Frequently Asked Questions

If you have any questions that you want to ask us then don't hesitate to join our forum where you can talk to any of the New Horizon staff members and where we can answer all your questions.

When and how did this project start?

Mega Man New Horizon (MMNH) was originally a Forum RPG that started around 2002/2003, on the now defunct Veomeshed forums (short for 'Vertices of the Meshed, some sort of 3-d modeler's term).

The forum RPG was started by Cinderous and Infinity Majinon, and set in the same setting as the current GameBoy Advance (GBA) game, but about a hundred years later on in the storyline. The current New Horizon GBA game has its setting around the Great War in the year 2440, while the forum RPG had its setting around the year 251X, where the Great War was just a memory, an important chapter of New Horizons history.

Eventually Cinderous gave up on any kind of major place in the forum RPG, and Grenzenlos (Ian) and his cohort Zoberraz (Frederick) took over management. Lysekoid (Michal) was a frequent player of the forum RPG during this time. Michal was an experienced programmer and spriter for the GBA and so during the summer of 2003 project plans began to hatch between the three of them to start a Mega Man New Horizon GBA project. With enough information collected about New Horizon during the fall of 2003, Lysekoid (together with his colleague Tobias) began creating a Game Engine/API for the GBA in January 2004. After that the New Horizon GBA project was way on its way...

The New Horizon forum RPG ran for about three years on and off before what we've come to call 'the fall.' The forum moved under new management, and began a slow spiral into its current defunct state.

The New Horizon GBA game represents a back story period to the forum RPG, and lacks many of the more colorful characters created for the forum. Some of them may still be adapted for use in later game products.

How are you able to develop a game for GameBoy Advance?

The Lypson Game Engine for Gameboy Advance/Nintendo DS.

When the Mega Man New Horizon (MMNH) GBA project started there was only one Game Engine/API available that we could have used, programmed in the computer language C, but we didn't like it for several reasons. So we, Lysekoid (Michal) and Tobias, chose to create our own GBA Game Engine/API and we chose to program in the computer language C++. This Game Engine started as a Bachelor Thesis project. The project lasted from January 2004 to June 2004. After that we just kept on working on it and now we have what we have... a pretty nice Game Engine where we've invested more than 5000 hours into its source code. The MMNH GBA game is based on this Game Engine.

What game making tools are you using?

Lypson Game Engine version 3.7.31 (2007) for Gameboy Advance/Nintendo DS. Only version 0.3.24 (2004) of the game engine (API) is available for download.

Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance - The Unofficial Guide: Jonathan S. Harbour's book titled "Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance" is the first and probably the only book covering this topic. We, the programmers at AUD Studios, started our education about how to program the Gameboy Advance using this book. In our opinion, the Gameboy Advance is the best handheld system for any engineer to work with. Working with the Gameboy Advance involves graphic design, music composition, hardware understanding and software program-ming as a complete package of game development. The book can be downloaded as PDF from the webpage for anyone who'd like to venture into the incredible experience of game development for Gameboy Advance.

HAM Development Kit 2.8: HAM is a non-graphical development environment for Game Boy Advance. It is useful by itself but we recommend using a graphical front-end in the like of Visual HAM. The compiler in HAM is the GNU projects ARM-compiler.

Visual HAM 2.6 Beta 1 (PRIVATE): Visual HAM is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Windows platform. By default it uses the HAM Development Kit for compilation and VisualBoyAdvance for running and debugging the developed games.

VisualBoyAdvance 1.7.1: VisualBoyAdvance is an emulator for Game Boy Advance that makes it possible to test developed games (as well as commercial games) on a computer. VisualBoyAdvance function almost exactly as the real hardware. As loading, debugging and error searching is easier on an emulator than on real hardware, the emulator is used for standard testing during development. However, some differences have been observed (i.e. DMA calls are much faster in VisualBoyAdvance) so the game engine must be tested on real hardware too.

pcx2gba and pcx2sprite: Two programs to convert pictures in PCX format to header files containing C arrays. pcx2gba converts background images whereas pcx2sprite convert sprite images. Their strength lies in their simplicity. Even though they are command line driven programs, they takes no parameters except the picture to convert. Therefore, converting pictures are a simple task of dropping files onto a program icon. Both of these programs are available for download from The Pern Project.

gfx2gba 0.13 and GFX2GBA Frontend 1.3: gfx2gba is a program that convert pictures in various formats to other formats suitable for GBA development. It is one of the few programs that can generate a single colour palette from multiple pictures. gfx2gba is a command line driven program and quite a lot of parameters are required. The front-end is a graphical user interface for setting these parameters. Note: There are two different programs named gfx2gba, by different authors. Check the version numbers.

AGB Convert V1.4: A graphical programs that converts pictures in BMP format to files containing C arrays. AGB Convert is unfortunately not that good at removing tiles that are identical, although the tile-arrays are nicely separated from each other.

GBA Graphics Tool: A graphical programs that converts pictures in BMP format to header files containing C arrays.

Doxygen 1.3.7, DoxyWizard, Graphviz 1.10 och HTML Help Workshop 1.3: Doxygen is a powerful code documentation tool that among other things is able to autogenerate documentation from C++-files. DoxyWizard is a graphical front-end to Doxygen. It is included in the Doxygen distribution. Graphviz is used by Doxygen to generate graphical images, for example class diagrams. HTML Help Compiler, a part of Microsoft HTML Help Workshop, is used by Doxygen to generate documentation in Windows HTML-help format.

How to get started?

1. Read and learn how to program the Game Boy Advance: Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance - The Unofficial Guide.

2. Download the Lypson Game Engine. The Visual HAM project file is included, but you probably have to start a new project: Start a new project (File menu - New - New project - [C++] Empty). Remove the default main.cpp file (In the workspace panel to the left, right click on the file name and select "Remove selected". Add the files from the zip file (In the workspace panel to the left, right click on the text "Source Files" and select "Add File(s)".

3. Start programming. There is a very small test program supplied in the main.cpp file that you can run in the VisualBoyAdvance emulator. Press F6 to compile and run.

Why not making a game for Nintendo DS instead?

To tell you the truth, the GBA Game Engine has been extended with additional libraries and is now fully compatible with Nintendo DS. In the future we will release New Horizon games for Nintendo DS as well.

Why don't you use any of the original Capcom characters in the game, such as Axl or Protoman?

We try to keep everything new and not to use any original Capcom material. This is to make the game more unique. Besides, we do the best we can but we're NOT as good as Capcom. Let's not kid ourselves, we do a good job but bottom line, we're just amateurs.

So, if we used original Capcom characters and they turned out bad then we would be responsible for damaging these characters and the hard work Capcom has put into these characters. Most of us are huge Mega Man fans and we would not wish to hurt Capcom's good will in any way. Therefore, we do our best to keep our hands off any original Capcom material.

When the MMNH project started Alouette was the reploid designer who integrated the Cyber-Elf X's DNA soul into the new body that Hubart has created. At this time, Alouette was just a small kid in the original Capcom game. A character of somewhat little or no importance. But then Capcom reused Alouette for their new games and she became a key figure. At that point we were not able to use Alouette for New Horizon anymore and Alouette was replaced by a new character called Dolly.

The only thing we have left in this project that is still borrowed from Capcom is Mega Man… it's kind of hard to make a Mega Man game without the little blue fellow , so there's no way to go around this I'm guessing. But we try to do our outmost for this project and we are very careful not to discredit either Capcom or their number one mascot Mega Man in anyway.

Is Zero in the game? If so, can you play as him?

Zero is not in this game and he never will be. He is just briefly mentioned in the history before the spaceship Icarus left Earth to locate New Horizon. Zero never left Earth.

Can anyone join the project?

We are always looking for skilled people who want to and can contribute to our project. But the question is, do you have what it takes to join the team? We need skilled people, who are willing to work hard and contribute a lot to the project. Anything else is not acceptable.

MEGAMAN NEW HORIZON IS AN UNOFFICIAL GAME DEVELOPED BY REALMS OF ALTERNITY © 2003-2007.

ALL ORIGINAL NEW HORIZON MATERIALS ARE PROPERTY OF REALMS OF ALTERNITY. THIS GAME IS A FAN-BASED NON-PROFIT

PORTFOLIO PIECE AND IT IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH OR WAS EDITED BY CAPCOM U.S.A., INC. OR CAPCOM CO., LTD.