Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

[paulojr_mam]

I still didn't see that elevator scene that caused a discussion in the old thread about transparencies and impossible color tones. Isn't it in the game?

[CrazyMonkey]

Tea Time 5 is definitely a partial/full mockup, there's these subtle differences such as no 1-frame desynch when picking the partner (which is present in 2018's tech demo and final version).
Sprite limit doesn't honestly look like anything abnormal, at least the horizontal "sprite flickering", aka horizontal limit. When well used, sprite layer is actually more powerful than it seems. It also has nice visual compositing, programming has its ups and downs, and I think the music plays off-key at times. You can achieve some good sprite scaling through software, too.

What I don't know is how it deals with the DMA: To what I know, you can only copy around 0x1000 to 0x1800 bytes to VRAM in a single vertical blank (unless you "double" the bandwidth by fiddling with the debug register if I'm correct), but whatever it does the CRAM dots are all over the place, so I assume the color copy is done after many internal checks... which begs to question why the copy doesn't occur before them.

The 2018 demo looked glitchy as hell at all times including the logo. When the intro text finishes, the bottom copyright blinks to black a while. Still happen in the final version.

[matteus]

MegaWire4 was detailed fully in the leaked manuals. Don't know what the current manual is like are the pages dropped?

[zredgemz]

MegaWire4 was detailed fully in the leaked manuals. Don't know what the current manual is like are the pages dropped?

This is the closest thing to a full documentation i have seen thus far, unless chilled wants to dig through his combbook.https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...ZO7CimcRLMangF I would do this myself but i imagine by the time i get mine most people would have it before and most likely would scan the paper work.

[stika]

So, what's the difference between "Arcade" and "Original" modes?

[zredgemz]

So, what's the difference between "Arcade" and "Original" modes?

Original mode has branching paths and rpg elements and arcade is more in line with your typical beat'em up.

[axel]

Tea Time 5 is definitely a partial/full mockup, there's these subtle differences such as no 1-frame desynch when picking the partner (which is present in 2018's tech demo and final version).
Sprite limit doesn't honestly look like anything abnormal, at least the horizontal "sprite flickering", aka horizontal limit. When well used, sprite layer is actually more powerful than it seems. It also has nice visual compositing, programming has its ups and downs, and I think the music plays off-key at times. You can achieve some good sprite scaling through software, too.

What I don't know is how it deals with the DMA: To what I know, you can only copy around 0x1000 to 0x1800 bytes to VRAM in a single vertical blank (unless you "double" the bandwidth by fiddling with the debug register if I'm correct), but whatever it does the CRAM dots are all over the place, so I assume the color copy is done after many internal checks... which begs to question why the copy doesn't occur before them.

The 2018 demo looked glitchy as hell at all times including the logo. When the intro text finishes, the bottom copyright blinks to black a while. Still happen in the final version.

Thanks for confirming this. I've said for years I thought the early videos had to be mockups, because there's no way something looks that good in 2014 and then fails miserably in 2018. There's nothing wrong with using mockups to advertise but why pretend it's running on real hardware, this is among the reasons I was convinced the whole thing was a scam.

[nieds16]

The packaging is impeccable as usual. I wonder what is the most valuable for a gamer? Package or game itself?

Since I'm graduating tomorrow, next year I'll be back to the game making scene. I need to know from you what you want.

It took a while to comb through all of these posts as they are filling up faster than I can keep up with.

#1 Excited to see you are wanting to make more games. I know it was Fonzie that has a real enthusiasm for the Mega Drive, but if I remember correctly you both entered Pier Solar dev for the system because it was both of your favorite system. With that said I HOPE YOU ARE PLANNING TO MAKE A MEGA DRIVE GAME.

#2 The game is the most important for sure. I will say, I have seen games released as cart or digital only, and I just feel that is wrong. It needs a case and manual minimum imo. In this scenerio what I was hoping for was a plastic mega drive/genesis case mold as thick as a EA game or fatter that all the materials fit within. Still sad about the cardboard direction and a lot of stuff I saw in the French unboxing video seemed to just be way over the top.

To your point, in a later post, games are not meant to sit on a shelf in unused condition so why would I want cardboard (an easy to damage material). This decision seemed to favor the collectors. Unfortunately, the development on this game has taken so long I haven't played anything other than pinball in a year now. Life changes so I feel I'm guilty about having games that are trophies on a shelf, but that was never the intent. Kids will consume a lot of time.

#3 Thank you for your balanced comments on the Paprium subject over the years. Each time you post it shows true balance and relevance to the subject at hand.

[nieds16]

Original mode has branching paths and rpg elements and arcade is more in line with your typical beat'em up.

Excellent. Thank you for the info. I was wondering the same.

[nieds16]

I have posted and also seen a number of people doing the same asking about the group shipping from Las Vegas. No update on my package, but kind of glad to hear I'm not the only one. I would guess somebody updating the shipping status to "shipped" with no tracking info for anybody would likely mean all of the materials have been shipped to Las Vegas in bulk to then be split up into individual orders from there. I would assume we are going to be waiting a bit. All speculative.

Completely unrelated but trying to condense instead of continuing to create more posts, has anybody seen an unboxing of the "limited" version of the game. I've seen the investor version with the fold out, extra materials, and pink (maybe red as I'm partially color blind) cartridge. The "classic" is the plastic clamshell with black cartridge. The website says the "limited" has a "customized clamshell box." Really I'm just wanting to know if it is plastic or cardboard as that is unclear and the cartridge color would be nice to know as well.

Lastly, as I went to the site to get the "customized clamshell box" quote has anybody seen the pricing update? For one, the limited versions state that there is a 26% discount promo. Just the other day I believe they were $169 and maybe $229 for the euro edition (could be remembering incorrectly). Now the US and JP editions still say $169.46 (why 46 cents I don't know) and the PAL version is $339.66. I will say, why increase the price to put a promo on an item that is a one time sell? From what I can remember the "limited" was a single run only and all future versions should be the "classic." Furthermore, the regular price for the NTSC and JP is $228 and the PAL is $459?

[Groovemaster303]

Hey hey GM303, so nice to hear from you. I was wondering if the key shift was intentional to add some flare to some parts of the game, as we know, shifting two tones normally gives an uplifting feeling, a technique very used in the 80s and early 90s.

Hey Tulio, nice to see you too, glad to see you around and doing well.
The key shift was not intentional from me. It’s possible Fonzie implemented the pitching trick to shake things up during a stage or it could be an unavoidable quirk with how Datenmeister works.

I’ve also noticed a few FM synth patches go a little odd on a couple of tracks when we push things hard. Again this could be how Datenmeister works in tandem with the Megadrive or could be a console compatibility issue similar to how like on Streets Of Rage, where almost every single version of Keep The Groovin the hi-hats always sound different.

[Stifu]

Just sharing this because I'm bored and waiting for my copy...

https://i.postimg.cc/CLKF9gXD/So-R-Lineup.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Fsn946X6/So-R-Select.jpg

Nice! Although the JPEG kinda ruins the pixel art, better share it as PNG.

I think it's unlikely that both you and gsaurus would care about this, but maybe you could contribute the Max portrait and maybe even the Adam one to the The Bare Knuckle 3 Project? That SoR 2 Max portrait stands out badly in the character selection screen of that hack.

[Devil N]

Thanks for the playthrough devil! Definitely the cleanest source video I've seen. As usual the framemeister is so sharp you can cut yourself on the pixels.

I'd like to continue analysising here but still trying my hardest not to go more than 3 stages deep while watching videos but man it's hard. There is one thing left that nobody has tried that stil pertains to the whole game though.

The investors magazine mentioned that you can force feed enemies blu pills. Just grab them and press the pill button. It says the effects can vary across enemies, so that's quite a few things to try!

Thanks, I'm glad I was able to provide some value to the community with my stream.

That's really fascinating about the force feeding of pills! It's not mentioned in the manual and it hadn't occurred to me to try it. In a way though I'm happy that my stream has left a lot of questions unresolved, because it'll be fun to see all of the game's secrets slowly being revealed in the coming days/weeks/months. I played right up to the first major boss and then got a Game Over, which was really the perfect length for this stream. You get to see a sizeable slice of gameplay and a good look at the game's overall structure, but there's still a lot left to discover.

[Devil N]

The Classic edition really turned out well. If it is not too much trouble would you mind doing a close up of the box with a older mega drive game box if you have one? I was wondering if Fonzie got the texture on par or better then Papi Commando.

I've taken some macro pictures of Paprium's cover and three others, highlighting the texture of the plastic sleeves: https://imgur.com/a/ulZ99Kd

Normally I try to avoid glare in my photos but here it really helped to bring out the texture patterns.

Paprium's box has the same kind of roughness to it as an older Mega Drive game like Revenge of Shinobi. In close-up the texture looks slightly different but to the touch they feel almost the same. A newer blue-cover game like Ristar has a finer texture to it and so doesn't feel as rough. There's enough variation in original Mega Drive game boxes that I feel Paprium fits right in.

[jymannob]

MegaWire4 was detailed fully in the leaked manuals. Don't know what the current manual is like are the pages dropped?

It's still in the book.
I have add 3-4 pictures if you want. (I can take some others if you need)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...gF?usp=sharing

The MegaWire seems to be a add-on sell separately :/
At the boot of the game you can see the check of "modem" at "none" (same for the Mega-CD if connected "sub-cpu : M68000" or "none" if not)