[Cobra!]

So I recently discovered this new game engine called Simulant which is for making games for the Dreamcast. From what I've been told by the developers, it's even going to get a level editor, like what you see in Godot or Unity.

I've been thinking, if I can somehow get the assets, I would love to have a go at porting Klonoa 2 to the Dreamcast using this engine.

Who would be interested in this if I went ahead with it?

[BlueNinty]

You've caught my interest already. I can't imagine it being an simple process (especially with the Dreamcast being a weaker console), so I wish you the best of luck.

[IsmaDLR]

Development for the Dreamcast is well known thanks to it being fairly easy. It may require a graphical downgrade, but the reason no Klonoa 2 was done for Dreamcast may be because nobody thought about trying it.

It would be interesting to see the results, but as long as you have a Dreamcast and it's able to run homebrew (I just discovered some Dreamcast consoles can run backups and homebrew stuff from the get go, by just putting the disc on the console, no extra steps needed) you could check if you're going the right direction with the port.

[Cobra!]

I actually spoke to the developer of Simulant about the potential port, and they took a look at the game and reckons the game is perfectly possible on the Dreamcast as is, and easy to do on the engine.

I personally expect that to keep the game 60FPS, I would have to cull some background models (which I think the engine would handle, anyway. The dev mentioned something about this), and maybe downgrade the environments a tad, and even then, the framerate would suffer dips.

It should be fun, though. I would love to have my favourite PS2 game on my favourite console. Besides, Klonoa is a series about dreams, not being on the Dreamcast is a missed opportunity! 

The only issues now would be getting the assets, the legality of it all. Apparently, it's legal to remake a game, but not so much using the assets and distributing the game with them, so this might just end up as a personal project to test the engine, maybe send copies to some friends.

[IsmaDLR]

The easy solution would be obviously keeping the game to yourself once you make it, maybe sending it to someone who can test it on a Dreamcast with different region, just to see if it works. It may also be the less perfmorming-friendly solution.

The hard solution would be REDO ALL ASSETS, which would be very time consuming and hard, but it shouldn't give you a lot of troubles, and it should theoricaly be the safest option for making it perform good.

Needless to say, it's either keep it to yourself as a proof that it can be done without working very hard, or take the time to redo everything and make it legal to distribute it. I personally recommend keeping it to yourself, record gameplay of it from a real Dreamcast and uploading it to YouTube, just as a proof that it's possible to have Klonoa 2 on a Dreamcast if you don't want to spend that amount of time with it and let someone else try to redo the entire game.

It's up to you, anyways, so whatever decision you make, we'll be perfectly fine.

[Cobra!]

The easy solution would be obviously keeping the game to yourself once you make it, maybe sending it to someone who can test it on a Dreamcast with different region, just to see if it works. It may also be the less perfmorming-friendly solution.

The hard solution would be REDO ALL ASSETS, which would be very time consuming and hard, but it shouldn't give you a lot of troubles, and it should theoricaly be the safest option for making it perform good.

A friend of mine actually came up with a really good solution: Upload the source code online, and leave it up to the user to compile it and insert the assets themselves. That way I can still share my work and not have to worry about doing anything illegal.

The only issue here would be that I might be stuck with the PS2 assets, which the engine devs reckon would work on the Dreamcast, anyway. I might try and be more creative with how to optimise it. Maybe make the game work with both the original and optimised models, but the optimised ones give better performance?

I personally recommend keeping it to yourself, record gameplay of it from a real Dreamcast and uploading it to YouTube, just as a proof that it's possible to have Klonoa 2 on a Dreamcast if you don't want to spend that amount of time with it and let someone else try to redo the entire game.

That's actually a really good idea, I might do that as well! 

Another thing about the engine is that it can export to PC, Mac and Linux, too. So I'd also be porting Klonoa 2 to those! 

[IsmaDLR]

Another thing about the engine is that it can export to PC, Mac and Linux, too. So I'd also be porting Klonoa 2 to those! 

Yowee Wowee. Klonoa on PC will definitely be weird, but it's kinda exciting. Only that may make some noise about the franchise and maybe will warn Bandai Namco that fans are ready and willing to support the franchise if a PC port gets popular enough.

If you said this before, I wouldn't waste close to 40$ for a promo copy of Klonoa 2 for PS2, even though I think it was worth every buck and I have absolutely no regrets.

[Voka~Daemyn]

I'm very interested in Klonoa 2 running natively on a PC 

[HylianBran]

There's a Klonoa 2 pre-release dev interview I read where the interviewer asks if Klonoa 2 can possibly be ported to the Dreamcast. What a time...

[SerialDreams]

I'm very interested in Klonoa 2 running natively on a PC 

THIS. YES.