Recent competitions mentioned in the intro:
NESDev - https://itch.io/jam/nesdev-2022
Amiga Blitz Basic Jam - https://itch.io/jam/abbgjam
CPCRetroDev 2022 - https://itch.io/jam/cpcretrodev2022/entries
SMS Power (2023 competition ends March 27th)- https://www.smspower.org/
Amiga Game Jam - "Swords and Sorcery" theme (ends April 30th) - https://itch.io/jam/amigamejam
MAIN FEATURE - ROBOCOP RETURNS
ANSWERS FROM RETRO ENCODER (Mega Drive/Genesis port):
Q. What inspired you to convert Robocop to Genesis?
When I got my Sega Genesis in the 90s, I really wanted an arcade version of Robocop for it, but it never came.
So that's my biggest inspiration.
Q. Did you play the original arcade game back in the 1980s?
I played a lot of Robocop in arcades in the late 80s.
I knew the tricks to earning more points with the boxes and shooting the points in the third and fourth stages.
I also finished with 1 credit
Q. What is your development environment?
I use Microsoft's Visual Studio, C++ and the SGDK
Q. What have been the most difficult things so far in the conversion?
Convert arcade version sprites to Sega Genesis colour palette and re-make map tiles to fit Sega Genesis VRAM
Q. Will you be making any changes or adding extra content?
At the moment my plan is to develop a faithful arcade port
Q. Are you working on any other conversions or original games?
For Sega Genesis, this is my first project
Q. Would you play the Amiga version being done?
Certainly
Q. Are you planning a physical release, or will it be too difficult because of the copyrights?
I do not intend to release this port in a cartridge.
I believe the community makes its own cartridges.
ANSWERS FROM DANIEL ALLSOPP (Amiga AGA):
Q. What inspired you to convert Robocop to AGA Amigas?
I think the primary reason would be that I just wanted to learn 68000 assembler, and at the same time to do something meaningful whilst learning. I’ve been programming various languages since I was 10 years old and so if I was going to learn a new one, it wouldn’t interest me to just pick a book up and learn the intricacies of a language without putting that knowledge to good use.
Also, I don’t think the original Amiga version did the hardware any justice, what with it being an Atari-ST port. That said, it’s not horrendous and I have massive respect for the original developer for getting something out under what were probably massive time constraints. As is the story of most Amiga ports.
Lastly, I think there’s been a big surge in new Amiga games coming out over the last couple of years; we have originals like Metro Siege, Devils Temple and Scourge of the Underkind, and then there are wonderful ports of arcade games like Rygar, Super Sprint, Bomb Jack and Pacman all looking great. We also have ports of original Amiga games like Turrican 2 being remastered for AGA using 256 colour graphics, so I guess I wanted to have a go at joining the gang!
Q. Did you play the original arcade game back in the 1980s?
I did, but my only memories of playing the arcade game were on holiday in Mallorca when I was probably 10 or 11? There was a small cafe/bar just across the road from the holiday complex and my cousin and I used to regularly run across and thread 25 peseta coins into the machine for hours on end. However, I do remember there being a problem with this particular version of the arcade machine, in that there was no jump button, or the jump button was broken because once you reached the scrap yard you *need* to be able to jump, but of course, we couldn’t so ended up being stuck there unable to progress any further.
Q. What is your development environment?
I’m an iOS software engineer by trade so I run a high-end Apple setup with multiple monitors, which comes in handy with the emulator. Code is edited using Atom editor and the m68k plugin for syntax highlighting and the code is compiled via the command line with vasm. I use FS-UAE with a basic A1200 configuration for development testing, but I also have an A4000 and an A1200 for testing on real hardware at strategic points of development.
The software side of things is a mix of native Apple software such as Photoshop, Aseprite and Tiled as well as the aforementioned Atom and FS-UAE. On the Amiga side, I use Personal Paint, which has great colour reduction and remapping capabilities. I’ve also written a few tools for macOS for image compression and data manipulation.
I can’t begin to imagine how tedious it would have been back in the day without all of the modern equipment, emulators and general development environment that I take for granted today.
Q. What have been the most difficult things so far in the conversion?
Not so much the conversion, but first off the bat has got to be learning the intricacies of the Amiga’s hardware, it still baffles me and I have all of the official documentation and hardware specifications in print right in front of me. Fortunately, there is a lot of help out there from people who know the hardware inside-out so you’re never stuck for long. Hopefully, it’s all sinking in!
As far as the conversion is concerned, keeping the frame rate up is a challenge, and pulling the colours down to a shared 64 colour palette from the arcade originals sometimes has its challenges but with the Amiga copper’s ability to change colours on the fly for each scanline, there are some nice little effects you can manage.
Getting hold of the arcade graphics has also been a bit hit-and-miss. Some nice folks have managed to rip the background graphics, but apart from RoboCop himself and the end-of-level bosses, there are no downloadable graphics files for any of the other sprites. Unfortunately, that means saving a lossless video through MAME, extracting the individual frames and then ripping and cutting out each individual sprite by hand in Photoshop.
I think the actual graphics are there in MAME but they’re all stored as 16x16 pixel blocks, and in no discernible order either so it would be like putting a huge jigsaw puzzle together and I don’t have time for that :-)
Q. Will you be making any changes or adding extra content?
Although the arcade and home computer versions were developed at pretty much the same time, there are some differences to the home versions which I do want to include, for example, the alleyway shootout, and the photo e-fit sub-games. I think they would be good to include along side the target practice rounds featured in the arcade version.
Some of the prologue phrases were a bit… oddly worded so I’ve changed those slightly to make it read better.
I’ve added a few things to the intro sequence too, like the 4th directive and I've used some moody music which comes from the Amiga version of RoboCop 3. There’s also a nice cut scene before the level loads of the news readers explaining about the riot on downtown main street, instead of just the black screen and a bit of text used in the arcade. Little things like that.
Gameplay will obviously have to change slightly too, the arcade was easy to complete so long as you kept threading coins into it but that’s not going to work with a home version so I’ll have to think about that a bit.
Q. Are you working on any other conversions or original games?
Nothing as of yet, I think I have my hands full with this RoboCop conversion as it is. After I get through that though, I’ll continue to write Amiga games as it would be a shame to waste that knowledge and a half-decent game engine on one game!
Q. Which homebrew programmers/teams inspire you?
I think all of the guys on the English Amiga Board are my biggest inspiration; seeing what they’re capable of squeezing out of this decades-old hardware is amazing, and they’re never short of ideas and more importantly, help when needed. I’m just getting my head around the 68k language still but some of those lot blow my mind with their optimisation techniques, out-of-the-box thinking and deep-rooted knowledge of the Amiga hardware.
So yeah, all of those guys really but if I had to pinpoint one project that literally had my jaw on the floor when I saw what was being achieved it would be the Turrican 2 AGA conversion, that one is superb.
Q. Would you play the Mega Drive version being done?
I’m guessing the only way to play home-brew Mega Drive games these days would be through an emulator so yes, I would definitely try the Mega Drive version of RoboCop when it’s released, it would be nice to compare the two ports side by side.
You know, having said that it, dawns on me that I have never actually played on a Mega Drive since I was at school; it was definitely before I got my first Amiga which was in 1992. My neighbour had a Japanese import model which was pretty cool, and I only had a Master System at the time so it would be good to get back into it.
Q. Are you planning a physical release, or will it be too difficult because of the copyrights?
I would love a physical release, I see all of the other new Amiga home-brew releases being offered in glossy boxes and with real floppy disks so that would definitely be nice to have. Copyright issues, I have no idea what would be involved here; on one hand, I doubt anyone cares about the Amiga anymore but then RoboCop is still a high-value money maker for someone so it might get shot down straight away.
ROUSING REMAKES - five forthcoming remakes/conversions:
THE SIMPSONS ARCADE (MEGA DRIVE)
Interview coming soon.
TURRICAN 2 AGA (AMIGA)
Now released: https://bit.ly/eab-turrican2
KING OF FIGHTERS ’94 (MEGA DRIVE)
WONDER BOY (AMIGA)
Now released: https://bit.ly/wbaga-demo
CASTLEVANIA - SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT (MEGA DRIVE)
YouTube development diary - https://bit.ly/pigsy13
NEWS BYTES
AMIGA: Matze1887 - platform game Minky playable on a stock Amiga. https://bit.ly/minky-amiga
ATARI 7800: 1942, supporting YM music on the Dragonfly cart, or POKEY music for Concerto users. https://bit.ly/1942-7800
ATARI ST: playable demo of Cosmos Chronicles, inspired by the classic Ultima games. https://bit.ly/cosmos-st-demo
C64: New Lands by Magic Krol. https://bit.ly/newlands-c64
PICO-8: Beamrider by Paul Hammond - https://pahammond.itch.io/beamrider
Invader Overload by Morning Toast - https://morningtoast.itch.io/invader-overload
PLUS/4: Raid Over Moscow - https://bit.ly/raid-plus4
ZX SPECTRUM: Drift 2K22 - https://bit.ly/drift2k22
Pac-Hic Rehab (for 128K machines) - https://danielisoba.itch.io/pachic
Johnathan – Trick Or Treat - https://bit.ly/jonathan-trick
VARIOUS: Tenebra 2 for Plus/4 and C64, plus the original Tenebra for ZX Spectrum - https://h4plo.itch.io/
CHAMPION CODER - ALASTAIR LOW
[Name]
Alastair Low
[Info]
From: Scotland
Website: http://www.lowtek.games/
Format: NES, Playdate
Previous game: Flea, Tapeworm Disco Puzzle
Working on: Playdate experiments
Ally Low’s homebrew games have reached a wider audience, thanks to Evercade and Playdate.
Q. What got you interested in developing for old consoles?
I had an NES and an Amiga from a very young age as either hand-me-downs from family friends or cheap pickups at the car boot. I got my hands on software called The Games Factory when I was in primary school which allowed me to build pixel art games. Studied games art at Uni and my flat mats were into old hardware too. At that point, I heard about the game “D-Pad Hero” and discovered the world of homebrew. We did a few test projects for Mega Drive back then, but they didn't go any further than tech demos. Years later while working in the games industry I saw a rise in new homebrew after the success of the games Micro Mages and Xeno Crisis, and the new NESmaker engine had just launched.
I followed all the tutorials and added a spin on the platformer controller where the character always jumps from a previous game idea and that's how Flea jumped onto the NES.
Q. How has your dyslexia affected your programming and your game playing?
Being dyslexic has really affected my gaming life. I think I stayed more in the NES era over SNES as the games were less wordy. Zelda on NES was an exploring adventure but on the SNES it was a visual novel with some gameplay, and I struggled to enjoy it.
On the game creation and coding side, dyslexia has made it difficult. My main problem was reading the documentation which was usually text only. More recently I’ve got a screen reader which I couldn't imagine living without. The widespread of YouTube tutorials has also helped a ton and I’m not sure I would have learned as much if it weren’t for that as a resource. I’ve also learned when something breaks, the first thing to check I’ve spelt the variable names the same way.
Q. What development environment do you use for NES games?
We used NESmaker for Flea and then C and NES lib for Tapeworm. I’ve played around with GB studio and have been very impressed with what you can achieve with no coding experience.
Q. What makes it easy or difficult to develop for NES?
One thing that I like about working on NES is it's easier to know when you’re done. With modern game dev, you can polish forever but on NES you run out of colours or memory and then design around it to squeeze as much as you can in.
For Flea, we used NESmaker which did all the technical stuff and is a good place for people more art and design-focused like me, and the community is very helpful and supportive. Couldn't have done it without their support, I tried to share anything I learn along the way in a game mega-thread on the forums for people in future and myself when I forget.
On Tapeworm I teamed up with Valdir who handled all the technical stuff, he would occasionally tell me the way we were doing something wasn't working and we'd find another way around it.
Designing around bugs was definitely a feature in both games and in a few cases turned out to be features/ mechanics, like the small jump in Flea.
Q. How did you come up with the ideas for Flea and Tapeworm Disco?
The initial Flea concept came about from looking at popular mobile games around 2012. Games like Temple Run where you always run and then have to jump.
I liked the idea of the reverse, always jumping and you have to control movement. The reason the character is a flea is because fleas are underrepresented in games, and I wanted to make it pixel art just after playing Fez. I liked the idea that pixels are small and so are fleas, so it could at times zoom out and see the bigger picture.
Q. What prompted your NESTEK and NES To Dreamcast tools?
I couldn't have done any of the retro game dev stuff without the work of the community. We used open-source software and made modifications. Legally some of the licences need to stay open source but morally I think we should share anything back with the community. There was no easy way to publish your NES game to Steam or Dreamcast, so I commissioned a programmer friend to make it an easy reusable solution that anyone can use to get their games out there. I'd love to do the same for Playdate in future too.
Q. What is it like seeing your games ported to modern consoles?
It's been great seeing the games on current hardware too. It’s much more accessible than the retro stuff and opens up the games to so many more people. I’ve had a bunch of messages from people I went to school with saying they are enjoying the games and their children are too.
Q. How did you get involved with Evercade and Playdate?
For Evercade I liked the idea of the system and thought it had potential to include my games. After seeing the Mega Cat Collection it seemed like they were open to working with homebrew developers, so I emailed. I then got connected with a bunch of other devs and we formed a Discord chat that grew and became Indie Heroes 1. The Evercade release has been great for Lowtek Games and has helped make Flea recognisable as a new retro character. I think the inclusion of Tapeworm on Indie Heroes 2 was a given after the success of the first collection.
Playdate was more of a passion project. The Kickstarter for Tapeworm had a stretch goal for Playdate, as we knew it could be coded in C and the game was in C so would be possible to port to Playdate. The SDK was delayed in release, and we only started porting when I had the device in hand. Luckily, Valdir is great and managed to get the basic game running within a couple of days. We launched on itch.io and through normal sales and community, bundles have sold over 1300 copies so far.
I'm really enjoying learning to code in Lua through smaller projects for Playdate and am definitely going to build more stuff for it.
Q. Do you have any more NES games in development?
We have a few ideas for new NES, SNES and Game Boy games but still in the concept stage. I would like to expand the Flea universe with more genres and characters to flesh out the world and bring new twists to familiar game mechanics.
Q. What other homebrew/indie developers working on the NES do you admire?
Mystic Searches and NESmaker are a great example of what community involvement can do. Micro Mages by Morph Cat is an absolute masterpiece. Witch & Wiz by Matt Hughson is another great puzzle game. And anything Franken Graphics touches is gold.
DATABURST REVIEWS:
Devil’s Temple – Son Of The Kung-Fu Master
Format: Amiga (minimum A500 with 0.5Mb slow RAM)
Credits: McGeezer, TenShu, Hoffman, no9, DJ MeTune
Price: £10 (digital) / £35 (boxed edition)
Web: https://bit.ly/devilstemple (digital)
https://www.geezergames.co.uk/ (boxed version)
[Score]
OVERALL: 90%
RETRO GAMER SIZZLER
Toki
Format: Amstrad CPC
Credits: AmstradGGP (MaitreJoe, Jack)
Price: Free (digital download)
[Score]
OVERALL: 88%
Gherbert Groundhog – Save The Date
Format: ZX Spectrum
Credits: Psychic Parrot & PuttyCAD
Price: $2.00 (digital)
[Score]
OVERALL: 84%
PROCESSING
Preview of Terrestrial (C64) by ICON64/Psytronik
NOW AVAILABLE!
https://psytronik.itch.io/terrestrial - $4.99 digital
https://bit.ly/terrrestrial-c64 - physical pre-order
Budget disk £9.99
Premium Disk £14.99
Clamshell USB Cassette £19.99
Basic Box Disk £24.99
Collector Disk £39.99
Collector Cartridge £44.99
Psytronik has also announced that future releases may no longer be available on disk due to shortages.