Homebrewing cartridges with RPG maker games

[WickedYoungMan]

Hey folks, I was wondering if anyone knew anything about homebrewing game cartridges for commercial systems (the ones I'm interested in homebrewing for are Sega Genesis and/or Gameboy Color), and if its possible to convert games made using RPG maker to a format suitable for inserting into physical game cartridges. If anyone has any information on where one can acquire the proper parts, hardware, and software necessary to execute such an operation, I would greatly appreciate it.

Info on homebrewing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(video_games)#Sega_Mega_Drive.2FGenesis_and_Master_System

[fruckert]

Holy hell this'll be hard.
I personally don't know, but if you're good enough at programming, you can probably just program a 2k3 type game, and just import graphical resources.
As for the actually converting a 2k3 game to a console, I highly doubt it.

[WickedYoungMan]

I think the trick might be just getting an RPG maker 2000 (the program I'm using) game formatted into a ROM file for an emulator, and working from there. There must be some way to reformat the source code. I highly doubt I'm the first person to attempt this.

[Musha]

Yeah, the hard part would be converting the RM game file into an appropriate ROM format.  Back in the day it wasn't uncommon for people to make their own homebrew cartridges for consoles like the NES.  It's just a matter of having the right hardware...and there are people out there who know a lot more about that than I do.

[Red Fox]

Each console has it's restrictions that must be followed, such as there can only be a certain amount of sprites on screen, how many colors it can handle and so on. So I think it would be impossible to make it in rpg maker.

You will probably have to code it yourself. I looked into making games for the GBA awhile back. For that you coded you game and when your done you just put your game on a flashcard and you could play it. But as far as I know there is no flash cards for sega or gameboy. So your probably will have to make your own cartridges which is not the easiest.

[WickedYoungMan]

Yeah, I looked into it, and I don't think genesis cartridges have enough memory for one of these games. GBA however might hold some possibility. I know sega dreamcast has its own home software kit...

[Red Fox]

Well, if you wanna look into programming games for GBA I can provide you with some tutorial links that might help.

http://www.loirak.com/gameboy/gbatutor.php - beginners tutorial
 
http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/toc.htm - goes through hardware limitations and much more

http://www.gbadev.org/ - Tools and tutorial that might help you.

[ninji]

Well, does anyone have any idea how to turn it into an ISO (for PSP/PSX/PS2 and so on)? My games are WAY too big to go on cartridges.

[Red Fox]

You can't play rpg maker in emulators...

[Osmose]

Technically, RMXP runs Ruby, so in theory, any chipset with a Ruby Interpreter could run an RMXP game with enough massaging (don't quote me on that).

But in reality, no. RPG Maker games are a set of files meant to run on an underlying engine. Getting an RPG Maker game to run as a ROM would require porting the engine to whatever platform you want it to run on. This isn't just a matter of taking the existing program and converting it through magic. Basically, if you're not Enterbrain, it would be nearly impossible to redesign the entire system to run on a different platform.

As previously said, if you really want to make games for the GBA or Genesis, you'd be better off learning how to program and developing for them.

[Darkfox]

Basically, you'll have to convert each graphic to one readable by the system. And in the case of GBC and Sega Genesis, you'll also have to establish a color set for the GBC and a palette for the Sega Genesis. Then you'll have to redo all the coding that makes a character do what at where. And also do the loading screens and... it goes on from there.