Jackal nes2pce

[ParanoiaDragon]

Like I said over on yer site, this is one of those games I'd love to work on(music), ported over to the Turbo, using the arcades gfx along with other games like Trojan & Contra!

[Bonknuts]

Same here. I started tracer through the game in the debugger, and found the tile/sprite decompression routine (game uses chr-ram instead of chr-rom). I need to write a decompressor for the game's graphics, and then write a hook to update alt graphics (16 color tiles/sprites). Next would be to trace and locate the sprite handling code, and change all sprites from 8x16 to 16x16.

[Bernie]

Woot!  I'd love to see Dragon Warrior.  Thanks for all your efforts.  These are awesome. I recently spent a fair amount of time playing Contra on my Duo.

Dragon Warrior here as well! 

[Bonknuts]

Dragon Warrior is planned, but I have to update the old emulation code in it first (which requires some new code to be written).

[Greg2600]

Runs really well, the music is great.  I have a TG-16 and Turbo Everdrive but no Turbo Tap.  Gameplay feels exactly like the NES.

Issues: The sound effect for the grenades is not great, nor explosions.  In the game music, anything that is drum/percussion heavy seems to have a popping sound.  Screen scrolling occasionally gets a single black horizontal/vertical line for a second.  Lastly, when scrolling, the "ground" seems to get a lot more blurry than the NES version.

Frankly, this is amazingly close to the NES, though I can't test 2P mode, and I feel a huge improvement musically over your Contra port.  The music (beyond the drums) is an improvement over NES thanks to better TG hardware.

PS: I compared my results to using Magic Engine on PC.  On the emulator, the scrolling seems fine, no blurriness, with occasional screen glitches.  Percussion isn't as distorted/popping.  FWIW, I used TurboBooster composite out directly to HDTV, which looks like shit.  Then used it with my DVDO upscaler, which cleans it up nearly perfectly.  Still has the glitches I mentioned.

Lastly, I hooked up the TG to an old CRT, and the blurriness in the background scrolling seems much better, so could just be the LCD TV's crappy deinterlacing.

[Bonknuts]

Thanks for the report

 The version is a bit harder than the NES, specifically because there's no slowdown (which makes the nes one easier). I posted as version that have 9 lives starting out and for continuing.

[Greg2600]

Right, no Konami code.

[whisper2053]

Just played around with it a little bit, and as far as I can tell, the only oddity is the weird *BOOP* whenever stuff blows up. I am assuming those are just placeholder sounds for now?

Anyways, here's a quick test vid I made showing it running on my Duo:

[Bonknuts]

Cool. Thanks for testing

 

[Keith Courage]

The only thing I notice that is different is the lack of drums for the audio. Other then that it plays great

[Bonknuts]

Yeah, drums aren't in yet (no nes DPCM emulation). I'll add that in, when I hack the game to use more PCE specific stuff, instead converting on the fly. Working on that now.

 I also had an idea; hack the game's audio tracks for stereo. NES uses a lot of phase pair channels and such. They sound nice when separated. For games that don't use the DPCM, I could reserve two channels to add a slight echo effect on the two pulse channels too (since 2 PCE channels aren't being used for anything).

[esteban]

I also had an idea; hack the game's audio tracks for stereo. NES uses a lot of phase pair channels and such. They sound nice when separated. For games that don't use the DPCM, I could reserve two channels to add a slight echo effect on the two pulse channels too (since 2 PCE channels aren't being used for anything).

Awesome! That would add a nice touch to the soundtrack.

[Mortis]

We played this enough yesterday to make it to what I assume is the the final boss, on the last level. Its second form has misaligned sprites and so much flickering with the graphics that it's impossible to beat at the moment!

That being said, wow, this game is pretty darn good for what it is, 1988 and all. So many novel ideas - they really mixed it up with the weapons system, you basically use special weapons for normal enemies and the basic gun for bosses. That is really strange and cool. Thanks so much for making the port!

[Bonknuts]

Thanks for testing it that far Yeah, the last boss second form is something that I'm aware of. I'll be fixing that.

[Xak]

I loved Dragoon Omega also, a NES rpg with a facelift would be gorgeous

But for now I thank you for the countless hours of fun you have provided me! Great game so far so good in Jackal i shall report any errors