Porting Day of the Tentacle and/or similar games

Ascended (15187)

18-03-2003, 17:50

I was pleasantly surprised to see Maggoo mention Day of the Tentacle in another thread. This was one of the first games that made me think 'you see? some people know how to create nice games for PC'.

After seeing the Uncle in Brazil demo, I was quite convinced that a game like Day of the Tentacle should be possible on an MSX2 with HD (or CF) as well. Using the right compression, some clever thinking and uhm... hmm.. PCM? Muziekmodule? to play the samples might get some impressive results. I would appreciate a port of the game, but a similar game would be nice as well ^_^ I think it's never been done before on the MSX indeed.

However, I'm wondering what the trouble is in development, apart from the massive ammount of GFX needed.

By Maggoo

Paragon (1217)

18-03-2003, 18:16

That's one of the game type that would be the easiest to program actually, even in Basic/Nestor Basic / Xbasic (if I remember well, Uncle in Brazil was 100% in basic). Speed is really not the issue for that type of game. Quality of the graphics / storyline is another matter...

By Retroman

Expert (85)

18-03-2003, 18:27

Well, you could try porting the SCUMMVM Engine to MSX-DOS perhaps .... it is open source and then we would also get games like MONKEY ISLAND and SAM & MAX to the MSX finally

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10096)

18-03-2003, 19:26

DOTG & MI rule!

Anyway, wouldn't the msx2 VDP cook when copying all those gfx? I suppose you do want compariible sized characters moving around?

By snout

Ascended (15187)

18-03-2003, 19:30

When porting SCUMM, I think the requirements will rise to turboR with GFX9000 and Moonsound ^_^

But.... if you use the right (to VRAM) compression, you can get far with an MSX2 as well. You will need to load small ammounts of data a lot, but... if you have a close look at DOTT only 1/3 of the screen is used for animations. That gives quite some extra space.

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10096)

18-03-2003, 20:49

And then there's also the issue of storing all the gfx.. since there are a lot of!

I think it would be the best, not to store 'complete' scenes, but small elements out of which you can build a scene. But not in the RPG/platform style.. gfx should be like handdrawn, but if you have a big blue sky without clouds, you don't need to store that complete sky..

By snout

Ascended (15187)

18-03-2003, 21:00

When you have CD-ROM or CompactFlash... you don't need to worry about storage that much anymore. The days of 2DD floppy disks are over

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

19-03-2003, 00:27

And then there's also the issue of storing all the gfx.. since there are a lot of!
Just using some compression will get you far on a 64K machine already. Going to 256K should be more than enough for the program, graphics and (moonsound) music.

Anyway, I don't like this genre of games, so don't expect me to make it

By FiXato

Scribe (1742)

19-03-2003, 00:31

When you have CD-ROM or CompactFlash... you don't need to worry about storage that much anymore. The days of 2DD floppy disks are over
wel, I wish that was true... But I and a lot of other users still use 2DD's...
If only I had the moeny to buy an IDE-interface and a cheap HDD

By snout

Ascended (15187)

19-03-2003, 00:48

Well.. I think a CF interface is a lot cheaper and easier. No external power supplies, cheap memory cards... what more do you want?

also I think a game on CF can highly increase Sunrise sales ^_^

By mighty.m

Expert (116)

19-03-2003, 12:15

I once tried to draw some GFX for such kind of game... Screen5 really can't help you here... I did some in screen 8 for some demo that was never released. It was green tentacle's room (with the stereo ... Looked pretty good (though it was never finished). But drawing an entire game like this seems like suicide to me... Thatz LOADS off work!

I think on MSX you're game would look more like Monkey Island 1 than DOTT or Sam&Max.