EL LOCO LOCOMALITO
Interview with developer Locomalito
What got you interested in programming your own games?
Like many, I fell in love with video games when I was a kid. Some weekends back in the late 80s, my parents used to take us to dinner outside. Then it was common to find arcade cabinets at cafes and restaurants, so I discovered video games there. I was fascinated with their graphics, colours, sounds and sense of danger. But playing was expensive and my parents were afraid I'd end up hooked on slot machines if I started playing arcades, so I hardly ever got to play. However, I used to stand nearby to watch other people play and pay close attention to every detail. So, somehow, I ended up studying the design of those games by observation.
Back home I used to write down what I had seen in my notebook, add things I would have done differently and fantasise about making my own games. However, I knew that programming games was impossible because I didn't have a computer and I wasn't even good at maths. But as time went by, I had more resources: access to my older brother's computer, to pixel art tools, to programming books...
I never finished anything I started because the projects took too long and new ideas were always coming in. But Game Maker changed this because I didn't have to mess with the internal design of the engine anymore, I could focus on creating the content of the game from scratch.
Why do you choose a retro style for the graphics, often based on a particular system?
It is because I have internalised the audio-visual style of some systems so much that it has
become a natural language for me. When I think about how I would express something in a game, it often pops into my mind in that format.
There are cases where the lack of detail is a very powerful resource because it activates the player's imagination, and that creates a very special bond with the game.
For example: black backgrounds. The player can imagine what is in the background based on what they see in front of them, but also by filling in their own ideas. In this way, the player is also creating the game.
What tools do you use to develop your games?
I use Game Maker as the main tool, since their older versions to the current Studio versions. For the graphics, I used to use a Windows XP icon editor called Iconomaker that, accidentally, was a great tool for pixel art and animation. But then, some years ago I started using the excellent Aseprite, a tool really designed for pixel artists.
You have a long-running association with Gryzor87, who does music and sound effects. How did he get involved in your games?
Oddly enough, we met each other at a dinner party organised by our partners, who have been friends since high school.
During the conversation, we talked about our day jobs, random stuff and finally our personal projects. I'm always shy about showing my video game projects because people don't usually get it, but somehow, I ended up showing him a game I was working on, which at the time had no music or sound. A few days later we talked again, he told me that he could compose the music for that game, and we just started working together.
It is quite easy for us to work together because we have a similar vision of video games and other media.
What inspired your latest game, Toxic Tomb?
I usually have two types of projects: some that are big and need a lot of planning and organisation, and others that are smaller, and where I allow myself to improvise on an idea that is not very well defined. Toxic Tombs is one of the latter.
I simply wanted to do something with bright colours and jellies in an industrial setting. Then, as I started designing things, I saw that it fit well with the aesthetics of the Master System, which was my first console. It started as a top-down dungeon crawler, but it changed to side-scrolling because I wanted the chaotic feeling of jellies climbing and falling.
Could Toxic Tomb ever be made as a real Master System game?
I don't make ports for actual retro systems myself, but there are people crazy enough to make it possible.
The game follows the specifications of the system even in terms of memory limits, so I think it could be made.
Well, probably with a lot of flickering and slowdowns when there are many things on the screen.
Have you played any of the conversions of your titles to retro machines, and what were your favourites?
I love all of them. Each one has its own charm. l'Abbaye des Morts for the ZX Spectrum because it was for the actual system I was mimicking in the PC version, the Mega Drive version because it has many extras and a beautiful physical edition, Mutants from the Deep for the MSX because it's almost identical to the PC version… I love it when people adapt the games in a way that feels natural with the specs and spirit of the system while keeping the essence of the game. That's what I consider a great port.
Does it feel good to see the physical versions of your games on modern hardware?
Sure. These games are created from home, and I usually publish them on my own website, for a small audience. To see them get interested beyond that and reach even the big platforms feels great.
Is there a game or genre you want to try but haven’t done yet?
I'm usually around action, platforming and shmups, but I have unfinished projects and ideas for puzzles, dungeon crawlers and racing games.
Would you go back and make sequels to any of your games?
I'm not a big fan of sequels. If I feel I want to add something to a game, I usually add it to the original game, rather than making a sequel. That's what I did with Maldita Castilla EX and Super Hydorah.
What seems good to me is making different games based on the same universe, like with the Verminest saga.
Are you working on anything new?
I've been working on a big project for a bunch of years, but things are getting complex in my real life, and I no longer have the time for a project that big, so I'm focusing on smaller projects. I have some ideas for games that look like arcades from the early 80s.
CRAZY CONVERSIONS
Our favourite Locomalito “demakes” on retro machines.
ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL (C64)
Locomalito remade Dave Hughes’ Spectrum EFMB for PC, and then this C64 update recreated the frantic platform gameplay.
L’ABBAYE DES MORTS (SPECTRUM)
Originally inspired by Spectrum graphics, this excellent DarkHorace port was followed by MSX, C64 and three different Amiga adaptations!
DARKULA (AMSTRAD)
Appearing at ArcadeCon 2019 in a dedicated cabinet, 21bloques brilliantly recreated the 1980s arcade action on the Amstrad.
MUTANTS FROM THE DEEP (MSX)
Locomalito’s personal favourite, Manuel Pazos and Fernando Garcia skilfully took it back to its MSX roots – with RetroWorks publishing a limited-edition cartridge.
8-BIT KILLER (AMIGA)
One of Locomalito’s earliest titles, this gory first-person shooter was recreated on Amiga thanks to the Gloom engine.
VISIT: https://locomalito.com/
NEWS BYTES
AMIGA: Hoffman’s Cecconoid conversion (pictured below) has started shipping its pre-orders, and opened up a new batch of physical editions. https://bit.ly/cecconoid-order
The digital download is available from: https://thalamusdigital.itch.io/cecconoid-amiga
AMSTRAD GX4000: Oh Chute! from Team Giraffe was released digitally, with a physical cartridge available to order. https://bit.ly/ohchute
ATARI 8-BIT: The puzzle game Sudotris comes with three different modes. https://bit.ly/sudotris
DREAMCAST: Good Deal Games has licensed Flight of the Amazon Queen, with the manual featuring an exclusive interview with creator John Passfield. $29.99 for a professionally pressed game disc, or $39.99 for an additional soundtrack CD. https://www.gooddealgames.com
GAME BOY: Incube8 has released Gunship DX and Genesis 2, with plans to finally publish the Game Boy Advance title KIEN – a mix of platformer and RPG - after more than 20 years. https://www.incube8games.com
Wink & The Broken Robot (RG237) is available to pre-order – digital download, cartridge only, and boxed edition. https://bit.ly/wink-preorder
MASTER SYSTEM: The superb Wing Warriors conversion is available free at https://bit.ly/wingwarriors
PC: Oscar Celestini’s superb Robocop vs Predator tie-in is free via https://bit.ly/rvsp-pc
PET: Milasoft created an 8K version of Jim Summers’ 1982 classic Slimed. https://bit.ly/slimed-pet8k
PICO-8: Try some ghost Bustin’ with Morning Toast https://bit.ly/bustin-pico8 and solve the Puzzles of the Paladin via https://bit.ly/paladin-p8
PLUS/4: Beat the viruses with Haplo’s Binary Battle, converted from C64. https://bit.ly/binary-plus4
ZX SPECTRUM: Remember Colin Stewart’s Frank N Stein? Get ready for the fiendish sequel, Dr. Acula at https://bit.ly/dr-acula
CHAMPION CODER
[Name]
Shannon Birt
[Info]
From: New Zealand
Website: @birt_shannon on X/Twitter
Format: Mega Drive/Genesis
Previous game: Mega Armalyte (cancelled)
Working on: Lufthoheit (Mega Drive)
Shannon is pushing the Mega Drive’s graphics hardware with shoot ‘em up Lufthoheit.
What got you interested in Mega Drive coding?
I had a C64 for a few years in the late 80s/early 90s which my parents bought the family and I loved it so much that we hadn't upgraded to the Amiga yet (not that we could afford too) , then I saw adverts for the Sega Megadrive and I just had to have one , ports like Strider were amazing at the time so eventually my brother and I finally saved enough for a second hand Sega Megadrive.
I had done quite a bit of programming on the c64 and always wanted to make a game one day - I must have been the only kid at my school to walk around with a c64 programmers reference manual !
I'd even made sprite multiplexors on the c64 and sprite editors but never quite got a game up and running sadly - school got in the way haha.
As SGDK started to become really popular I think 2020 onwards I thought I would love to dabble with it and 16 bit systems are my favourite retro generation, so it seemed a natural fit.
It took me a few years from to start dabbling however, early in 2023 I finally started to dive in. Pretty quickly from that point I had some demos running in C / SGDK on the Megadrive however the horizontal interrupt needed very careful timing to do the mid screen colour changes I wanted to do. Interrupt driven color changes were an under-utilised technique on the MegaDrive (which I was keen to explore) so I started to write that in 68k assembly to get optimal timing (as it didn't look too difficult - luckily the 68k is a very nice cpu to learn ) . Gradually but surely more and more of the codebase transferred from C to 68k assembly for the speed aspect / ease of optimisation.
What has inspired your game Lufthoheit?
A friend of mine had lent me a CRT tv and I'd been going through a retro phase with my Mister FPGA and playing Armalyte on the c64 core on the CRT which was really totally amazing after not having played on a CRT for 30 years. So when I started dabbling with SGDK / ASM programming on the Megadrive I thought what about doing an Armalyte game? Surely I could make a port of that as the Megadrive never got an Armalyte port.
Armalyte whilst being a fun game (great power up system !) used many technical tricks on the c64 that I was keen to explore on the Megadrive also such as sprite Multiplexing , using background tiles for bullets etc and hence Mega Armalyte was born.
However I was a little bit ignorant of copyright / porting around a Fan Project and within 3 months after initially being positive of the project Thalamus asked me to discontinue it, which was really disappointing at the time.
However this was bad that lead to good, as I was pushing the MegaDrive quite hard technically (240+ colors on screen with sprite multiplexing and tile sprites etc) the Mega Armalyte port was starting to deviate from the c64 port and having to stay true to the original did feel a bit limiting. People were already saying our port looked like colors on LSD vs the original's quite dark aesthetic for example.
Near the start of the Mega Armalyte project musicians Cyan & Laurent Crouzet had thankfully joined me to handle the audio side, more recently a Graphics Artist Carsten Glaser had joined the project, after the news broke of having to discontinue Mega Armalyte speaking with them it turns out Carsten had been cooking a shootem-up concept in his head for 4-5 years and even better he even had some graphics drawn for it !
So we decided as a team to port the engine to Carstens game concept. Its a great mix of Rtype / Thunderforce with some Bullet-hell all mixed in.
We had to come up with a name and Carsten being German floated the idea of Lufthoheit which is something like "King of the Sky" broadly translated from German. I liked the edgy sound of it and ready made concept to transfer to and hence development began in full on Lufthoheit at that time.
What is your development environment and any major tools used?
I think many would consider it a pretty basic toolset at present- however my game making journey has just started so I expect to get a lot better / automated as we go forward.
I use Visual Code with the excellent Genesis Code plugin for an SGDK/C IDE , also using the 68k counter plugin (fantastic for optimising 68k routines) for 68k Assembly . The game is currently coded in C/SGDK (20%) and Assembly (80%) hence the need for both tool chains.
We have settled on using Tiled as the background editor.
Carsten uses Aseprite and Gimp for Graphics.
Cyan & Laurent use Deflemask for Audio.
Are you working with anyone else and what are they contributing?
I am lucky to have Musicians & SFX experts Cyan & Laurent Crouzet and Graphics Artist / Level designer Carsten Glaser onboard with the project.
Thankfully with their amazing work this leaves me largely free to devote my time to the programming and endless optimisation.
I'd be remiss not to also mention Stephane Dallongevillle the creator of SGDK who has been very helpful and I'm sure with SGDK has made the perfect launching pad for many Sega Megadrive projects.
Kulor for his help with efficient algorithms for shooters such as collision detections systems etc.
Are there any particular tricks or techniques you are using on the Mega Drive?
In the game engine we are using some techniques that were not commonly used in the commercial days of the MegaDrive.
Sprite Multiplexing - to my knowledge this was never used in any commercial game that got released which is a shame so we hope to rectify that with Lufthoheit. This will allow in places up to 250 sprites (objects) onscreen which is a big jump from the systems hardware limit of 80 sprites onscreen. Basically hardware sprites are re-used as the screen is drawn - its racing the beam in effect - eg we wait till just after some sprites are drawn and then reposition them below the current raster position and the system is none the wiser it simply redraws them again . This is not a free sprite upgrade however as it takes considerable CPU to drive the software multiplexing of the sprites, I estimate I have a 6 mhz 68k cpu left to work with (Its a 7.6mhz cpu by default) after the multiplexor overhead is accounted for.
Active Color Streaming - by default the Megadrive is limited to 61 colors on screen, there are a few techniques to get more colors on screen that we will use in places to increase the color count greatly.
Mid screen color changes - we use the horizontal interrupt to change 3 colors per scanline without any side affects , this allows us to re-use a single sprite palette for example and make it look like 3 sprite palettes onscreen or a background palette can be altered for a gradient etc.
In Lufthoheit the water stage shown we use only 1 sprite palette but we re-use the palette to show 3 or more palettes worth of color in scenes. The 3 cruisers in the opening battle are all in different colors but use the same sprite palette for example.
Mid screen DMA color change , using DMA (direct memory access via the VDP) to transfer the colors in the horizontal interrupt allows up to 15 colors per scanline to be changed but can wipe out up to 70% of the sprites on the following scanline so has to be used carefully to work around this issue - Armalyte used this to change whole palettes for sprites quickly in one scanline.
The Armalyte demo uses this technique in the background to get 81 colors onscreen from 3 palette colors in a background gradient - think Amiga Copper bars trickery but on Megadrive !
Sprite scaling and sprite rotation effects, the intro for example shows the player ship being scaled in and out whilst avoiding fireballs.
Shadow and Highlight mode we use in our Lufthoheit demo extensively for the water effect (to shadow objects below the water line), we will also use it in many other parts of the game - this can allow a shade darker or a shade brighter than the onscreen palette colors for overlapping pixels and hence can simulate transparency effects well.
We use the SGDK / XGM sound driver to allow up to 4 PCM sound effects at once vs the 1 or 2 that was standard in commercial times.
We are aiming to use a Large rom eg greater than 32 mbit by using bank switching to ensure no skimping on graphics or sound to create the best shootem up we can.
Lufthoheit is heavily optimised in assembly for all object movement- SGDK/C code is mainly used for sound driver / XGM and initialisation . When you have over 200 objects onscreen even very small efficiency gains per object multiply out heavily so large amounts of code in optimal assembly makes a lot of sense. SGDK is very well optimised for normal use cases so we can use that toolset where speed is not absolutely critical.
How much have you done so far, and what remains to do?
It's very much at the engine building stage of the games development which means a lot remains to be done, however it means level content progress should rapidly come later in the games development.
We are just starting to tackle destruction systems at present such as explosions / debris systems and their physics for example which is a fundamental part of the gameplay / visuals. The latest video update shows destruction on the Drone ships. There were some sprite / cpu challenges with this as one ship explodes into 4 debris objects for example and the object count in this scene is already high.
I've just finished implemented dual scrolling systems (line scrolling + tile scrolling on the same screen via interrupts to save cpu) , prior to that I focused heavily on collision systems which are hugely important to get optimal as they can completely bog down the cpu otherwise.
The HUD / Scoring systems are next along with more level developments.
Graphically Carsten has assets for nearly 2 levels of the game but trail that in development of the engine.
Cyan and Laurent have more audio tracks also for us but its held up by Graphics and Gameplay as the music needs to fit that also.
Thankfully we are not under any deadlines as everything we implement has to run in the minimum of cpu budget to leave spare cpu for other tasks.
Do you have any other projects underway?
Thankfully no other major projects - one serious retro game is enough haha !
I do have a demo I want to update in the near future showing ways to simulate more than 512 colors onscreen on the Megadrive but Lufthoheit is taking preference to that at present.
I think the issue with retro system programming is unless you are making a very low cpu usage type game (rpg cough cough) then you end up spending an inordinate amount of time optimising the code vs actually content creating so that's where a lot of time is going at present.
Possibly in the future a run-n-gun would be great to do if time permits, the MegaDrive seems to be getting quite crowded with new shooters so a run-n-gun would be a welcome addition to the library I feel in the future.
DATABURST - REVIEWS
The Storied Sword
Format: NES
Credits: Team Sword (Jordan Davis, Nathan Tolbert)
Price: TBC (demo available)
[Score] 87%
Good Kniight & Harharagon
Format: C64 (dual cartridge, USB cassette, C64 tape, digital download)
Credits: ICON64 for Psytronik (Stuart Collier, Trevor Storey, Saul Cross)
Price: £34.99 (dual cartridge or USB cassette) / £8.99 each (individual C64 tape) / $3.99 each (digital download)
[Score] 78%
Pang Plus
Format: Amstrad Plus/GX4000 (cartridge download)
Credits: Mojon Twins (SyX & RedAngel)
Price: Free
[Score] 89%
PROCESSING PREVIEW - TURRICAN (MSX)
Giuseppe Pintus is trying to bring Turrican to the MSX.
What made you decide to tackle Turrican for the MSX?
Turrican 2 is my favourite game of all time. And MSX is my favourite 8bit computer, being the one I owned before my Amiga 500+
And Factor5 didn't release Turrican for MSX, not even the usual bad Spectrum port (not that Speccy games were bad, they were good for Speccy hardware but porting them to MSX not properly and so slowing down them was a crime against humans!)
What is your development environment and any major tools used?
I use VSCode as editor with Z80 assembly extension, z80 assembly meter plugin for VSCode to check the used cycles, Glass Z80 assembler (java needed), Magellan/GIMP/paint/PyroPaint for GFX, Charpad/Tiled for tiles/map creation/management (yes, CharPad is a tool for C64 but it export maps and tileset as binaries, so works fine for me. And last, but not least, it has in the example ripped maps/tilesets/gfx from Turrican C64 and I started from them)
How long have you been working on it, and how close to the original are you trying to make it?
I started to work on this project in September 2021 and published the first proof of concept demo at the end of November 2021. I'm trying to make it as much closer as possible to the original, trying to take something from the Amiga version too: for example, the main sprite is inspired by the Amiga one, we have the 5-way bullets whereas the C64 switches between two different degrees bullets between even an odd shots and, of course, we will have the background music during all the game...
This is possible thanks to the use of a MegaROM cartridge support, which is the favourite MSX games' support. It allows you to also have a superb speech sample at the beginning which uses 128KB!
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
Well, the MSX standard includes a lot of different machines, both PAL and NTSC. You can't stick all the same stuff in a shorter NTSC frame as a longer PAL one... so the game checks runtime of the used hardware is PAL or NTSC and draws the screen in different ways depending on that. PAL machines have better bullet display, but NTSC ones have better sprites' flickering (because they flash 60 times per second whereas PAL flashes 50 times per second). But also writing specific code for each type of enemy is quite challenging...
When do you think it will be finished?
This is a good question... It depends, obviously, on how much free time my real life gives to me. I'm hoping to complete the main code (first level and first jetpack level) before the summer. But January is already gone... so, who knows? But when the base code is complete, I need to talk again with Factor5 (I had permission to code Turrican from Julian Eggebrecht after the first proof of concept demo) to know If I will be allowed to publish it (and eventually also for ColecoVision and SEGA SG-1000/SC-3000). Asking a GFX artist (Toni Galvez) and a musician (Bitcaffe) to work on an incredibly big amount of data like this without being able to gain something is out of the question...
If I won't be allowed, then I'll release the done-so-far demo for free and code another game using the Turrican engine. Of course, it won't be Turrican, so no rotating laser or other too many-related features. I have too much respect for Factor5 and Turrican to do such kind of bad things.
You can "play" the Turrican tech demo (updated today) at File-Hunter website at this link
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