Shovel Knight for the PCE possible?

[BigusSchmuck]

Curious, what would it take to get Shovel Knight ported to the PCE? Might just be a pipe dream of mine, but its one hell of a platformer.

[Dicer]

Big Yachts blessing and people willing to do it...

[Michirin9801]

Well, you'd lose most (if not all) of the Parallax Scrolling, that much is for sure, and well, given how the soundtrack was composed using the 2A03 + VRC6 (8 channels total) some of the detail in the composition would most likely be lost, whether or not it would be noticeable though is up in the air...
(Or you could just go the lazy route and redbook the OST)
That said though, I think a better idea would be to make a side-game with the same gameplay, similar level design, but optimised for the PC engine, taking full advantage of the colour capabilities to make better graphics, which would make up for the loss in the parallax, and re-interpreting the soundtrack in a way that it would sound better on the PCE soundchip!

[ccovell]

The colour depth is below the PCE's abilities; more NES than PCE.  Audio, mostly no problem.  The layers of parallax scrolling would be a real challenge to do well; if one were to do it just on the stock PCE by using sprites as BG elements, there would be a bit of sprite flicker in-game.

What would it take?  It would take a team roughly as talented and dedicated and roughly the size of Yacht Club games.

[fragmare]

The colour depth is below the PCE's abilities; more NES than PCE.  Audio, mostly no problem.  The layers of parallax scrolling would be a real challenge to do well; if one were to do it just on the stock PCE by using sprites as BG elements, there would be a bit of sprite flicker in-game.

What would it take?  It would take a team roughly as talented and dedicated and roughly the size of Yacht Club games.

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times, and I've *ALWAYS* thought an almost 1:1 version could be done on the PC-Engine.  Yea, of course, you're going to lose some parallax (but not all of it!) and a lot of the backgrounds would need to be static.  That's no big deal, to me.  But as far as colors, music, sounds, sprites, level design, etc.... i see absolutely nothing in Shovel Knight that couldn't be done on the PC-Engine.

If you're willing to go the SuperGrafx route, you could probably even keep most (all?) of the parallax.

To be perfectly honest, I think the graphics could even be redrawn to look better.  They look mostly Master System styled/inspired, to me.  Better than NES, not quite 16-bit era.

[Necromancer]

What would it take?  It would take a team roughly as talented and dedicated and roughly the size of Yacht Club games.

This.

The Turbob could easily handle a quality port, though it wouldn't be pixel perfect.  Like most ports from back in the day, you'd have to have changes to fit the hardware (parallax, resolution, etc.).

[Michirin9801]

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times, and I've *ALWAYS* thought an almost 1:1 version could be done on the PC-Engine.  Yea, of course, you're going to lose some parallax (but not all of it!) and a lot of the backgrounds would need to be static.  That's no big deal, to me.  But as far as colors, music, sounds, sprites, level design, etc.... i see absolutely nothing in Shovel Knight that couldn't be done on the PC-Engine.

If you're willing to go the SuperGrafx route, you could probably even keep most (all?) of the parallax.

To be perfectly honest, I think the graphics could even be redrawn to look better.  They look mostly Master System styled/inspired, to me.  Better than NES, not quite 16-bit era.

You need to look at the game a little more closely because it has like a thousand scrolling planes, a 1:1 port would be hard even on the SNES which has 3 layers... But you know, a lot of that game's parallax is so subtle that its loss would be pretty much unnoticeable on a system with 2 BG layers, so a SuperGrafx version would be pretty close!

[ClodBuster]

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times

I guess you meant the Xbone?

[fragmare]

You need to look at the game a little more closely because it has like a thousand scrolling planes, a 1:1 port would be hard even on the SNES which has 3 layers... But you know, a lot of that game's parallax is so subtle that its loss would be pretty much unnoticeable on a system with 2 BG layers, so a SuperGrafx version would be pretty close!

I'm not talking about parallax.  I'm talking about everything else BUT parallax. Ditch the 923487 layers of parallax, and there's NOTHING in that game that couldn't be done on the PCE.  Of course, you're not going to get a zillion layers of background scrolling on a system that has precisely 1... but you might be able to fake it here and there.  I'm mainly talking about gameplay and general content.  To me, if you cut out the parallax and everything else remains the same... that's still basically a 1:1 port, imo.

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times

I guess you meant the Xbone?

Er yea, XBox One, not 360.  Though, he plays another game on the 360 called Terraria that looks pretty 8/16 bit era-ish, in a similar way to Shovel Knight.

[Black Tiger]

Shovel Knight was designed by tech experts who did a lot of research to determine exactly what kind of accelerator chips NES games would use in the future and made the game fit within the technical limits of the NES hardware with those chips.

Just physically port over those chips into the Shovel Knight HuCard and quintuple the parallax found in the computer version.

[Michirin9801]

I'm not talking about parallax.  I'm talking about everything else BUT parallax. Ditch the 923487 layers of parallax, and there's NOTHING in that game that couldn't be done on the PCE.

Well now that you put it that way then yes, you're absolutely correct...

Shovel Knight was designed by tech experts who did a lot of research to determine exactly what kind of accelerator chips NES games would use in the future and made the game fit within the technical limits of the NES hardware with those chips.

Just physically port over those chips into the Shovel Knight HuCard and quintuple the parallax found in the computer version.

If we got to the point of actually putting Shovel Knight on a real NES cartridge, then pretty much the whole hardware would be inside of the cartridge and the NES itself would only serve to power the cartridge, provide input and MAYBE use the soundchip...
Heck I doubt it would even be able to output an image, the cart would most likely have an HDMI output in it somewhere and you'd connect the cartridge to your TV, not the actual NES...

I mean seriously, not only does the game have countless background layers, it also completely breaks the NES's colour count per sprite/tile and colour palette (Like, seriously, the game uses a few colours that aren't even on the system's palette) and it does gigantic well-animated sprites, has NO flickering what-so-ever, uses an extra soundchip for audio AND plays sound effects without clipping ANY of the sound channels on top of that, not to mention the game displays exclusively in widescreen! There are NO 4:3 options...
At that point, even if the game is on an NES cartridge, is it even an NES game still? I'd say the point where it stops being an NES game and starts being something else is the moment when you're outputting the image from the cartridge to the TV, and not from the NES...

Putting all of that extra hardware on the NES cartridge would be no problem because the thing is as big as an aircraft carrier, meanwhile all the PCE would need would be 2 or 3 extra sound channels (2 for no loss in musical detail, 3 for no sound-clipping, preferably one of them would be an ADPCM to mimic the NES DPCM without any wasted CPU cycles by playing a sample on a PSG channel) about a million extra BG layers, maybe one extra sprite layer too in order to avoid flickering (not like it would be likely on the PCE but better safe than sorry!) and some way to support a widescreen display... That's about it really... If you could cram the necessary hardware to pull that off on a HuCard then great! A 1:1 port would be pretty much a matter of actually going and making it, but personally, I'd rather just use the base hardware and push it to the limits, that's why I said a side-game with the same gameplay, but better graphics, re-arranged (read "better") music, similar level design, but all optimised for the PC engine would be a better idea than attempting a straight port of the game...

[Black Tiger]

From what I've seen in videos, every layer of parallax could be included, but it would be dialed down similar to many port made bitd. Instead of 10 trees on-screen per row in the foreground, you might only have 2 or 3 and they might be redrawn narrower. When they're spaced out evenly, it feels the same because you have the same number of layers.

[Gredler]

From what I've seen in videos, every layer of parallax could be included, but it would be dialed down similar to many port made bitd. Instead of 10 trees on-screen per row in the foreground, you might only have 2 or 3 and they might be redrawn narrower. When they're spaced out evenly, it feels the same because you have the same number of layers.

This is what I was going to chime in and say. Cuts would need to be made, but a similar feeling could be conveyed if the elements were planned accordingly.

[Arkhan]

Or just make it a CD game, use the soundtrack that already exists, and ditch the foofoo parallax where possible and dial it down to be doable. 


That way you aren't dicking around with adding hardware to a HuCard when we've only barely made it to the point where we're successfully putting out real cards.     

adding hardware to a cartridge might seem like "no problem" when space is the only concern...

but you also have to factor in actually designing the circuitry, manufacturing costs, "are these chips readily available", "should we use an FPGA and just do it that way", and all of that.

That stuff isn't free.

At least on the Turbo, with a HuCard, we have the perk of not really needing a mapper for anything we'd all probably ever bother to make, including a port of this game. Also, the sound chip itself is competent enough that "losing channels" might not actually be that big of a deal.

From a sound mixing standpoint, sometimes its actually better to have some channels drop for sfx when they play, because it actually sounds a bit awful when there's too much going on at once.    You get grating/blaring noise.  If you just want to enjoy the tunes, fire up the soundtest modes. 

Anyway, my main take away from this thread is the confirmation that parallax is often excessive, and overrated.

[Michirin9801]

Cuts would need to be made, but a similar feeling could be conveyed if the elements were planned accordingly.

That way you aren't dicking around with adding hardware to a HuCard when we've only barely made it to the point where we're successfully putting out real cards.     

adding hardware to a cartridge might seem like "no problem" when space is the only concern...

The extra hardware (on either version) would only be necessary for a 100% identical port, the PCE could easily handle a game with the same gameplay and even better graphics and music, so long as a few compromises were made... The NES however, absolutely couldn't...

From a sound mixing standpoint, sometimes its actually better to have some channels drop for sfx when they play, because it actually sounds a bit awful when there's too much going on at once.    You get grating/blaring noise.  If you just want to enjoy the tunes, fire up the soundtest modes. 

That's why I said re-interpreting the soundtrack would be a better idea...

Anyway, my main take away from this thread is the confirmation that parallax is often excessive, and overrated.

Excessive parallax, like the type that Shovel Knight uses, absolutely is overrated, however I think nothing beats a good parallax that's actually well-implemented and meaningful!
And I think it's especially impressive when it's done on a system with just a single BG layer, like the PC engine...