga cable ( great pictures on actual screens with Vga ). Dreamcast except the very last ones in late 2001 can read CD, you don't need officials GD Rom to make your game working. Also there is a SD Card reader since a few years, you plugin into the extension port, games can be read from it. All I can say is that the Dreamcast scene want physical games and want to buy them : ). I'll keep you informed when I have more informations from the scene. Thank you for your interest !

Me again :
What is the resolution of the game ? higher than 240 p ?

Benitosub :
the logical resolution is 480 x 270, which then gets up-scaled based on the actual resolution of your screen. In windowed mode for example, the window size is 960x540, so each pixel is doubled in size. Hope this makes sense?
I also speak french because I'm french if it could help to be more clear about this :wink:
User avatar
bogglez
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 578
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2014 9:45 am
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: Need your help to perhaps bring a new game to the Dreamc

Post by bogglez »

So what is it you want to know?
Wiki & tutorials: http://dcemulation.org/?title=Development
Wiki feedback: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=103940
My libgl playground (not for production): https://bitbucket.org/bogglez/libgl15
My lxdream fork (with small fixes): https://bitbucket.org/bogglez/lxdream
sakuragi
DCEmu Fast Newbie
DCEmu Fast Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jan 27, 2005 6:43 pm
Location: France
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: Need your help to perhaps bring a new game to the Dreamc

Post by sakuragi »

I want to know if someone that know how to program a game on the DC would share is knowledge with the dev of Tower 57. I can make them in contact :) .
User avatar
bogglez
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 578
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2014 9:45 am
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Re: Need your help to perhaps bring a new game to the Dreamc

Post by bogglez »

That's what this forum is for. The DC scene is not a secret cult
Wiki & tutorials: http://dcemulation.org/?title=Development
Wiki feedback: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=103940
My libgl playground (not for production): https://bitbucket.org/bogglez/libgl15
My lxdream fork (with small fixes): https://bitbucket.org/bogglez/lxdream
User avatar
DaMadFiddler
Team Screamcast
Team Screamcast
Posts: 7953
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 7:17 am
Location: San Francisco, CA
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0
Contact:

Re: Need your help to perhaps bring a new game to the Dreamc

Post by DaMadFiddler »

A big part of this will depend on how the game is written. At first I was afraid it might be built with an authoring tool like The Games Factory (a popular option for small indie pixel-art games), in which case a port would be impossible.

However, I see from their Kickstarter page that they are actually coding it themselves (though few details are given), and that they are considering a port to Amiga. That would imply that the engine is in-house or at least portable, in which case the main hurdle will be adapting it for Dreamcast and making any adjustments necessary to get it running with the system's quirks and limited resources.

I wish we had a more comprehensive guide than we currently do, but you might try pinging some of the folks over in the Programming Discussion forum: viewforum.php?f=29

There are a number of guides and tutorials there as well, but they're fairly scattered.

The main thing is to set up KallistiOS: http://gamedev.allusion.net/softprj/kos/

Beyond that, try contacting a few Dreamcast developers on here for help getting started.
Post Reply