Sonic Robo-Blast 2

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BlazeHedgehog
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Sonic Robo-Blast 2

Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Often there have been a handful of posts in the request forum about porting this to the Dreamcast. I come bearing good news today: SRB2 v1.09 has been ported to the Dreamcast. Let me clarify right now: I am not a coder. I am a texture artist for SRB2. Hopefully the coders will register here, if not, I will re-post what they say on the official forum.

What is SRB2? SRB2 stands for "Sonic Robo-Blast 2", a 3D Sonic fangame based on the DooM Legacy code base (but most will argue it's been modified so drastically that it's hardly even Legacy anymore). It's been in development over 5 years now. It's website is located here. It features full analog controls, in addition to standard Doom controls. It features many great features, such as floor-over-floors, dehacked modification (called a .soc, here), and dynamic blockmap generation (to get around the 64kb blockmap limit).

In the last 9 months, SRB2 has gained new coders, and with those coders, has come a Linux port - and, most impressively, a Dreamcast port! The latter was finally released four days ago, through this forum topic. By combining the ELF/Bin file with the data from the SRB2 1.09 demo, you can play SRB2 on your Dreamcast! (I'm sure you guys are aware, but you can take the ELF/Bin and make a Self-boot ISO easily with Boot Dreams)

However, this is a beta. The coders, as of now, are using SDL to run it, but in the future they plan on abandoning SDL to interface with the Dreamcast directly. Other beta bugs:

- Gamepad support is still very problematic. While not required, it is reccomended you use a Keyboard.

- With using SDL, the framerate isn't very good. Normally, SRB2 runs locked at a max of 30fps. Here, framerate depends on the size of the room, with an average of 10fps.

- It seems to crash after playing a few maps.

- There's no sound yet.

If you need an image of SRB2 running on an actual Dreamcast, there's this. If you need more screenshots of the game actually running, obviously I can get them very easily (or you could try the PC version yourself).

Happy playing. :wink:
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Post by GyroVorbis »

I just downloaded and tried up upload the elf straight to my DC through the BBA, but it looks like it was looking for the .WAD files on the CD.

That just means I'll have to burn it a bit later.

But I googled and found the website of this project, and I'm impressed. It looks pretty awesome. I can't wait to give it a try on my Dreamcast.

BTW, it sounds weird, but this reminds me a lot of the old discontinued Sonic project for Saturn: Sonic Xtreme. Dunno why either.
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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Why would you need to google for the site? I link to it in my post. :P
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Post by bizzle »

Tell him to try this: http://chui.dcemu.co.uk/sdl.html

Maybe it'll help with the framerate and some other issues. Perhaps someone else here who has more experience with the system can help as well.

Regardless, neato.
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Post by GyroVorbis »

BlazeHedgehog wrote:Why would you need to google for the site? I link to it in my post. :P
Oh damn... so you did...

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Post by LoganGBC »

heh, I forgot that I signed up for this forum a while ago

hmm, looking at Chui's Dreamcast SDL driver, Alam and I may not need to write up dreamcast interface code for SRB2, yea, less work for us!
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Post by NOWKA »

(Looking at the pic of it running on the dc)

Holy crap, its running on a Sega Genesis Mark 3.
Kidding aside, wow this looks neat. Very impressive
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Post by Syd »

This game looks freakin' sweet! Very nice graphics. Once the bugs are worked out this should be an awesome game. Great work! :D
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Post by Green Ranger »

Post screenshots to entice others to download! That is, if screenshots aren't already on the site. :)
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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

These were taken from the PC verison in software mode. They are of the first zone, Green Flower Zone.

Image
Image
Image
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Post by Imerion »

Fantastic! Thanks a lot all of you! I remember playing this game a long time ago (perhaps three/four years). There was an X-Mas version which i played a lot. A few weeks ago though, I stumbled upon it again and tried it, and this time it was mesmerizing! It really is hard to believe it is a modified version of the Doom engine. Mostly because the controls and graphics really feel Sonic. It great to hear a Dreamcast-port is on the way, since the only computer I have which is running windows (or dos) is my laptop, and I rather play the game on my TV!
I look forward to all news regarding this!
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Post by Tyne »

Be sure to get the mystic realm addon :)
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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Indeed. I would argue that Mystic Realm is better than the main SRB2 game itself. :P (that is, until Mystic makes his official SRB2 levels)
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Post by Cid Highwind »

Wow this looks really cool :D

I can't wait to try it.
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Post by Tyne »

Beta 3 was released!

Fixes/Updates
---------------------------------
Beta 3
1) Now looks at /cd for wad files, heh <.<'
2) Joystick support is now better! now you can use one of the buttons to skip the intro
3) now uses Chui's Dreamcast SDL driver
4) THe Sreen refresh is now faster, but it clips also...
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Post by XDelusion »

This is the BEST news we could possibly get! Do you all realize what this means!?!??!?!?? We are getting a lot more here than just a homemade Sonic game (which is very good btw).
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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

XDelusion wrote:This is the BEST news we could possibly get! Do you all realize what this means!?!??!?!?? We are getting a lot more here than just a homemade Sonic game (which is very good btw).
Indeed. Thanks to all the modder-friendly stuff in SRB2, you can take it's engine and pretty much build a brand new (2D or 3D!) platformer game out of it without ever actually needing to code. (editing stuff in SRB2 is a bit more complicated than doing stuff in Doom)
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Post by Tyne »

I love it for several reasons:

1. You've combined 3D Sonic Adventure with the classic Sonic gameplay.
2. Another new Sonic game on Dreamcast!
3. This is probably what Sonic for Saturn should of been like.

I lubber it :)
Currently I'm on Aerial Garden Zone in the Mystic Realm pack, it's tough with Sonic so I'm going through it right now with Knuckles.
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Post by Cormega »

I'm just curious. I know it took about 5 years to accomplish but I wanted to know how large was the development team that worked on this.
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Post by DaMadFiddler »

I remember back when I was in high school, and this project was first announced (1998-ish? maybe a little later)

It was actually how I got into homebrew in the first place--I started by coding games in BASIC for the TI-8x calculators, and somehow I ended up coming across a link to the Sonic Fan Games HQ. This was all around the same time I was discovering the magic of emulators, ROM patches, and BETA versions of games such as Sonic 2 and Sonic CD.

I was working on a Sonic clone for a while, using Multimedia Fusion (a graphical gamebuilder), but I ended up scrapping it for quality reasons. Sonic Robo Blast 2 was first regarded as an impossible dream, then as it actually started coming together, as one of the two "gold standard" projects of the community (the other being a 2D effort called Sonic: Project Mettrix...which I believe was started by a member of the SRB team who left, though I could be mistaken).

Yay, I know tons of stupid history about useless stuff :P

Glad to see this project finally make its way onto consoles, though. Hopefully the DC port will continue to be improved, and not just remain as a proof-of-concept. Good work :)
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