re: programmers needed to port game to sega genesis/megadrive

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ButtsAndButtsAndButts

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What you're proposing simply isn't feasible. I played a little bit of your game, and I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to explain why porting between consoles isn't simply a matter of drag-and-drop. It's a little more helpful and interesting than "no," and hopefully it'll allow you to make design decisions that are more conducive to porting in the future.

First, every console has different limitations. Look at your file. How big is it? It took my computer about 10 seconds to load. My computer is approximately a bajillion gazillion googolplex times more powerful than a Sega Genesis, so you'll probably need to prune out some resources or something.

The Genesis has a restricted color palette and sound chip. My computer, not so much. Just because something has an 8-bit sprite aesthetic doesn't mean it's actually feasible on an early generation game system. Just because the music sounds like beeps and boops doesn't mean it's ACTUALLY beeps and boops that can be generated by old hardware. It's possible to make the sprites and music work on a Genesis system, but that would require redrawing and remastering, neither of which are the domain of a programmer.

Plus, writing code for an early video game console is a lot of work. You pretty much have to talk to the hardware directly. It's a completely different world from writing software for modern PC's, where you can say "draw this sprite" with one line of code. Usually it's a little bit nicer than assembly language, but not my much. Programmers had to be economical because consoles were so slow and they had so little memory.

Even writing software for iOS and Android isn't easy, and they're not that far removed from each other. The best way to avoid having to rewrite the exact same code in two different languages as much as possible is to have the code on the device be nothing more than the code that draws the screen and captures input. After getting input it sends the input to some server somewhere, and the server does stuff with it and pushes it back out to the sending device.

I COULD have just let this thread die, but people don't realize that they don't really know what programmers do.

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Joru

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#2  Edited By Joru

What? Is this some sort of internal dialogue?

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Emperor_Jimmu

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#3  Edited By Emperor_Jimmu

Is this an ARG?

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august

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#4  Edited By august

I'm glad we cleared this up.

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toowalrus

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#5  Edited By toowalrus

@Joru said:

What? Is this some sort of internal dialogue?

So I have to read this in Max Payne's voice?

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musubi

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#6  Edited By musubi

All my questions answered!

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MattyFTM

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#7  Edited By MattyFTM  Moderator

That thread was locked for a reason. There is no reason to reply to it.