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Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo

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

#31

Post by boppo1 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #29
janfoeh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't need proof, that was just a couple years after a time when that would have been the norm. There have always been great, notable and successful games been developed by solo developers and bedroom studios, at any time. Introversion, Stardew Valley.. Gaming simply exited niche culture and the market became humongous. And of course in total numbers, the share of the lone wolves has dwindled when compared to the…

>There have always been great, notable and successful games been developed by solo developers and bedroom studios, at any time. Rollercoaster Tycoon

He did that in a bedroom studio? Was he working elsewhere at the time?

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

#32

Post by MrFoof »

janfoeh wrote: post #3
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.

It didn't need proof, that was just a couple years after a time when that would have been the norm. There have always been great, notable and successful games been developed by solo developers and bedroom studios, at any time. Introversion, Stardew Valley.. Gaming simply exited niche culture and the market became humongous. And of course in total numbers, the share of the lone wolves has dwindled when compared to the…

Joakim Sandberg made, “The Iconoclasts” entirely solo, which was impressive for a modern Metroidvania that had 20+ bosses with all sorts of varying fight mechanics. It also included multiple console ports.

Granted, he’s done a ton of animation work over the years, including for WayForward, so it’s not a surprise that The Iconoclasts looks as great as it does.

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

#33

Post by glhaynes »

goosedragons wrote: post #26
afandian wrote: post #12

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.

Yeah it does. Sharopolis discusses a little bit what they're doing in X, the game that came out of this demo [0]. [0] https://youtu.be/Ty-qFeYK2l8?si=sH1TSKzDzBG9VopW&t=750

Always glad to see Sharopolis get mentioned, his videos about old game tricks are interesting and tend to be more accurate IMO than a lot of others. He breaks it down and actually investigates in emulators rather than just regurgitating Wikipedia.

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

#34

Post by FirmwareBurner »

boppo1 wrote: post #31
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There have always been great, notable and successful games been developed by solo developers and bedroom studios, at any time. Rollercoaster Tycoon

He did that in a bedroom studio? Was he working elsewhere at the time?

He wrote the game himself at home.

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

#35

Post by jedrek »

coldpie wrote: post #28
stormdennis wrote: post #17

Is there any way to get rid of the banner that moves with you as you scroll down the page?

Kill Sticky bookmarklet[1]. Also works on mobile. Get in the habit of clicking it, you'll start using it a lot to recover that extra inch of vertical space that web devs love to take away from you for some bizarre reason. [1] https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky NoScript[2] often prevents them from showing up in the first place, but it's a bit bigger lift to get used to using. [2] https://noscript.net/

Web devs do not love to take it away from you. However, designers, product owners and project managers do.

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

#36

Post by coldpie »

jedrek wrote: post #35
coldpie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kill Sticky bookmarklet[1]. Also works on mobile. Get in the habit of clicking it, you'll start using it a lot to recover that extra inch of vertical space that web devs love to take away from you for some bizarre reason. [1] https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky NoScript[2] often prevents them from showing up in the first place, but it's a bit bigger lift to get used to using. [2] https://noscript.net/

Web devs do not love to take it away from you. However, designers, product owners and project managers do.

Whatever. I'm just glad I have the tools I need to clean up the mess y'all are making.

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

#37

Post by lopis »

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…

There's something ingenious about coding with artificial restrictions that brings out your creativity and drive to come trough. I participate yearly in a Web game jam called js13k where you have to code a game under 13kb zipped. It drove me to learn better compressible code and generating audio and graphics. But in our case we can harness all the power of the modern Web platform. Coding for old systems probably is the same but on steroids.

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

#38

Post by blincoln »

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.

Are you thinking of a different solo developer, or a different game, or something else?

Eclipse was the working title for the demo in the article. It was eventually reworked into a game released as X in Japan, and would have been titled Lunar Chase elsewhere.

The closest I can find to a match for what you're describing is Starfox and Starfox 2, but that seems like a stretch.

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