Turrican DS devblog
2010-05-13, 02:42:33 - WIP Screens
So this time, new screens, new functionalities.
I had to make another level map so I could do a little more tests. This one is bigger: 3072x768, ie. 12 screens wide and 4 screens high.
The character has the wheel mode now, can swim, and reacts to wind.
But there are still quite a lot of little things to fix and/or rewrite: collisions underwater are still buggy (jumping out of the water is almost impossible), the wheel mode isn't very accurate... The movement isn't close enough to the original.
Anyway, I also tested the stuff on actual hardware, and it runs really fine (this is what it's made for, after all ;).
19 comments -
2012-08-29, 23:26:26 - Chief:
After playing a short demo, I think this project deserves to get continued. Playing this classic on the DS would be a dream come true.
2012-03-04, 21:37:07 - Chief:
Hope this project will make some progress soon. Being able to play this classic on the DS would be a dream come true.
2012-01-25, 19:54:39 - PypeBros:
Hey! do you think you could release a technical demo of how far you've been ?
2011-07-22, 21:02:54 - skykeeper:
Are the project stopped?
As an old amiga fan (grown up with it), this game in fact is still in my blood. I loove this game, Gods and Giana Sisters as mentioned by others here. My daughter plays DSi which is a cool little yet primitive, but powerful enough to impress me. Porting Turricane to DS could be so awesome. If you do it all by yourself, I understand such a project may hit some walls while sitting there with all the code alone. If this is the case, then involve somebody and make this your success! I would love to see it alive again:-)
2011-05-31, 11:54:25 - Topher:
Thanks for the inisght. It brings light into the dark!
2011-04-17, 16:53:08 - seAN:
ich libe turrican
2011-01-30, 18:20:43 - ninboy:
When is the great Game finish? I wait so long about this genial game!!!! :-)
2011-01-29, 12:55:39 - Chief:
The demo I played is already looking very good. Smooth scrolling, and the fact that you can choose between Amiga and PC sprite is a brilliant touch. Really looking forward to more development. Keep up the good work!
2011-01-01, 22:14:48 - TheFinalFighter:
Check your mail ;)
2011-01-01, 21:03:22 - Chief:
Is there still some progress in this project? I am still looking forward to a playable demo or so. ;-)
2010-08-25, 19:47:05 - Chief:
Hi. I mailed you about those beta versions you offered to send me if I wanted to try it, but never got an answer. So I try it this way. My email is hjve at hotmail dot com
2010-07-01, 22:05:36 - Iraden:
@TheFinalFighter :
Oki, je te souhaite bon courage en tout cas. J'espère que ton projet de Turrican DS verra le jour !
2010-07-01, 13:52:04 - TheFinalFighter:
Ouais, je suis au courant, je passe mes journées à virer du spam... faut vraiment que je me trouve un vrai hébergeur...
2010-06-30, 23:36:15 - Iraden:
Tu lis si tu veux mais bon, l'hébergeur de ton site est reconnu comme étant malveillant dans Web of Trust (un antiphising).
A moins de vouloir faire l'égocentriste et le mec qui n'écoute personne, ça serait cool de répondre une fois de temps en temps...
2010-06-28, 07:30:08 - dart760:
If you need help i'm here!!! i love turrican's saga, i have played every version and now if you make a nds version i go crazy!!! thanks!
2010-05-17, 20:56:32 - TheFinalFighter:
Chief: This was not intended to be a T2002 port ;)
Even though I never mentioned it on this blog, the game was originally supposed to be based on the T2PC graphics (for the sprites and some of the tilesets -- as there will be new tilesets especially for TDS).
But no worry about that ;) (and it's not a hardware issue) -- because it seems like I'm the only one to prefer the PC graphics...
Anyway, Chief, if you want to test some unfinished and buggy Work-In-Progress stuff, you still can contact me at thefinalfighter[[at]]msn[[dot]]com.
2010-05-17, 17:56:58 - Chief:
That sounds nice. How about a beta demo so we die hard fans have something to tinker around with while waiting for more progress?
Btw, I noticed the sprite still looks like the Turrican PC version, instead of like the T2002 version. Or is that impossible on DS hardware?
Anyway, keep up the good work. If you succeed, and we know you will, you will be famous among Turrican fans with a DS all around the globe.
2010-05-17, 10:53:16 - Iraden:
Cool, tu continues le projet. Bonne continuation !
2010-05-01, 01:26:19 - Ported to life
Hello everyone!
The game's still progressing, a little slowly, but surely.
The whole code has been rewritten for the 4th time! (1: a PAlib test written in 2007; 2: the first libnds version; 3: the one with parts in ASM).
In fact, I thought that couldn't go any further in the project without getting the code into a real mess, so I ported the game from C to C++.
Everything in the C code was functional, so I didn't have everything to rewrite -- just copy-pasted and adapted to an object-oriented code; and everything is back there again (and the code is easier to read!).
And now, Turrican has been finally brought to life!
Indeed, basic movements, gravity and collisions have been implemented for the main character. What's left is the wheel mode, and the ability to crouch (and fire, of course!).
Well that's it for the news...
1 comment -
2010-05-05, 05:40:58 - Magnar Harestad (Lizard/TBL):
Good to see that the project is brought back to life again. I'm still eager to do the music as long as the project is still aimed to be released.
Email: magnar.harestad@logica.com
2010-03-10, 22:50:48 - Optimization after implementation, inter- .......................... -ruption
Long time no see!
Sorry everyone, the development has been paused during quite a long period. But at least, the map is completely functional:
What to expect (not visible in the screenshots ^^):
> 3 layers implemented and working (including the foreground)
> Potentially infinite maps with potentially infinite number of tiles (I'll set a limit to 20 screens * 20 screens, and 4096 tiles anyway)
> Animated tiles
> Palette rotations (used to animate waterfalls -- takes less CPU time). Thanks to sylvainulg for the tip ;)
The scrolling routine has been almost totally rewritten, with parts coded in ASM, and the CPU load is more regular when the screen scrolls.
The Turrican sprite is only used as a test (especially for the foreground). I'm currently working on a basic character implementation with collision detection.
---
Also, I'm finally planning to make a level editor, but only in the end of the game development. Actually, Mappy doesn't exactly match the features and the constraints of the game, and I need something a little more adapted.
But I'll use it anyway during the development (with custom converters) because I can have all the maps exported in less time than making the whole editor itself. However, the level editor is more aimed at users -- I don't want to make people install a lot of things and type in a command-line prompt things such as "grit file.bmp -gu8 gt -gB8 -m! -pu16 -ftb -fh! ..." :)
That's all for now,
Stay tuned.
5 comments -
2010-04-28, 18:55:36 - Chief:
No news? I would really love to play this game on my DS, or even a small demo. I hope you can find some time and energy to make it happen. Good luck!
2010-04-08, 13:12:55 - TheFinalFighter:
Haha, spambots don't know what to invent for not being filtered ^^
I kinda like the one above :D
2010-04-08, 01:47:48 - zntfhopsrr:
9yq8wa <a href="http://phgwxfsjzmbo.com/">phgwxfsjzmbo</a>, [url=http://uzvzxqozcujp.com/]uzvzxqozcujp[/url], [link=http://txnpxnclqhkn.com/]txnpxnclqhkn[/link], http://chntzbhoiuxu.com/
2010-03-27, 09:20:53 - Chief:
Seems like a spambot has found this site. I know it's only 2 weeks since my last post here, but is there any news? Perhaps a working demo for die hard fans that have no patience, like me? ;-)
2010-03-26, 11:06:36 - Bio:
Great job !
you make my dream come true !
2009-05-09, 15:05:36 - Optimization before implementation
The DS's limitations, again...
The game field is made of 16*16px tiles, and each tile is divided into four 8*8 tiles (for NDS compatibility). That way, every background had 884 tiles (for a 34*26 field, that was the minimum for scrolling).
There are 3 backgrounds (that makes 2562 tiles), plus another fixed background for the gradient (that makes 2586 tiles, as it's a 24-tile-high map).
The problem is, the DS can only display 2048 tiles simultaneously... Therefore, I had to find a (theoretical) solution to optimize the display and to get over the limitations. It implies every 34*26 part of all (combined) 3 backgrounds not to have more than 1280 tiles.
Hope it'll work this time...
Edit [2009-05-16, 19:07:12] - The scrolling engine finally works!
21 comments -
2012-11-21, 19:20:01 - Good Guy:
"The DS's limitations, again...
The game field is made of 16*16px tiles, and each tile is divided into four 8*8 tiles (for NDS compatibility). That way, every background had 884 tiles (for a 34*26 field, that was the minimum for scrolling).
There are 3 backgrounds (that makes 2562 tiles), plus another fixed background for the gradient (that makes 2586 tiles, as it's a 24-tile-high map).
The problem is, the DS can only display 2048 tiles simultaneously... Therefore, I had to find a (theoretical) solution to optimize the display and to get over the limitations. It implies every 34*26 part of all (combined) 3 backgrounds not to have more than 1280 tiles.
Hope it'll work this time..."
Hello, I am in the middle of trying to figure out how to do the same thing. I want to make a map of tilees using a 2d array to set the locations, but I need to swap the tiles when you scroll the camera...
The problem is when the loop to set the tiles goes past the screen width, it loops back to the begginning of the screen. How do I fix this?
2010-03-13, 18:55:31 - Chief:
That's great! I really hope this project will make good progress now. After seeing how well Giana Sisters was translated to Nintendo DS, I really want Turrican on this console as well! Good luck programming!
2010-03-10, 21:02:25 - TheFinalFighter:
Seen your comments on the SETA shoutbox, replied to Bronko ;)
I'm very sorry, the project has been put on ice for several months. But at least, all the map implementation is done, and now I'm working on collision detection.
Expect a little post here very soon for more info.
2010-03-10, 14:51:14 - Chief:
I really hope there will one day be a DS version. If I look at how well Giana Sisters was tranferred to the DS, with smooth 8 way scrolling, with parallax layers, great sound and even a beam-weapon that can rotate 360 degrees, in the form of a soda bottle in this case, I would assume that this engine might be used for Turrican DS.
2010-02-14, 23:40:08 - Earthmanbrick:
Great news, I love the idea of a DS Turrican! Don't worry too much about cramming everything in... heck, if the game can run on the gameboy it's got no worries on the DS. Keep up the good work, dude. I'm rooting for ya. :D
2009-12-15, 16:41:55 - Magnar Harestad (Lizard/TBL):
Hi,
How is the project progressing?
Cheers Magnar
2009-08-09, 12:31:32 - Isaac Conrad:
Des nouvelles de ton projet ? Bonne continuation.
2009-07-27, 22:48:26 - torgal:
kad ce taj turrican !!!!!!!!
2009-07-13, 21:39:18 - Isaac Conrad:
Content de voir que le projet n'est pas abandonné !
Concernant l'affichage et le "hud" de ce Turrican, comment seront disposés les éléments (vies, énergie, lames de feu etc) ? Y'aura t'il un bon ratio pour permettre de voir où on saute / atterit (souci rencontré avec le très bon T2002) ?
Bon courage pour la suite.
2009-07-10, 10:49:42 - Bronko:
Nice to see that you're keeping it alive! :)
2009-07-03, 04:51:21 - TheFinalFighter:
Sorry guys for not having replied for a month and a half. The game was actually paused, and then I had a lot of work so I didn't have time to get back to the project.
Now, I managed to gather all the frames for the main sprite. I hope the animation will be ported soon, once I have finished with those backgrounds.
I also had the opportunity to try the T2002 demo on real hardware, well that kinda boosted my motivation.
@Lizard: At first, I planned to do the musics myself, but I listened to some of your tracks and I'm convinced that you can do much better than I.
The only thing is, I planned to make several new tunes, and also some remixes of official tunes, and of songs from the Turrican.eu Soundbase (with the authors' agreement).
The project isn't really advanced yet, so you can take your time.
2009-06-26, 20:55:46 - MrSkiz:
Oh god ! Turrican on my beloved console ! A dream come true. Thanx a lot, and good luck for the dev.
The editor is a great news also : accelerated development, fanmade missions... Yummy !
I started a thread on dcemu.co.uk to alk about your project : the whole world needs to know
2009-06-11, 08:10:19 - Magnar Harestad (Lizard/TBL):
Hi,
I would really love to compose the music for this game. If you don't already have anyone signed, please consider me for the job. Cheers Magnar
www.myspace.com/magnarharestad
email: magnar@harestad.info
2009-06-02, 05:47:50 - TheFinalFighter:
@sylvainulg: the limitation is actually twice higher: 128KB per bank (for A-B-C-D only -- see "NDS/Tutorials Day 2" on Dev-Scene) that means, 256 tiles per base (or "slot" or whatever). The limitation I actually had was the first bank's size (2048 tiles), I'm gonna add one more bank to the main BG engine.
2009-06-01, 20:07:44 - sylvainulg:
as far as i know, you're limitted to 1024 tiles (64KB) per background, but you can define a different "tile base" for the different backgrounds. You could theoretically go up to 4096 different tiles ... Where does that "2048 simultaneous tiles" restriction come from ?
2009-05-22, 02:07:50 - Un fan:
Bon courage pour ce Turrican DS !
2009-05-19, 22:43:06 - TheFinalFighter:
Thanks a lot for the tip, MartinMan!
Anyway, this becomes useless when you have a landscape in the background ^^ (since there won't be gradients in all the levels).
I'll probably rise the limit of 1280 sprites, but I had problems with tile slot 0 (ie the first 256 tiles) and I also want to keep enough tiles for a possible 4th layer.
2009-05-19, 09:06:28 - MartinMan:
Color 0 of all the backgrounds is not displayed. And if there's no color from any of the backgrounds, then color 0 is displayed. You could interpret this as an additional layer made up of just one color. And then you can use the DMA in HBL mode to change this color every HBL. Worked fine for me in a GBA project :)
2009-05-19, 04:54:46 - TheFinalFighter:
HDMA? You're using libnds?
I'm using tiled or BMP backgrounds, and I could use only one tile (duplicated in a row) or one pixel line in BMP mode, and change the BG's offset and the color palette every HBL, but I can't see how the background could be unnecessary...
2009-05-19, 03:37:52 - MartinMan:
You don't need an additional background layer for a color gradient. You can use the HDMA instead.
2009-05-18, 16:51:31 - TheFinalFighter:
Yay! The devblog is referenced by Google!
Btw, thanx Bronko for adding TDS to your site!
Getting back to work (multiple layers, or animated tiles first?)
2009-04-23, 22:20:06 - TDSME, the end of the useless
... Looks very Turricanish, doesn't it?
So, this time I give up my time-eating project initially called TDSME (TurricanDS Map Editor). I'm switching to Mappy (thanks again Bronko for the idea), and, eventually, a test map is finished!
The game maps will have three layers: a background (for waterfalls and shadows), the game field (with collision detection, sprites and so on), and even a foreground! (the waterfall on the left is in front of the rocks) Therefore, there will be hidden parts of the level.
But given the limited possibilities of the DS's hardware, I'll have to find a way to use parallax scrolling by putting a few layers on the same background. Anyway, for now, I'm simply using a gradient.
Here are mock-ups that show how TurricanDS should look:
The next thing left to do is a basic implementation (at least, of the map).
3 comments -
2009-04-25, 19:57:42 - TheFinalFighter:
[Off-topic] Fixed a bug that made Internet Exploder users unable to post/view comments.
2009-04-25, 18:42:54 - TurricanFan:
Yay! Keep it up!
2009-04-24, 09:02:32 - Isaac Conrad:
Good luck !
2009-04-18, 01:28:00 - Website improvement
Hey everyone,
As you see, the devblog looks a little different. The design has been slightly improved, and now you can add comments to the posts.
Feel free to post your suggestions, remarks or whatever!
10 comments -
2009-04-18, 16:00:35 - Bronko:
As you are improving this site, how about providing some more useful way to contact you? An Email address would be nice. ;)
After you were in our chat at somehow the wrong time (Not your fault though) , I wanted to ask you some questions about this project for my page http://bronko.turrican.eu .
2010-03-25, 12:04:42 - TheFinalFighter:
Added a word-filter to avoid those annoying spambots.
2009-04-20, 21:01:04 - TheFinalFighter:
Alright, then I'll give up Turrican DS Map Editor (aka TDSME)... if I manage to make Mappy work on my Mac. There is an SDL version of the source code, I hope it's not using too much of the Win32 API.
2009-04-20, 17:50:27 - Bronko:
It actually did work for TurricanII on the amiga. x_to gave me mappy and a conversion tool, which put the map into a savestate, and voila: http://bronko.turricanforever.de/Bilder/t2mp/Versuch1.gif .
Sadly this project didn't get any further...
So mappy should be suitable for many tile based games. It supports many layers, so if you want to place something like triggers, you could use one layer for triggers...
The question is, if that is easier than just coding a new editor. ;)
2009-04-20, 08:39:45 - TheFinalFighter:
Well, my first post in the SETA was in 2004 (I was 15). After I thought that nickname didn't really fit to me, I changed it for Synthesis (this is the one I currently use). But I'm still using TFF on the Turrican.eu board so that you still see who I am :p
Concerning the map editor, I don't know how an existing editor would have exported the map to code or binary files. I'll probably add to the map format some features that are specific to the game, that aren't in a standard map editor I think.
I'll go and try Mappy anyway, just to see how it works.
2009-04-19, 21:47:37 - Bronko:
Wohoo, ok. That means, "TheFinalFigter" is your real nick, and not an invention for DS-Turrican? :D
I don't know, how far you are with that editor, but how about using an open source tile based editor like http://www.tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php instead?
2009-04-19, 17:24:34 - TheFinalFighter:
@Bronko: you're totally wrong :p I created this e-mail address about six years ago, and I check my mail quite regularly (btw, go and check yours too :D).
@Isaac Conrad: Er... just a small precision: the level editor wasn't planned to be public. It's just a tool that allows me to make level maps more easily, and automatically (instead of writing lists of thousands of numbers in the source code, just read the second post from the bottom, named "Need help with maps").
2009-04-19, 12:10:41 - Isaac Conrad:
Hello !
I just wanna say : Man, this project will be great ! I've been dreamin' a Turrican on DS, but with a Level Editor, wow !
Good luck for the future :).
Cheers.
2009-04-19, 12:09:57 - Bronko:
Great, you've got mail. ;)
Uhhh, something tells me, that you created that address just for this game. The bad thing about that is, if you abandon the project (let's hope that never will happen!), you probably won't tell anybody, and if someone asks per mail, you might not even see it, as the address is for the project only.
So please, if you cancel it, or put it on ice, tell us here.
Better, don't cancel it at all. :D
There are so many Turrican projecs, from which we don't know, if they are still in developement...
2009-04-18, 17:02:02 - TheFinalFighter:
Yeah, I was probably on the chat at the wrong moment, and so I didn't think my project has been really taken into account :)
Anyway, glad you put the link in the SETA shoutbox (even if it won't stay visible a long time ^^)
My e-mail address is thefinalfighter@msn.com.
2009-04-12, 19:49:39 - TDSME, unfinished
Finally, a screenshot of the unfinished map editor:
You can view and scroll over the tileset, and make a personal tile selection. The map view hasn't been implemented yet. It's coming soon.
0 comments -
2009-04-09, 15:48:00 - T2PC stuff
Hi,
I've spent all my time on the TurricanDS project since the last weekend.
----------
On Saturday & Sunday, I've been playin' around with Turrican 2 PC: opened the executable with a hex editor, modified some values, and checked out what it did.
I've noticed a lot of interesting things, like the offset of the first world's palette, and how colors are coded (in fact it's 24-bit RGB, but... kind of crypted).
I also know where the first level's data is located in the file (Desert Rocks only)... also encoded (didn't take time to decode it all, as it's more complex than the palette).
I also took time to finish the tileset, as a lot of parts of the waterfall animation were missing.
----------
From Monday to Wednesday it was time for coding.
The tileset viewer is implemented, the only things left are the multiple tile selection and the map editor. Once this is done, I'll have to implement the export functions. I'll upload a screenshot in the next few weeks, when all this is done.
----------
Five days of full-time work (I'm on holiday :p), but I still find that the project hasn't progressed fast enough.
Sometimes I even get quite discouraged, but I really feel like having the game done.
I hope I'll be able to display the map on the NDS before July...
0 comments -
2009-03-31, 00:00:00 - Desert Rocks tileset, animation
The T2002 Desert Rocks tileset isn't complete. I'm taking some screenshots of Turrican 2 PC to add the missing tiles.
Some gfx concerning tops of waterfalls are missing. Here's a little animation I've done after having ripped ALL the frames:
Now, I have to prepare the tilesets for the map editor, as it'll soon be ready to read them.
Have a nice day :)
2 comments -
2010-03-07, 23:24:48 - TheFinalFighter:
Right ;)
TDS now has a pal-rotate feature : up to 16 simultaneous pal-rotates, for up to 192 -- because 256 was useless ^^ -- non-contiguous colors!
2009-06-01, 20:10:04 - sylvainulg:
i may be wrong, but it looks like this animation is actually palette cycling (which was very common by that time).
2009-03-26, 00:00:00 - The map editor
Hello everybody.
I've finally begun to code a tilemap editor for the future portable Turrican clone! It's written in C using the SDL graphic library (yeah, Java seemed a little difficult for manipulating image data).
It's not in a really advanced state, but maybe in a few days it'll give something interesting (I had to code a bitmap font and render it myself, as I felt too lazy to install SDL TTF... At least I'm sure that it'll work properly).
Sorry I can't show you a screenshot yet... I'll try and get one once the program is advanced enough.
Anyway, I'm pretty glad the project is going on. Even if the development's not very quick, it could be even slower, as I have some work for the studies...
0 comments -
2009-03-21, 00:00:00 - Need help with maps
Hello again, folks!
I have a lot of work to do currently (as you might have guessed, I'm a student) so I couldn't find enough time to finish a test map for the game.
By the way, the maps are really going to be a problem: I have to split them in tiles so it takes less RAM, but I don't want to do this by hand...
I'm seriously planning to develop a map editor (the best would be to find an already existing one :p) so it's easier to use (WYSIWYG) and the maps are exported automatically.
But the main drawback is that coding this tool would really be time-eating! The sooner it'll be done, the sooner something playable will be released, but anyway, don't expect anything.
Getting back to search (and to work... ^^) See you!
0 comments -
2009-03-08, 00:00:00 - Devblog creation
Hello, world!
This is the first post of my (empty) devblog about another Turrican clone... this time for the Nintendo DS! The game will be coded using libnds, and has no name yet (even if the unofficial name is TurricanDS).
The devblog almost starts at the same time as the videogame development. Up to now, I've only coded very small games for the DS using PAlib. I've recently switched to libnds and I'm still learning its basics.
Concerning the game, almost nothing has been done yet, but I'll add a test level map soon.
Er, one last thing: discard the advertisement on this site, I'm not responsible for it.
0 comments -
2015-06-22, 21:01:15 - Adam:
This looks so cool!! Are you still working on it? I'm wondering if there are other ways to play turrican on the DS