[POC + RESOURCES] MegaDrive BIOS // Loading Screen // Splash Screen

Discussion in 'Showroom Archive' started by Zana, Jan 29, 2013.

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  1. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    ( Youtube Fails at Handling 1280 x 896 resolutions - http://www.mediafire.com/?z777m7huj56q676 Cleaner version of the video )

    No one saw this coming.

    24 years later, and with a really lazily made BIOS. the MD is still living up in the hearts of many, many players.

    I have worked for 2 weeks on this, and i now want to share it with everyone of you.

    Basically i thought that the Mega Drive really would benefict from a BIOS-y splash screen. Kind of how the Mega CD does, but on it's own way. Sort to appear before the lazy TMSS screen and before the usual SEGA splash screen.

    I intend this to be used in any hack or MD application / Homebrew game that feels right on using it. and thus i am Linking here the resources i used to make it. just in case anyone wants to code it into a proper thing.

    http://www.mediafire.com/?db8taqa1eccikld

    The 7Z file contains.

    MD.XCF: Contains the logo + plain colored logo + text un several layers (no shading) + SEGA logo -- All in a 320x224 canvas

    SEGA FONT.XCF: pretty self explainatory

    [​IMG]

    (Uses 31 total colors and the chessiest slogan anyone could find)

    I'd like to see someone making this into a reality. if it does not. at least i had fun doing it and showing it to you all

    (I placed it in the showroom to people could see the proof of concept and take it if they wanted to. if any of you thinks this is badly placed. feel free to move this post somewhere else)

    EDIT: I was commented it'd also make a good wallpaper. so i also made a WP pack: http://fav.me/d5soowa

    I officially don't know how to write properly a post of this magnitude
     
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  2. SonicVaan

    SonicVaan I'm a cyberpunk with a taste for guns Member

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    Like I told you on Skype, I love this thing! =D

    The animation flows pretty well, the detail is great and to be honest, I think this would be the best Splash Screen I've ever seen in a hack. <3
     
  3. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    Well, Thank you ^w^ honestly it was a challenge, to keep things classy and minimal. but also quite rich
     
  4. EMK-20218

    EMK-20218 The Fuss Maker Exiled

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    This is very well done. It could be a good suggestion making this as some kind of bios screen for hack projects? Someone would code it to turn into a true reality.
     
  5. vladikcomper

    vladikcomper Well-Known Member Member

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    I'm coming...

    [​IMG]

    Started it yesterday. It's a pity that I could've finished everything today, because the only thing left is to program palette cycles, but unfortunately I simply didn't have enough time for it today, same can happen tomorrow. =(
     
  6. DanielHall

    DanielHall Well-Known Member Member

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    This looks fun. I'll give it a go.
     
  7. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    Well, that's the idea. The Loading text was a placeholder from where i actually planned to do a whole buffed up modern bios thingy... I guess it can go as a plain logo, or i dunno. Either way, i have hopefully covered almost every possible scenario with the XCF

    It is all right, take all the time you need. at least someone's doing something with my work.


    I can whip you any complimentary resources you need for it, in case you need alternatively sized logos, or a font specially made for that purpose, or anything. (which i just see, the font i provided, has the old styled "I"s and "T"s ... lol). Still, if you need anything. do tell me, and i'll get to it right away

    You mean... As in... coding it as well? or implementing it on a project?
     
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  8. DanielHall

    DanielHall Well-Known Member Member

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    Coding, of course! :p
     
  9. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    You know what they say: "The More, The Merrier"... [​IMG]

    I am quite worried tho tho. i tried to run behind the actual limits of the MD but i tend to overdo things. are you coders encountering any problems at all? (i am sure the D may have problems pal-cycling)
     
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  10. DanielHall

    DanielHall Well-Known Member Member

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    If I may ask, did you want it to appear before the TMSS screen? That's more of a hardware thing.
     
  11. vladikcomper

    vladikcomper Well-Known Member Member

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    Finally, finished this thing.

    Boot Screen implementation in Sonic 1

    [​IMG]


    ROM + Source Code

    I tried to follow the video from the first post quite closely, there are some small hardly noticeable differences and tweaks I've done, though.

    At first, I wanted to code it in a form of a small stand-alone ROM, but then realized it would be better to implement this as a splash screen in Sonic 1, so people could easily use it in their hacks.

    Yeah, feel free to use my coding in any of your projects (if Zana doesn't mind her art being used in multiple hacks of course, I believe she doesn't, according to the first post, this is why I'm making it open source). Well, to make things a little more challenging, I won't tell you a single word on how to add this into you hack. If you want this fresh and catchy splash screen, just go figure out few obvious things. It's easy. If you can't copy-paste a bunch of ready-to-use files and do minor tweaks to the original code, then you hack isn't worthy this screen, I'm afraid.

    Don't worry, there is nothing that is beyond hardware capabilities, really. I've already worked on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOD3XSc62WU, so I can tell for sure =P (there's even crazier stuff I've done, but I can't show it yet unfortunately, as I'm keeping it a secret before one of my hack's release).

    Your screen is all about a static image with animated palettes. Unless you have enough colors in CRAM to put them in, technically, there's nothing you can't handle. Here, there was more than enough. Animating D wasn't a big deal, I've initially separated it's rotating part from the rest of the logo. It's using another palette line with its own animation. In my implementation, the screen uses 3 palette animations that run independently: BG, Logo and rotating part of D. The first two ones use no more than 14 color indexes to show off and the last uses only 6 (as that thing is divided into 6 parts, obviously). The fourth palette line is used for loading text. There's still a lot of unused colors on the last two lines, so there's still enough room for more catchy stuff =)
     
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  12. EMK-20218

    EMK-20218 The Fuss Maker Exiled

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    It doesn't support songs? I'd be pleased on compose a song for this boot screen. Something a la Sega CD bios.
     
  13. vladikcomper

    vladikcomper Well-Known Member Member

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    Sure it does! I just had no appropriate sounds for this one.
     
  14. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    No, as it is unavoidable, and i am sure it'd be hard to replace the whole thing. But the concept that lays behind it, is what if there was something that wasn't TMSS

    Don't worry, there is nothing that is beyond hardware capabilities, really. I've already worked on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOD3XSc62WU, so I can tell for sure =P (there's even crazier stuff I've done, but I can't show it yet unfortunately, as I'm keeping it a secret before one of my hack's release).

    Your screen is all about a static image with animated palettes. Unless you have enough colors in CRAM to put them in, technically, there's nothing you can't handle. Here, there was more than enough. Animating D wasn't a big deal, I've initially separated it's rotating part from the rest of the logo. It's using another palette line with its own animation. In my implementation, the screen uses 3 palette animations that run independently: BG, Logo and rotating part of D. The first two ones use no more than 14 color indexes to show off and the last uses only 6 (as that thing is divided into 6 parts, obviously). The fourth palette line is used for loading text. There's still a lot of unused colors on the last two lines, so there's still enough room for more catchy stuff =)

    Well, good to know it works just fine. I looked at it and it is simply gorgeous.

    Referring the more complicated sega logo, well, that' looks amazing!, and well, i guess this could have been done with your eyes closed (or maybe i am exaggerating, but i lack technical knowledge so ... yeah, everything looks impressive to me x3 )

    Regarding it's use. everyone's free to use it, as long as somewhere on their games or apps, there's a mention to me for doing it. A simple string saying "MD Splash by Zana" would be enough for me.. Thought, i made many splash screens over the time, so people have only to choose one, I Still Work on several screens, but again, it is all a matter of how they chose to credit me.

    Regarding adding more stuff to it. I had the idea of making the MD text the first thing of all, in sort of a way like the MCB text appears on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCjYqO7wl1w, while the cheesy slogan "Audiovisual Intelligent Terminal; High Grade Multipurpose System" was being displayed just like the Loading text does. but i was unable to manually do all those frames by myself (animating using the GIMP is a bad idea, i tell you). Also, the MD occupies a large portion of the screen, so i am unsure if anything could be done, without removing elements, or skipping to another screen. If anyone has an idea, i could make the graphics for it, and (unlikely) animate it sorta as a concept.

    There's one small thing i detected, but i am just nitpicking: The whole screen fades, (probably because you are using one of those "general fade out commands") , while the original idea was the whole thing go off, and the D segments stay for a little while, around 1 or 2 cycles more, resulting on it giving one last, full colored trail before completely fading off, just like the first cycle for the segments. It is just a minor thing, i also saw that rarely (i probably have resseted the rom more than 40 times already) a bit of frame dropping during the whole fade out thing, so, maybe its my emulator glitching up, or that the MD is busy working. if it was the latter, my idea / fix, would also fix this collateral effect.

    I also love how you actually shaded the letters like in the XCF files, and that you used my font as well. That's just a thing that made me love you for it. (i did not shade it because i had to manually animate it and add more frames to it lol)

    Overall, i frigging love it. and i hope the other users love it as welll



    Sure it does! I just had no appropriate sounds for this one.

    It should be a short specey Whoosh sound or something like that, i don't see it appropiate to have a jingle as is. but, it's a matter of experimenting.
     
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  15. SonicVaan

    SonicVaan I'm a cyberpunk with a taste for guns Member

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    Well, vladikcomper, I'm having some problems getting the "Loading..." to show up.

    When I tried to build the rom, it shows up that:

    "VDP_Data"

    "VDP_Ctrl"

    "VBlankSub" and

    "WaterState"

    are defined more than once. It's simple because you defined it already in the menu screen of my hack, so I removed the 4 definitions from the Boot Screen code. So everything works now, except for "Loading..." showing up. Any ideas why?
     
  16. Mike B Berry

    Mike B Berry A grandiose return Member

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    Hmmm... It shows garbage graphics for the Loading text when I built my rom.
     
  17. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    I Hope V.C. Comes with a solution soonish :C sadly i cant help there

    Well, it does mean, the text-writing part of the code works. but, if it shows garbage, is my "font" ported over the new rom? because maybe it is looking for it? (while it should work fine with the "system font" it'd be better to use the font i made for this purpose)
     
  18. vladikcomper

    vladikcomper Well-Known Member Member

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    We've already resolved this one with SonicVaan on the IRC, his problem was using MarkeyJester's palette fading routines, some of which were not compatible with the original ones.

    You can see in my ROM, that I'm also using different fading algorithms than the original game, mainly to make SEGA logo and loading text appearance better (SEGA's blue shades looked really poor with old fading methods). But these are not MJ's code, I quickly coded ones myself while working on the screen, it wasn't a big deal.

    Everything should work fine, whether you you're using the original routines, or my modified ones - they are completely compatible. Perhaps MJ's code handles some of routines differently, which is why you're have issues with it (can't tell for sure as I didn't check the code). Replacing that code with either the original or my one should work, if you've applied MJ's guide already, you know what routines to replace.

    No, I'm not using palette fading out here, I'm still doing it through the palette cycles. Using standard faders would look really awkward here due to they way they increment colors. It's just all fade out animations for palette cycles running synchronously. I really loved that effect and decided to leave it like this.

    Anyways, I can make an alternative version if you want, with fade out animation that closely repeats the one you initially intended.
     
  19. Zana

    Zana In Bun We Trust Exiled

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    No, it is ok, no need to rework on all that for just a nitpick. but thanks.

    i wonder. could the slogan replace the loading text? (and probably put the MD typography somewhere too?) so it can be a proper splash screen more than a bios mockup? 
     
  20. DanielHall

    DanielHall Well-Known Member Member

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    Well snap, looks like you beat me to it. Aww... :(
     
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