Paianis Harper
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Post by Paianis Harper on Sept 22, 2010 20:52:15 GMT
I may be wrong, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of brand new Saturn games at the moment. It was only really the C4 Coding Contest that kept it going, and from a search on the interest it's fallen by the wayside since 2008/2009, and discussion is biased towards emulators on forums, and maybe the odd port. Just a question; where has the Saturn homebrew community disappeared off to? It's just gone a bit quiet in recent years.
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Paianis Harper
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Post by Paianis Harper on Sept 22, 2010 21:00:18 GMT
I may be wrong, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of brand new Saturn games at the moment. It was only really the C4 Coding Contest that kept it going, and from a search on the interest it's fallen by the wayside since 2008/2009, and discussion is biased towards emulators on forums, and maybe the odd port. Just a question; where has the Saturn homebrew community disappeared off to? It's just gone a bit quiet in recent years.
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mick_aka
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Post by mick_aka on Sept 22, 2010 21:02:07 GMT
I think a major issue is that although development tools have gotten better the Saturn is still an absolute nightmare to write anything for. And a lot of the stuff we've seen in recent times only runs via emulation not on real hardware
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Paianis Harper
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Post by Paianis Harper on Sept 22, 2010 21:10:33 GMT
Sorry guys, everytime I refresh thiis page my original post repeats itself.
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Post by Yart on Sept 22, 2010 21:12:23 GMT
Aye.
There was a Saturn homebrewing community?
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mick_aka
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Post by mick_aka on Sept 22, 2010 21:21:08 GMT
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Paianis Harper
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Post by Paianis Harper on Sept 22, 2010 21:36:28 GMT
Okay. That article was written about the last year of the contest, 2008. Anything for 2010? I guess Saturn homebrew has been crushed by the Dreamcast with more commercial releases like Dux and Rush Rush Rally Racing, stealing the show.
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mick_aka
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Post by mick_aka on Sept 22, 2010 21:41:16 GMT
It's been crushed by the fact that it's a horrible system to write anything for, believe me I've tried.
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Paianis Harper
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Post by Paianis Harper on Sept 22, 2010 21:53:55 GMT
I guess it's the challenge that kept programmers coming back!
Personally I would love to start programming for either Saturn or Dreamcast, I just need to grow up. I'm not really interested in ports.
Problem is, without new games or hardware for any console, only the legacy will live on.
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mick_aka
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Post by mick_aka on Sept 22, 2010 21:57:48 GMT
Problem is, without new games or hardware for any console, only the legacy will live on. When does this legacy die then? I mean we're 15 years on... PLenty of people still play intellivision or 3DO and I dont see the massive homebrew community behind those.
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Post by Yart on Sept 22, 2010 23:02:40 GMT
I think the main thing that's discouraging to homebrew on the Saturn is the copy protection.
It's possible to publish games if you use the cartridge port however.
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vbt
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Post by vbt on Sept 23, 2010 18:19:51 GMT
And a lot of the stuff we've seen in recent times only runs via emulation not on real hardware Which homebrew doesn't run on real hardware ? About Saturn dev decline, there is the c4 2008-2009 waiting for results, I know there are really great games ported for this contest. Since this contest there was also at least Another World & Flashback released by Hkz.
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mick_aka
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Post by mick_aka on Sept 23, 2010 18:53:32 GMT
It's a great achievement I cant deny that, but a port of games I've had for several other systems for over 10 years isn't going to get my nads pumping.
Show me some GOOD, COMPLETE and ORIGINAL Saturn homebrew?
I'm not trying to come acroiss as a complete dick, I'm massively impressed what gets made year on year but seriously...
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Post by Anthaemia. on Sept 23, 2010 22:13:55 GMT
I doubt we'll ever see any homebrew Saturn efforts comparable with the best from Sega's own development teams... but it would be great if such a thing ever did happen! The fact is there are just too many obstacles in the way, and the copy protection issue is one of many roadblocks. For example, as a result of Sony favouring a programmer-friendly C environment back in the PlayStation era most coders (well, the majority of then-fresh "talent" with no real past experience of hardware featuring mostly custom processors, never mind parallel processing setups) still prefer to avoid complicated systems, which is quite ironic when you consider that in the present generation it's the PS3 that often receives the worst multiplatform ports for this very reason.
We all know that in the right hands our favourite 32-bit system could produce graphical results far beyond what the PlayThing and Pretendo64 were capable of, such as the Shenmue prototype, Panzer Dragoon Saga or Sonic R. However, the fact remains that many games were seriously compromised in their Saturn forms and you felt the world probably wasn't ready to give multiprocessor architecture a break when someone as revered as Yu Suzuki went very publically on record with his now-infamous declaration that only one in every hundred programmers would be able to do much with Sega's predominantly sprite-favouring powerhouse.
As I said before, it's unlikely some backroom coder is going to bring us the next Virtua Fighter 2 or Sega Rally. On the other hand, maybe one day we'll find a dedicated team of Saturn enthusiasts with the knowledge, patience and some degree of luck to produce something better than just a few rough ports and save file management tools, but this will only happen when the disc protection is circumvented, someone finally understands the mythical yet still-untapped potential of the Sega Graphics Libraries and if there's more demand for such hard work. Until then, who's for more of the same for years to come and plenty of further "bullet hell" shooters or basic titles on the Dreamcast?
My personal dream is for someone to reverse engineer the Sonic World portion of Sonic Jam and create an approximation of what Sonic Adventure may have looked like when it was still a Saturn project. Alternatively, how about if someone was to switch Bug's sprites for those of Sonic and implement a fish-eye camera to effectively resurrect Sonic Xtreme in one of its earliest-seen forms? Better yet, hack the backgrounds of Fighters Megamix (mostly by removing the ring walls) and slip in the correct music to produce a scaled-down Saturn port of Virtua Fighter 3, because there's probably a greater chance of this happening than the real thing ever being allowed out from the vault!
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vbt
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Post by vbt on Sept 26, 2010 20:17:18 GMT
Show me some GOOD, COMPLETE and ORIGINAL Saturn homebrew? There is no real complete and original saturn homebrew, police officer Smith had to be the first one with high res gfx and a nice story but there is just only a demo. To get more, it needed more support from people. If you check C4 entries, you'll see there was some original games but not finished, mainly due to lack of time.
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