I'm just quoting Drakon. He told me many times to do it myself, well if people want ports so bad I'm going to quote him and tell them same thing, I mean it's okay for him to say it to me many times right ? It's just a joke anyway.
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I'm just quoting Drakon. He told me many times to do it myself, well if people want ports so bad I'm going to quote him and tell them same thing, I mean it's okay for him to say it to me many times right ? It's just a joke anyway.
Well Trek said it's possible to go threw stuff line by line. Or is Mugen too big ? It's possible correct ? Because I always wanted to drag Mugen on sdcard and play on my DC ha. I luved Mugen in 2009.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
Because if just 1 person does it, others can just copy it and make all kind of ports right ? I'm shocked nobody went threw it line by line in 20 years you know.Quote:
It's quite sad actually, It would be very awesome if someone skilled enough could decompile.. lets say.. Street Fighter II CE for Genesis,
its a great fighting engine, and if we had that then I'm sure there's lotsa people who'd go around converting stuff like Street Fighter Alpha to Genesis.
No one was asking for a port at that point to warrant that kind of reply. They were saying "This game should have been made for the 32X back when it was on the market" not "I want a port of this right now!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
It takes dedication, if no one has the dedication to do it it wont be done. As for line by line, I didn't say that as that would require either the source code or the Assembly code. What I referred to was essentially reverse engineering the game to figure out how it works. Be it by analyzing gameplay frame by frame over and over again, or by hacking it and messing with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
No shit.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
When I brought up you can only make a port if you know source code, you said not really true, you can reverse engineer it by doing it line by line, making the game by reading line by line and no source code, right ?Quote:
As for line by line, I didn't say that as that would require either the source code or the Assembly code. What I referred to was essentially reverse engineering the game to figure out how it works. Be it by analyzing gameplay frame by frame over and over again, or by hacking it and messing with it.
So that's why I brought it up. I'm surprised no one was dedicated enough in 20 years to read the popular Capcom fighting engine and do something homebrew with it.
No I didn't say that. What exactly are you going to read line by line?Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
I said analyzing the game Frame by Frame, which is radically different:
Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
By frames, I thought you meant line by line of code or something, I don't know what you mean by frame by frame sorry. So reading it frame by frame you discover source code or you don't need it because you are doing it frame by frame or sentences of info like C++ or something ? You said you don't need source code so I'm trying to figure out how specifically how I could make a SF port without source.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
No source code is involved at all. Frame by Frame means you look at the individual frames the game renders and figure out how exactly things move and react. So for that Space Harrier conversion the person basically played Space Harrier with frame advance on in an emulator of some sort and analyzed what was happening each frame to see how it worked. At least I'm pretty sure that's what's been stated as how it was done.
It takes a stupidly high amount of work and dedication, but it is possible.
Okay thanks. But doing that technique for SH for Atari would be "easier" than going threw sf2 on MD or mugen on PC I imagine ?
It seems like you are not really sure what a source code really is, its the actual code that programmers have written to create the game,Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
if you do not have this enormous piece of code (imagine it as multiple text files containing A LOT of code) then you can do two things.
1. Give up.
2. Recreate the source code by gathering information. (this will never be a 100% copy of the original)
Remember Streets of Rage Remake? this was coded from the ground up, the guy first started by programming the way
sprites moved around the screen, then he would add the enemies, who also walked around the screen,
but this is not yet Streets of Rage.
So what did he do? he played the original games and looked at how many pixels it takes to do this move, and that move,
how fast do the characters walk? how long does it take to do an attack, how many hit points does each attack do,
how do enemies behave, and he wrote that all down.
then he coded the game to behave like that, he did not have the original source code so he had to try and duplicate as
much of the original games as he could.
if he had had the original source code then SORR would have taken.. a couple months instead of a couple years.
all because he had to figure out how shit worked.
And that's why they reverse engineer, Reverse engineering means dumping memory contents of the game to a file and
examining it, it does not automatically give you source code, just hints at how shit works.
That's why all those pirate games are always off here and there, because the pirates gathered information in a very short
time and did not really debug it. All so they could sell their port of "new game" on "old console" as quickly as possible.
People however always complain about pirate ports, but I feel its kinda cool how quickly they can do these things,
that's kind of all that it would take, one programmer who does a very quick (shoddy) reverse engineering job,
and then people might be motivated enough to fix the bugs in the source code he has gathered.
I kind of knew almost all of that but thanks. You don't need the whole sf2 code though, just the fighting engine, characters (sprites ?) and basic knowledge on creating new backgrounds (doesn't need to be detailed like Blanka stage or the water NOT moving on Ken stage in sf2 but yet boat bobs ha that always bothered me) yes if we want to do a Street Alpha 4 on 32 x or something ?Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
It's difficult and time consuming regardless of the game. You'd get better results going to the original Arcade version most likely though. As then you'd get pure data and not data that was possibly inaccurate in the home port.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
Yes you don't need everything, you don't need the sound driver for example, but even then the fighting engine code would still be about 95% of the source.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
You want too much, completely redoing the source code is already a hell of a lot of work and now you're talking about doing completely new backgrounds for SFA4.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
Then you might as well hook up a PS2 because doing it on 32X serves no purpose, there's no challenge in making it look good,Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
you just overlap a big 256 color layer for the backgrounds and you're done.
Like Trekkies said, if you just want to make a new game you should focus on the actual arcade games and work from there,
I was merely stating what it would take to port an existing game to the Genesis, not even the 32X
Right well I always knew source code was main part of overall game and with it it'll be much easier to port things, but it's surprising in 20 years Capcom fighting sf engine wasn't "found" and shared yet you agree ? Or SNK. I'm discussing 32 x port of lets say capcom vs snk or something because it'll look closer to Capcom vs SNK Neo Geo version than it would on MD.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
Ehm, I agree that its surprising that nobody on the Internet ever bothered to make an open source fighter with adjustable importable parameters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
I guess Mugen is to blame, nobody wants to bother because Mugen is good enough for most, even if its not open source,
like it would even matter since 95% of Mugen users are poor kids who can't afford a Modded PS2/Xbox/PSP/Toaster so they don't care about ports.
As for the 32X, I don't care about the 32X, to me its.. its not a Genesis, and most of the joy I get from converting art is trying to get the most out of the limitations of the Genesis.
I find the 32X a big ugly mushroom that takes away from the beauty that is my Mega Drive, it requires an additional adapter and messing with cables,
even when its fully hooked up you'll encounter problems with Genesis games and flashcarts, forcing you to take it apart again.
all for what? some extra colors? might as well hook up a Playstation then.
So I don't see the point in porting Garou or SFA or SF3 or KOF to the 32X, its too much work and too little a payoff.
A port to the Genesis I could understand, at least then one day you check ebay and see that some Asian pirate made a cart of it,
which he'd never do if it was a 32X game that needed an extra ram cart to get the game working.
To me the joy is trying to see what a stock Genesis can do, trying to get it to run Garou MOTW and making it look good,
so I think back to whathisface said about MOTW's being impossible to port because it had so many frames, so what? just cut frames,
do you think MKII had all its frames? SF2? UMK3? Fatal Fury? all had frames cut.
aah but then it won't be as fluid as the arcade game and combo's will be different and and and..
SO WHAT? its a fucking port to an inferior system, you'll always end up losing shit, but that didn't stop us from playing the games back then.
Like anyone would bring their Genesis to a tournament and say "hey lets play MOTW on it on a competitive level!"
Thing is we all saw what the Genesis can and can't do. Hell it had what a 9 year life span or so. And well over 600 games were released for it. With the 32X it didn't have nowhere near the lifespan of the Sega CD. I have seen all of the limitations of the Genesis and it had a good run now I would like to see what the 32X was fully capable of.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp