Hello you all

[Top l'âne]

Activated account. Nice.

I spread a few words right here to introduce myself. (Didn't find a dedicated sub forum)

I've become a big MegaDrive fan for the past 10 years.
I found my brother's genuine MD2 model in 2013 and started collecting a few games.
I heard soon after of a game called Pier Solar and was stunned to discover a productive scene on a retro system.
I bought the 2015's release and decided to jump in Genesis dev.

I had no knowledge in prog in any way.

I started learning C. My sixth sense told me this honorable langage could be useful.
As an amazing piece of luck I discovered SGDK a few time later.

I produced a small bunch of playable demos during one or two years and started another project of a complete game, a shmup.
A team work with a friend of mine.

I got a few complicated years then. The project aborted. And I never coded anymore.
Complicated years!?
Not only, cause I met the girl who's gonna become my wife in a couple of weeks.

My life has become much more steady and when I realised the past month I had backed the third Kickstarter project in a four months (Cursed Knight, Astebros & Affinity of sorrow, by the way), I decided to jump back in Genesis dev.

I spent the last three weeks re-learning C and compilating a few SGDK exercises such as tiles display, sprite controlling and plan scroll, enjoying VGM and BMP files creation with side tools.

To perform a complete game remains a vast goal.
I'll try to but demos could be a much more realistic aim. I think of 80's micro style demos (I owned an Atari St when I was younger... everything is said^^) as well as interactive demos, for instance.

To do so I need to collect many more informations and I thought this forum could be obviously helpul.

To conclude, I'll add an:

"Hello World!"



Top l'âne

[AmateurSegaDev]

Welcome!

I too am new to the scene. Yes, making a full game is a lofty goal, but even just a few minutes a night can add up. Some progress is better than no progress.

May we both find success in our endeavors.

[Chilly Willy]

Welcome to the site. If you're into Sega console development, this is a great site to join. Lots of people with lots of experience who don't mind sharing that experience with newcomers. If you need help, just ask. If you can help someone else here, chime right in. One thing I suggest is go through the forums and skim through the list of topics. If you find one that looks interesting, skim through it pretty quickly. If you think it's worth a more in-depth reading, bookmark it and keep skimming. There's lots of good info here, but you'll have to find it. If you're looking for something specific, the search feature can help. Then if you still have trouble, ask. Someone will either know, or maybe point you towards a thread or two that has the info you need.

[Top l'âne]

Replies!

I've just noticed it.

@Amateur: I had sent you a PM in the meantime to know more about your current... endeavors.
Considering we both work on SGDK v1.7, I would all the more suggest a short associative project (everyone who feels concerned by this idea is welcome by the way).

@Chilly: the dev scene seems very silent to me. When I started a few years ago, I could find tens of WIP everywhere on forums and pretty cool guys to share knowledge and tools of their own. Most have disapeared.
Networks may have changed. I heard lately of Discord for instance.
Forums may be dying, informations remain though and I thank you for your advices. I'll try to wander on spritesmind efficiently.

[Stef]

Welcome on the board !
As you noticed indeed forums are not as active than they were some years ago, new tools as Discord appeared and lot of people moved there.
I've to admit myself that i rather prefer to use Discord (there is a SGDK discord server), it's just faster to discuss / provide support using that media than classic forum. But still i'm trying to check/read SpritesMind forum regularly
Anyway good luck in your quest of developing on your Mega Drive, it's definitely a good thing that you started by learning C language

[AmateurSegaDev]

For what it's worth, I do find it much easier to search for answers on a forum compared to Discord.

[Chilly Willy]

For what it's worth, I do find it much easier to search for answers on a forum compared to Discord.

QFT

Discord is good for asking a question and getting a number of (almost) immediate answers, but generally terrible for finding existing knowledge to browse through at you leisure. Discord is basically one exceedingly long stream of consciousness. Imagine if SpritesMind had one thread per category that held every single post for that category. Now try to find that info!

[cero]

Imagine if SpritesMind had one thread per category that held every single post for that category. Now try to find that info!

You forgot that it's not available via google, requires your phone number just to read it, and you're at the mercy of one company who may ban you at any time for any reason.

[Chilly Willy]

Yes, good points. I like Discord okay, but don't spend much time on it. Only as needed. I still prefer email that I can respond to at my leisure, and boards like this one for organizing info and questions.