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jotd · 14 January 2022, 10:25

Even if engines aren't my cup of tea, Scorpion looks powerful, though. Needs a powerful machine, but the alternative for some devs is : no games done (Considering nice WIPs ongoing with this engine, check the Double Dragon episode for instance: started in C, going nowhere, resumed with Scorpion: making good progress).

Specially because the 8 way scroller is implemented when you start. Not a piece of cake considering what chaderrack wrote about Black Tiger.

But if you target a lowspec amiga, you have to go full specific, C / asm and it's not enough: optimize your code / time the DMA waits, etc... And when you know asm & C, you probably don't want to use Scorpion.

It's difficult to do speed hacks with an engine. Sprite management is not that easy with shared palettes, blitter operations can be intermixed with CPU copies but only sometimes...

Coders weren't idiots in the 1990's (some were brilliant) and had a lot of time as they had full time jobs on that. Difficult to compete against that.

The advantage we have now are: WinUAE & tools, windows cross development tools (which are the reasons I started coding games on the amiga)

14 January 2022, 10:25	#26
jotd This cat is no more Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: FRANCE Age: 52 Posts: 8,330	Even if engines aren't my cup of tea, Scorpion looks powerful, though. Needs a powerful machine, but the alternative for some devs is : no games done (Considering nice WIPs ongoing with this engine, check the Double Dragon episode for instance: started in C, going nowhere, resumed with Scorpion: making good progress). Specially because the 8 way scroller is implemented when you start. Not a piece of cake considering what chaderrack wrote about Black Tiger. But if you target a lowspec amiga, you have to go full specific, C / asm and it's not enough: optimize your code / time the DMA waits, etc... And when you know asm & C, you probably don't want to use Scorpion. It's difficult to do speed hacks with an engine. Sprite management is not that easy with shared palettes, blitter operations can be intermixed with CPU copies but only sometimes... Coders weren't idiots in the 1990's (some were brilliant) and had a lot of time as they had full time jobs on that. Difficult to compete against that. The advantage we have now are: WinUAE & tools, windows cross development tools (which are the reasons I started coding games on the amiga) Last edited by jotd; 14 January 2022 at 10:32.