IRENA - Genesis Metal Fury *WIP* [SGDK Project]

[kentosama]

Greetings to all! I'm coming to speak about IRENA and I have to admit that I do not know where to start after a lot improvements.

Lately, I especially bring code optimizations in order to gain speed and stability. We also work on the famous super attack that I mentioned some time ago. You can look that on this video.



A lot of work has been done in recent weeks, if you look closely at the videos posted on our Twitter account, you can see that we have made the game faster and the scrolling of the sea is much more better now.

The time is short and it will be difficult to add all the elements we wanted, but I think the demo already has a good look and remains enjoyable to play.

Before releasing the demo, we should do a lot of hardware testing to make sure the game is stable.

See ya

[Kamahl]

I see you are a Revenge of Shinobi fan

[Pyron]

I already send my feedback via twitter, gz again

I see you are a Revenge of Shinobi fan

yeah, ninja studios inspired by the best ninja out there, for great justice!

[Dirt Ball Gamer]

The game is shaping up very nicely! Keep up the great work! Nothing wrong with a classic style 16 bit shooter!

[kentosama]

Hello everyone, I come with some little news. Sure, the demo of the IRENA prototype has level up well and we should come into a finalization phase although I would like to add some additional gfx elements.

The biggest difficulty was the optimization so that demo runs without slowing down on Mega Drive and also the sprites number displayed. We quickly exceeded the 80 sprites allowed and it was necessary to find compromises to display the four dragons for totaling 28 sprites (7 x 32px)!

Mainly, it remains to correct any bugs / crash and check that everything works perfectly well on Mega Drive. So a little patience before you can get this demo.

Note that currently, the game has no level design, it's really a prototype. Once the engine is 100% finalized, we can really focus on level and game design. I say that, because it seems that many have found IRENA very bad , but know that we still have a lot of work before having a finalized game. It is really premature to give any judgment other than technical.

Currently, the demo offers 5 minutes of gameplay. In this video, I made a pretty bad performance, but normally once completed, it should give around 6 to 8 minutes, because I want to add some extra waves.

[kentosama]

For now, the demo is running very well on Mega Drive II and Mega Drive first generation. I have several Mega Drive, which allows me to test the game in different configurations (PAL / NTSC, revision 1/2/4/6). I also have a switched Mega Drive, which allows me to check that the game works properly during hot switch and find that the game remains playable despite a speed slightly lower than the real NTSC.

Please remember that the prototype does not have game design, it's really an technical engine demo.

We still have some elements to add and I think the demo will be released within two to three weeks max. Afterwards, I will start working on the PapiRium engine, although I have read that many people think that the project is dead or will die. I can assure you no, but I like doing things step by step even though it seems like take an eternity.

I sincerely hope that you will like the demo of the prototype.

[newbie1]

cool

[kentosama]

Hello, I'm coming to announce that the demo prototype of IRENA works very well on Mega Drive. This is a big relief, because it's never easy to get where a memory leak or addressing problem comes from.

It will be difficult to more improve the performance optimization before releasing the demo, but the game is already running very fast on Mega Drive NTSC and we have not noticed any slowdowns, which is a very good thing.

In this new video, you will see that the demo has undergone many visual and technical improvements.

I want to personally thank everyone on our team who, without their work, nothing would be possible. I also thank all those who support the project and have confidence in our ability to carry out this project.

Although the demo is nearing completion, we have decided to incorporate a new scene, a clash against a final boss much more powerful than the dragon and there will be a new enemy that will bring some freshness to the combat zone.
In addition, the color of the enemy bullets will be replaced for more visibility.

It is also envisaged to allow the player to control the speed of movement of the ship by using the A button.

We will certainly need to adjust a little the difficulty that might seem far too high. It's quite difficult to judge, because I begin to know very well the enemy moves and it seems really easy. So before releasing the demo, we will ask the opinion of some players after playing it.

I also wanted to announce that White Ninja will soon have its official website. As a result, we are going to close the IRENA site who using the GENKU domain name. This should have been done since some time, but it is very difficult for me to work on the demo and realize at the same time a functional website.

[Sik]

We will certainly need to adjust a little the difficulty that might seem far too high. It's quite difficult to judge, because I begin to know very well the enemy moves and it seems really easy. So before releasing the demo, we will ask the opinion of some players after playing it.

Sounds like you need a difficulty setting and make the current one the "hard" difficulty (but yeah, this is what testing is usually for).

[xelement5x]

Exciting! I look forward to more updates

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

The pixel art and colors are at high level.

It's really cool to see the developer working around Genesis limitations to bring a nice game like in the old days.

A question I ask for simple curiosity, because the Genesis horizontal shump's always show a HUD that occupies a large playable area? This is only an aesthetic decision or serves to save some CPU work, since the sprites are not rendered below the HUD?

[kentosama]

Hello @EPSYLON EAGLE, thank you for your support and interest in our project.

To answer your question, we decided to use a hud, because the super power like shinobi requires a lot of CPU resources. In a game like Shinobi II, this is not a problem, because the action is frozen and there are never lot of sprites on the screen.

With IRENA, it is essential not to stop the action, which that implies a consequent CPU load in addition to the problems related to the limitation of sprite (80). If you do a quick calcul, a dragon requires 8 sprites, which gives us a total of 32 sprites to manage at the same time !

To relieve the CPU a little and keep some free sprites, the hud has a great use. So, the four dragons requires 28 sprites to be displayed on the screen.

Naturally, when a sprite is behind the hud, it is automatically hidden / recyled according her definition for more performance.

On this video, IRENA run on Japanese Mega Drive VA2 :

[kentosama]

Hello, I'm happy to announce that it's now possible to try our prototype demo of IRENA Genesis Metal Fury!

So, the rom is available on itch.io and just go to this address to download the ROM to enjoy it on Mega Drive using an EverDrive or with any emulator. Nevertheless, it is advisable to use RetroArch, Regen or Kega Fusion although most emulators should work without problems.

I have a preference for RetroArch, because the emulation is relatively fast with good latency. Of course, if you want use an emulator, make sure you have a good controller like the RetroBit 6-button Mega Drive.

I sincerely hope that you will enjoy our teamwork and allow us to continue the project.

Feel free to post here opinions, suggestions and your best highscore!

[Zygrunt]

I think it is good for a prototype. Congrats!

Can we expect more things on the background and enemies in the screen at the same time for the actual game or would this be hard to pull off without creating slowdowns?

[Zebbe]

The demo is great. Nice graphics and gameplay! I really like the Fury mechanic, it makes it worthwhile to destroy enemies. The boss pattern could be a bit better, sometimes it comes from behind and stays there really long, and if the weapon isn't powered up you have to wait for quite a while until you can damage him again. Or maybe you could put weapon upgrades every now and then during the boss too.