So I figured I should probably make an "official" thread for this, considering how far along it's come. This is a game originally developed by Studio Piña back in 2011 apparently as a homage to the MSX. I am not sure of the details of what happened between then and now, but somehow, Gregarious Games LLC picked it up, along with its artist, Keith Erickson. Anyway, I had been in contact with a gentleman named Anthony Di Masi, who was looking for a coder to work on a project. I agreed to do it, but he said that I would not be needed for some time, so I just went back to work on Lucretia for the time being. A few months ago, however, John Lester (some of you might know him as Gamester81) decided that Sydney Hunter needed a PCE port. Anthony had been working with John on another project, The Adventures Of The Tiny Knight, and recommended me to John to take up the reins of a PCE conversion. Well, we worked out a deal, they sent me the assets, and I started production. Originally, this was meant to be just a HuCard game, but John inquired about a possible CD version as well, using Benjamin Allen's arranged soundtrack. I told him that it should work, but that I was going to focus on the HuCard version first and then convert to CD.
So yeah, that's the backstory as far as my tired brain remembers it, hahah.
Anyway, I have posted screenshots in an unrelated thread prior to this, but figured this needed its own thread as to not pollute other threads.
These are the shots I posted before; just reposting them here.
This is an actual gameplay image, as early as it is. There is no HUD nor any enemies or lighting effects yet... that all comes later once I have nailed down the player FSM and all collision algorithms, which so far have been 100% functional. One interesting thing about this game is that each room (yes, this is a screen-by-screen game) can have one of three different lighting schemes... fully-lit, half-lit, or dark. In fully-lit rooms, things are as you see in the above shot (though technically, that particular room should be half-lit). In half-lit rooms, all the areas outside of Sydney's torch range are dimmed. In dark rooms, all you can see is what's within the range of his torch. Rooms that have wall torches or lava flow are always fully-lit, and any room that was not previously fully-lit will become so if the lava flow reaches it.
This shot was taken a bit later, and I was using debug text for position checking. Climbable vines are everywhere in this game. Also, this game has a rather nifty feature, which is climbable ropes that extend between two uneven platforms. Sydney will climb across them when going up but slide on them with his boomerang when going down. Little touches like that make things more interesting, I think.
Now, this game is still a ways off, and I will be sure to post more screenies when they are available. Priority was given to the SNES and NES conversions, and that's what the Kickstarter campaign was based on, so I am pretty much on my own in regards to this conversion. The game engine I have developed for this game was built from scratch; I did not convert any of my previous game engines for it. That ended up being a good thing, as this has the most accurate collision routines I have ever coded, and also features variable jumping (jump height determined by how long you hold the jump button for, up to a max height), a feature missing from quite a few games from yesteryear (such as Exile). All in all, this is turning out to be a great little conversion. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to share demo builds with the community as per my contract with Gregarious Games, but it says nothing of screenshots or videos...
