Vengeance Hunters (Beat 'em Up) for the Neo Geo
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amerika
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Good call. I don't control the website and it's sometimes hard to get fixed up. But I'll see what I can do.
I also don't control this, but I do get info. I did get confirmation today that the PCB's will be at the factory and get soldered on September 1st. Hopefully that means we'll get them, get the flashed, packaged and then shipped out by end of the month. I figured I'd go ahead and pass along that info.
So even if we miss the end of September, it will be very close to then.
amerika
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As far as buying/shipping goes, yes (if it's coming from Andorra). As far as testing the game, no. SAG will have copies of the game as well.
I honestly have no idea as we are still using a modified flash cart to do all of our testing. However, I have had the game flashed to my modded NeoSD Pro and it worked in a 6 slot MVS which had never seen a minute of service in it's life. It only worked on slot 4, but it did work. And to my knowledge, that is one of the most fickle pieces of MVS hardware you can own.
Safe bet is if a NeoSD (original or Pro) can work in your system where it's setup to auto-boot a pre-flashed game, Vengeance Hunters should work. I'm going to do my best to get as much of that stuff tested as possible before we ship. I might even reach out for help in this area.
One key thing about our cart is that it will have an SD card slot that can be used for updating the game if any big issues are found and need to be fixed.
amerika
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I posted our third and final playable character showcase tonight. Showing off the ranged combo monster, Loony. I am especially proud of this guy as I think his kit is fairly unique to beat'em'ups and he appears OP despite not being so. Having ranged options for combos and how the combos bounce enemies everywhere makes for a pretty fun time IMO.
I also showed off VENGEANCE! mode, which is what we call our Hard difficulty. I wasn't lazy with this and simply increased HP of all enemies. That is a pet peeve of mine and I consider it lazy. So every enemy gets a speed boost, an attack speed boost, an aggression boost and some enemies will select more powerful attacks a lot more often based on difficulty. Also, all the extra enemies that are in 2player mode show up even in 1player Vengeance mode. And there are even health items that do not show up. So you better know how to rack up a good score to get 1ups via points and know where all the secret 1ups are in order to get through VENGEANCE mode.
I also showed off VENGEANCE! mode, which is what we call our Hard difficulty. I wasn't lazy with this and simply increased HP of all enemies. That is a pet peeve of mine and I consider it lazy. So every enemy gets a speed boost, an attack speed boost, an aggression boost and some enemies will select more powerful attacks a lot more often based on difficulty. Also, all the extra enemies that are in 2player mode show up even in 1player Vengeance mode. And there are even health items that do not show up. So you better know how to rack up a good score to get 1ups via points and know where all the secret 1ups are in order to get through VENGEANCE mode.
Your high skill makes the gameplay more offensive and aggressive.
Really nice to see all possibilities by each characters.
Yeah with vengeance mode, i saw some extra enemies at once on screen.
Neo geo hardware has its limits with sprites on same line that can give some flickerings.
I remember that Alpha Denshi with Ninja Combat made a good job with many enemies on the same line.
As you said on your last gameplay, enemies entrance ( by the ground, air ... ) is also very important because it contributes to give good rhythm.
Really nice to see all possibilities by each characters.
Yeah with vengeance mode, i saw some extra enemies at once on screen.
Neo geo hardware has its limits with sprites on same line that can give some flickerings.
I remember that Alpha Denshi with Ninja Combat made a good job with many enemies on the same line.
As you said on your last gameplay, enemies entrance ( by the ground, air ... ) is also very important because it contributes to give good rhythm.
amerika
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Thank you! Yeah, part of showing these videos is to let people know that the game isn't just walk right and punch and throw. Or in some cases, jump kick to victory
The response has been awesome to see and I hope people pick up the game and end up loving it. There is also a bit of speed running tech in here too. I hope at least a couple of people try to break the game haha.Yeah, the Neo-Geo has issues with to many sprites on a line and we have to be careful about that. We don't hit it often in 1P mode, but in 2P there are a few sections that will have a bit of line corruption. But nothing excessive and you'll mostly be 60FPS or near it through those small bits. I have it setup where enemies will pop up based on how many enemies are left on the screen pretty often and I try to ensure that there are no more than 4 on screen in order to give the CPU a break, but limit our chances of hitting any other Neo-Geo limits. Not sure if VH looks like it, but it's actually pushing the Neo-Geo to it's technical limits in quite a few ways while also retaining 60FPS.
Fun fact, Loony was originally designed with a Bionic Commando/Dhalsim style of arm that went pretty far across the screen. But due to the line limit on the Neo-Geo, it was changed to a Missile. Thus, the FISSILE was born.
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Try to adapt on hardware limit ( your exemple on Loony ), it requires finding ingenious solutions. Nintendo with less power consoles is a master of innovation.
I remember the interview of Nazca team and Takeshi Okui ( pixel artist on metal slug that worked on 2 last Zelda BOTW AND TEARS OF THE KINGDOM) was speaking of sprites limits on the same line on neo geo hardware ( less than on Irem hardware, M92 for example ), but in other hand neo geo was capable of " giving a sprite up to eight animation patterns without any real processing overhead".
I'm not a native english, so if you can explain me "the eight animation patterns ", it would be useful for me.
Takeshi Okui: The new [NEOGEO] hardware was a challenge; it allowed us to do things we were never able to before, but it also came with restrictions we didn’t previously have. For example, most of Irem’s hardware – except for one of their last boards – couldn’t do scaling. Actually, it couldn’t zoom, only shrink. The NEOGEO could display big sprites and enabled us to do things like giving a sprite up to eight animation patterns without any real processing overhead, but the number we could display on a single horizontal line was less than Irem’s boards could do. We needed to take care not to line up too many [sprites] together, meaning we had to restrict the use of parallax scrolling. Coming from Irem, parallax is something we wanted to use everywhere, but the restrictions meant we had to minimise it. Instead, we made the most of the ability to do eight animation patterns.
Shinichi Hamada: At Irem, we made a lot of use of parallax scrolling using the raster method, but, on the NEOGEO, we couldn’t do this. Well, we could, but not without putting a load on the system. What we could do, was use the background’s VRAM to handle fixed animations. By fixed, I mean the animation played for a number of frames, then looped. We couldn’t play three frames and then six; it had to be the same each loop. That’s what Okui-san was talking about when he said “eight animation patterns”. At first, we weren’t even sure how to best use this, and the background team had an especially tough time. So, when I first saw the waterfall, the one on the first stage which Okui-kun drew, I was blown away. WOW!
I remember the interview of Nazca team and Takeshi Okui ( pixel artist on metal slug that worked on 2 last Zelda BOTW AND TEARS OF THE KINGDOM) was speaking of sprites limits on the same line on neo geo hardware ( less than on Irem hardware, M92 for example ), but in other hand neo geo was capable of " giving a sprite up to eight animation patterns without any real processing overhead".
I'm not a native english, so if you can explain me "the eight animation patterns ", it would be useful for me.
Takeshi Okui: The new [NEOGEO] hardware was a challenge; it allowed us to do things we were never able to before, but it also came with restrictions we didn’t previously have. For example, most of Irem’s hardware – except for one of their last boards – couldn’t do scaling. Actually, it couldn’t zoom, only shrink. The NEOGEO could display big sprites and enabled us to do things like giving a sprite up to eight animation patterns without any real processing overhead, but the number we could display on a single horizontal line was less than Irem’s boards could do. We needed to take care not to line up too many [sprites] together, meaning we had to restrict the use of parallax scrolling. Coming from Irem, parallax is something we wanted to use everywhere, but the restrictions meant we had to minimise it. Instead, we made the most of the ability to do eight animation patterns.
Shinichi Hamada: At Irem, we made a lot of use of parallax scrolling using the raster method, but, on the NEOGEO, we couldn’t do this. Well, we could, but not without putting a load on the system. What we could do, was use the background’s VRAM to handle fixed animations. By fixed, I mean the animation played for a number of frames, then looped. We couldn’t play three frames and then six; it had to be the same each loop. That’s what Okui-san was talking about when he said “eight animation patterns”. At first, we weren’t even sure how to best use this, and the background team had an especially tough time. So, when I first saw the waterfall, the one on the first stage which Okui-kun drew, I was blown away. WOW!
amerika
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Just a quick update here:
We are nearing completion! We are fighting with the Xbox partner program that is absolute shit. Sony stuff is basically done, I believe Switch is too, we've got a retail build testing for Steam and all we have left is to find any unfound issues (focusing on some 2player stuff and MVS soft dips).
We are also done with all cut scenes save the endings. And each playable character gets a unique ending. Also, the dialogue was recently finalized. The game will have different dialogue in-game based on character chosen AND changes based on difficulty. So you get a bit more flavor text for anybody who cares/enjoys that kind of stuff (and you can mash A to speed through it). And all cut-scenes change dialogue and some images based on which character you select to go along with the previously mentioned unique endings.
Carts are being soldered in a couple of days and hopefully will be done and completed with no issues (fingers crossed). Cases I believe are shipped now too.
Also, if anybody is in the Kansas City area, I'll be hopefully bringing the game to a barcade or possibly multiple ones in the next few weeks for people to play through. I'll announce date/s and time when I get more details worked out. This is mostly a thing for fun than any type of advertisement or gaining feedback.
We are nearing completion! We are fighting with the Xbox partner program that is absolute shit. Sony stuff is basically done, I believe Switch is too, we've got a retail build testing for Steam and all we have left is to find any unfound issues (focusing on some 2player stuff and MVS soft dips).
We are also done with all cut scenes save the endings. And each playable character gets a unique ending. Also, the dialogue was recently finalized. The game will have different dialogue in-game based on character chosen AND changes based on difficulty. So you get a bit more flavor text for anybody who cares/enjoys that kind of stuff (and you can mash A to speed through it). And all cut-scenes change dialogue and some images based on which character you select to go along with the previously mentioned unique endings.
Carts are being soldered in a couple of days and hopefully will be done and completed with no issues (fingers crossed). Cases I believe are shipped now too.
Also, if anybody is in the Kansas City area, I'll be hopefully bringing the game to a barcade or possibly multiple ones in the next few weeks for people to play through. I'll announce date/s and time when I get more details worked out. This is mostly a thing for fun than any type of advertisement or gaining feedback.
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Definitely intrigued for some in person testing.
amerika
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Hell yeah! Would be cool to meet some people in the area into this stuff.
I don't have an exact answer to your question as I only have a single slot OMVS currently. The final cart will be using hardware similar to the NeoSD with custom firmware and will auto-boot to the game. So if you can cycle a NeoSD that auto-boots a game, then VH will be fine. I was told by somebody more familiar with MVS hardware that the NeoSD does not have issues with cycling when setup like this. But YMMV. I'll see if I can't get this tested myself shortly.
SAG will be selling carts. I'm not sure if Nalua will have any. We hope that there will be quite the rush to snag carts once the game actually releases as I think a lot of fence sitters might be swayed once they see people playing/talking about the game. I hope so anyway. All local playtests and tests with external people, including some well known beat'em'up enthusiasts, has been ultra positive.
amerika
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Oh, we got some images of our PCB's for the game that I shared on Twitter. We also got confirmation that all our shells for them have been shipped. As you can probably imagine, I am pretty damn excited. Hopefully all goes well on the hardware side which, as I've expressed here before, is a bit of a concern since it's out of our hands and history has proven that unforseen things can mess up timetables.
amerika
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Welp, we did a thing! We have a complete game.
Also, the PCB's should hopefully be done being soldered at the factory and ship out soon. We have all the other components shipping to us right now and we should be able to start putting orders together. We are submitting the modern console ports to Nintendo/Sony/Xbox this weekend. I am talking to a few people who have agreed to do some reviews and streams (no strings attached/they can say what they want). Mostly we are excited for more people to play.
BTW, I did find out that SAG will have both the regular edition and the limited edition carts for people interested in going that route.
Also, the PCB's should hopefully be done being soldered at the factory and ship out soon. We have all the other components shipping to us right now and we should be able to start putting orders together. We are submitting the modern console ports to Nintendo/Sony/Xbox this weekend. I am talking to a few people who have agreed to do some reviews and streams (no strings attached/they can say what they want). Mostly we are excited for more people to play.
BTW, I did find out that SAG will have both the regular edition and the limited edition carts for people interested in going that route.
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amerika
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Posted some new Character Showcase videos (3 consecutive tweets) that we also uploaded to Steam (only place viewable atm) and all the other modern game digital storefronts.
We will also be announcing our release date shortly.
We will also be announcing our release date shortly.
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