Kraut Buster New NGDEV - 2015

kuze

Akari's Big Brother
10 Year Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2013
Posts
2,549
I might be swayed to preorder once they release the new video / update, but I really hope they come through with the "Q4" release date.
 

Piwi

Rugal's Thug
Joined
Oct 4, 2013
Posts
91
Just got mail from NGDEV:


Kraut Buster Mission Status Report 2017

Dear customers,

here is the current state of Kraut Buster for NEOGEO.

We have a new video ready here: https://youtu.be/TMix_9cesik

This video uses a simple RGB CRT effect to make it look a little bit like an arcade screen.
It's recommended to watch it full screen to prevent distortion and to have it run in 60fps.

We kept the video intentionally short as we don't want to spoiler too much of the game.

C-MODE:

It's the first time we show the player character: Jack "Handsome" Rowdy and the "contra" mode (displayed as C-MODE).

The C-MODE mode changes the gameplay to a faster more action and running and crushing oriented gameplay.
With less stops, less energy for enemies and less bullet sponges.
Masks and treasures/collectable/secrets are removed in C-MODE to keep this mode as clutter free as possible.
The player's knife attack is also disabled to keep the gunning flow.
To compensate the "simplicity" of this mode we also added a fast kill score system additional to the timed chain system to increase long time appeal of the C-MODE.

Content of video:

We are showing small parts of mission 3-1 (train ride), mission 3-2 (train yard), mission 4-2 (boat ride),

Mission 3-1 you are fighting your way across a military train towards it's locomotive to stop it.
It has 4 parallax layers. Far away background, background, train, foreground details.
All train cars have a nice full body hand pixelated driving motion effect applied to them.

Mission 3-2 is about battling yourself through the ruins of a bombed village, a train wreck and destroying some experimental weapon system in the train yard.
It also introduces the enemy characters: Vixens of the Dictator "Heiße Helga" and "Herrin Peitsche"
We are only showing the first 60 seconds of ca. 6 minutes.

Both missions are also very military. While mission 2 and mission 4 have monsters, robots and tesla enemies.


Mission 4-2 is about escaping a secret submarine base, the fortified coastal zone and infiltrating the dictator's battle ship.
We are showing the first 60 seconds of the "fortified coastal zone" part.

As you can see in the map screen the game has 9 selectable missions.
Some missions consist of several "rooms" with their own settings and graphic sets. Right now we have about 17 "rooms".
Each mission ends with a proper and individual end boss. All stages also have mini bosses.

Overall game status:

The base game will be finished in December/January.
We included below information of which nice to have graphic details we want to add to the game and will see if you guys give us the time for it or if you guys want an earlier release.
We won't do a vote, we will just go with the general impression of the mood we get from you guys.
If we produce the PCBs in December we can do a release in January. A release in February is advised though.

The allotted graphic development budget of KB will be used up after December, we will then start the next pixel art game for NEOGEO.

Shipping is done as always in this order: MVS LE->MVS RE->AES CE->AES RE (order of payment)



Features that we would like to implement but that need more time:

Details:

- Proper story intro / ending / special ending / new fitting music composed
- 3rd character: Valaria "Bona" Bossa (needs to be drawn from scratch unless we reuse the legs of the guys)
- Proper character select screen
- Character customization: skin color / cloth colors
- Mission select screen (partially implemented as you can see in the video, but we would like to include some fun stuff happening on the map)
- Animated title screen
- Adding more destructibles, parallax scrolling and small background animations in the stages
- Player stage win animation (each character)
- Experimental: Sliding for players in C-MODE to make it even more fluid/speedy (requires extra frames for each character) / can have large implication on gameplay / not sure if it can happen


We redrew some later backgrounds from scratch to boost quality even further.
We redrew most explosions.
Added a fast kill / quickkill score system

Having the game run in 60 fps was also quite time consuming at times and not an easy feature to archive.
While we have up to 2x the amount of objects on screen the engine kinda runs up to 4x times as fluid as similar games on NEOGEO (60 fps instead of 30fps).
A lot of optimizations, trickery and out of the box thinking was required to archive this.

We wrote a new Z80 sound driver for better handling the limited resources and adding new features such as user adjustable music volume.
We are not sure but we think it's the first time that it's possible for the user to adjust music volume in a NEOGEO game!?

All our future NEOGEO games will benefit from those engine upgrades.

It also looks like KB could become a gigashock game as it is approaching 512MEGS for graphic ROMs. Music is already at 512 MEGs.
It would be the first pixel art giga shock NEOGEO game ever.

We added some new hardware features on our custom PCBs, implementing them and using them well will take additional time too:

AES+MVS:

- 64KBytes EEPROM: for example to save scores / configs / unlocks / achievements / game progress

- WLAN for example to do software updates / worldwide online highscore list
WLAN needs quite some testing both in hardware and software, hopefully it will make it.
Having WLAN on NEOGEO would be quite cool and could lead to interesting stuff in the future.

- GFX ROM doubled in size

MVS:

- Micro SD-Card (software update) to replace USB update. If WLAN does not work out we maybe add this to AES too.
Allows software updates without the need of a connection to a windows PC.


Those hardware costs are covered by us for the existing pre orders.

Best regards,
NGDEV

******************

This video was recorded at 59.18 FPS -> speedup to 60 FPS and a simple artificial scan line CRT effect was overlaid in post production (line tripling 3x 224p->672p). The music are MP3s of the in game OST overlaid.
The videos were recorded on an unoptimized debug built.
 
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Flagshiphero

Crazed MVS Addict
Joined
Dec 15, 2009
Posts
140
New info and video are up.

IT LOOKS GREAT!!!

If anyone dares to complain to release earlier, instead of adding some good stuff...........FIGHT ME.

 

Rot

Calvin & Hobbes, ,
Joined
Jul 8, 2003
Posts
11,441
If anyone dares to complain to release earlier, instead of adding some good stuff...........FIGHT ME.

You wanna be a playa'?

Gotta take on the best... I'm available for this evenings entertainment...

xROTx

PS. There are no happy endings on NG.com... just victims...
 

RAZO

Mayor of Southtown
15 Year Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2006
Posts
8,788
Yea, just saw the video. I think they are doing micro usb updates so I guess it doesn't matter if you request the game to be released earlier or if you want to wait till February. I didn't pre-order this, so I guess it's up to you guys to decide on Facebook or how ever you communicate with ngdev.
 

Rot

Calvin & Hobbes, ,
Joined
Jul 8, 2003
Posts
11,441

That's not a definite... yes or no...

The keke... sign should be used appropriately...

Like this... "if you don't give me a reasonable answer... I am gonna make sure you remember this evening for a LONG time"... :keke:

xROTx
 

Ukyo

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2000
Posts
1,062
delay please; I want a proper character select screen.

not sure why they put all this effort into C-MODE, but whatever. The mask system makes the game unique, why spend resources designing around it?

sprites are looking good though.
 

Rot

Calvin & Hobbes, ,
Joined
Jul 8, 2003
Posts
11,441
Take your time, don't burn the cake! Looking great!!!

Seeing as FlaggingSmallCawk has pussied out... you wanna take his place... and play?

Timm won't mind... he has your money... He aint even here anymore...

...so free reign....

xROTx
 

bello

Crossed Swords Squire
10 Year Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2009
Posts
191
Looks great but unfortunately we have to wait at least 4-6month for an AES release!
 

madman

Blame madman, You Know You Want To.,
Joined
Jun 1, 2007
Posts
7,518
Looks great, I'm not sure customizing the character is worth it. However, a story and more details/parallax would be worth the time.
 

xsq

Thou Shalt Not, Question Rot.,
Joined
Jan 17, 2013
Posts
7,414
how is no one going bonkers over the WLAN feature? if it can be done, that seems massive to me!
 

madman

Blame madman, You Know You Want To.,
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7,518
I don't see the WLAN thing actually happening, if it does it'd be a cool technical achievement but I care more about the gameplay than something like that.
 

TikTekTak

Haomaru's Blade Shiner
10 Year Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Posts
680
I also think the Wlan feature is more of a "could be done in the future sometime" but not in the next few months.
 

xsq

Thou Shalt Not, Question Rot.,
Joined
Jan 17, 2013
Posts
7,414
so, just a carrot to dangle in front of the preorder mule? maybe.
it's not like anyone uses international highscore lists anyway ;)
 

LegoSlug

Over Top Auto Mechanic
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Posts
864
Safe to say this will be their best game yet, in terms of content, animation, and quite likely in gameplay. It looks stellar.
 

Salvio007

Mr. Big's Thug
Joined
Oct 29, 2012
Posts
196
Really looking forward to this one and it's one of those games they need to go balls to the wall with.
More time working on it, the better it will be.
 

madman

Blame madman, You Know You Want To.,
Joined
Jun 1, 2007
Posts
7,518
Safe to say this will be their best game yet, in terms of content, animation, and quite likely in gameplay. It looks stellar.

Indeed. It'll be amusing to see all the naysayers posting WTB ads so they can get a copy.
 

MCF 76

Vice's Love Slave
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2010
Posts
2,172
KB AES will be available again next year, (maybe) jamma version too.

Although i sold all my Neo stuff last couple years & canceled my preorder of this game. I honestly would buy a jamma version if they ever released that format. You can't deny the game looks very damn good in recent video.
 

Morden

Somewhere in Europe.,
Joined
Jul 5, 2005
Posts
711
- Proper story intro / ending / special ending / new fitting music composed
- 3rd character: Valaria "Bona" Bossa (needs to be drawn from scratch unless we reuse the legs of the guys)
- Proper character select screen
- Character customization: skin color / cloth colors
- Mission select screen (partially implemented as you can see in the video, but we would like to include some fun stuff happening on the map)
- Animated title screen
- Adding more destructibles, parallax scrolling and small background animations in the stages
- Player stage win animation (each character)
- Experimental: Sliding for players in C-MODE to make it even more fluid/speedy (requires extra frames for each character) / can have large implication on gameplay / not sure if it can happen

That sure is some list, but it would be a less of a game if it didn't have a proper intro, ending, character select screen and so on, so I guess they should push back the release. I wonder why NG:Dev bother with release dates, knowing how much work they have left? Wouldn't it be better to just release it when it's done, but keep people updated on monthly basis at least, so that they know things are moving forward?

I for one would appreciate more frequent updates. Plus, it opens up a channel for feedback in early stages. I'm not saying they should let people decide everything in the game, but let's say you put a lot of hours into a sprite or a background, and people simply hate it.

- 64KBytes EEPROM: for example to save scores / configs / unlocks / achievements / game progress
- WLAN for example to do software updates / worldwide online highscore list
WLAN needs quite some testing both in hardware and software, hopefully it will make it.
Having WLAN on NEOGEO would be quite cool and could lead to interesting stuff in the future.
- GFX ROM doubled in size

The WLAN feature sounds so cool! I wish they'd push things even further. Two player game over internet connection using WLAN, perhaps? I really hope that at least high score tables will work upon release.
 

nornor1

NEST Puppet
Joined
Sep 1, 2016
Posts
173
1 Giga Power!! The game looks pretty good. Its probably pushing the neo-geo hardware pretty hard.
 

FilthyRear

Neo-Geo.com's, Top Rated Bully.,
15 Year Member
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Posts
8,152
1 Giga Power!! The game looks pretty good. Its probably pushing the neo-geo hardware pretty hard.

Looks like a rip-off of Metal Slug to me.

More quality overpriced, unoriginal garbage from the folks at NG DEV!
 
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