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Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

gamehistory.org

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Re: Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

#11

Post by amatecha »

Very cool! I love seeing "behind the scenes" on this kind of stuff. I always check out these kind of articles the moment they come up because there's always some really neat history to learn about. I can only imagine what kind of awesome artifacts of video game history are still in some devs' attic or basement... Super thankful for people (like the author(s)) who seek and research/document this stuff. :)

Oh, the "tank" screenshot reminded me a bit of Spectre, an old Macintosh game, even though I imagine there's no direct relation there.

Re: Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

#12

Post by afandian »

I’m curious how he managed to get that much detail out of the GameBoy tiles and sprites. It looks like the engine is casually treating the screen as a bitmap (AIUI it’s not) whilst also rendering 3D meshes, which must have taken some clever caching/buffering. They gloss over that in the video, but it must have been a monumental achievement.

Re: Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

#13

Post by pjmlp »

emptybits wrote: post #7

On the topic of solo game devs... if this sounds like your jam (and modern mobile games isn't your jam) then consider the console homebrew scene as an outlet. All the "retro" platforms still have a pulse and several are thriving enough to have competitions and forums and podcasts. 8-bit NES and 16-bit Genesis (Mega Drive) both have a supportive community and one or two publishers who can take your game from ROM.BIN t…

Or pick one of the ESP32/Arduino/Pi based handhelds, it will give similar vibes, with hardware designed for coding, instead of hacking cartriges, or being afraid to kill the only home computer available at home.

Re: Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

#15

Post by knallfrosch »

woleium wrote: post #2

Eclipse, hailed as proof that one person game dev teams could work. Then he ended up chasing his tail with eclipse2, releasing it late, looking like a game from 2 years prior to the release date. Proving the days of the solo game dev was over, at least for a while.

Then Chris Sawyer wrote RollerCoaster Tycoon all alone in assembly (after finding success with Transport Tycoon also), proving that the days of the solo game dev was far from over.

Re: Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

#18

Post by x1sec »

emptybits wrote: post #7

On the topic of solo game devs... if this sounds like your jam (and modern mobile games isn't your jam) then consider the console homebrew scene as an outlet. All the "retro" platforms still have a pulse and several are thriving enough to have competitions and forums and podcasts. 8-bit NES and 16-bit Genesis (Mega Drive) both have a supportive community and one or two publishers who can take your game from ROM.BIN t…

Pikuma has a 25 hour “NES Programming with 6502 Assembly” that is both accessible to beginners with little to no prior knowledge and being packed with content. [1]

He also has other interesting courses which touch upon “retro” programming in a very accessible manner. [2]

[1] https://pikuma.com/courses/nes-game-programming-tutorial

[2] https://pikuma.com/courses

Re: Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

#19

Post by atombender »

Thoreandan wrote: post #5

It's good to see BallBlazer mentioned, but the article/video feels like it's incomplete without mentioning Dimension X (which also alternates between tank realtime combat and tunnel travel dodging walls) and Atari’s Battlezone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension_X_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1980_video_game)

Also, Stellar 7 [1] and Empire Strikes Back [2]. Surprised these weren't mentioned at all.

[1] https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Stellar_7

[2] https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/The_Empire_Strikes_Back

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