MAIDEN – / Updated July 2020 /

Thanks for the posts guys. Again I don’t want to alienate those who want to play on a flashboy, but my hunch is that between map/graphics data there will not be a lot of room left over. I am working on sorting out the cartridge situation, so just be patient while I figure out what that’s going to look like.

Regarding music and what I’m trying to do on that front, I’d really like to create something similar to what GEMS for the Genesis was purposed for. Something where you could write/edit on your PC and listen to it via hardware (or emulation). I don’t know if that’s in the scope of this project yet but I do have some experience in the area. If this is something people really want I might include this as a part of the crowdfunding, just judging off the samples included with VBDE I know that music production has been pretty difficult/limited in the past and there’s a lot of improvement to be had.

Here’s development update #1! I’d like to remove any doubt about my credentials for developing games, as I know lots of people tend to start neat projects then leave them to fizzle out over time. We’re working with multiple partners to make sure that people can play MAIDEN on Steam, Virtual Boy, and maybe even 3DS. MAIDEN is being published by Triverske who will oversee the release on both Steam and Virtual Boy.

Today I’d like to talk about the underlying tech of MAIDEN, as we tested a couple different ideas before we reached the current engine. We tested wireframes and voxel-based renderer but we found that drawing directly to the framebuffer was a bit slower than we were hoping for. At that point we looked to the VIP’s object worlds to help with graphics processing. When we tested this it was much more performant and in-line with the experience we wanted. Although it’s pretty impressive I ended up making the decision to go with something a bit more visually appealing and a bit less technically appealing.

I thought that the tech was a bit too cool to just give up so I’ve prepared a little tech demo to mess around with. (it works really well in 3D) This isn’t the game demo, so please don’t confuse it with that, merely a bit of engine that probably won’t get a lot of use. Enjoy!

Devlopment update #2! I have good news and even better news.

Let’s start with the good news: You’ll be able to order a MAIDEN cart, regardless if the game ends up over/under 16Mbit. This of course is a bit of a luxury item, as I’ve come to learn that the making of these cartridges is quite the process.

While learning about how these carts get made, it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. The choice to be made was between super expensive and often inferior 3D printed parts or ripping parts from actual Virtual Boy games and re-purposing them.

Which brings me to the better news, the effort to fund mellott124’s cartridge molds is now part of MAIDEN’s crowdfunding campaign. We hope to bring an end to the era of pulling parts from games whose prices have risen several times over the past decade or so. These new carts will be more affordable than the alternatives (past the initial cost of course) and also will be able to come in a variety of colors. Mellott124 and I both see a pretty healthy homebrew community in the Virtual Boy’s future and we hope to make it easier to play games on actual hardware.

More info coming soon, but this was important enough to announce now!