Xevious for the Neo Geo Beta 1 released! - Page 1

Get it while it's hot!!!

For MAME, NeoSD and NGCD. Runs in tate mode!

https://tcdev.itch.io/xevious

This is exciting stuff! Very cool project! Thanks very much for the hook up I'll give it a test run and report back!

I'm waaaay behind I'm excited to try Blastar's Flappy Chicken project as well! This is wicked!

the usefulness of this is not entirely clear to me but a technically impressive work!

blastar (./3) :
the usefulness of this is not entirely clear to me but a technically impressive work!

Yeah I get it's not everyone's cup of tea. And plenty of ways to play Xevious without having to fire up a Neo Geo. I guess it's one of those things where you say I did it, "because I could".

congrats!

@tcdev - This Xevious of yours is a masterpiece hats off!

I'm not too familiar with Xevious but I understand it is a very formative and fundamental shooter from back in the day!

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you get the title for first tate port to Neo Geo! and first tate game to hit the Neo Geo!

IMO any game added to the console is a win for the library....In this case your efforts extraordinary to faithfully reproduce this classic...You are some M2 quality stuff here!

Feedback:

- I notice little horizontal dots across the top the screen they are minor I've seen them show up in my own projects I don't the symptom well enough to officially comment but could it have to do with palette access?
Regardless this is a masterpiece with or without those minor dots!

- Unfortunately it isn't easily possible to orient my TV in Tate Mode which makes my controls awkward...would you consider hacking another control scheme that allows - up to be left, down to be right, right to be up and left to be down?

- How hard is it to have a reskinned mode? I asked for selfish reasons and badass reasons...

- The option to play OG xevious with OG GFX in TATE - Already in place
- The option to play OG xevious with Neo Geo GFX in 4:3 (but in Xevious you drop bombs to the ground so that's weird playing side ways...yes and no if the background of xevious was reskinned to be a massive ship you are side bombing the ships cannons etc)

THE DREAM -tcdev ports Black Tiger to Neo Geo!!!! (A top favorite non-neo geo 68K based game)

Mega Shocked - helps rip all the assets etc...

A reskin mode is made that features the legendary Magic Sword GFX!!!!

Now off to make an itchio account and pay for some Xevious thank you for all your hard work man! Keep up the great work! This is incredible knowing you have the skill to pull this off makes my mind spiral and bend at the same time!

Mega Shocked (./6) :
@tcdev - This Xevious of yours is a masterpiece hats off!

Thanks!

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you get the title for first tate port to Neo Geo! and first tate game to hit the Neo Geo!

It may well be the first tate port, but Neo XYX is another tate game I'm aware of.

- I notice little horizontal dots across the top the screen they are minor I've seen them show up in my own projects I don't the symptom well enough to officially comment but could it have to do with palette access?
Regardless this is a masterpiece with or without those minor dots!

Yes, I'm going to try to address this in the next beta. It's not palette access as I'm not touching the palette after start-up, more likely accessing sprite registers for the foreground layer (score etc) outside VBLANK.

- Unfortunately it isn't easily possible to orient my TV in Tate Mode which makes my controls awkward...would you consider hacking another control scheme that allows - up to be left, down to be right, right to be up and left to be down?

I could look into that, yes!

- How hard is it to have a reskinned mode? I asked for selfish reasons and badass reasons...

That would be a job for a graphic artist... I'm terrible at that sort of thing.

THE DREAM -tcdev ports Black Tiger to Neo Geo!!!! (A top favorite non-neo geo 68K based game)

I'm not familiar with that game myself, happy to look at it. Next off the rank though is Donkey Kong, then I'll be looking for a horizontal game (like Black Tiger) to port...

This is too good! Thanks for the reply!

So Neo XYX is Tate eh!?

If you make that control hack for Xevious I think it would be a cool addition and give some more playability etc! I love the Xevious music!

What I love is the potential of reskinned modes! Arcade Perfection with 16 Bit GFX sign me up!

You can't get more classic than the OG Donkey Kong! I would love to work with you/experiment on a reskinned mode for that title! I feel the tile set is small enough we can make something nice people will get a kick out of! in a relatively short time!

If Black Tiger ends up on your list that will be insane IMO it is top tier a sound home port never made it to the consoles of the 16 Bit era!

Mega Shocked (./8) :
If you make that control hack for Xevious I think it would be a cool addition and give some more playability etc! I love the Xevious music!

Done, it'll be in the next Beta.

You can't get more classic than the OG Donkey Kong! I would love to work with you/experiment on a reskinned mode for that title! I feel the tile set is small enough we can make something nice people will get a kick out of! in a relatively short time!

I recall many years ago when arcade emulators were just hitting mainstream there was a short-lived fad with a few people trying to re-skin the classics, and Donkey Kong was one of them. I think it was called "Donkey Kong DX" or something similar, but I can't find any reference to it on the net now. I think for a really radical re-skin you need to at least double the resolution though...

Was hoping to release Beta 2 tonight but still struggling with sound issues... hopefully sorted soon...

All good! I'm struggling in general lol. Keep it up! Truly amazing stuff you are up to! One of these days I'm gonna write my own ASM routines! Any particular book you recommend for a beginner?

Mega Shocked (./11) :
One of these days I'm gonna write my own ASM routines! Any particular book you recommend for a beginner?

Sorry, I haven't read any learner/tutorial books on 68K myself; knowing several 8-bit CPUs I pretty much just studied sample code and used the 68K ASM reference to get started.

Hearing you started on 8-bit cpu's is a cool origin story! No worries! I figured I would ask in the chance you had a book in mind.

Mega Shocked (./13) :
Hearing you started on 8-bit cpu's is a cool origin story! No worries! I figured I would ask in the chance you had a book in mind.

I don't know if I am a great example to follow since my 68000 is very basic. But I use an old Amiga book "Amiga Machine Language : A practical guide to learning 68000 assembler language on the Amiga" by Stefan Dittrich. It teaches you all the basics and you can ignore the Amiga specific stuff. I had it since the Amiga days. I also have the official Motorola manual which I think is really good if you need to work out how many cycles certain instructions take. Weirdly I think the Neo Geo uses slow memory for the program space so you have to add an extra cycle or 2 on. (can anyone confirm this?)

There is also an online tutorial here for Neo Geo specific 68000 programming : https://www.ajworld.net/neogeodev/beginner/

And you can also use ChatGPT to write 68000 assembly and to optimise your own assembly. Although sadly it won't write Neo Geo specific code (yet!)