Well it's no secret by now that I have been working on a homebrew version of Radiant Silvergun for the Nintendo DS. Being that this is my (and many others) favourite shoot-em-up to date, I really want to spend my time on this to get everything working as it should.
I am at present in the process of rewriting the engine to be more user friendly and to enable faster level building. The screenshots and video you can see posted here are taken from a previous build that was created before I started to rewrite the engine so although I doubt it is far from what I intend the finished product will look like, please bear this in mind when commenting.
Current plans for Radiant Silvergun are to include at least 6 or 7 levels of which will consist of at least one boss per stage and various enemies scattered throughout the stages. I would also like to include something similar to the dogs that you could find in the Sega Saturn version of the game but I am not too sure how well I can get the weapon (required to hit the dogs) working so this could limit me although I do have some ideas churning around.
Click to show video
What can you see in these preview shots?
Well you have 4 enemy types, 3 enemy bullet types and 2 player bullet types. The player can shoot fire forwards or a combination of fowards and backwards. The player also has a heat seeker weapon (green bullets) which home into the closest enemy. The radiant sword is in and you can collect bullets with it which increases the special bar. Unfortunately due to a few limitations I have been unable to reproduce the special attack of the radiant sword but there is a special attack in the demo, check towards the end of the video to see it in action (I tried to make the screen quite hectic before I used it so you can see it's true power). Each weapon has it's own level and experience, as you kill more enemies the power of the weapon increases allowing you to kill the enemies easier. In the final version the level of your weapons will be saved so the next time you come to play the game, it should be a little easier allowing you progress further. There is also a combo system in place which reflects a simple version of the combo system in the original game, I will need to observe the original a little closer to check that the combo system is pretty much reproduced.
Other than these things there is not much else that will really interest you so check out the video and the screenshots and feel free to let me know your comments so far. I'm still not happy to release any kind of build yet and I feel it is going to be a few months or so until I can release a demo, I would like to have at least one boss in there for you to kill!
Future plans include a website dedicated to the game which I am hoping will include a WiFi Leaderboard for each stage not so different to Shooting Watch DS
I hope that this game his creators do not leave it as other homebrews
Put it this way, I don't plan on dropping this project anytime soon and I am quite confident that I will be able to complete at least a few levels for you. Again I will try to keep you updated as the game develops.
I'm very impressed retro, I tried making a 2d shooter, but ultimately had a lot of trouble with sprite reallocation, sprites kept screwing up.
My one criticism of it, which is actually nothing to do with the gameplay per se, is why have you called it Radiant Silvergun DS? From what I can see based on You Tube videos (because I've never played RS)you aren't replicating the game inch by inch, attack patterns aren't the same, the sword doesn't work exactly the same (although it is cool) and the power ups won't be the same. It is convenient to use the graphics, but why put yourself at the mercy of the copyright holders when you could use the engine (a rather good one judging by the video) in something original, albeit with ideas and concepts borrowed from other games.
I don't mean to put down any of the work you have done of course, because it is excellent, but it's just be aversion to people in the scene ripping of established franchises to sell a poor game (which you obviously don't need to do).
Whatever happens, I can't wait to play it
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Comment on: Radiant Silvergun DS - Early Alpha Video
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
I do empathise with you on the sprite front, I've been making a game in XNA and I'm having one hell of a problem getting character sprites, I've somehow got to rope an artist into the project at some point, but I'll worry about that later.
Good look with the game though Retro, it's going to rock!
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