The decision to go with Radiant Silvergun DS as the name was made even before I started coding it. I wanted to create a version of the game for the DS and having an established game to work off of was my initial drive and I found it makes things alot easier as everything I want to put in the game is already down on paper so to speak.

Using the graphics from the game is not only convenient but it also improves the look of the game 100%, hell 200% for those that have seen my own sprites. I have played around with sprites and spent alot of time trying my skills at drawing my own and unfortunately they just do not feel quite right.

If I was planning on selling the game/engine then I would most certainly remove all the current sprites and replace them with my own but this is after all just a homebrew project and part of my learning curve so I need to sidestep the long winded stuff and get down to the actual coding. This is by far complete and you never know, I may decide with a name change before release and perhaps even my own sprites but I doubt it the way things are at the moment. It's not that hard to change sprites as I am sure you are aware so these kind of details can be combatted once the game is ready for distribution. I should also know by that time if Treasure has a problem with me doing what I am doing  

Also, I like to challenge myself and for those that know the original game, this is certainly a challenge. Using an established game gives me something to aim towards and I can tell if things are going exactly according to plan or not.

Once the engine is complete I can manipulate it to make other shmups for the DS (something which is sorely missing imo).

You are perfectly correct in everything you said and I do agree but on a personal scale, this seems the way to go for me currently. The note you made about sprites is actually quite amusing as it is half of the reason I decided to recode the engine to utilise the 3D power of the DS to throw around more sprites than you currently see in the video. There is alot going on in there but there is also a few things missing that I wanted to add, hopefully the new engine will allow me to get these details in and keep the speed chugging alot at a nice framerate, only time will tell.

This post has been edited by retrohead, Thu, April 17th, 2008 at 08:53