Shadow of the Beast (port)

[Diskover]

Title: Shadow of the Beast
Original company: Psygnosis
Port: RetroNES Software
Console: NES (8 bits)
Mapper: MMC3
Librery: NESlib (Shiru)
Multiscroll engine: Doug Fraker
Music: MovieMovies1, arreglada para que funcione en MMC3
ROM: Shadow of the Beast (alpha 0.34) [HB].nes


Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PthPqjZslEA

https://twitter.com/RetroNES_Soft/statu ... 1169505281

Many of you have already seen it on my Twitter account, but there it goes:

Shadow of the Beast is a videogame developed by Psygnosis in 1989 for the Amiga computer, and later programmed in many other platforms of 8 and 16 bits ... except NES.

This video game, although it is not remarkable when playing, was very famous at that time due to its artistic and musical section.

Several users of the EOL forum, after discussing 8-bit and 16-bit video games that attracted attention in the 80s and 90s, talked about this videogame and how rare it was that it did not appear on NES when on most other platforms there was a version, even in Sega Master System.

Many possibilities were considered regarding its possible technical realization in NES and I proposed a demonstration about its viability.

The result is as follows.

NROM



Then I proposed to make a demonstration using the MMC3 for the IRQ interrupts and to be able to make the effect of the clouds.
MMC3


You can still improve, add more animations, etc ... For its realization, as always, I used the CC65 compiler and the NESlib library of Shiru. To make the MMC3 work, I've helped with the @dougeff tutorial

I do not intend to make the whole game, but simply show what NES could be capable of with this videogame.

Until I have a decent ROM I will not share anything

More info: https://www.elotrolado.net/hilo_homebre ... ca_2282337

[rainwarrior]

I've always had a fond admiration for that game. Best of luck!

[FrankenGraphics]

Sounds like a great project. Good luck!

[Diskover]

- April 28, 2018: we add the fence silhouetted, below.

[Drew Sebastino]

Do you have any NTSC filtered screenshots? In the pictures, the sky colors are just too far apart to use dithering to make a convincing gradient, imo, so I was wondering if it would look any better with an NTSC filter.

[Diskover]

Do you have any NTSC filtered screenshots? In the pictures, the sky colors are just too far apart to use dithering to make a convincing gradient, imo, so I was wondering if it would look any better with an NTSC filter.

I do not have NTSC TV, I'm from Spain and here everything works in PAL.

I have two videos from an LED screen, and soon I will upload one from CRT to see if there is much difference and the color gradient works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_TrfDLk6S0

[nesrocks]

This is a question I've always had: is it just harder to code that many splits in the scrolling or does it have a high cpu cycle cost? What is the most that has ever been done in a gameplay section of a game?

Anyway, I never understood the appeal to this game, but I didn't get to know it until the 16-bit era of consoles. This looks very nice!

[rainwarrior]

This is a question I've always had: is it just harder to code that many splits in the scrolling or does it have a high cpu cycle cost? What is the most that has ever been done in a gameplay section of a game?

It's say Recca took it as far as it ever went on NES:
https://youtu.be/EE5URFvZfHo?t=5m25s

There are a bunch of others that have a high number of splits. Rad Racer, Tetrastar, etc.

With an IRQ they take up a much smaller cycle cost than without one, 'cause you can keep executing code between the splits. Without the IRQ you have to dedicate the whole CPU to splits until you're done splitting (e.g. this is why half the screen is sky in Rad Racer, time to get the other work done).

[Diskover]

And now to work in the forest

[Drew Sebastino]

Definitely looks better now that the colors are closer together.

Have you ever considered doing something like this to also make the transformation smoother? I didn't bother trying to put it "behind" the trees, even though you'd obviously want to do that.

[Diskover]

Ok, @Espozo I'll keep it in mind next time.

[FrankenGraphics]

@espozo: Actually curved gradients like that can help a lot with making something look more alive and less a pattern... even if you did it to avoid the work around the trees. Tough to pull off with scrolling though as you don't want that to scroll at all.

[Diskover]

Ok?

[rainwarrior]

Home. <3

[Sumez]

Several users of the EOL forum, after discussing 8-bit and 16-bit video games that attracted attention in the 80s and 90s, talked about this videogame and how rare it was that it did not appear on NES when on most other platforms there was a version, even in Sega Master System.

I was about to point out that it's very common that an inherent Amiga game doesn't get an NES port, but looking it up, I'm absolutely baffled how many ports this game actually did get!
I've always seen the game as primarily an Amiga title, and basically a tour de force of showing off what the system can do, with very little care taken into how it actually played.

Your videos are really amazing looking, and I'm very interested in seeing how the demo ends out on the NES, backed by your expertise. Would it be too much to also wish for an attempt at fixing the terrible gameplay, and make it into a fun game to play as well? Or are you only focusing on recreating the graphical experience?