Let’s write about the future of “Giana’s Return”.
The next step will be v0.998 – For now we use different playback methods for different system releases. Goal is to use just one good working (hence the “good working”) engine which plays our .XM files in a proper way. Extended Modules are a lot smaller and allow us to drop the streamed music part. Some releases which are over 20 MB in size, will reduce easily by 50%.
Also in theory streamed music, depending on the quality, takes more CPU power than playing tracked formats. At least this is the result of an interesting experiment, which allowed us to run “Giana’s Return” on a 133 MHZ ARM CPU handheld without any major problems. This means that if the new playback library is integrated, the additional CPU power will be used for the game itself, people who loved to overclock their handheld to get a better result will not need overclocking anymore.
So far there were no major bugs reported for v0.997, so the next release will be probably just having the internal change discribed above.
Well, I’m playing it on Dreamcast now and let me tell you it’s one of the best homebrew for that machine.
Everything runs smooth and the musics are also all right(you can also play it in a emulator but the result is not that good). A very very very good work.
As far as I’m concerned, the current version fills all my hopes!
vive la Dreamcast!!!
Comment by shametblame
January 30, 2010 @ 12:45
Hi,
Some days ago I tried to underclock my GP2X to 133 MHz, and Giana’s Return actually ran pretty well, with a slight overclocking to 166MHz it was almost perfect :)
Could that 133MHz ARM CPU powered machine be the GP32 ?
p.s: How is libmodplug behaving with Giana’s Return ?
Bye and thanks, Magic Sam
Comment by Magic Sam
January 30, 2010 @ 12:52
@shametblame: you better find some critism and bugs before we declare the dreamcast version final :)
@Magic Sam: The machine COULD be a GP32, or probably something else :) As the news were telling, Thor is at the integration process this week, but in theory everything should work out. Just read the Giana’s Return homepage regular, we plan to keep it more up to date now.
Comment by Gianas-Return Team
January 30, 2010 @ 15:17
Nintendo 8bit joypads.
I bought a NES controller for PC (USB) so I use the old NES Joypads , but I can’t use the buttons = B and A :-(
Please fix so I can use them
Comment by Night_Creature
January 30, 2010 @ 18:16
Please fix the stearing! It’s horrible. The game would be so great with proper stearing and physics.
Comment by sx
January 31, 2010 @ 13:31
and Select and Start Buttons :-)
Comment by Night_Creature
January 31, 2010 @ 15:42
Hi,
This is just great work!
Concerning joystick playability I would also plead for an enhanced joystick configurability.
I wasn’t able to configure my Commpetition Pro (USB) to use “JOY UP” for jumping. Jumping always was on a button, no matter what I did. Can this be changed?
Logan
Comment by Logan
January 31, 2010 @ 17:15
I really need my Nintendo 8bit joystick to work now :(
give us an update with Joystick controll to Giana’s Return before v0.998 Please !! I can’t play it , my others joypads are so bad.
Comment by Night_Creature
February 3, 2010 @ 19:28
Logan, Night_Creature: Let’s see what we can realize for the final. A Windows/Linux/MAC computer is really difficult, because you basically can switch hardware like socks, while handhelds only have one possible configuration.
Comment by Gianas-Return Team
February 6, 2010 @ 05:07