11 replies to this topic

[Paranoia Dragon]

I thought I'd start a topic here, & just see what kind of interest there would be for something like this. I've often thought about the idea of porting some Lynx games to the Turbo/PC Engine(keep in mind, I don't have an specifc plans or anything), & have thought about what games I'd like to port most. Ofcoarse, I'd have to get a coder at the very least, that has some mild interest. I'm pretty sure I can get a sprite artist or 2 onboard, & then I'd do the music.



One of the ones that comes to mind, is Slime World, however, there's already a Slime World on the Turbo & Genesis. And while I feel they could've done a better job, it just doesn't seem like it'd be worth it to do a slightly better version of that game. If anything I miss the most, it's the slime in the bg, seems like it'd be an easy tile pallette swapping, but I'm not coder. There's also Skweek on the Turbo, though, I don't think it's the exact same game, & Skweek is probably on some PC's for all I know. There were 2 versions of Pit Fighter(Hu card & CD) that still haven't seen the light of day, plus, it's technically an arcade game.



Dirty Larry. If I did that one, I would like to add some more moves, as well as add some more guns. Not to mention, I don't believe there's any music ingame. I recall there being a tune or 2 at the begining, but, like quite a few Lynx & Jag games, it's one of those that doesn't have level or boss music, so, I'd have to come up with some original stuff for it. I'd also maybe take some idea's from Technocop for Genesis. Atleast in the people blowing up department.



Kung Food. Once again, I would want to add more moves, that game had potential, but I don't recall it being all that fun, nor do I recall music ingame. I'm too lazy to boot it up. We'll eventually have a brawler in the works for the Turbo, so this(& possibly Dirty Larry) could maybe use that game's engine.



Guantlet 3. I think the Turbo could easily handle it. It'd need more music, I'd probably remake anything I can find from any of the other Guantlet games so that there's more dungeon tunes. I'd assume, like the Dungeon Explorer games, it could be 5 players. We could probably pull off the sprite scaling easily with frames of animation, though, if a level is really heavy on different types of enemies, there may just not be enough memory, atleast as a Super Cd.



Hydra & Turbo Sub. However, they'd probably take a hit in the scaling department. It's hard to say, especially with Hydra, if there'd be enough memory to have that many frames of animation for, well, everything.



Xybots. I think someone even suggested porting that over, though, I don't think it was someone who actually is a part of the homebrew scene. Even still, it(& Hydra) were both arcade games, so, not technically Lynx exclusive, though, AFAIK, there were no ports, atleast, not on a console.



Toki. Once again, arcade game, this one with several ports.



Electrocop. Probably not doable, atleast, not as-is. Maybe someone could come up with some ideas.



Gates of Zendocon. I'd want to atleast have 3 choices of main weapons, though, there's plenty of shmups on the Turbo.



Power Factor & Switchblade 2 could both probably be pretty cool, including the adding of music for Switchblade 2, I think Power Factor had music.



Viking Child. This would be a cool one, maybe speed it up slightly, add music. It's kind of got a Wonderboy in Monsterland feel, though, I think it may not be an exclusive Lynx game though.



So, any thoughts, anything you'd really like to see maybe some day hopefully if my dreams come to fruition? I've got too many projects right now at the moment, but, still, doesn't hurt to dream.

[matashen]

I dont want play Lynx Games on a console.
The other way is more interesting.

what games from the consoles would you choose play on lynx.

Than we all stop talking about and working on it.

next infos later this week.

[bentper2]

We need more games ported to the lynx :-)

[108 Stars]

Electrocop would be nice on console, and I don´t see why it would not be doable.
The thing is that it is an interesting game but suffers from the Lynx' low res. You have this big character and overview is not good because of that. There´s so little tme between enemies entering the screen and hitting you, I think it would really benefit from having a higher resolution so you see more of your surroundings.

Power Factor would be nice too, it would also benefit from a better overview, though not as much as Electrocop.

Switchblade 2 would be cool, but there is a version for Amiga 500. Same for Viking Child, which could also use a Lynx version with decent speed. If you speed it up, don´t do it slightly, do it needs twice the speed. It is the slowest jump´n run I have ever played.

Dirty Larry & Kung Food just aren´t very good imo..

[ACrystal2011]

more games for LYNX

[Rex Dart]

****in' S.T.U.N. Runner!

[Paranoia Dragon]

I'm not suggesting there not be more games for the Lynx, I love the Lynx. However, I have no way of truly contributing to Lynx homebrew, since my main forte is music, & all my stuff is redbook audio. I've never used any trackers or whatever(not sure what the Lynx uses, MML?). I just bust out my old MMT-8 sequencer & my Roland Juno, & make tunes for cd games. I wish I could do chip tunes for various homebrew projects, that's just one more thing I'd like to add to my abilities.

I love the Lynx & the Turbo almost equally. I'd say the Lynx is my favorite portable, & the Turbo is my favorite console(not that I don't love the Jag). I'd like more people to give the Lynx a chance, & maybe working on some Lynx ports work...

In any event, I think Electrocop could easily be done on the SNES, since it has no problem with scaling, but the Turbo, I just don't know. In regards to S.T.U.N Runner, I'd love to work on a port of that(though, technically it's an arcade game), as it's probably one of my all time favorite games! The Turbo can't do scaling(unless it's done using a tremendous amount of animation), nor can it really do poly's. However, there were atleast 2 games that did, Gunboat & Falcon. Those 2 games suck, but, still, the fact that they push some poly's, makes me think, maybe S.T.U.N. Runner could be done combining tiles & poly's. Some coders have suggested that Wolfenstein could be done on the Turbo. It might take alot of talent, but there are so many conversions of that game, it wouldn't be worth it. So, maybe if that game could be done, perhaps S.T.U.N. Runner could. It seems like it'd be easier, since in Wolfenstein, you have full control of moving around the screen, but in S.T.U.N. Runner, you only control the vehicle as it cruises the set path.

Dirty Larry & Kung Food might not be good, but my suggestion is to use what good there is, & improve upon them. They both had potential. I'd want to add what should've been there in the first place.

[Ninjabba]

Its never too late to learn we could definitely use a dedicated chiptuner around here. I'm screwing around in ProTracker to get something interesting for my own project.

[Paranoia Dragon]

Heh, I wish! I barely have time for our Turbo projects as it is! Our next game is gonna have 25+ songs. I've taken care of 12 which took me roughly 1 song a month. And we want to release it this year! I honestly could've planned the soundtrack out to be shorter, but, the way I have it all put together so far, there's no way I'm going back now. Mabye in several years, after we've gotten our main projects out of the way, (including my own secret project) I'll look into chip tunin', I'd honestly love to!

[ThomH]

Paranoia Dragon, on Tue Feb 7, 2012 12:39 AM, said:

In any event, I think Electrocop could easily be done on the SNES, since it has no problem with scaling

I think the SNES can scale and rotate its background but can't do a thing with sprites. So you're in trouble as soon as you want more than one thing to scale distinctly. The Lynx has much more flexible video hardware than the SNES — the 16-color palette limitation is probably its most obvious weakness.

Other thoughts: I wish I could compose music.

[108 Stars]

ThomH, on Wed Feb 8, 2012 10:53 AM, said:

Paranoia Dragon, on Tue Feb 7, 2012 12:39 AM, said:

In any event, I think Electrocop could easily be done on the SNES, since it has no problem with scaling

I think the SNES can scale and rotate its background but can't do a thing with sprites. So you're in trouble as soon as you want more than one thing to scale distinctly. The Lynx has much more flexible video hardware than the SNES — the 16-color palette limitation is probably its most obvious weakness.

Other thoughts: I wish I could compose music.

The SNES can actually scale sprites, I have no idea how well it does or what limitations it has when doing it though

Look from about 5:20:


As for the Lynx biggest weakness, as mentioned above for me it is clearly the resolution. It´s just a huge problem when doing graphics having 40 lines less to use than GameBoy and GameGear. The 16 colors I can do well with though.

[TailChao]

108 Stars, on Wed Feb 8, 2012 11:53 AM, said:

The SNES can actually scale sprites, I have no idea how well it does or what limitations it has when doing it though

Look from about 5:20:


As for the Lynx biggest weakness, as mentioned above for me it is clearly the resolution. It´s just a huge problem when doing graphics having 40 lines less to use than GameBoy and GameGear. The 16 colors I can do well with though.

This is not true object scaling, It's just some prerendered foot soldier tiles in a BG layer and messing with tilemaps. Some Genesis games do similar things, but it is a good trick.
If you want sprite scaling on the SNES it must be done in software and then copied to VRAM, the only thing it can do alone is affine transforms on a single BG layer. Which is quite nice.

As for the Lynx's resolution, yes it is a little difficult to work with. The lucky thing though is that it is very close to the 16:10 aspect ratio, so it's nice and easy to do layouts for it.