Amiga sprites restoration project
 

I've just been farting about with the game Superfrog. Messing around and stealing graphics from it for help with Superfrog9's website.

I didn't intend to but I've actually started playing the game again and am getting stuck into it !

Anyhow - I was thinking how cool it would be to rip all our favourite sprites out of games and put them on a website somewhere as a basic flash animation where you can control the sprite as in the original game. These could also be supplied as gifs so aspiring coders could make a new game and put our favourite characters in it.

Examples could include - Superfrog, Zool, Xenon II spaceship etc.... (you get the idea).

Does this seem a worthwhile project ?

Has it already been thought of/done ?

With Amiga games, I think not (I have vague memories of an Apidya Flash remake but I could be wrong).

I'd like to try and convert one of these to try some Flash code I've done :). Keep me posted, we might be able to knock up one at least as a test.

I think the project should be renamed to Amiga Restoration : Sprites Extraction

or in short ARSE. So many projects now it ought to be named that.

Hahahahaha

How's about Sensible Soccer for Flash !

Could it be done - in theory ?

I've messed around with some simple animations in flash but I'm not sure of the limitations.

At least the sprites are nice 'n' small for that one.

Hmm. I'm of the thought that anything can be possible with it :) But I have no clue about the control for curving the ball etc. That might be complex.

Akira - just get 22 guys (well we need the ref too, and why not have 2 linesmen).

OK - get 25 guys running around a scrolling football pitch - ala Sensible Soccer to prove it can be done.

I'll handle the physics !

I wouldn't know how to code IA, I never done it before. So the computer players would just be useless plonkers

How you gonna do the physics? Just animating it? it wouldn't be fine if you want to make this onto a proper game. Or you just wnt it to be like a rolling demo?

Proper game of course !

I've already thought about importing all the latest teams from Championship Manager ! :D

I want it to be just like Sensible. No more tweaks on the pitch (except maybe more crowd chants and goal celebrations), but with plenty of modern/current teams to choose from. Hell, maybe we could introduce a streaker that runs on the pitch every 1000 games !

I used to be a AMOS (haha) coder so I know how to code game logic, animation movement etc... But I am useless at Flash though and honestly don't think it is up to the task (see if Akira bytes the bait!).

However I am propising a test - just have 25 guys moving around the screen. No need for AI - just use a Random X,Y,Distance calculation for now and move them there. Repeat this process for all 25 guys and then keep repeating it. Have 1 guy as the main guy and scroll the screen around him. If this was smooth and quick we could say that SS Flash would work.

The AI can be sorted later.

If Flash couldn't handle this there are alternatives....

Would it be better pursuing this in Blitz Basic PC - is BBPC quick enough ?

Or would we have to move into the realms of other PC coding methods ?

What was that PC-SS clone mentioned in the other thread coded in ?

Hmm... if you can help me teaching me basic AI and game logic algorithms I can code them in Flash. I have physics code already, inertia, and stuff like that. All is done and redy to be used, I made my own libraries.

If you move onto Blitz Iwont be able to help you :)

I take the bait of course, I think most everything can be done :). but I'll use Flash MX, it's much more versatile.

I'l do a little guy making the screen scrollwith him as a first step, how does that sound?

It could take a while thugh, im too busy :/

That's great.

Coding is a bit like Flash animating: Always get the basic thing working, then make it pretty. If you get the basics working well you can be pretty sure the idea you envisaged originally will work.

So start with 1 guy on a scrolling pitch and show me that.

Then we add 24 other guys.

If speed is slow then there is no point continuing in Flash. If speed is good then we get to work on the AI. AI is just a lot of IF's/ELSE's & randomizes. There is no learning involved for the computer - some IE programs learn as you play. These don't have to. We tell them how to play football and that is it.

It's not that simple though - think about how footballer's play and write some pseudo-code. Players have to stay in a rough formation (you can't have them all chasing the ball!), some need to go into space, some need to mark players, others need to pick up the ball and pass/run. The easiest AI to code is probably the computer GK !

What would be groovy would be to analyse SS's machine code and work out the AI from that, and clone it exactly. But as I do not know 68000 I wouldn't know where to start !

You have the dynamics of kicking the ball, applying spin, acceleration, deccelaration - but these can be coded not too difficultly.

You have the player movements which will be failry simple.

We need accurate collision detection - so if a player kicks and the ball is there he'd better hit it ! And also for the important goal-line.

Offside checking would be pretty easy (but we could make it not-accurate on purpose, like real life). Of course you need to watch the important goal-line.

On top of all this we need to read the controllers and keep the screen scrolling and the crowd cheering !

It all fits into a loop until half-time.

OK - I won't bullshit - it will be complicated (esp the AI) but we have the whole board as playtesters / idea makers :-)

I once tried to code a soccer game (eons ago), but it's not an easy task really. The AI and the physics are troublesome at best.

I wish I could have tons of ripped sprites for me, as I would use them on my games. I love to code games, but I have no talent to draw graphics :)

I'll be Flash CODING so, it has to be the same :) I'm not gonne do this just with animations, it's gonna get actionscripted.

Speed methinks wouldnt be an issue if I stick with a sensitive resolution (320x256 for example). And the controls will be keyboard only.

This thread has strayed way off topic. Back to sprite-ripping. I remember a web site years ago that was loaded with ripped sprites from arcade and console games. Mind you, the term sprite-ripping is a bit of a cheat, since they aren't really ripped the way a mod is ripped, but essentially they had converted multiple frames of characters from games (needless to say, the fighting games were massive chores!)

Heck, anything that might encourage further Amiga game attention might be a good thing, although I'd rather see new Amiga releases come out of it (even if it's PD/SW sequels).

I always wanted to take board games (Milton Bradley, etc.) that I was finding in thrift stores and make Blitz or AMOS versions of them. Lots of TV and movie license stuff to pick from. Plus I was grabbing books from the library with old card games and junk like that back when I was learning some programming so that I would have new ideas (anything beats yet another Minesweeper game!) The game I always wanted to finish was a card game I'd learned as a teen called "Oh, Shit!" which I eventually found again in some old book under the name "Oh, Pshaw!" I still think it would make a cool game (imagine the title screen!)

There now. Back on topic and then back off again - all in a single post!

I once pretended to start doing Blitz on the Amiga. I never got into it.

I would LOVE making a game for it. I have many conccepts I'd like to apply.

Going back to sprite ripping, the screenshot-modded Winuae is the tool we need to use. Editing the screenshots later is a pain in the arse (I have done many spriterips of those fighting games, I was into that kind of shite about 4 years ago). I don't wnt to do that again, so, Jim... :D

Wanna rip graphics ?
 

If anyone here is interested... I have made a little proggy for pc (windows) that lets you rip out Amiga graphics from the games. It is best to use WinUAE and its game state save facility (it snapshots whole memory uncompressed) and use it with the proggy.

The program can handle any bit-depth (up to 8 bitplanes supported), it can search for copper lists to get the palettes (about 80% of the time it is succesfull, for the rest you have to change the colours manually by screenshotting the game and then getting the colours from there). It can use different types of bitmap storing, different modulos, etc.

I was succesfull at getting the graphics out of around 90% of the games I tried. Mostly I could rip the whole graphics set (sprites + tiles, etc.). Stuff like Cadaver, Beast 1,2,3 , Colditz, AirBall, Treasure Trap, etc...

Anyway, if you want it all I ask is that you send me the graphics you rip with it to me ;-) since I am remake author and I loooove to get those !

The utility is fully keyboard controlled for fast action...

Also the utility can rip graphics from ZX Spectrum, C64 and Atari ST (tried with several games and had around 70% success I would say) - but without any palette support !

Here is an example of ripped graphics from

That's great Tomcat!

Since SuperFrog was prolly the one that started this thread... Here is a little piccy for you :-) Yes, you can rip the whole thing (tiles, sprites, etc.) from SuperFrog without having to use screenshots at all... and the palette is found very quickly :)

Great util! I would love to have this ! :)