Question on Programming Fighting games on the Mega Drive

Mikel · Post by **Mikel** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:13 pm

Hi, I'm completely new to this nice place, and I have a question:

I want to learn how to program a Fighting game for the Mega Drive (Seeing on how Fatal Fury 1 & 2, Art of Fighting 1, and King of the Monsters 1 & 2 were made on the Mega Drive). I want to make a port of Garou: Mark of the Wolves to the Mega Drive, and I want to know how long It takes to program a fighting game for the Sega Mega Drive.

So, are there any SDK's for programming Mega Drive fighting games?

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:21 pm

There is no SDK for certain type of games, and no information about programming game of certain genre for certain platform as well. Programming for platform, game programming and specific genre is absolutely independent themes.

If you know nothing about programming, it take many years. If you have good low-level programming skills, but you have no experience with SMD, it take few years. If you are genius, you'll maybe done this in less than year.

Huge · Post by **Huge** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:44 pm

No offense, but there's no way anybody will ever port Garou Mark of the Wolves to the Megadrive. That game used something like 800mbits, the Megadrive can't even address 1/20 of that size.
If it is ported, it would have to be downgraded at exorbital levels - to the point that it's a completely different game.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:51 pm

Huge wrote:No offense, but there's no way anybody will ever port Garou Mark of the Wolves to the Megadrive. That game used something like 800mbits, the Megadrive can't even address 1/20 of that size.

For today, ~128MB cart (using banking) is not so big problem. In any case, a lot of downgrade would be necessary to fit in the VRAM limitations.

Huge · Post by **Huge** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:45 pm

Shiru wrote:
Huge wrote:No offense, but there's no way anybody will ever port Garou Mark of the Wolves to the Megadrive. That game used something like 800mbits, the Megadrive can't even address 1/20 of that size.
For today, ~128MB cart (using banking) is not so big problem. In any case, a lot of downgrade would be necessary to fit in the VRAM limitations.

I don't know if you've played it, but Garou has near Street Fighter 3 level animation. By playing it from vram, you'd have to downgrade animation to absymal levels. Maybe you could do more by streaming animations from the cart, but that will only work if you can get all character gfx stored into one 4mb bank.

*maybe* you could get it done on the Saturn with the 4mb cart, but even that would be very ambitious.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:01 pm

I have played it a lot, and actually I can't say it near SFIII. Nobody says that all animation frames must be fit into VRAM, only BG and two current frames, but even this would require a lot of downgrade.

Saturn with 4 MB cart must store all animation frames of two characters in those 4 MB, so SMD, being cartridge-based system, has sort of advantage.

ob1 · Post by **ob1** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 7:02 am

The fonz has made some tries with huge sprites decompressing. See his site.

ElBarto · Post by **ElBarto** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 7:16 am

ob1 wrote:The fonz has made some tries with huge sprites decompressing. See his site.

Yeah, that's why I tried at first my Mega Multi Fighter (an old demo is on the Demo part of this forum). I'm still working on it, I've solve a lot of bugs and now I'm working on the input part (to have combo and special).
But to do a garou or sfiii it's nearly impossible, n) ..I don't know if in my game I can have a backgroud level + 2 characters + special (like an hadoke..

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 7:33 am

You can transfer 14KBytes of tiles into VRAM a single frame in 50Hz (though much less in 60Hz)... lot of things can be achieved IMO

powerofrecall · Post by **powerofrecall** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:52 pm

Huge wrote:No offense, but there's no way anybody will ever port Garou Mark of the Wolves to the Megadrive. That game used something like 800mbits, the Megadrive can't even address 1/20 of that size.
If it is ported, it would have to be downgraded at exorbital levels - to the point that it's a completely different game.

I think it's still possible, but you're right... it'd be like what Takara did to Neo-Geo games

plee · Post by **plee** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:08 am

ElBarto wrote:
ob1 wrote:The fonz has made some tries with huge sprites decompressing. See his site.
Yeah, that's why I tried at first my Mega Multi Fighter (an old demo is on the Demo part of this forum). I'm still working on it, I've solve a lot of bugs and now I'm working on the input part (to have combo and special).
But to do a garou or sfiii it's nearly impossible, n) ..I don't know if in my game I can have a backgroud level + 2 characters + special (like an hadoke..

SFII came out for the Genny so I would think you could do a pretty decent SFIII version.

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:28 am

The lack of logic in that post is astounding.

Let's try the same post but with a different game.

SF2 came out on the Genesis, so I think it can do SF4.

ob1 · Post by **ob1** » Thu May 28, 2009 7:03 am

Please, keep quiet gentleman.

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Thu May 28, 2009 8:24 am

Yeah, after reading a bit more of his posts I realized I was being an idiot. I left my post up instead of editing it so my idiocy could be recorded for the ages.

plee · Post by **plee** » Sat May 30, 2009 12:28 am

My point was that, SF3 was not that much of a difference than SF2 as far as graphics so I think you could do a decent job of it for the Genesis. SF4 is a different story... Having some friends who live and breathe SF, graphics is not always their big concern, it's playability and matchups between the different characters. I would love to reverse/disassemble SF for the Genesis just to look at the joypad logic as it's the heart of all the SF games.