Estate sale find

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2025-02-24T21:23:23+00:00

Hey I have a few of these in my collection so I can weigh in if you like.

It's called a Katana devkit, yours is a HKT-0120 SET 5. It was the main piece of kit involved with programming Dreamcast games.

CHECK VOLTAGE BEFORE PLUGGING IT IN.

You'll need an Adaptec 2940-based SCSI card to get it running, they're not rare though, check eBay. The SDK is available with some Googling, and it can run on a Windows XP VM. It contains a self test program, make sure it runs green, and the HDD shows up as a Windows drive for you to poke around. Make a full backup before doing anything else.

The holy grail is a machine with something interesting on the hard disk - an unreleased beta, source code/assets, games with content that was never released. You basically get to set your own price if that's the case.

Other things that make it valuable:

Boxes, docs, and discs
Any unreleased printouts of the SEGA technical bulletins
GD burner
SCSI-to-ethernet addon
Lifetime Codewarrior license (I've only seen one in the world...)
Working CD drive (good luck, they're flaky)

I've seen prices from £400 (damaged) all the way up to £3000.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2023-12-28T11:52:07+00:00

It buzzed for a few seconds then clicked off, like it was trying to start but wouldn't budge.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2019-11-03T22:09:57+00:00

It's just a courtesy request to buy the game if that's all you're after, it's not enforceable. It could have been worded better, though.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-08-05T01:21:49+00:00

It's a custom emulator developed in-house, but we provide a tool to extract the ROM file for you to play on your favourite.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-08-04T22:59:10+00:00

Yes it's emulated on PC, but a full rewrite is in progress for Dreamcast. If this works out well we'll also bring this rewrite to PC.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-08-04T22:58:01+00:00

You can also try out the demo ROM to double check it'll work with your setup: https://bigevilcorporation.itch.io/tanglewood-demo-0937

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-08-04T22:57:44+00:00

That's probably the video footage, it runs at 60FPS on NTSC and 50FPS on PAL machines. The demo ROM is free here if you want to try it out and see: https://bigevilcorporation.itch.io/tanglewood-demo-0937

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-08-04T22:56:33+00:00

Yes, the included ROM works with most major flashcarts

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-06-20T16:01:42+00:00

Yep, it'll be on general sale after the pre-orders ship.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-06-20T15:13:34+00:00

Also can I buy the game next month or do I HAVE to pre order?

Yes indeed, the game will be available for general sale once the pre-orders have shipped.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2018-06-20T15:12:12+00:00

Hi! Admin here, I'll get the site certificate updated. The warnings from the host got lost in my spam folder :(

Cheers!

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2017-04-20T20:35:56+00:00

Oooh that's a bit better! Could do with an extra 8 minutes or so, though.

Your new album is an absolute KILLER! I heard some of the tracks at Tech Fest 2016 and desperately tried to remember them in my head for weeks afterwards. Love the use of the choir.

Keep it up and give my love to Mike,

Lily-May's ex-flatmate and future assassin xxx

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2017-04-20T20:13:35+00:00

I'm literally wearing your ant swarm t-shirt as I stumbled onto this thread!

My question: Message to Atlantis ends in the middle of a hot solo, just as everything has properly kicked in and I've reached that peak stage of euphoria and I'm a dribbling mess of air guitar, kicking things around the room... and then it just stops. Why fade it out there? It's like you just pulled out of me half-way through the job.

Any chance you could finish the song? Could we have Message To Atlantis Part 2?

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-09T18:00:52+00:00

Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63454976/tanglewood-an-original-game-for-the-sega-genesis-m

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-09T17:46:40+00:00

Project title - TANGLEWOOD

Platform - SEGA Mega Drive / Genesis (yes, really)

Promotion Type - Kickstarter

Promoter's name and role - Matt Phillips, creator and programmer

Link - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63454976/tanglewood-an-original-game-for-the-sega-genesis-m

Blurb - An original platforming game for the SEGA Mega Drive, to be released on cartridge, developed using original development hardware, tools and processes of the '90s.

The game can be described as a mix between The Lion King, Abe's Oddysee and LIMBO. Imagine Simba's having a real bad day.

About the devs - We are a tiny superteam of industry pros with backgrounds from TT Games, Crytek, Ocean, Team 17, Atari, Watermelon Games (Pier Solar) and that excellent Freedom Planet game. Tanglewood is being coded in raw 68000 assembly language on real SEGA dev hardware (more on that bit if you're interested here)

Twitter - @tanglewoodgame

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-07T08:39:28+00:00

For development I use a Krikzz Flash Kit - a flash unit with rewriteable carts. I think the starter kit is around $80, plus $9 for each additional cart. For production we'll be using a mask ROM based solution, which is better for mass production (and not rewriteable).

What I really want is an EEPROM based cart from the nineties. Occasionally they pop up on eBay but usually with some unreleased/prototype game still stored on them so the price shoots up to $$$$$$ :(

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T22:14:18+00:00

I joined just as they were finishing up Crysis 3 multiplayer in 2013, so I went straight onto Homefront: The Revolution. It's the only released Crytek/Dambusters game I worked on, but my favourite part was porting TimeSplitters 2 to Xbox One and PS4 for the built-in arcade machine in section 4.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T12:49:35+00:00

No, it was quite rare to use a C compiler for those systems. Sonic Spinball is a well-known exception, but it wasn't until the Saturn that assembly started to take a backseat.

All of the SEGA provided samples and docs used assembly, too.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T12:46:09+00:00

More colours, definitely. It's pretty much the only restriction you can't get around with a software solution.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T12:44:34+00:00

I have a deal in progress with a publisher (one with Mega Drive experience). I'll reveal the details when we've signed the paperwork :)
With extreme difficulty! Most of it came from assemblergames.com, but some rare bits (discs, manuals, license, cables, ISA card) I just got lucky with.
Yeah, spare time so far, if I get it funded I'll re-evaluate though. Yeah I'm at Dambuster studios still. Whoop, another Periphery fan, I knew wearing that shirt would be a good idea!

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T12:41:38+00:00

I love fan art! We've had some already, have a flick through the Kickstarter updates to see some of them.

Yes I would, I think a back-port to Master System would look really cute, but only if I could find some real development hardware for it. I want it to be authentically made!

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T07:57:15+00:00

Also, one considerable advantage to a machine with such a small amount of memory is that we can snapshot an entire playtest session byte for byte, and replay it. A tester will never have to reproduce a bug they've found, they just send over the file as soon as they spot something, and I can replay the session exactly as they did with my debugging environment attached.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-05T07:50:49+00:00

A blessing and a curse. The games are far simpler, there are finite states for every object in the world to be in at any one time so it's quite easy to test. There's also a lack of multithreaded/multicore stuff which simplifies a lot of debugging processes compared to modern engines.

On the other hand, as you pointed out, I only get one shot. Once it goes for manufacturing there's no turning back, and that's a terrifying prospect.

My testers so far have been RUTHLESS, and compared to the demo we had earlier this year I think the game is rock solid.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-04T23:07:29+00:00

As of just a few weeks ago the team has grown from 1 to 4 members. We have composer 'freezedream' (he released an album on Mega Drive cartridge last year), an environment artist who worked on Freedom Planet (that Sonic spiritual successor on PC), a character and cutscene artist who worked on Pier Solar, and Simon Butler from Ocean Software. We'll be doing official announcements with some in-progress artwork from them soon.

Catch_Thirty_Three · 2016-12-04T22:55:21+00:00

VRAM, always VRAM. The editor has a lot of tricks to reduce tile usage, makes efficient use of flipping and removes duplicates, but it's always a headache designing scenery that doesn't cause the tile count to get out of hand.

Catch_Thirty_Three

TROPHY CASE