Jo Engine: 2D game engine for the Sega Saturn

[Barone]

Hi!

I discovered this project the other day and felt like giving it a proper thread here since it looks very interesting IMO and it's currently active.

Website: http://www.jo-engine.org/

Jo Engine is a 2D game engine for the Sega Saturn written in C under MIT license.
It allows to develop game easily without extensive knowledge in embedded development.
And... games run on emulator and also on the original system !

It also offers a map editor:
http://www.jo-engine.org/mapeditor/


Sonic demo (2014):

[Genesis Knight]

Wow. Looks a ton better than I would have expected. Very smooth, good color, transparencies even! Maybe now that it's getting easier to play unsigned code on the Saturn, this sort of thing will pick up some steam.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Might be fun to try playing around in this.

[evilevoix]

Very nice I am impressed.

[tryphon]

Only one sprite for the moment. Hard to tell if it will stay smooth.

But it's a great, great project. I wish him good luck.

[Tower of Power]

Wow. Looks a ton better than I would have expected. Very smooth, good color, transparencies even! Maybe now that it's getting easier to play unsigned code on the Saturn, this sort of thing will pick up some steam.

You can play unsigned code on Saturn now?

[cleeg]

That's superb, great thread. I'd love to see some more Saturn homebrew; I've been following the row on the N64 Vs Saturn thread of late and though I can't remember who said it I think it's true there is a lot of untapped potential in this machine. I get the impression it's versatile if handled properly, it'll be interesting to see if this takes off...

As a side note, it looks like he's using a HDMI upscaler box in his vid, the OSD looks like the one I use. I'd recommend it, it's a cheapo - no - brando little thing that handles the Saturn's 240p - 480i changeovers with no lag at all.

[Sik]

So much for 2D... (what is this for, superscaler-style games?)

Only one sprite for the moment. Hard to tell if it will stay smooth.

Very likely unless something really dumb is going on under the hood, in fact the documentation seems to warn you about the functions that are slow to use. Having a shitty entity manager is more likely to be an issue (and this would be your fault since Jo doesn't provide that).

[tryphon]

(what is this for, superscaler-style games?)

You're meaning the z attribute ? I'd have thought it was related to priority (what is above what), not scaling (but it was just a supposition).

[Sik]

Yeah, but the name of the function suggests it should at least look 3D-like, and scaling sprites doesn't take much effort on the Saturn (・～・) (in hindsight, maybe the name refers to isometric games, where sprites are in 3D coordinates but their size is not affected by perspective?)

[Johannes Fetz]

Hi,

I'm the creator of this engine and I want to answer your questions.

the Z index is the layer (or priority if you wants) not stretch or scalling.

The engine is optimized to load and display many sprites at the same time not just one

You can also made many scroll map with multi layer transparency.

On the documentation some function are noted "slow" but I mean "slower" (we talk about millisecond or microsecond ) than the basic function in the jo engine.

To answer the question

You can play unsigned code on Saturn now

, you can but you have to do the swap ticks or use a modchip, but one of my friend is working on it .


PS: I will add a mode7 feature to the engine wednesday.

[willis]

Very, very interesting... Having something new for the Saturn would be completely welcome! I'm sure that machine didn't get the optimum time it needed to really reach what it was capable of. Many games showed absolute potential of what could be done, but sadly it never got the chance. Is there a homebrew scene that has released games for it? If so can anyone point me in the direction to check it out.

[LinkueiBR]

Hi,

I'm the creator of this engine and I want to answer your questions.

the Z index is the layer (or priority if you wants) not stretch or scalling.

The engine is optimized to load and display many sprites at the same time not just one

You can also made many scroll map with multi layer transparency.

On the documentation some function are noted "slow" but I mean "slower" (we talk about millisecond or microsecond ) than the basic function in the jo engine.

To answer the question , you can but you have to do the swap ticks or use a modchip, but one of my friend is working on it .


PS: I will add a mode7 feature to the engine wednesday.

[tryphon]

Good luck

I'd like to buy a Saturn, but like with all the CD-based consoles, you're never sure to have something that will function...

[Johannes Fetz]

Hi,

Thank you everybody for your support

I 'm glad to know that the project interests you

I'll post news about the project on this thread