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/vr/ - Retro Games

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File: 71 KB, 660x495, nightmare_1000-660x495.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2479902 No.2479902 [Reply] [Original]

Who out there still developing ROM's/Carts for "dead" consoles? I get that there is better hardware to work with now and selling a new SNES game is likely not cost effective but the retro following is so big still there has to be a few talented fiends making playable games still.

>> No.2479919

>>2479902
literally only autist still develop for older consoles

and 99% of the time the game is trash or a rip off of another famous title.

And the graphics are always lackluster.

>> No.2479920

I'd love to see more of this.

Nintendo's been sucking, so I'd really like to see them re-release a SNES or something with all the chips pre-installed and start developing games for it again. Something along those lines.

How do you into SNES dev anyway?

>> No.2479929

>>2479919
I would almost expect artists to be the ones doing it. Even if it was a rip off, you could still make a great game, it's been done. It just surprises me I cant find more than one team out there that is willing to put the effort in.

>> No.2479932

>>2479920
Snes dev? I wish I knew. One cool perk of today is memory is way cheaper so you could pack way more game into a cart and still have an old console run it.

>> No.2479949

>>2479920
Why bother? Snes has a disgustingly slow processor and model 7 can only rotate background layers with few tiles. It's only good for the novelty.
At least the NES had a minimalistic art style and the fact it's an archaic and difficult to program system makes running modern games run on it at least seem impressive.

>> No.2479954

worth checking out video on the difficulties of developing on older systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvx4xXhZMrU
this is like nerd porn

>> No.2479957

Developing for those old consoles is not easy. Most of the documentation is only half complete and you have to patch alot of the information together yourself.

Programming is done in assembly if you want to get anything decent. This means you have to learn the specific architecture. There are C assemblers but they are poorly documented and deliver poorly optimised code.

Most consoles also have multiple processors for example a CPU and a GPU and also in most cases a seperate audio chip which sometimes has another extra processor (e.g. sega genesis).

Another thing is the hardware limitations. You have to keep track of all the limitations during development. This might seem obvious, but some of the consoles have very cripling limitations. A famous example is the limited texture memory of the N64. There are tricks to get around this, but again it complicates things.

All this combined means a very steep learning curve. And with only a handful of people with the actual knowhow and skills to make a full game for the specific platform you choose (not just some silly helloworld demo) you'd have to be extremely skilled and/or extremely motivated to stick to it.

>> No.2479978

>>2479949
Hello shithead.
The SNES is almost the exact same as the NES to program.
Stop inventing stuff.

>> No.2479983

>>2479978
The 65816 (SNES) has more operations and is a little harder to program than the 6502 (NES), but it has fewer limitations, and near the end of the console's cycle, you had C compilers and libraries for the SNES, which made development much easier. IIRC, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has C code in it.

>> No.2480239
File: 655 KB, 1195x652, piersolar01.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2480239

>pic related

Pier solar was released just a few years ago for the Genesis / MD.

>> No.2480270

>>2480239
Holy shit, I had no idea. Thank you for that.

>> No.2480334

>>2480239

Too bad its a rip off of lunar, and a shitty one at that.

>> No.2480502

>>2479957
I also read that the language where SNES games were programmed was very unstable and it was prone to errors

>> No.2480506

>>2479902
Way easier to develop for modern consoles.
Less restrictions.

Coding for older consoles like SNES and NES really requires a deep rooted understanding of the architecture. Modern stuff you don't really need a lot of architecture know-how because its usually strong enough to brute force things.

Which is how you get stuff thats unoptimized as fuck like Blight Town in Dark Souls slipping through the cracks.

>> No.2480553

>>2479957
if it's so hard, how did so many games get released back in the day?

>> No.2480596

>>2479983
> near the end of the console's cycle, you had C compilers and libraries for the SNES, which made development much easier.

This is not true at ALL. Few commercial games ever used the C compiler. It didn't work very well, the performance was not what it could be. The only way to program a high-performing game on the SNES was by assembly alone.

>> No.2480603

>>2480553
Because the developers had devkits and reused useful code. That's why you see some very similar style graphics/mechanics with different games. They didn't write them all from scratch. Also some of these people were experts in the assembly language with years of experience, like you'd have experts in Java or C++ nowadays.

>> No.2480613

>>2480553
PSX games were programmed in MIPS assembly and there are thousands of them.

>> No.2480617

>>2480553
there's a reason that was a full time job back then

>> No.2480619

>>2480596
The games weren't totally programmed in C, but there was C code in quite a few of them. I've looked into a few games (for romhacking purposes) and there are a few telltale signs of stuff that was introduced in the code by compilers - a human would never do some of those things (perhaps a complete amateur, but that's something else).

Like someone said above, UMK3 used C code somewhere. There are sections of the ROM with audit messages on them (this is pretty common in PC games, not so much on consoles), making reference to pointers and even the names of the files.

>> No.2480623

>>2480619
No wonder UMK3 is a bug-ridden mess. They left the MK3 code to unlock Smoke in, and even a completely dummied character (Sheeva).

>> No.2480626
File: 333 KB, 320x240, Whoops.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2480626

>>2480623
Both UMK3 ports are a mess. The Genesis version outright blue screens when you try to input Scorpion's pit fatality after a spear.

It's a shame there still do this day isn't a perfect port of the game. Everything since the fifth generation has been emulated and very poorly at that with shitloads of sound and graphical issues.

>> No.2480856

>>2480596
not just SNES, but having to write everything in asm is true for almost every console pre 32-bit era.

>>2480603
this. back in the day, programmers who wrote games for consoles tended to be experienced writing really low level code, ie. asm, which isn't the case these days. most devs rely on high-level code that they run through compilers, pre-built game engines with piles of libraries (ie. Unreal Engine) and so on.

games like Pier Solar on Genesis/MD and the ng.devteam games on neo geo are very impressive when you consider the difficulties of developing on that kind of hardware.

>>2480626
isn't the Xbox 360 version basically perfect? people play it competitively.

>>2480623
https://tcrf.net/Ultimate_Mortal_Kombat_3_(SNES)
https://tcrf.net/Ultimate_Mortal_Kombat_3_(Genesis)

>> No.2480862

>>2480239
This game looks neat as fuck and now I want that fucking Genesis cart. I'm a sucker for novelty releases like that.

>> No.2481023

Trying to learn how to make an nes game. Making a side scrolling platformer is hard as fuck, I don't know how so many people made them

>> No.2481046

>>2479902
Is it just the angle, or is that cart longer than the standard cart?