During the last coding competition a new member going by the nickname Red Metal joined planetvb. He planned to submit a VB port of Snatcher, a game that I had never heard of. After 7 post he stopped writing updates. Almost exactly one year ago someone else posted that Red Metal had passed away.
That post choked me up quite a bit. I had never talked to him but from his post I could tell that he was a very nice person. I felt like I missed my chance to get to know him. I tried to express that in a post but somehow my words felt meaningless to me.
It sparked an idea though… I could create a Snatcher port in his memory. So I started learning about the game and all the different versions. After playing it for a bit I came to the conclusion that it’s too complex. But somehow I couldn’t let the idea go.
One year and something like 200-300 hours of work later I have a first demo done. You can play up to the point where you leave for Alton Plaza. The Jordan Computer, inventory and shooting games are fully working. I had to skip the save feature and the video phone for now. To my knowledge it is furthers a homebrew Snatcher port has ever gotten.
Here are some features:
– Dynamic dialog system with alternating answers
– Dynamic inventory (Select button) that reacts to people in the room
– Every image has been converted to 3D
– PCM music and sound effects
– In game Jordan computer fully working
– Shooting games fully ported
Special Thanks go to:
– Bigmak and Minestorm for testing.
– Horvat for sharing his PCM code. In the end I wrote my own but it sure helped allot.
– Benjamin Stevens for testing and helping out with the transcripts.
I’m well aware that there are some imperfections in the game. I will continue polishing what is there and extending it until the game is fully completed. Even if it takes till the 25th vb anniversary.
I hope this is something Red Metal would have enjoyed playing.
Happy 20th anniversary everyone.
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KR155E wrote:
Since the game has never been available in any other languages than Japanese and English, have you thought about a multilingual release? Would be awesome to play this in German. 🙂
Most of the text is stored in a generic xml model right now. The same text exist in multiple xml files as a xml file represents one dialog tree. When exported to vb format it ends up in one giant header file without duplicates. Some text are hardcoded (like the dialog when the inventory is empty), others are stored in text files that are exported to vb files (like the computer text and the dialog in the shooting games). While a translation could be done by translating all of those sources, there is really allot of text in the game.
KR155E wrote:
Easteregg hunt, everybody! 😀
There might be even more.
KR155E wrote:
Really cool that you write your own specialized tools for all kind of purposes! I assume the converter still needs some post-processing in cases where the stereo conversion generates gaps? Or does some kind of magic algorithm fill up those missing pixels?
I really need to make a separate post about all the supporting tools and make an interest check. I use a free library that allows the conversion from 2D to 3D images using depth maps. A depth map is a black and white image that contains the information at which depth a particular object is. There is no post processing. You just define the maximum pixel displacement (which more or less defines the depth of the image) and the tool will create the SBS image.
This is what I meant (the green circle in the attached image), that part is not present in the original image, so the converter must have some kind of algorithm to fill in missing pixels. So cool, I am looking forward to read about your tools when you get around to write about them, thunder.
VBmills wrote:
Thunder you made the news at retro collect.http://www.retrocollect.com/News/konamis-cult-classic-snatcher-ported-to-nintendo-virtual-boy.html
Plus a few dozen other sites following the retrocollect post. 🙂
thunderstruck wrote:
Well, the current demo still fits on a regular flashboy. Since I compressed the music and the images a bit there is still space left for more. We will see how far I can get with that.
What kind of compression did you use? I recently talked about image compression with jorgeche and we came to the conclusive guess that it’s not practical on the VB. I’d love to hear how you managed to compress your images. 🙂
thunderstruck wrote:
I intend to release the game in 2mb parts as well so that everyone can play it. I will have to see how I do the transition between roms.
That’s a great thing to do. You could release the parts one by one, each one when it’s done, like an episodic release. Since the FlashBoy Plus’ SRAM is not touched by the flasher, each part can simply pick up the savegame of the previous part and continue from there.
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I find this version of Snatcher by far the best for two reasons. For one it’s 3d for another since it’s red it allows the user to create the color. The colors in Snatcher the cd game are quite dated but this version the player after a long period of time the player starts to see modern colors. I am wondering are there any plans for battery back up? In closing It just seems that the homebrew is getting better and better. You really cannot call these two last games homebrew at all it’s more like something far greater some kind of hybrid.
