Now Available: Patreon v0.5 "Grasslands" - Public v0.4 "Torchlight"

Patreon Build - v0.5 "Grasslands"

This month's Patreon build is out! Highlights include a fully revamped level generation system and loads of general polish on the player's animations. Check out the full devlog (available to anyone) for the full details:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/june-2024-devlog-107713307

Test builds are available early to my Patreons of any paid tier, including the $1 tier. You can also follow as a free member to get notified of devlogs, which will always be available to everyone. Tell your friends, spread the word, etc. (Zeta is terrible at marketing.)

In delightful related news, Super Tilt Bro has finally released on cartridge! This is significant as it uses the same Rainbow mapper that Tactus is targeting. That means the hardware design is finalized, and I can stop typing "prototype" every 3 sentences when writing these devlogs. It's also genuinely a cool project. It's seriously amazing to see a real NES game with working Online NetPlay. Do check it out if you have a chance.

Public Build - v0.4 "Torchlight"

I've decided that I want to post all of my test builds for Tactus on this itch page, since it's a somewhat comprehensive test of many of Rainbow's features. I want emulator authors to have interesting software to test as they work to implement the mapper features. Patreons will always have access to the latest test build. As soon as that goes out, I'll update the Itch page with the previous test build. This means the March "v0.4 Torchlight" build is now public!

I've updated the embedded Rustico player to accommodate the new mapper, and added the new ROM file to the Downloads page. Note that you'll need a special emulator fork if you plan to run the game locally, as most upstream emulator projects haven't implemented the Rainbow mapper yet. (That's rather the point of releasing this.) I personally develop against Broke Studio's fork of Mesen2, whose build artifacts can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/BrokeStudio/Mesen2/tree/rainbow

This continues to be new territory for me, so thanks for your patience as I work out the details.

Upcoming Plans

While traveling with family, I drew a whole bunch of new enemy animations and a bunch of icons for new equipment, so look forward to those in the next release. I'd really like to get the shop and economy started this year. I wrote "September" down in my planning doc; we'll see if that actually happens. Y'know. Soon!™

- Zeta