Last month, the results of Saturn 29th Game Competition Contest were published ... I'm a bit late to share the good news here but on the other hand it's the perfect moment to do that
So, after more than a decade without participating into a coding contest, I'm happy to announce that my entry ranked with the highest score in the "Original Games" category !!!It's a double surprise for me : first to get a so high score and second to see that the judges of the contest evaluated my masterpiece to its real value
Also, it's cool to see that my friends vbt and privateye received pretty high scores too ! You both made a brilliant performance and I sincerely hope it will be outperformed on next contest
Folks interested in my entry can find it on SegaXtreme forums and may also be interested in "VTT" a.k.a. "VBT Touring Truck" made by vbt as the name suggest. Before playing, please beware that these games may disturb the ones who forgot the good old times when retro games were made with 5 different colors, mentally designed during three months, coded during two days, tested during one night and finished at 3 A.M. just before the deadline
The game description that I wrote before going to bed.
As indicated in the title, this is a poll to decide which display method should be used when displaying game titles in disc image selection menu.
Why such kind of poll ? Because privateye (in charge of Pseudo Saturn Kai beta testing) and me (in charge of adding bugs in Pseudo Saturn Kai) have different opinions regarding this default display method.
And as Pseudo Saturn Kai is here to please their users, I thought it would be cool to directly ask about that.
As illustrated below, display method can be either "centered" or "left-justified".
Centered display example
Left-justified display example
Both methods have their own pro and cons : "left-justified" is same as other disc image selection menus (and consequently users are more likely to be familiar with it) and "centered" may be felt as a more natural way to display menu items.
Ideally, it would be better to ask this on patreon because the voice of people who financially contributed to this project takes priority.
However, that's unfair for the supporters who left patreon and the ones who directly sent me a donation.
Also, I don't want to force someone to join my patreon page just to answer this poll.
So, feel free to share your opinion in the comments of this blog article ! It's free and doesn't even require any registration; there's a mail address input field but it's optional and just in case you want me to contact you back.
Rules : - Poll is open until 2023 August 31st - Don't hesitate to indicate the reason why you voted (or not) for this or that display method - Don't flood the comments - If the result of this poll doesn't pleases me, I will set default display method according to my personal preferences
Extra bonus, limited to the first 5 person who will request that : if you want to be listed in "Display Method Decision Committee" section of Pseudo Saturn Kai credits page, please inform me about the nickname (no real name please) to display there !
Well, I'm quite late, but as we are still in January I wish everyone still reading this blog an happy new year for 2023 !!!
There wasn't any release of Pseudo Saturn Kai in 2022 but this doesn't means the project stalled. Last year was dedicated to Satiator support, improvements of cheat codes list as well as many other small improvements here and there. Please stay tuned until next release of Pseudo Saturn Kai
Wishing only an happy new year is a bit cheap as a blog post, so I would like to introduce the marvelous christmas present I received last month : a pair of slippers from my favorite movie !!
I like these Deluxe Slippers so much that every morning is a pleasure to put them at the right place in the entrance to see Victor Pivert and Mohamed Larbi Slimane to welcome me back when I return back home on late night
After a long wait there is finally an update of Pseudo Saturn Kai ! ... and, there's not a lot of new things from previous version : only the minimum stuff to work correctly with latest (20210207) firmware for Fenrir ODE .
But wait, there's more ! As the weird title of this article suggests, this release is a bit special because it was made directly from previous release (v6.408) of Pseudo Saturn Kai and this is why both release numbers are quite close : there are other changes pending but not available in v6.411a and instead available in a "parallel future".
So you may ask why everything new is not available in v6.411a, and the answer is simple : all pending changes together don't work ! Additionally to small changes and improvements, this was an attempt to get write access working on Fenrir SD card, but as the previous times it didn't worked and in fact was terrible enough to break other base features such as SD card refresh
So rather than trying to fix everything in the same time, I simply focused on what's most important : fixing compatibility with Fenrir firmware 20210207, and the strategy paid because if I continued in trying to fix everything together, Pseudo Saturn Kai would certainly be still stuck at the same "nothing works" dead spot !
The plans for near future is to return back to main codebase indicated as "v6.419" in the picture above, merge back the fixes around firmware 20210207 from v6.411a and then terminate the remaining pending changes ! Now that base features are finally working correctly I hope that the remaining won't take a lot of time until being ready to release.
After finishing base and extra features, I shall finally be ready to attack the "Fenrir save data export & import" final boss. In order to (finally) go on next development goal, I really would like to terminate that this time, so please wish me good luck
Last but not least, I would like to express warm thanks to privateye, who helped a lot in the preparations of this release !!!
TL/DR: a new version of Pseudo Saturn Kai is available, but as it only contains tweaks to work with Fenrir, please wait for next release in the case you're not using this ODE
As usual I'm not very on time for sending my best wishes but I hope that everyone spent a nice Christmas and are appreciating winter vacations To add even more fun to theses vacations, I'm happy to announce that latest flavor of Pseudo Saturn Kai is -finally- publicly available !
To be frank, there are no new major feature for Pseudo Saturn Kai in this release : the most important news is not hidden in Pseudo Saturn Kai itself, but in Save Data Manager, with a new edition of Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager, featuring 11 new opus !
Regarding this new edition of Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager, I really want to thank each respective contributor for their passionate work in shmup creation : - mk2, designer of DAIOH Huricane Special - WANG, designer of Houkou Tiger
Also featuring screenshots gallery of DAIOH Hurricane
I also would like to give a special thanks to Dezaemon DB (wiki) for all his support around floppy disk emulation in Gamer's Cartridge and motivating me in developing a new blend of Save Game Manager for Dezaemon 2, which then turned into Save Game Manager 3 (released on last Winter) and Save Game Manager 4, freshly releasing right now. Unfortunately I didn't received any news from Dezaemon DB for more than two years, but I continue to believe he will be back in action in Dezaemon community someday.
Regarding Pseudo Saturn Kai itself, majority of changes in this release concern fixes in automatic game loader and cheat codes list. So if previous version of Pseudo Saturn Kai installed on your cartridge are working fine with your favorite games library, then ... theses games will continue to play fine with latest version.
All theses improvements were directed by privateye, who really deserve warm thanks for this huge work !!
It's a big task to get a project working more or less correctly as it was in previous releases of Pseudo Saturn Kai. But it's an even bigger task when trying to fix all the little details around that project Without privateye, Pseudo Saturn Kai certainly wouldn't had its edges polished so well
And, Gamer's Cartridge users may appreciate that a problem sometimes happening when retrieving Saturn date and time has been fixed in this release.
This bug was introduced in previous (6.314) version because I didn't checked enough side effects of modification done at that time to add support for wireless pads.
Concretely speaking, this fixes the file time stamp of save data files as well as folder naming (which is based on Saturn date) when dumping save(s) to SD card.
Except that, Gamer's Cartridge support is equivalent to previous version, so if you don't want to brick your Gamer's Cartridge (risk is super low, but I can't assert it to be zero), then continuing using previous version may be a wise choice. After all, rather than upgrading to latest firmware, the most important is to play your favorite games
The game description that I wrote before going to bed.
but I hope that everyone spent a nice Christmas and are appreciating winter vacations 
