wow thanks for all the ideas, and questions
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Originally Posted by Neobeo
Hardware
Honestly, there's nowhere I'd rather see a JJ2 ported to than the Nintendo DS. And yet, when this is said and done, the DS is also one of the harder platforms to program on, mainly because of it's extremely limited 4MB ram. Depending on the design and implementation of the port itself, the CPU and screen size should also be taken into account.
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I haven't paid much attention on how powerful the hardware is because there are always alternative options (so that 4 megs of ram doesn't mean you are limited to 4 megs only, and you can pass on most of the tasks to other parts of the hardware), but since jazz 1 could run on a 486 well I am confident.
edit: do not forget that jj2 used directx, and some special effects such as lighting etc, which I will ignore.
I have already come up with a lot of ideas on minimalising the usage of resources (despite the hardware).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Implementation
It is difficult to see how much thought you have put into this. I am by no means a game expert, nor have I actually made any full-fledged games. The tiles for a start; 32x32 would be pretty cramped I agree, yet 16x16 will not do any justice to the graphics. Also, the stylus controls sound very gimmicky. I'm not really sure how this will work out, since one hand will have to control a lot of buttons. A Metroid Prime Hunters style control might or might not work. Then again, don't take my word for this; I'm really bad at game design. But another thing you should consider is how much this port will be able to handle. Remember that memory is very limited. Level sizes will have to be kept small, and events (JCS events) will have to be kept few. Going in and out of levels, which many DS games do in order to load the next level, or next portion of a level, may not work in a multiplayer context.
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bullseye, I was planning on a metroid-like controlling:
depending on which hand you use (lets go with right)
arrows for movement, left trigger for shooting
abxy for changing weapons
stylus: depending on where you point on the screen your character will aim that direction and shoot. If you drag the stylus on the screen your character will aim towards it but will not shoot. if you click on your character and drag it towards north, east,west or south you change weapons just like using abxy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Resources
Again, I'm not trying to completely destroy this project, but I have to wonder how much effort you have spent or are willing to spend in this. Is it going to be a one-man programming team? You did start this thread requesting for help, but the help required (sprites, sounds, levels) are nothing more than trivial aspects to the entire game creation process. At the very least, will you be designing and programming the entire thing yourself?
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I have a few friends who are willing to help and are interested in coding for the DS, but I am pretty sure that I will have to do the major part of the work. In fact I rather do things myself. Of course it won't be released soon, since I have some php code to take care of first, and I attend Uni. But seeing the other jazz projects I think it will be done faster than those.
eidt: the reason I started this thread now, because I am almost ready with the engine and I didn't know how much time would it taken to get all the sprites. So I thought the sooner the better. Well ,should have used the search for other things than levelpacks and music
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Programming
Finally, the section in which I'd consider myself most experienced in. This section alone can be broken into multiple subsections, but I'll have to start somewhere. Firstly, the engine. Why would the engine be written in java first, only to have it later converted to C++? Unless it was a generic engine, but this will not work very well. Not to say that JJ2 is an extremely complicated game, but the engine should be made to revolve around the game, rather than taking some engine and customising it to meet the game specs. In other words, it should be programmed directly in C++, and probably after the design stage is finalised.
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it's just that I had to write some random java homework for my school so I thought I should kill two birds with one stone. I wrote the engine in java, so I could get an A on it from my school and use it for the project later. Yes it is indeed generic, but besides the eventListeners for the keyboard/mouse events and the main threads everything works the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Then there's also the porting aspect. At this stage, only j2nsm has the source code to jj2 but they will never give it to us so that is not an option. Since there is no source code of any sort, the only way to port or remake will be to default to experimentation or reverse engineering of some sort. In which case, it is definitely a better idea to create a "port" or remake on the PC itself; think OpenJazz2. Only when you get something that works closely enough to the original will it be worthy of porting.
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remake with the same textures and music not port. my bad
btw even if I had the code, I still wouldn't port it. it's just too booring that way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Last but not least, programming on the DS. This is what I am most skeptical about. Like ahat has already shown a few times, it is almost certain that you have never programmed any DS homebrew. Perhaps you considered learning the ropes while working on the project. This might work for windows programming, which requires lots of trial and error. But DS programming is very specific, and if it is indeed your first project, you may want to consider my first option. Which is to remake on the PC first then port it to the DS.
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you are almost right, actually seeing the palib documentation and tutors alone made it look easy enough to be done. Some changes in the plan alone won't make me cancell the project. In fact I have already made an idiot of myself here so it would look stupid if I would give it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Conclusion
Consider whether this project will be realistic. Probably start with something slightly lighter and proceed from there.
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hahaha no, I prefer deep water
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neobeo
Epilogue
OK, I tried to keep this criticism as free of attacks as possible. My apologies if it sounds rather offensive, but I believe it best to correct the entire thing before it starts to go wrong. Also, NDS > PSP!!!
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no it's ok it was rather helpful, if you have any more toughts on this, please feel free to share it with me.