I spent half my day working on a new formula to fix some problems in the ProSonic engine. The formula addresses some miscalculations of mine in the player movement. Although there's more code to be added still, the formula is 100% correct. I've hard-coded the values needed to make the player's speed and acceleration work with precise accuracy. This decision was made so I could keep the engine running as fast as possible. It essentially cuts down on the number of times division, multiplication, and sine calculations are done. If anyone wants to recode the engine when the source code is available, I'll be keeping the complete formula in tact as a comment in the code so the values can be easily manipulated without creating a whole new table. Trust me when I say it's a very complicated formula, but it definitely produces the same results as those in the original Sonic games.
I'm rather excited about this because once I get movement completed, I will work on installing the jump, spin, and other code into the engine. The idea right now is to get the player's movement and functionality complete. A demo may be possible afterwards, but don't get your hopes up. I've been very skeptical of releasing a demo at this stage of development because I still don't think it's of good enough quality to deserve public viewing.
Also, I'd like to announce that I would like to do a Nintendo DS port. I've been thinking about it for several months now, and I really think it's a good direction to go in. Some people have been asking for a port to the Dreamcast and although I haven't completely ruled it out, I will say it's not my highest priority. I think the Nintendo DS would be a better system to port ProSonic over to. I believe there's a much larger audience with the DS, and I also believe the DS is much more easily accessible to people with and without the system.
12 comments:
No Love for a Mac and PSP port? =(
I do think you would have a very large audience for PSP because the community has cracked the firmware wide open with downgraders and even custom firmware.
But hell, you're releasing the source so ports should follow soon.
* Starts Learning C so he can Port to Mac *
DS support would be AMAZING.
striker: PSP wouldn't have much issue simply emulating it.
Great Damian, I respect you.
There are a couple people who have suggested a PSP port, but the reason I don't have too much interest in that port is simply there isn't a wide-spread "spark" of PSP fans out there. Sony hit it big with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, but the PSP hasn't really caught on in my honest opinion. It might be a very good system for all I know, but it'd be a shame to do all that work to port it to PSP only to have a few individuals interested. I see more support for the DS, and I see more DS popularity as well. That's what really positioned me to make the choice I did.
Certainly though, ProSonic will be portable to other platforms via public source code as you mentioned, so a PSP port is always possible. Systems I don't see a port possible for are the Sega Genesis, Sega CD, GBA, and SNES. The Sega 32X, Saturn, PSX, PS2, DC, XBox, N64, GameCube, and many of the other newer systems I see as good contenders for a port. I thought about supporting the GBA initially, but who would want resolution and color limits like that? My engine can do better than that.
Nice choice :)
I think Xbox would be possible and maybe DC. but definetly Xbox, I have a modded xbox and it can do wonderful stuff.
Personally I'd prefer a PSP port, considering that I don't find the DS to be all that appealing, especially since there's only one title of interest. Who in their right mind buys a console for only one game?
I'd also like to see it ported to either a past or current generation console, such as the Saturn, Dreamcast or PlayStation2.
"Who in their right mind buys a console for only one game?"
The same reason a lot of people haven't bothered with the PSP.
32X port?
That would be awesome. Sonic 4 was planned for it, imagine it running on actual console!
Superb idea.
Without the hardware you're going to have loads of fun playing it in a slow, highly incompatible NDS emulator.
With the hardware, you still have to have a flash cart and a PassMe or similar device.
With a Dreamcast, burn to a CD and pop it in. =P
Oooooh, a Dreamcast port would be sweet ! ^ ^
xbox 360 !
what about 360?
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