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- Jul 20, 2002
- Posts
- 4,743
Do you think anyone will ever sell a copy of a game they waited 3 years for?
Kraut Buster New NGDEV - 2015
- Thread starter Fox1
- Start date
Do you think anyone will ever sell a copy of a game they waited 3 years for?
- Joined
- May 22, 2013
- Posts
- 10,173
Funny guy
Nothing is more important than one's health, theMot. Sad to see such cynicism at Christmas
"Due to hang over issues on both dev and betatest staff it's postponed to the week of 3rd of January 2019"
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2012
- Posts
- 7,626
No, it’s 100% cynicism. Wyo nailed it. I don’t mean to come across cruel and cold but I am so that’s just the way it comes out.
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2000
- Posts
- 624
It's released!
NG Dev Team
11 mins ·
[NGDEV] Kraut Buster MVS Release
Dear customers,
finally after years of hard work and a lot of patience from you guys we are ready to release Kraut Buster.
Warnung! Ueberlangertext! Warnung!
Kraut Buster is our love letter to the NEOGEO and a fulfillment of the dream of making a World War 2 themed technicolor styled pixel art run'n'gun.
It's art direction and designs were inspired by old war movies, Hogan's Heroes and Indy III.
When you play the game you will see the game is quite German in design and maybe humor? Yes German humor .
Kraut Buster evolved and changed a lot over the years and became a different and better game.
We hope you guys feel the same and think it was worth the wait.
--------------------------------------------------------
New moves
We added a lot of new moves and more modern controls to the game:
Ground slide move and air dash.
You can dash both on ground and air.
The slide/dash makes you shortly invincible against most projectiles (except stuff that explodes/fire/acid).
Mastering this move is very important to survive maniac-ish amounts of bullets and enemies in later missions.
With the new weapon position lock you can walk around while your weapon is in an arrested position.
It's very useful against air enemies and bosses. Advanced players also can use it against enemies that are below.
A drop down feature allows dropping down ledges to quickly get closer to enemies below or to get treasures.
Different grenade throwing speeds/modes and in C-mode you can adjust the grenade throwing angle to a small degree
If you hold the grenade button it automatically throws up to 3 grenades in a short succession.
You can shoot directly in 8 directions and with spraying/swaying the Maschienenpistole can do 16 directions.
Players can hold up to 2 weapons and switch among them.
Rapid prison shank style stab move for bigger humanoid enemies like "Gas Gerd", "Lurchmutant", "Zwergritter", "Heisse Helga", "Herrin Peitsche", "Wein Werner", "Ueberritter Ausf. S" and "Ueberritter Ausf. G"
Masks can upgrade the knife attacks to a super knife and Katana knife attack. Those do more damage and can penetrate multiple enemies.
Speaking about masks:
Masks can add combinations of abilities like:
- 1 hit shield
- weaponized chick sidekicks
- more shot power
- different grenades
- super knife
- killer slide
- higher jumps
- floating in air
- faster jump and run speed
- faster combo build up
- lower/higher difficulty and personal challenges
- negative effects like increased ammo usage in trade for power
Maybe you can already guess from the above information that Kraut Buster plays purposefully quite different to the MS games.
We used a more direct control approach known from the gorgeous Contra series.
The player always has immediate control of the characters. There are no transition animations that get spooled off.
Most actions are instant, like switching direction/jumping. Other are very fast like stabbing/ducking and grenade throwing.
Those differences above and the 60 fps give Kraut Buster quite a different feel, especially in C-mode.
However for people preferring the old and reduced controls of the MS games we offer a lot of customization options.
Using the "old style" controls makes the game unnecessary more difficult though.
The game requires 4 buttons per player 1L4B / 2L8B.
--------------------------------------------------------
Game modes:
T-mode
T-mode is similar to the MS games.
It's slower and more tactical. It's best played by slowly advancing and has lots of forced stops.
Only a reduced set of missions need to be played to keep the game time below 40 minutes.
Missions can be selected in the mission map screen. The 2nd mission for selection is always longer than the first.
Ammunition is limited in this mode, but a bigger variety of weapons are available for pickup.
C-mode
C-mode is similar to the 90s Contra (III/HC) games.
It's faster, brutal and relentless.
You need to blast yourself through all missions in one go.
There are no masks, no knives, no hidden treasures and no chicks.
The game flow is less guided in this mode and you have more control over your own pace. This also means you need to do more enemy crowd control yourself as the engine can pump out quite a lot of enemies.
But you have unlimited ammunition, an extra extend and you throw 3-way grenades! (The 3-way grenades can be slightly aimed)
There is a fast kill (quickkill) system in place that grants scoring bonuses.
--------------------------------------------------------
Difficulties:
3 ranks are available: bronze, silver and gold
Bronze is the lowest but is still quite challenging.
We recommend starting with that one to get acquainted with this game. Before you play the real game with the silver rank.
The higher the rank the better the enemy AI gets, the more bullets and enemies will be there. Bigger enemies may have additional attacks and more energy.
--------------------------------------------------------
Scoring:
This game features a complex risk and reward based scoring system.
Factors are:
- current combo meter
- the amount of bigger enemies on screen
- T-mode: the amount of rescued birds in your pocket
- C-mode: the amount of fast kill treasures in your pocket
- difficulty/rank
To raise the combo meter destroy a lot of enemies in a short succession.
Some enemies and some attacks give more boost than others.
If your combo meter is very high you are in Baerzerker mode for maximum bonuses.
T-mode: collecting all treasures of a set grants additional bonuses
--------------------------------------------------------
Customization options (just a short excerpt):
Like on modern JAMMA hardware, settings and high scores are stored directly on the cartridge in an EEPROM.
To access the settings hold the start button at booting (can be configured on MVS at soft DIPs).
[Gameplay Menu]
- Auto Weapon Switch Pickup [on]
Automatically tries to select a slot for the new weapon. E.g. if you have an empty slot the new weapon always is put there.
If you pick up the same weapon it sums up ammo instead of putting it in a new slot.
- Auto Weapon Switch Empty [on]
If you current weapon is empty, it switches to the other weapon slot.
- Slide Move [on]
- Weapon Lock [on]
Activates weapon lock mode. It locks the weapon in aiming position.
- Movement and Weapon Lock [on]
Allows the player to move forward/backward (moonwalk), jump etc. while retaining the weapon aim
If off, the player's position is fixed
- Allow Turning in Air [on]
Allows the player to quickly turn the direction while jumping/shooting.
- Simplified Air Dash [on]
Allows doing the air dash with just pressing the slide button instead of needing to press slide+down+direction
- Masks [on]
We highly recommend to leave everything on and embrace the new play style.
[Operator Menu]
- Reduce Sprite Flicker [++ ]
As Kraut Buster has a lot more sprites, multi layering techniques and at times background layers than similar games on NEOGEO, it has a higher risk of slowdown and sprite flicker.
To keep sprite flicker and slowdown in check we introduced some simple 16 bit "AI" that decides on the fly to take measurements to reduce sprite flickering and slowdown. It's aggressiveness can be configured to some extend.
Some examples are that dead bodies have a tendency to fall out of the game area or get otherwise disposed off ASAP.
In favor of 60 fps we also needed to pass on having dynamic sprite depth sorting.
This sometimes results in small sprite priority irregularities.
As the NEOGEO hardware does not have sprite priority flags and with the huge amount of sprites we use, it would have been impossible to hold the 60fps goal otherwise.
The game is optimized around the single player mode. The 2 player mode will increase anti flicker and slowdown measurements more aggressively.
- Force 60hz Transparency [off]
Forces 16 bit style 60hz flicker fake transparency on all explosions. This reduces risk of sprite flickering greatly. Works best on arcade and consumer CRTs due to their after glow.
[Customizer Menu]
- Controls (buttons)
- Name Entry (set a default name)
- Character Design John
- Character Design Jack
- Character Design Valeria
Set colors of the characters (cloth, skin, etc.)
[Cheats]
The game comes with a variety of built in cheat modes.
Use at your own discretion. Score saving is disabled in that mode. The score font turns yellow as a cheat indicator.
Unlimited credits are supported in home mode, you can add them with the select button.
--------------------------------------------------------
Note to arcade operators:
Like all our NEOGEO games Kraut Buster was developed for private home use.
Make sure to read the included legal disclaimer and install on location at your own risk.
--------------------------------------------------------
MEGS count:
+512 MEGS for pixel art
+256 MEGS for music and sound fx
+ 40 MEGS for code and data
------
=808 MEGS
As a small surprise Kraut Buster MVS kits come with a high quality mini marquee foil for the lightbox panel of your BigRed or MVS-U.
To build and ship all units it takes about 2-3 weeks from now on. In the first 4-5 days we build and then ship the Shockbox LE and after that all normal MVS kits.
The shop system will automatically send out emails and you can also log in the shop and see the current status of your orders there.
Pictures of the Shockbox MVS LE can be found on our website and pictures of the MVS Kit in the shop.
Once all MVS units are shipped we start working on the AES version of the 2.0 PCBs so they are ready when the software side is final too.
This will take a couple of months.
>>> If you moved since your MVS order please let us know your current address. <<<
Thanks for staying with us over the years and letting us create our dream NEOGEO game!
Without you that wouldn't have been possible...
Small glimpse in the future:
The Kraut Buster pixel artists finished their work on our first exclusive(?) Switch handheld game and already moved on to our next pixel art NEOGEO+arcade game.
While Kraut Buster was made the render gfx team worked on a couple of Shmups, that will be revealed and released over the next 2 years.
We also expect to expand the team further in the next year(s) and maybe add a new hardware platform to our portfolio.
Happy holidays and a new year,
NGDEV
NG Dev Team
11 mins ·
[NGDEV] Kraut Buster MVS Release
Dear customers,
finally after years of hard work and a lot of patience from you guys we are ready to release Kraut Buster.
Warnung! Ueberlangertext! Warnung!
Kraut Buster is our love letter to the NEOGEO and a fulfillment of the dream of making a World War 2 themed technicolor styled pixel art run'n'gun.
It's art direction and designs were inspired by old war movies, Hogan's Heroes and Indy III.
When you play the game you will see the game is quite German in design and maybe humor? Yes German humor .
Kraut Buster evolved and changed a lot over the years and became a different and better game.
We hope you guys feel the same and think it was worth the wait.
--------------------------------------------------------
New moves
We added a lot of new moves and more modern controls to the game:
Ground slide move and air dash.
You can dash both on ground and air.
The slide/dash makes you shortly invincible against most projectiles (except stuff that explodes/fire/acid).
Mastering this move is very important to survive maniac-ish amounts of bullets and enemies in later missions.
With the new weapon position lock you can walk around while your weapon is in an arrested position.
It's very useful against air enemies and bosses. Advanced players also can use it against enemies that are below.
A drop down feature allows dropping down ledges to quickly get closer to enemies below or to get treasures.
Different grenade throwing speeds/modes and in C-mode you can adjust the grenade throwing angle to a small degree
If you hold the grenade button it automatically throws up to 3 grenades in a short succession.
You can shoot directly in 8 directions and with spraying/swaying the Maschienenpistole can do 16 directions.
Players can hold up to 2 weapons and switch among them.
Rapid prison shank style stab move for bigger humanoid enemies like "Gas Gerd", "Lurchmutant", "Zwergritter", "Heisse Helga", "Herrin Peitsche", "Wein Werner", "Ueberritter Ausf. S" and "Ueberritter Ausf. G"
Masks can upgrade the knife attacks to a super knife and Katana knife attack. Those do more damage and can penetrate multiple enemies.
Speaking about masks:
Masks can add combinations of abilities like:
- 1 hit shield
- weaponized chick sidekicks
- more shot power
- different grenades
- super knife
- killer slide
- higher jumps
- floating in air
- faster jump and run speed
- faster combo build up
- lower/higher difficulty and personal challenges
- negative effects like increased ammo usage in trade for power
Maybe you can already guess from the above information that Kraut Buster plays purposefully quite different to the MS games.
We used a more direct control approach known from the gorgeous Contra series.
The player always has immediate control of the characters. There are no transition animations that get spooled off.
Most actions are instant, like switching direction/jumping. Other are very fast like stabbing/ducking and grenade throwing.
Those differences above and the 60 fps give Kraut Buster quite a different feel, especially in C-mode.
However for people preferring the old and reduced controls of the MS games we offer a lot of customization options.
Using the "old style" controls makes the game unnecessary more difficult though.
The game requires 4 buttons per player 1L4B / 2L8B.
--------------------------------------------------------
Game modes:
T-mode
T-mode is similar to the MS games.
It's slower and more tactical. It's best played by slowly advancing and has lots of forced stops.
Only a reduced set of missions need to be played to keep the game time below 40 minutes.
Missions can be selected in the mission map screen. The 2nd mission for selection is always longer than the first.
Ammunition is limited in this mode, but a bigger variety of weapons are available for pickup.
C-mode
C-mode is similar to the 90s Contra (III/HC) games.
It's faster, brutal and relentless.
You need to blast yourself through all missions in one go.
There are no masks, no knives, no hidden treasures and no chicks.
The game flow is less guided in this mode and you have more control over your own pace. This also means you need to do more enemy crowd control yourself as the engine can pump out quite a lot of enemies.
But you have unlimited ammunition, an extra extend and you throw 3-way grenades! (The 3-way grenades can be slightly aimed)
There is a fast kill (quickkill) system in place that grants scoring bonuses.
--------------------------------------------------------
Difficulties:
3 ranks are available: bronze, silver and gold
Bronze is the lowest but is still quite challenging.
We recommend starting with that one to get acquainted with this game. Before you play the real game with the silver rank.
The higher the rank the better the enemy AI gets, the more bullets and enemies will be there. Bigger enemies may have additional attacks and more energy.
--------------------------------------------------------
Scoring:
This game features a complex risk and reward based scoring system.
Factors are:
- current combo meter
- the amount of bigger enemies on screen
- T-mode: the amount of rescued birds in your pocket
- C-mode: the amount of fast kill treasures in your pocket
- difficulty/rank
To raise the combo meter destroy a lot of enemies in a short succession.
Some enemies and some attacks give more boost than others.
If your combo meter is very high you are in Baerzerker mode for maximum bonuses.
T-mode: collecting all treasures of a set grants additional bonuses
--------------------------------------------------------
Customization options (just a short excerpt):
Like on modern JAMMA hardware, settings and high scores are stored directly on the cartridge in an EEPROM.
To access the settings hold the start button at booting (can be configured on MVS at soft DIPs).
[Gameplay Menu]
- Auto Weapon Switch Pickup [on]
Automatically tries to select a slot for the new weapon. E.g. if you have an empty slot the new weapon always is put there.
If you pick up the same weapon it sums up ammo instead of putting it in a new slot.
- Auto Weapon Switch Empty [on]
If you current weapon is empty, it switches to the other weapon slot.
- Slide Move [on]
- Weapon Lock [on]
Activates weapon lock mode. It locks the weapon in aiming position.
- Movement and Weapon Lock [on]
Allows the player to move forward/backward (moonwalk), jump etc. while retaining the weapon aim
If off, the player's position is fixed
- Allow Turning in Air [on]
Allows the player to quickly turn the direction while jumping/shooting.
- Simplified Air Dash [on]
Allows doing the air dash with just pressing the slide button instead of needing to press slide+down+direction
- Masks [on]
We highly recommend to leave everything on and embrace the new play style.
[Operator Menu]
- Reduce Sprite Flicker [++ ]
As Kraut Buster has a lot more sprites, multi layering techniques and at times background layers than similar games on NEOGEO, it has a higher risk of slowdown and sprite flicker.
To keep sprite flicker and slowdown in check we introduced some simple 16 bit "AI" that decides on the fly to take measurements to reduce sprite flickering and slowdown. It's aggressiveness can be configured to some extend.
Some examples are that dead bodies have a tendency to fall out of the game area or get otherwise disposed off ASAP.
In favor of 60 fps we also needed to pass on having dynamic sprite depth sorting.
This sometimes results in small sprite priority irregularities.
As the NEOGEO hardware does not have sprite priority flags and with the huge amount of sprites we use, it would have been impossible to hold the 60fps goal otherwise.
The game is optimized around the single player mode. The 2 player mode will increase anti flicker and slowdown measurements more aggressively.
- Force 60hz Transparency [off]
Forces 16 bit style 60hz flicker fake transparency on all explosions. This reduces risk of sprite flickering greatly. Works best on arcade and consumer CRTs due to their after glow.
[Customizer Menu]
- Controls (buttons)
- Name Entry (set a default name)
- Character Design John
- Character Design Jack
- Character Design Valeria
Set colors of the characters (cloth, skin, etc.)
[Cheats]
The game comes with a variety of built in cheat modes.
Use at your own discretion. Score saving is disabled in that mode. The score font turns yellow as a cheat indicator.
Unlimited credits are supported in home mode, you can add them with the select button.
--------------------------------------------------------
Note to arcade operators:
Like all our NEOGEO games Kraut Buster was developed for private home use.
Make sure to read the included legal disclaimer and install on location at your own risk.
--------------------------------------------------------
MEGS count:
+512 MEGS for pixel art
+256 MEGS for music and sound fx
+ 40 MEGS for code and data
------
=808 MEGS
As a small surprise Kraut Buster MVS kits come with a high quality mini marquee foil for the lightbox panel of your BigRed or MVS-U.
To build and ship all units it takes about 2-3 weeks from now on. In the first 4-5 days we build and then ship the Shockbox LE and after that all normal MVS kits.
The shop system will automatically send out emails and you can also log in the shop and see the current status of your orders there.
Pictures of the Shockbox MVS LE can be found on our website and pictures of the MVS Kit in the shop.
Once all MVS units are shipped we start working on the AES version of the 2.0 PCBs so they are ready when the software side is final too.
This will take a couple of months.
>>> If you moved since your MVS order please let us know your current address. <<<
Thanks for staying with us over the years and letting us create our dream NEOGEO game!
Without you that wouldn't have been possible...
Small glimpse in the future:
The Kraut Buster pixel artists finished their work on our first exclusive(?) Switch handheld game and already moved on to our next pixel art NEOGEO+arcade game.
While Kraut Buster was made the render gfx team worked on a couple of Shmups, that will be revealed and released over the next 2 years.
We also expect to expand the team further in the next year(s) and maybe add a new hardware platform to our portfolio.
Happy holidays and a new year,
NGDEV
aha2940
AH, A, COLUMBIAN!,
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2013
- Posts
- 2,528
I like what I read. It seems to be varied, a mixture of Contra and Metal Slug, but with the customizations it can be a good game worthy of the neo-geo, however only gameplay will tell if it is or not. Let's wait for the carts to start arriving and people to test it. I, for one, am excited for this and can't wait to play it 
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2004
- Posts
- 1,309
Great news! Super excited!
Jonmkl
Rasputin's Rose Gardener
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2012
- Posts
- 715
Do we know if KB is on the reprint schedule? I decided I would wait until I could see the final game in action before buying in this time.
Very curious to see this exclusive switch game, I’m also wondering if the “new platform” they’re thinking of adding is the Airframe.
Very curious to see this exclusive switch game, I’m also wondering if the “new platform” they’re thinking of adding is the Airframe.
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2007
- Posts
- 1,166
They responded to my comment on Facebook today saying they’re doing another run next year so yeah
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2004
- Posts
- 4,300
Well... This sounds pretty damn cool with all the new additions. Now to wait for AES orders to open and hope I've got the scrilla to grab one at that time!
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2002
- Posts
- 13,556
I hope it's good fun for all buyers. Seems they put a lot of work into making it
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2001
- Posts
- 1,452
I would think/hope the Exa Arcadia is more likely.
oliverclaude
General Morden's Aide
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2013
- Posts
- 7,688
Excellent, the 60fps will deliver the needed difference to Metal Slug. Very good decision to keep them!