New Mega Drive & Dreamcast game Tanglewood @Kickstarter

[Christuserloeser]

There's a kickstarter for a new Sega Mega Drive game called Tanglewood, with a stretch goal for a Dreamcast port at 55k!

The game is being developed by Ex-Traveller's Tales employee Matt Phillips in 68k assembly language.

Matt recently announced that he managed to get Team 17's Simon Butler, Freedom Planet's Matthew Weekes and Pier Solar's Adoru C. to join the project to help on graphics.

Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63 ... genesis-m/

[Christuserloeser]

Matt recently mentioned a possible Dreamcast port of the game should the Mega Drive / Genesis version get funded!

[Christuserloeser]

Aaand it's official. There will be a Dreamcast port at 55k and a full HD remake at 75k!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63 ... -m/updates

[bogglez]

I'm not proficient at Mega Drive development, but he seems to be using the official SDK, so it's not a homebrew title? Or is he just using the development hardware? Has me worried about legal issues.

And I'm surprised that he wants to support so many platforms, considering that he's programming the whole game in assembly. He'll have to rewrite the whole game for Dreamcast, if he's not going to use an emulator. Same for the PC platforms.

[Christuserloeser]

Indeed. We talked about it. He plans on using the official Katana SDK too. I hope to talk him out of it. Seems like a complete PITA.

As for the 68k asm: there might still be an option to have the game code itself run via one of the many 68k emulators for Dreamcast while porting the VDP code to run natively.

[bogglez]

Indeed. We talked about it. He plans on using the official Katana SDK too. I hope to talk him out of it. Seems like a complete PITA.

We don't have sophisticated 3D stuff in KOS, so I understand why some devs just go the Katana route for a quick port, but for 2D+audio+input I don't really get it.
He seems to be very concerned about being "authentic" and creating games exactly like back then, including the development environment?

As for the 68k asm: there might still be an option to have the game code itself run via one of the many 68k emulators for Dreamcast while porting the VDP code to run natively.

I actually saw later in the FAQ that he does not want to use an emulator and intends to port all assembly code.
He can't possibly be doing this for performance reasons, otherwise only parts of his code would be assembly (like the renderer) and it would be easier to port.
It also can't be for authenticity, because even back then programming was done in assembly + c/c++.
If I am to invest money into this project, I'd rather he works on something more meaningful than setting the remaining lives value in various assembly languages instead of C, to be honest.

[Christuserloeser]

The campaign ended with only 170 missing for the Dreamcast port!!!


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63 ... ts/1767230

What happens next?

Paperwork! Glorious, glorious paperwork! We've taken on board a superteam of developers to help bring this game to life - Simon Butler (of Ocean Software, Team 17, Atari, Probe), Armen "Adoru" Mardirossian (of Pier Solar and Pier Solar HD), Nathan "freezedream" Stanley, and Matthew Weekes (of Freedom Planet) - who all need plans and designs and tasks and contracts.

Some backing tiers have special requirements that we need to act on immediately - Developer Edition backers need hooking up to our development process, we need to help our Design a Monster backer, well, design a monster, and plans need arranging to have the custom Tanglewood Mega Drive consoles created sooner rather than later.

We need to finalise the level designs, one of the most important parts of any game. We have designs for most of the levels in place, but the feedback we've had from over 1,600 downloaders has been monumentally useful for improving our demo level, and we think some refinements in this area would be advantageous for the rest. We're now in a position where we can rapidly prototype sections of levels and puzzles, making changes and tweaks to perfect the experience and ensure the game is fun to play from beginning to end, so we're going to get it right.
Discussion Forum

We think it's very important that progress of the game's development is communicated to backers and fans. We won't stay quiet on the changes we make or the progress of the game, and we're open to feedback of all kinds throughout development. For all of this and more, we've set up a forum on our website where fans can see news, screenshots and videos, download newer demo builds and discuss anything and everything to do with Tanglewood. We'll continue to be responsive and make sure we are part of the community surrounding the game.

SEGA Dreamcast port

I think it's safe to say that - with only £170 short of our Dreamcast stretch goal - everybody would be disappointed if this failed to come to fruition, especially considering we had to hold off the announcement of the stretch goal until later in the campaign due to a complication.

The shortfall was less than just one Collector's Edition tier, so how about this: we will auction off one extra Collector's Edition of Tanglewood to raise the remainder of the stretch goal, and we'll donate any extra proceeds of that auction to the Special Effect charity for gamers with disabilities.

Tanglewood is coming to SEGA Dreamcast.

By popular request, we will also research into "slacker backer" continued funding options to try and reach the Tanglewood HD stretch goal. We were only made aware of this concept recently so bear with us whilst we figure it out