Development: 100%
Year of publication : 2022
Platform: J2ME and Sega Saturn
Bridget Bishop was born from the idea of an old boss to develop a J2ME game, with the intention of getting into it and learning how to develop 3D games, taking inspiration from the game Jack in the Dark. Although it was never developed within the walls of that company, the idea remained dormant and I tried to develop it years later. This is how the game, without me having ever played it, has certain influence and similarities with Jack in the Dark.
The plot of the game is: Little witch Bridget Bishop has accidentally transformed her beloved cat Socks into a frog. She will have to search her magic book, gather ingredients and create new potions to transform Socks into a cat again. However, in her house she will only find substitutes for the necessary ingredients, so the resulting potions will transform her cat into various things...
In 2022 I found the Jo_engine library, which promised to easily develop for the ancient and exotic Sega Saturn. Thanks to this library it is possible to make small projects with relative ease for this console famous for its technical difficulty. This version, unlike the J2ME version, is fully finalized and playable from start to finish.
One of the most laborious points during the development were the animations of the 3D models. Bone animation is unfeasible on machines of this age, instead breaking the model into chunks and rotating/moving them independently. The deformation of the meshes was not usual, but I applied it in some points, such as the animation of the frog, or that of the grandmother when she is transformed into a dragon.
Another difficult point was the music. Because the game makes constant use of cd reading (for background loading) playing music CDs was not feasible. Instead use the ponèSound library, which allows streaming music playback. This system reads from the cd approximately every three seconds. We had to write a system that would prevent the loading of scenarios and the streaming of music from overlapping.
Bridget Bishop J2ME JSR-184 240x320 (85 KB)
