Hello SpritesMind,
I came here because I have a need for specific technical knowledge on the Sega Genesis, among other things, and I hope the community here will be able to help me.
First of all, I don't have a strong interest at this time to develop any actual homebrew games. While I certainly understand and hope for the success of these projects, it simply isn't something I want to be focusing on right now.
I am developing a private game project with a few of my friends. I am focusing on replicating the performance, graphics, and audio as accurately as possible for multiple old video game systems, especially the Genesis and Super Nintendo. I am disappointed by the number of inauthentic "retro" games that are out there now.
Therefore, I would like some help to lead me in the right direction for such things as: how the Genesis processes graphics and audio, what the best program/tool for creating Genesis audio is at this time, etc.
I have already done a bit of research into this matter, but there is still a lot I do not know. I have been trying to draw game graphics based on the hardware information at Sega Retro, but it is not especially helpful, and may not be 100% accurate. For music, I have tried Deflemask Tracker, XPMCK, and Shiru's VGM Music Maker. I gave up with Deflemask because of its inability to export real Genesis audio data. The others are both decent, but XPMCK's PCM implementation is buggy and hard to understand.
I will probably want to study how to use assembly code to process audio, since I am hoping to develop a multi-system tracker in the future (focused on systems that use Yamaha soundchips). I don't have the programming experience to work on that right now, but I would like to learn how I could do something like that.
If you can give me some pointers, thank you.
An introduction of myself and some beginner questions
Moderator: BigEvilCorporation
Hi Blaze,
You'll quickly find there is no "best tool" for any thing
It's all about
- language used
- input
- personnal feeling
For sound, you have at least 6 ways to play song (read 6 formats/tools)
For graphics, it's all depend on what you want to produce.
will you need fast loading (DMA) ?
few space (uncompression needed) ?
tiles or sprites ?
special FX (play with hint, shadow, highlight) ?
perhaps this will give you an intro of what is possible :
http://md.squee.co/VDP
Good luck
You'll quickly find there is no "best tool" for any thing
It's all about
- language used
- input
- personnal feeling
For sound, you have at least 6 ways to play song (read 6 formats/tools)
For graphics, it's all depend on what you want to produce.
will you need fast loading (DMA) ?
few space (uncompression needed) ?
tiles or sprites ?
special FX (play with hint, shadow, highlight) ?
perhaps this will give you an intro of what is possible :
http://md.squee.co/VDP
Good luck