Making of Retro City Rampage

[drk421]

Didn't see this posted anywhere yet,

http://youtu.be/Hvx4xXhZMrU

[blargg]

Wow, there's someone with a good solid view of the big picture of NES development. Very refreshing how he approached porting without getting lost in the details of the hardware.

[NESHomebrew]

I believe bripro joined a tech institute at age 14 to be a programmer (it was in a video, can't remember the details). I only wish I had started programming at a young age, would make things like assembly language much easier.

[tokumaru]

He found a pretty interesting way to explain how things work to people not acquainted with retro console development, but to long time programmers this is pretty basic stuff.

[3gengames]

I'm more impressed with how fast he made his setup, not what it does really. But still, over all it STILL is very impressive. And it was fun to see, even for me. Somebody, like many here, who have worked on said system and saw the types of tradeoffs he did.

But he should have had a decompression routine determine which type of tile to output when rendering, instead of changing them all to one type. Hehe, kidding...sort of.

[Bananmos]

That's one great video! I reckon it'll be the first thing I reach for the next time I make another failing attempt at explaining NES programming to the uninitiated

Furthermore, I still remember my disappointment when bripro decided to change the scope of his project to not target the NES anymore, so I'm really thrilled he's now gone full circle and resurrected the original NES version! If he plans to produce carts for sale he can count me in as a customer...

[Kasumi]

Well, it's out. I bought Retro City Rampage way back in when it was first released, so I just grabbed the update to see "ROM City Rampage". What's been done is really, really impressive, but the physics and things leave a lot to be desired especially after playing the non-NES version. He definitely made the right choice when he switched from NES, the game is better for it.

Also, there really does appear to be a rom in there. I found and edited some 6502 code in RAM while the prototype (ROM City Rampage) was running. It picked up my change as expected.

[Bananmos]

Have you managed to rip the ROM and verify that it works on a NES? (and preferably a powerpak) Just to exclude the possibility of it being a ROM specifically adjusted for the emulator...

[koitsu]

Have you managed to rip the ROM and verify that it works on a NES? (and preferably a powerpak) Just to exclude the possibility of it being a ROM specifically adjusted for the emulator...

He "sort of" answers that in another video (uploaded 5 hours ago), but not exactly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZffFxLyD4Ig

The important part comes from a single comment to that video:

Code: Select all

1. Buy the game.
2. extract 747E67D6 and C87FC3A3 from gamedata.bfp with BFPExtractor
3. use hex editor to create file "RCRheader.bin" with hex data like "4E 45 53 1A 20 20 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00"
4. run command
   copy /b RCRheader.bin+747E67D6+C87FC3A­3 "ROM City Rampage [!].nes"
5. Play in FCEUX or whatever you want
6. Make sure you bought the game.

From the header it looks like it uses mapper 5, i.e. MMC5. Yow.

[Bananmos]

Game was on sale on the webpage and was said to run well in Wine, so figured I would try it out myself and purchased it.

Doesn't run so well though - sound is completely garbled and apparently if you misconfigure your joypad once there's no way to get back to the joypad settings (re-install probably needed?).

So it just proves the point of why I stay away from PC games and prefer my NES instead. hope the embedded ROM will give a better experience...

[tokumaru]

From the header it looks like it uses mapper 5, i.e. MMC5. Yow.

He mentioned that right from the beginning, way before he moved away from the NES. I think the reason for the MMC5 is the need to color individual 8x8-pixel tiles, as opposed to the regular 16x16-pixel areas. Since everything is so small, he needs that to properly color doors, windows and other tiny details on buildings. Also, I bet he takes advantage of being able to access way more than 256 background tiles at the same time, so he can draw a detailed city without having to bankswitch or update the pattern tables for specific regions

[lidnariq]

In the video, he mentioned using the MMC5's 16384 tile mode several times, and that despite that, he still ran out of tiles.

[zzo38]

Code: Select all

1. Buy the game.
2. extract 747E67D6 and C87FC3A3 from gamedata.bfp with BFPExtractor
3. use hex editor to create file "RCRheader.bin" with hex data like "4E 45 53 1A 20 20 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00"
4. run command
   copy /b RCRheader.bin+747E67D6+C87FC3A­3 "ROM City Rampage [!].nes"
5. Play in FCEUX or whatever you want
6. Make sure you bought the game.

From the header it looks like it uses mapper 5, i.e. MMC5. Yow.

That's good. Now you can use it on any real NES/Famicom hardware or any computer having the NES/Famicom emulator, rather than only Windows or Wine or whatever. (Step 6 can be omitted though, and step 4 might be modified on non-Windows computers)

[Bananmos]

So, the ROM turned out to be a disappointment as well. On the upside, the graphics are quite nice, so the MMC5 extra graphics features do show, even if t looks somewhat too static with no animated bg tiles.

On the downside, there's no sound at all, neither music nor SFX. It's very glitchy graphically, with flickering screen transitions and lots of sprite flicker, which the constant slowdowns make even worse. Controls seem pretty broken, as trying to get into the car takes an eternity. And there's no intructions about where to go or what to do. Lots of doors and entrances, but seems they can't be accessed. So while it's a bit of a cool MMC5 tech demo, it's a very unfinished product.

It does say "Unfinished prototype" in big letters, so I hope it'll be improved to a point where it's playable. At the moment there's nothing fun about playing it, and not really worth even the halved sale price I got it for.

Just my 749 cents 'bout it...

[Bregalad]

Sounds like I'll have to buy it when the ROM version will be fixed.
I mean I am not a fan of GTA and derivate (far, FAR from it) but on the technical side it looks like a cool project.