English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Flying Shark new Amiga port [was: Going to Drop this here :)]

Rob68K · 17 May 2022, 18:40

Interesting. Some info as far as I can remember it. This port was done in less than 2 weeks in November 1988 ( I think ) and most of the heavy lifting was done by Rob Hylands. I was really on standby as a consultant because Rob knew absolutely nothing about the Amiga. We were told to get the thing ported as quickly as possible. I did a really crappy interpretation of the music in Soundtracker and a few other jobs but really it was all Rob H. So if you want to know why it wasn't exactly Shadow of the Beast, now you know.

The Atari ST version was coded by Henry Clarke. Karl Jeffery wrote the sprite and scroll systems which I seem to remember used 5 screens to make some use of the limited repointability of the ST's screen memory. The sprites were shifted onto the screen in realtime.

I'm pretty sure the Amiga version did use hardware scrolling but with the amount of sprites and environment masking going on, it was never going to run in a frame. I mean, what does on an OCS Amiga that doesn't obviously look like it's making concessions to do so?

PS - About that movep comment...............

Rob H definitely knew about how it could be used to optimise graphics because it was right at the core of his and Karl's 'EggWhack' routine for Level 4 of R-Type on the ST which they'd just completed at that time. I understand that it's really good for writing characters to the screen on the ST but I'm not aware of where it can be used on the Amiga to speed things up. Always happy to learn though.........?

17 May 2022, 18:40	#27
Rob68K Registered User Join Date: Apr 2021 Location: Kingston / UK Posts: 105	Interesting. Some info as far as I can remember it. This port was done in less than 2 weeks in November 1988 ( I think ) and most of the heavy lifting was done by Rob Hylands. I was really on standby as a consultant because Rob knew absolutely nothing about the Amiga. We were told to get the thing ported as quickly as possible. I did a really crappy interpretation of the music in Soundtracker and a few other jobs but really it was all Rob H. So if you want to know why it wasn't exactly Shadow of the Beast, now you know. The Atari ST version was coded by Henry Clarke. Karl Jeffery wrote the sprite and scroll systems which I seem to remember used 5 screens to make some use of the limited repointability of the ST's screen memory. The sprites were shifted onto the screen in realtime. I'm pretty sure the Amiga version did use hardware scrolling but with the amount of sprites and environment masking going on, it was never going to run in a frame. I mean, what does on an OCS Amiga that doesn't obviously look like it's making concessions to do so? PS - About that movep comment............... Rob H definitely knew about how it could be used to optimise graphics because it was right at the core of his and Karl's 'EggWhack' routine for Level 4 of R-Type on the ST which they'd just completed at that time. I understand that it's really good for writing characters to the screen on the ST but I'm not aware of where it can be used on the Amiga to speed things up. Always happy to learn though.........? Last edited by Rob68K; 17 May 2022 at 21:09.