LATEST UPDATE September, 2012:
Got a ACK Metal Gear page up on the quick reference site and uploaded a youtube video demo of it in action. The video is also embedded there on the ACK Metal Gear page.
First things first. My Custom MSX Metal Gear Tiles for ACK
Here are the custom MSX Metal Gear Tilesets I edited for use in ACK. They are taken from or based on the tiles from the original Kanomi Metal Gear game that was playable on the MSX computer.
Hey sorry for my old site being down for so long without mirroring the files I had stored there. I got them all back online with dropbox. Heres link for the Metal Gear WIP.
You can still play the original with the emulator BlueMSX. I obtained the original music and sound fx as well as all graphics using this handy little emulator. Unfortunately I ended up having to edit many of the original tiles often combining and resizing tiles or simply cutting them in half if resizing resulted in too much loss of detail.
When seen altogether in completed maps these tiles actually look pretty good IMHO and I think any fan of Metal Gear would recognise the familiar Metal Gear atmosphere right away. I pretty much had to draw my own characters and npcs pixel by pixel but otherwise everything is as true to the original as was possible. I'll make a video of this WIP in play soon.
I will update the ACK community on my progress in this thread.
If the Nintendo version has some nostalgia for you it is available to play online.
Here is a Google video for a LP MSX Metal Gear 1. If you watch most of it you'll see the challenge I am faced with in coming up with ACK macro alternatives to achieve some of the effects in the game. Or something similar anyway.
Very interesting - I can't wait to see what the finished game looks like.
The first Metal Gear I played was the one on the original NES. Does this version have any similarities to the NES Metal Gear, or are they completely different?
The biggest or most noticeable difference is the intro and ground level maps which are completely different. In the NES version I believe it had you start out in a kind of jungle with a sandy dirt path right? This outdoor jungle area doesn't appear in the original MSX version at all.
The MSX MG does have a couple small outdoor regions which are just a couple rooms of mostly empty desert between the buildings of "Outer Heaven" the rogue military compund in a fictional desert [not jungle] area 200km north of the fictional town of Garzburg, South Africa .
The graphics are also a little nicer in the original in my opinion. Most of the actual walls and floors are the same its just the colors that are off in the NES version making them a little to bright and colorful.
The NES version pretty much kept to the formula established by Kojima but added more graphics in places and left out some in others. They also did a terrible job of preserving the original script and completely changed the climax. The Japanese to Engrish translation was just aweful.
Hideo Kojima the original Metal Gear creator did not approve of either of the two NES ports both of which were done without his involvement, including the one Kanomi [the company Kojima worked for when he did MG1] did later called Snakes Revenge.
Kojima did a real sequel to his original MG in 1990 called Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. After that was Metal Gear Solid for the PS in 1998. As they say, the rest is history. If the Nintendo version has some nostalgia for you it is available to play online.
Last edited by Garth's Equipment Shop on Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Another Nintendo game you can play online that was of the military sort and which I played the hell out of in the 80's is Contra. This one is not top down though, its a side scroller.
Here is a Google video for a LP MSX Metal Gear 1. If you watch most of it you'll see the challenge I am faced with in coming up with ACK macro alternatives to achieve some of the effects in the game. Or something similar anyway.
Your not gonna believe this but there is a live action fan made movie called Metal Gear: Outer Heaven. It was years in the making and was finally completed this year and available for download. It is 956MB so make sure you dont have any other upload/download software running or that will make this one take days to download. I'll let you know how good or terrible it is after I finish downloading the .wmv file and giving it a watch. Oh this should be quite entertaining. lol. I love fanmade stuff.
Last edited by Garth's Equipment Shop on Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I'm back from a long and tedius move to the other side of our state. I attempted to send the whole package of what I have done so far to all those who might be interested in testing or to help via feedback but I couldnt get the email attachment upload to work. Since then I haven't done any work on this project but since I was forced to use a different computer for a while I decided to mess around with some other ACK related stuff I had on the back burner.
As a present to Chris I started work on importing Amiga ACS Rivers of Light to ACK. I got all the graphics imported [ran into some trouble with capturing sounds using Camtasia, haven't figured out how to prevent the crackling, and the wav capture feature of WinUAE doesn't work at all for me.] I finished the world map. I started creating all the objects in the game. I didnt get to the critters yet. And I haven't gotten to messages yet.
I made an archive of this project and included folders with screen caps from the Amiga ACS editor showing all the items and creatures lists and also all the room maps with their names shown in the captures. Anyway, I know you wanted to do an ACK version of Rivers of Light Chris so I've given you a head start on it. I'm not sure how I'm gonna send it to you though since I am still not online with my home computer.
I also completed the world map for the wasteland remake I was working on and it is also archived and ready to upload to wherever it will be accepted via http. I managed to get most of the wl tiles in there by putting all the wall sets in the secondary tile set and using set later for generic walls and other nonessential or simple obstacles that dont do anything special [like objects used to signify doors but which do not actually do anything on their own]. It is unreal how many different kinds of doors WL has! I've been thinking of changing that somehow to free up enough slots for all the graphics I had to leave out.
Obviously the fighting (especially boss fights) will be different, but other than that, are you trying to replicate the rest of the game feature-for-feature?
Yes that is the best walkthrough I have found. It is saved to the resource directory of the WIP dl.
Yep, have went to great lengths in my attempt to stay true to the original. What do you think? Have you checked out the WIP dl yet? [EDIT: Ok I got your PM at SP Forums which answers my question. Thanks for the positive feedback. Actually, the first floor of building one isn't even complete yet and it is the most compelte so far.]
Thanks to rld for playtesting and providing badly needed direction as to what to work on next. I was suffering a bad case of burn out on the MSX MG project due to being overwhelmed and not knowing where to pick it back up. Rld's feedback really helped me get focused again and so I've put some more work into the project.
I fixed a few things that weren't working properly [pointed out by rld]. The fixes took a lot of experimentation and so I didn't actually get around to creating any new content like more maps.
What I am working on now is the macro that will display the tbmps that will represent the radio calls or messages sent at various points in the game to the player character from one of several contacts including 'Big Boss' in the game. The download is the same url, I just replaced the old one with the updated archive.
Updated project archive uploaded, same url, same file name. The url has been circulating privately so far. If someone wishes to download it let me know and I will pass the link to you.
Update: Improved title, opening cutscene, and some skins. Finished working out how to impliment radio calls and messages. Only added the first of many radio transmissions just to show it in action. I have begun adding all the messages in the message editor already and will begin adding them to the game when I've finished typing them all out in the editor.
Added the capture cutscene that takes you to the basement level.
Improved the implimentation of the background music as it was a little annoying how it would keep restarting anytime a new room was entered. Now it stops when you enter a small cell, store room, or truck and continues when you exit them back to the main room map.
Still deciding on walking music for other regions besides the first one. I have all the original music from the second Metal Gear and will be borrowing from that as the first one wasn't very diverse in that department.
I've made some improvements to the radio interface and started filling out more of the first building. No new upload yet as I want to have some more filling out of the first building to do first. Just wanted to give a progress report on this WIP for anyone interested.
Oh and I also made some more room for more graphics tiles by changing the trucks to all use one set of truck tiles. I improved the truck's front end a bit to make it look a little more like a truck and also to fill out the tiles so that no background shows thus enabling one set to be used regardless of surrounding floor tiles.
I will probably do the same for all the immobile and decorative in room objects, the crates primarily. I see no reason for them to come in different colors, they are crates afterall. They ought to all be that unfinished wood color that most manufacturers use. Probably some shade of yellow, tan or brown.
Hey sorry for my old site being down for so long without mirroring the files I had stored there. I got them all back online with dropbox. Heres link for the Metal Gear WIP.
