The Sword of IANNA by Retroworks in development

Retroworks developed amazing ports and games, which I just recently noticed. I´m curious about IANNA and hope they will also release new batches of their cartridges.

Awesome stuff. Very nice looking graphics and animation.

Btw funny: When I first saw some camera footage of this game (recorded during a fair) a few weeks ago, I thought it was called Sword of Lanna

Oh, really nice! Such nice animations and gameplay! Looking forward!

Excellent work and very nice graphics!
I like this game very, very much!
My congratulations, RetroWorks!

I tested it at RetroMadrid. I was shocked with the animations. Great game!

oh,wow. That looks seriously good. The main sprite is awesome, the detailed animation rocks. Technical it seems like a high-end game. Hope the play ability is just as good as it looks.

Sc5, when I tested it in retromadrid I asked the mode and they confirmed me SC5, the truth is that the coloring of the spectrum version has not broken the coherence of the set.

My only fear is that the end result won't be compatible with NTSC televisions. I've only encountered two games so far that have no compatibility for NTSC TVs whatsoever (Manbow 2, and Crafton & Xunk), but just the fact that one of them is a high-profile homebrew game that I think also used screen 5 (unless I'm mistaken?) gives me the slightest tinge of concern.

If anyone from Retroworks is reading this, and can confirm that allowances will be made for NTSC in the final product, it would definitely put my mind at rest.

-Tom

In 50 Hz mode there is much more time available per frame: 20 ms time instead of 16.7 ms (20% more). Additionally, because the VDP is idle a larger portion of the time, VDP commands can process more pixels, going beyond the 20% the extra time alone accounts for: 27% more pixels when sprites are enabled (~6% faster), 21% when disabled.

That 3.3 ms extra time is a significant amount, and affects all games, MSX1 and MSX2 alike. The VDP command speed only affects MSX2 screen modes, so in that sense there is a slight additional benefit to 50 Hz there, but I don’t think the difference is significant enough.

So rather than this being about titles using screen 5 or not, I think it is more a matter of, titles which are pushing the system to its limits (=high-profile) are more likely to make such a choice, because they simply do not run at 60 Hz without making significant sacrifices. E.g. Uridium is also an example of such a title, luckily it was built with 60 Hz in mind from the start, but for Uridium 2 ARTRAG is basically facing the same dilemma.

I don’t think it’s an excuse, software should IMO always be built to support 60 Hz. That said, I can understand making the choice because 20% extra time is a significant amount, and can make something possible that otherwise would not. And since we use RGB connections in Europe which work at both 50 Hz and 60 Hz, a case for users to "fix their cable / equipment" can be made. (I understand in other parts of the world this isn’t such an acceptable trade-off.)

But personally I would rather try to adjust / omit some game feature (e.g. lower speed animations or sprite updates) to allow the game to run at 60 Hz. My software will be certainly be built with 60 Hz as a basis. Not only because it is the minimum spec, but also I’ve personally always liked the 60 Hz frequency more, especially on CRT monitors the refresh rate looks nicer, smoother, and the image is taller and has nice scanlines.

nice!

Awesome! Thanks for writing back! I'm really looking forward to playing this -- it looks very reminiscent of classic cinematic platformers like Another World and Flashback, which is a genre you don't see a lot of on the MSX.

-Tom