Kraut Buster MVS de la NG:Dev.Team est enfin fini !!!

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En même temps que la mise à jour  de leur site, la NG:Dev.team  a adressé aux gamers qui ont préréservé leur jeu , un mail dont les premiers mots et les derniers  font chaud au coeur:

« Kraut Buster est notre lettre d’amour à la  NEOGEO et concrétise le rêve de réaliser un run’n’gun de style pixel art inspiré de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.  La direction artistique et les dessins ont été inspirés par les vieux films de guerre, Papa schultz et Indiana Johns 3 ».

« Merci d’être rester à nos côtés au fil des années et de nous avoir permis de créer notre jeu de rêve NEOGEO! Sans vous, cela n’aurait pas été possible … »

En gros, le jeu a énormément évolué par rapport au projet initial et n’en est que devenu meilleur. Les envois de la version MVS seront finalisée dans les 3 prochaines semaines en commencant par les versions LE. Sauvegarde automatique des scores sur la cartouche !!!.

La versions AES bénéficiera des nouvelles PCB 2.0

Que  pendant le temps de développement de ce jeu, les graphistes de l’équipe ont aussi travaillé sur une exclusivité dur Switch( Gunlord X ?) et des shoot’em up qui seront lancés dans les 2 prochaines années.

N’oublions pas que les versions MVS sont des sortes  de beta grande échelle qui bénéficieront de mise à jour via une carte SD avant de pouvoir bénéficier du lancement l’année prochaine de la version AES définitive.

NB : bonnes fêtes de fin d’année à toutes et tous !!!!

description sur le site du jeu :

KRAUT BUSTER est un jeu de tir comique réalisé pour le système 16 bits NEO · GEO.

MISSION Europe, Krautland 1936

Vous faites partie du glorieux mais infâme corps de Kraut Buster. Votre but est de vaincre le dictateur maléfique Dolph Edelwolf et de sauver tous les poussins! Jouez comme John « Küken » Mallone, Jack « Handsome » Rowdy ou Valeria « Bona » Bossa.

Caractéristiques du jeu :

– Fonction des masques: Portez différents masques pour modifier les capacités de vos personnages, vos armes, votre environnement et le comportement de vos ennemis.

– 5-6 boss finaux et plusieurs sous boss

– Mode coop simultané à 2 joueurs: les joueurs peuvent interagir les uns avec les autres.

– 8 directions: Permet de filmer dans 8 directions – Balancement: Certaines armes permettent la direction 16 en balançant avec le joystick

– Échange d’armes: appuyez rapidement sur «D» pour permuter entre les armes I et II

– Maintien de la grenade: maintenez le joystick dans la direction pour lancer des grenades plus loin – Lancer automatique de grenades: maintenez le bouton C enfoncé pour lancer plusieurs grenades.

– Ledge Drop: utilisez le terrain et les obstacles à votre avantage

– Weapon lock: arrêtez votre arme en position tout en vous déplaçant –

– Glissade au sol et air dash : glissez / tirez à travers certaines balles

– Coup de poignard rapide multyiples contre les gros ennemis –

– G3-way grenades in C-mode: lancez un paquet de 3 grenades légèrement orientées

– Mode C: système de score de bonus de destruction rapide

– Système de notation basé sur les « chain » pour fournir un défi à long terme

– Plusieurs chemins différents  pour plus de façons de jouer au jeu

– 2 modes de jeu :  « T-mode » et « C-mode »

– 3 difficultés

– Faire le jeu d’un trait de manière parfaite prend 40 à 60 minutes  (parcours normal)

– 60fps

– Beau pixel art 16 bits artisanal

– grands arrière-plans panoramiques avec une longueur maximale de 9 000 pixels avec de nombreux éléments de parallaxe

– grands boss entièrement animés

– des tonnes d’animation, de petits détails et de pixel love

Spécifications matérielles (cartouches MVS / AES): Utilisera environ 808 mégabits( 512 MEGS pour le pixel art, 256 MEGS pour une bande son  stéréo entièrement digitalisé e les effets sonores,  40 MEGS pour le code et data)

Mises à jour du logiciel intégré au système via microSDCard (MVS) PCB sur mesure Coquille de cartouche sur mesure Amélioration du support UNI BIOS / CMVS: le logo de démarrage et le menu de configuration sont pris en charge / insérer un crédit via le bouton de sélection

Copié/collé du mail :

Dear customers,

finally after years of hard work and a lot of patience from you guys we are ready to release Kraut Buster.

Warnung! Ueberlangertext! Warnung!

Kraut Buster is our love letter to the NEOGEO and a fulfillment of the dream of making a World War 2 themed technicolor styled pixel art run’n’gun.
It’s art direction and designs were inspired by old war movies, Hogan’s Heroes and Indy III.

When you play the game you will see the game is quite German in design and maybe humor? Yes German humor ;-).

Kraut Buster evolved and changed a lot over the years and became a different and better game.
We hope you guys feel the same and think it was worth the wait.

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New moves

We added a lot of new moves and more modern controls to the game:

Ground slide move and air dash.
You can dash both on ground and air.
The slide/dash makes you shortly invincible against most projectiles (except stuff that explodes/fire/acid).
Mastering this move is very important to survive maniac-ish amounts of bullets and enemies in later missions.

With the new weapon position lock you can walk around while your weapon is in an arrested position.
It’s very useful against air enemies and bosses. Advanced players also can use it against enemies that are below.

A drop down feature allows dropping down ledges to quickly get closer to enemies below or to get treasures.

Different grenade throwing speeds/modes and in C-mode you can adjust the grenade throwing angle to a small degree
If you hold the grenade button it automatically throws up to 3 grenades in a short succession.

You can shoot directly in 8 directions and with spraying/swaying the Maschienenpistole can do 16 directions.
Players can hold up to 2 weapons and switch among them.

Rapid prison shank style stab move for bigger humanoid enemies like « Gas Gerd », « Lurchmutant », « Zwergritter », « Heisse Helga », « Herrin Peitsche », « Wein Werner », « Ueberritter Ausf. S » and « Ueberritter Ausf. G »

Masks can upgrade the knife attacks to a super knife and Katana knife attack. Those do more damage and can penetrate multiple enemies.

Speaking about masks:

Masks can add combinations of abilities like:

– 1 hit shield
– weaponized chick sidekicks
– more shot power
– different grenades
– super knife
– killer slide
– higher jumps
– floating in air
– faster jump and run speed
– faster combo build up
– lower/higher difficulty and personal challenges
– negative effects like increased ammo usage in trade for power

Maybe you can already guess from the above information that Kraut Buster plays purposefully quite different to the MS games.
We used a more direct control approach known from the gorgeous Contra series.
The player always has immediate control of the characters. There are no transition animations that get spooled off.
Most actions are instant, like switching direction/jumping. Other are very fast like stabbing/ducking and grenade throwing.
Those differences above and the 60 fps give Kraut Buster quite a different feel, especially in C-mode.

However for people preferring the old and reduced controls of the MS games we offer a lot of customization options.
Using the « old style » controls makes the game unnecessary more difficult though.

The game requires 4 buttons per player 1L4B / 2L8B.

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Game modes:

T-mode

T-mode is similar to the MS games.
It’s slower and more tactical. It’s best played by slowly advancing and has lots of forced stops.
Only a reduced set of missions need to be played to keep the game time below 40 minutes.
Missions can be selected in the mission map screen. The 2nd mission for selection is always longer than the first.
Ammunition is limited in this mode, but a bigger variety of weapons are available for pickup.

C-mode

C-mode is similar to the 90s Contra (III/HC) games.
It’s faster, brutal and relentless.
You need to blast yourself through all missions in one go.
There are no masks, no knives, no hidden treasures and no chicks.
The game flow is less guided in this mode and you have more control over your own pace. This also means you need to do more enemy crowd control yourself as the engine can pump out quite a lot of enemies.
But you have unlimited ammunition, an extra extend and you throw 3-way grenades! (The 3-way grenades can be slightly aimed)

There is a fast kill (quickkill) system in place that grants scoring bonuses.

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Difficulties:

3 ranks are available: bronze, silver and gold

Bronze is the lowest but is still quite challenging.
We recommend starting with that one to get acquainted with this game. Before you play the real game with the silver rank.
The higher the rank the better the enemy AI gets, the more bullets and enemies will be there. Bigger enemies may have additional attacks and more energy.

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Scoring:

This game features a complex risk and reward based scoring system.

Factors are:
– current combo meter
– the amount of bigger enemies on screen
– T-mode: the amount of rescued birds in your pocket
– C-mode: the amount of fast kill treasures in your pocket
– difficulty/rank

To raise the combo meter destroy a lot of enemies in a short succession.
Some enemies and some attacks give more boost than others.

If your combo meter is very high you are in Baerzerker mode for maximum bonuses.

T-mode: collecting all treasures of a set grants additional bonuses

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Customization options (just a short excerpt):

Like on modern JAMMA hardware, settings and high scores are stored directly on the cartridge in an EEPROM.
To access the settings hold the start button at booting (can be configured on MVS at soft DIPs).

[Gameplay Menu]

– Auto Weapon Switch Pickup [on]

Automatically tries to select a slot for the new weapon. E.g. if you have an empty slot the new weapon always is put there.
If you pick up the same weapon it sums up ammo instead of putting it in a new slot.

– Auto Weapon Switch Empty [on]

If you current weapon is empty, it switches to the other weapon slot.

– Slide Move [on]

– Weapon Lock [on]
Activates weapon lock mode. It locks the weapon in aiming position.

– Movement and Weapon Lock [on]
Allows the player to move forward/backward (moonwalk), jump etc. while retaining the weapon aim
If off, the player’s position is fixed

– Allow Turning in Air [on]

Allows the player to quickly turn the direction while jumping/shooting.

– Simplified Air Dash [on]

Allows doing the air dash with just pressing the slide button instead of needing to press slide+down+direction

– Masks [on]

We highly recommend to leave everything on and embrace the new play style.

[Operator Menu]

– Reduce Sprite Flicker [++ ]

As Kraut Buster has a lot more sprites, multi layering techniques and at times background layers than similar games on NEOGEO, it has a higher risk of slowdown and sprite flicker.
To keep sprite flicker and slowdown in check we introduced some simple 16 bit « AI » that decides on the fly to take measurements to reduce sprite flickering and slowdown. It’s aggressiveness can be configured to some extend.
Some examples are that dead bodies have a tendency to fall out of the game area or get otherwise disposed off ASAP.

In favor of 60 fps we also needed to pass on having dynamic sprite depth sorting.
This sometimes results in small sprite priority irregularities.
As the NEOGEO hardware does not have sprite priority flags and with the huge amount of sprites we use, it would have been impossible to hold the 60fps goal otherwise.

The game is optimized around the single player mode. The 2 player mode will increase anti flicker and slowdown measurements more aggressively.

– Force 60hz Transparency [off]

Forces 16 bit style 60hz flicker fake transparency on all explosions. This reduces risk of sprite flickering greatly. Works best on arcade and consumer CRTs due to their after glow.

[Customizer Menu]

– Controls (buttons)
– Name Entry (set a default name)

– Character Design John
– Character Design Jack
– Character Design Valeria

Set colors of the characters (cloth, skin, etc.)

[Cheats]

The game comes with a variety of built in cheat modes.
Use at your own discretion. Score saving is disabled in that mode. The score font turns yellow as a cheat indicator.

Unlimited credits are supported in home mode, you can add them with the select button.