Darkstalkers for Mega Drive/SEGA Genesis **Progress Report**

[@3dohd]

Hey man - This is pretty awesome. I'm currently working on MK2 for the 3DO and I assume we're both dealing with a lot of the same challenges. There's a guy named Chris / TruFunGames working on an MK1 port to the Jaguar as well. We're all nuts ;)

[@rafaelantonio6765]

why dont you port street fighter zero?

[@vicentereisdacruz1915]

Fight games are a big challenge for any developer. Thanks for all your work...the Sega 16bits community is amazing

[@edsound2354]

Amazing job! It's almost unbelievable see this port working on real hardware, like the last build you've shared with us... Keep going!

[@GreyMatterShades]

Some really impressive stuff here. Amazing animation especially. I'm a bit concerned about the prospect of getting special moves implemented considering it looks like you're already hitting VRAM limits, but maybe if some less essential animation frames are cut (like from idle animations) and with some other creativity it could be possible. What you've done already is amazing though. Best of luck with the rest of the project!

[@rafaelantonio6765]

2 black bars. special moves are managed by DMA

[@rafaelantonio6765]

dithered lifebars take less vram

[@carlosiagnecz]

There is no need, you can use dplcs to upload the animation frames to vram.

[@carlosiagnecz]

So much so it's already being used, the broken tiles at 2:30 are the player tiles

[@bankbank]

ambitious project

[@Rayterni]

Amazing work so far! 🙏

[@rafaelantonio6765]

that glitchy moon stage is a VISUAL LET DOWN

[@cursodelicitacao-leonardo]

Excellent work, keep it up!

[@heilong79]

I was just thinking of this project the other day. I remember on the Saturn game Victor was cut back a good bit in frames.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

keep him and just remove his critical frames

[@kwizzeh]

This is fire. Impressive progress!

[@redfiregamesoficial]

Simplesmente incrível !!! Parabéns !

[@VezukiCh]

Love to see more progress! It would be fine with me if you switched Anakaris with someone like B.B. Hood... Especially if you can add her dog there too 👀

[@caveiracibernetica]

Awesome!

[@ghhf.yalexissanchez4713]

Impresionante trabajo!! Eres un crack!!!jijiji

[@Mohammed1000real]

Pretty decent progress so far, but you should take your time including all the characters.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

also better quality art for the stages

[@rafaelantonio6765]

paint the glitchy moon stage in all dark blue

[@rafaelantonio6765]

full dark blue color for the moon

[@NEONBattleGlitch]

Very VERY cool 😎

[@DeJotaGamer]

holly smoke!

[@JBalmoreS]

If the problem with Anakaris is that he has too many animation frames upon extending his arms then you need to split and redraw his snake arm into segmented tiles, as he extends you effectively create a copy and paste after effect of bandages. Like how in games like Turrican and Strider they used repeated sphere tiles to make a rope. The arms will look less detailed as it is just repeating the same tile but it should work. In theory it will function like a pop up book when you slide a page. Some frames I saw were just recolored sprites for when he is flashing. You can easily cut frames out by having him flash two contrasting pastel colors, such as pink or yellow with neon blue. Why pastel colors? Because they create a glow effect upon the darker and duller backgrounds. Contrasting colors are also just as flashy but dont flicker too fast between frames as the colors will blur into one combined hue. Give it a try and see how it looks. Worse case scenario is you just have him flicker into a white silhouette between frames. If VRAM, processing and sprite tearing is still a problem with special or EX moves you can also have the background change to monochrome or black out like they do with games like Rival Schools or Bloody Roar 2. If anything, there should be no animation within the background when special moves are on active frames.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

just add 2 black bars

[@rafaelantonio6765]

sprite tearing DMA improvement

[@rafaelantonio6765]

black screen white like batman no need

[@rafaelantonio6765]

you cant have enough vram with 320 res mode

[@kellymountain]

O.O hell yeah

[@rafaelantonio6765]

backgrounds deserve a better dither artwork. all dark blue for the car moon stage

[@NEONBattleGlitch]

Would it be possible to downsize (overall) Anakaris’ sprite size to fit the bigger looking moves, in addition to cutting frames?

[@rafaelantonio6765]

that corrupted stage should work well with no paralax

[@rafaelantonio6765]

just 2 colors for each character makes it faster to finish

[@julhao244]

What percentage is all set?

[@Retro_Reloaded101]

All the characters but Anakaris are done or at least their animation frames. Music is done. Some backgrounds need to be reworked. Animation timing and hit boxes need to be worked on. And a possible single player mode.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

horizontal bottom black bar for the select screen no need to shrink

[@rafaelantonio6765]

please consider dithering lifebars

[@rafaelantonio6765]

does paralax affect vram? real bout has no paralax

[@GreyMatterShades]

It sort of depends on the details in the background. Basically the more unique background detail an image has, the more space it'll take up in VRAM. Parallax effects don't necessarily require more VRAM, but backgrounds with parallax scrolling are often (though not always) more complex with more unique details. Parallax does affect overall performance though, so if a game is struggling to hit a good framerate, they might strip out parallax for better performance. That might be the reason for the lack of parallax in Real Bout, as it seems like they're pushing the hardware pretty hard.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

@@GreyMatterShades 256 res mode projects requires less vram

[@GreyMatterShades]

@@rafaelantonio6765 Not necessarily, but it can. It shows fewer background tiles on screen at once, which can mean you need fewer background tiles in VRAM. But for a fighting game you'd probably want all the background tiles for the stage loaded into VRAM at all times anyway, so the VRAM footprint is going to be based on the overall size of the background, not how much is displayed on screen at one time. You could load background tiles in and out of VRAM as they're needed to save a bit of space, but there's a limited amount of bandwidth for such swapping of assets, and for a fighting game I'd think it'd be more efficient to load and unload character animations based on their states (crouching, standing, jumping), and you might not be able to do both at the same time.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

@@GreyMatterShades sonic does that

[@rafaelantonio6765]

select screen must have a VS word

[@digitalwarrior4699]

nice xD

[@rafaelantonio6765]

can you shrink 1p 2p HUD sprites

[@rafaelantonio6765]

replace the middle center woman with BB Hood or akuma no need for special attack

[@rafaelantonio6765]

neon stage will be fixed?

[@rafaelantonio6765]

please keep Anakaris. if you remove 1p 2p sprites and replace them as format text you save some vram also by using low res project genesis mode instead of 320p

[@rafaelantonio6765]

HUD

[@rafaelantonio6765]

Anakaris

[@damin9913]

Who is making the genesis version????

[@rafaelantonio6765]

seagamer

[@rafaelantonio6765]

take you time then port street fighter zero 3

[@rafaelantonio6765]

dont like the moon line dithering

[@rafaelantonio6765]

add blanka as a secret ´char

[@rafaelantonio6765]

yellow lifebars man

[@vectororbitex7866]

Hey bro! Che your Twitter Mesage box, i sent you a new song improvement!

[@rafaelantonio6765]

can genesis have orchestra like star wars:?

[@Retro_Reloaded101]

I'm on it! Sorry, I do my best to check twitter more often.

[@vectororbitex7866]

@@Retro_Reloaded101 No problem my friend! I only want to let you know! Greetings!

[@NoSpamForYou]

Do the 128K VRAM mod and program for the interleaved banks. Someone has to push these things forward. Same with the SNES.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

snes has a 16kb limitation in ppu unfort

[@rafaelantonio6765]

not challenge here