Construction with cubes is at Saturn fans’ fingertips with QuadWorld, a homebrew game seeking to bring the magic of Minecraft to Sega’s 32-bit console.
Longtime Saturn homebrew developer SuperReye has been coding QuadWorld in C++ using the Saturn Rings Library. You can download the in-progress game from its SegaXtreme Resources page.
Note that some SAROO users reported problems running QuadWorld. SuperReye said he only plans on supporting other optical drive emulators: Fenrir, Satiator, Wasca and Gamers Cart, namely.
SuperReye began making QuadWorld not long after fellow developer Frogbull made a recreation of Minecraft on Saturn in February. It’s only “creative mode” for now — in other words, the player can build things but there are no survival mechanics or enemies yet. Current features include:
- 144-by-64-by-144-block world
- 37 unique blocks (planned to be up to 63 blocks in the future)
- Fully generated world, based on the seed composed from system clock (planned to be editable in the future)
- Falling sand and gravel
- Blocks are casting shadows under them selves
- Lava and water spreads in the same fashion as in Minecraft Classic
- When lava and water meet, they will produce rock
- Player collision, swimming in water and lava
- Unique premade world by Shiroiii
“I won’t stop until there is survival mode with crafting and mobs,” SuperReye told SHIRO!.
He said he plans on implementing a save and load feature. And doors, hopefully — “no clue how to implement doors yet as well” he said back in July.
QuadWorld is one of 14 original games submitted to the SegaXtreme Sega Saturn 31st Anniversary Showcase. You can read more about them and the showcase’s other submissions here. The showcase’s judges awarded QuadWorld in the Most Creative and Most Likely Fan Favorite categories.
Here’s a slideshow of this author’s first time playing QuadWorld on real Saturn hardware via Satiator:
Rapid progress on a deadline
After Frogbull showed off a partially completed port of Minecraft on the Saturn on Feb. 11, SuperReye got to work on his own unique attempt to get something working by the SegaXtreme Showcase’s May 11 entry deadline.
By April 7, he implemented glass blocks. The next day, a user inferface. The next, he got lava and water working. On April 10, he enabled swimming.
“Up till 17th of April there were only 10 blocks in the game and hard limit was 31 block types,” SuperReye told SHIRO!. “After that date, on [the] 17th I managed to raise the limit to 63 block types and after that I started adding new blocks fast.”
SuperReye put sand, which has gravity, and explodable TNT into QuadWorld on April 24, then got randomized world generation working on the 28th. By May 3, he’d added wheat and flowers, and a week later, he added a menu and music.
“And that is [the] whole development before [the] competition,” SuperReye said, referring to the SegaXtreme Showcase. He submitted version 0.2a, which is what anyone can download from SegaXtreme’s Resources area.
If you’d like to try out the earlier builds of QuadWorld for yourself, SuperReye gave SHIRO! permission to host them! You can download the March 24 build here and the April 8 build here.
“I did QuadWorld in kind of stages, where I first got chunks, then regions, then whole world, and then I just did random things until it worked,” SuperReye said. “I mean, it’s amazing I managed to work on it in sorta organized way for as long as I did but even when I write in a chaotic way, QuadWorld source is still same quality as [Saturn Rings Library] itself, fully documented properly formatted and separated.”
Since the Showcase, SuperReye has kept his head down, working on a version 0.3. Once he sees fit to release it, SHIRO! will be there to let you know.
Be the first to comment