Pier Solar: Official Thread

[Genesis Knight]

But since only one thing is 'thinking' at a time (turn-based) then it's virtually like there's only one monster at a time, which is why a monster limit makes me go 'eh?'

Are you really positive you're maxing the Genesis? Can't it just be the difference in programming skill between 1) a homebrew dev team and 2) a commercial programming firm with official tools and prior experience?

[evildragon]

Think of it this way.

When you play chess, it's turn based, but your oponent needs to make a smart move. Even that can take time, depending how "smart" it is to be.

RPG is sorta like that, but you have more factors to deal with.

[Genesis Knight]

Right, I understand that, but like I said - since only one monster is needing to think at a time, a party of ten monsters and a party of four monsters should be equal because although there are more characters there's still only one 'alive' at any given time.

But to be honest I don't want to insult the efforts of this dev team by any real argument on this, and I'm more curious than anything else, so we can just let this die.

[108 Stars]

Now you´re insulting us.
Fonzie is one of the best programmers when it comes to MD, even David Perry said he was very good. In demos he has proven he can bring hundreds of colours on-screen, he can do Mode-7 on MD and do awesome SFX.
I ask you again to take a look at other RPGs; you won´t find any on MD that make it better or even reach the same. PS IV for example, by Sega themselves, has wonderfully animated monsters, but therefor the party has very few animations and there are no special raster-effects like we have them in battle. And please count the monsters on screen in PS IV; I doubt you will ever encounter more than 8 at once and more than 4 of different types.

You do not have any technical knowledge yourself, so I find it harsh to doubt others´skills because you think some things are easier than others. Your idea of what is complex for the hardware and what not is just totally off. That is no crime, but what you say is just wrong.

[Zebbe]

I have a Swedish review of Chrono Trigger. It tells about the team, which wanted the monsters of the game to be as fast as in action games, but it wasn't possible because the game was already too advanced for that and because of the limited V-RAM of the SNES. I wouldn't be surprised if there are similar memory-related problems in the making of Tavern RPG.

[Genesis Knight]

Ironically, a glance at the timestamp of the posts makes you rude, 108.

[108 Stars]

Ironically, a glance at the timestamp of the posts makes you rude, 108.

Can´t see the irony. It´s quite obvious that a post as long as mine, not in my native language, takes some time, meaning: I started writing immediately after I read yor 06:49 post, and only saw your next one after I finished mine.

[Genesis Knight]

Point is that I said I was only curious and didn't want to insult you guys, only to have you blast back and then not even edit it once you saw my post. But you're clearly feeling overly touchy about this so I'm not going to bicker.

[evildragon]

Jeez, he probably didn't edit it, because he does what I do. If I see myself as the last poster, sometimes I don't even check the thread until someone else posts.

Stop it guys.

[Mr Smith]

That's it evildragon, sort of take sides and then tell them to stop arguing.

[Joe Redifer]

320x224. That's what you want to program in. Not 320x240. The NTSC Genesis cannot do that... that I know of. Will the game run properly at 60Hz or will it seem "fast"?

[108 Stars]

Hehe, Joe, you forget I´m a Palien. I said that because I´m used to 320 x 240 when contributing screenshots to another website. The game will have an option to optimize speed for both PAL and NTSC afaik. Again, Fonzie knows more, but he´s currently on vacation in Canada.

[Fonzie]

Hi
Thx for the comments. About the rez, it's about 320*216, so its both compatible with NTSC and PAL systems, and old TV's (that eat the screen edges).

About the limit of 8 monsters at once... First, I don't remember seeing a rpg with more than 8 at once ;P. Secondary, our monsters can be up to 96*96 pixels, so it eats a lot of VRAM and SPRITES in the list.

For example of an existing game with similar limitations, lunar2 usually have little 32*32pixels monsters... and like 3-4 on screen. One 96*96 monsters eats 9 times more memory/bandwidth than a 32*32 one ^^.
We have our own tricks to workaround that anyway.

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About the monster AI, I'm working on it... There is no plan to explain here how it work and with which parameters will influence it, haha!
And yeah, it's Turn Based with some surprise features

See ya

[Joe Redifer]

128 MEGA POWER for the cart version?

[108 Stars]

128 MEGA POWER for the cart version?

I´m afraid 128 MEGA POWER would let the 68 000 Heart melt immediately; 64 has to be enough.