Hi,
At the beginning of the year I had fun coding in Amos a small engine "like a shadow of the beast".
This little code is reported in the Amiga France forum (in French) :
https://www.amigafrance.com/forums/t...-beast-engine/
The idea was mainly to show that Amos was not that bad.
I would even say that this "basic" language for creating games on Amiga is excellent.
Of course, you can't redevelop a "Shadow of the beast" with all its scrollings and colors in pure Amos, not without redefining the copper list (possible in Amos but not in the spirit of the language) or the use of a home-made language extension (coded in 68000).
But we can make good quality Amiga games, smooth (I mean 50fps or a mix 25/50 fps) including games with fixed screen or light scrolling. So Barbarian+ for example could have been fluid on Amiga 500 vanilla if the authors, deserving by the way, had
really targeted this configuration.
I have a little time during this summer and an "amigaïte" takes me back so I thought to myself: why not code a shoot'em'up in Amos for Amiga 500 (512kp Chip / 512ko fast).
As it is not a fixed screen game, it contradicts what I just said before about scrollings and Amos. ;-)
The idea is to use this entry in the forum to make a kind of dev log and see if it can be of interest to the amigaphiles of the site. If some people are interested, I will make a new entry at each significant progress of the project.
So here we go.
The idea is to make a vertical scroll shmup and I would like to use the bitplane display of the Amiga.
Besides, as I appreciate the vectorial drawings, I can manage with only 4 bitplanes, transparency effects and a slightly geometric aesthetic. In addition, the sprites of the Amiga have their own palette (among the colors 16 to 31) and will allow
to add a little color.
Well the idea is already to make a small engine with a ship that shoots at a scrolling scenery.
I will devote for the moment 2 bitplans for the sets.
For the drawing, I could have taken "The Gimp" for example but I took Deluxe paint 4 under winuae: -)
I drew 2 sets in 2 colors, it's not very beautiful but it will be fine for now (besides the shots are not quite centered...).
Attachment 64091
Once the images were loaded in Amos, I didn't use dual playfield mode and scrolling based on the "Screen Offset" command (the amos devs will understand)
because Amos has trouble handling sprites in this mode and sprite and bobs collisions (objects drawn by the blitter) do not take offset (bug ;-)).
I used a command from the Amos turbo extension (1993 so now standard) to move the bitplanes independently ("plane offset" for experts).
For the ship and the shots I use sprites and 3 animations channels managed by the AMOS animation system (called AMAL).
I put two missiles in and I'll add more in the future.
The blitter is not yet used and will be used for enemy waves (but this will be the subject of another ticket).
It gives that:
Attachment 64092
The game is currently played with the mouse. The left button to shoot. I will put the joystick in place later.
I attach an ADF to be tested on a real Amiga 500 preferably:
geo1.adf
All returns are welcome.
By the way, I'm calling the project "Geometrical Blast" for the moment.
Ciao