Trojan arcade Amiga port

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by jotd

which makes me think of another limitation on the amiga.

Arcade machines often have the ability to flip sprites horizontally. Amiga can't do that, so we have to duplicate the data or flip on the fly

Seems stupid to ask since am not a coder but have the graphic as 8-bit unsigned int would not provide instant flip? (answer to myself, only if we use 15 bit and not 16 but is an interesting thing)

[jotd]

no. If you have 00100110 you need 01100100. You can do that with a lookup table, but it takes a lot of lookups for a big sprite.

[skyzoo73]

SMALL UPDATE:

I have posted a video of the audio tracks,
so you can listen to them better.

I remind you that this is still work in progress.

(Some are still missing and further refinements may be made in the future).



[ Show youtube player ]

[Toni Galvez]

Sounds great, congratulations. I love when the songs are faithfully converted to the Amiga.

[skyzoo73]

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

Sounds great, congratulations. I love when the songs are faithfully converted to the Amiga.

Thank you! all the credit goes to IM76

[turrican3]

This port looks amazing, can't wait to see the final beast !

[skyzoo73]

May 2024 update:

- added level 6 music, and end-game boss music.

- revisited the collision system between players and enemies, now you can no longer overlap with them and movement is blocked but you can still attack.

- in unshielded mode now both kicks and punches work by pressing fire1 or fire2, holding down the key only one attack is performed and then to repeat it you have to let go of the key and resume it ( like in arcade).

- in the normal mode during jumping by pressing fire2 you use the shield to parry which lasts the right amount of time.

- corrected the "superjumps" that now work in the two player modes, without movement in the x-axis but only y-axis.

- in the introductions before the levels, the ones with the mini map, i made the little player move from one point to another depending on the level reached as in the arcade.

- the "smasher" enemies, if there are more than one on either side now wait diligently in a line, touching the enemy the player is facing they move back a bit and then start charging again.

- fixed a bug that had been present for a while, killed the first two "mamushi" bosses would not always start the sequence with messages with related bonus, now it is working.

- fixed chipram problems (hopefully), now assets not needed for the game action are loaded and unloaded with small interruptions so as to save precious ram.

- fixed bug in level 6 (the last one) with the parallax backdrop, now it changes toward the end of the level without problems ( thanks to Earok's changes to the Scorpion Engine).

- Many things obviously remain to be implemented in the right way and logic to be defined, but I continue in this work with enthusiasm.

[Reynolds]

Originally Posted by skyzoo73

If you meant like widening the horizontal resolution so you can see more of the game map: it would disrupt the game mechanics, all the enemies are positioned and attack at certain times based on how fast they move.


If, on the other hand, you meant to fill the space that would be there with a higher horizontal resolution, like with Emulator-type game arts, that would be nice.


But either way it's technically not possible, to have the parallax background done with all the aga sprites, the max resolution is set at 256px.

This is what I was thinking about. As I understood it is simply not possible...

[jurassicman]

This game was one of my favorites when I was a kid. I remember going to the "sala giochi" and playing it a lot or even just watching other people playing... for some reason it particularly caught me...
Keep up the good work, mate!

[DanyPPC]

I think it's better ti maintain the original aspect.

I would have done it for Wonderboy Amiga too, but someone requested that the graphics fill the entire screen horizontally. distorting the original appearance.

If these are original arcade conversion I think they must be as faithful as possible.

[Reynolds]

Originally Posted by DanyPPC

I think it's better ti maintain the original aspect.

I would have done it for Wonderboy Amiga too, but someone requested that the graphics fill the entire screen horizontally. distorting the original appearance.

If these are original arcade conversion I think they must be as faithful as possible.

I wouldn't say stretching the screen, but extending the visible area with more gfx tiles to put onto the screen. It wouldn't distort the graphics, but could give a bit up-to-date look on today's screens. Once I saw Shadow of the Beast this way and it was looking really cool. But I can accept if it will not happen, because of any technical reasons, of course.
The game looks stunning anyway. Wish to see it on my monitor

[acidbottle]

Originally Posted by skyzoo73

May 2024 update:
- Many things obviously remain to be implemented in the right way and logic to be defined, but I continue in this work with enthusiasm.

Well that's the important thing right there, maintaining enthusiasm and keeping the project momentum. Sounding like a tonne of progress has now taken place, great job Skyzoo.

Wonderboy did have a weird screen setup, run this rom in MAME or similar and the screen does indeed stretch and distort nastily. AFAIK it is 256x240 though. The real issue with Amiga port was the panel, the arcade has a kind of overhang for game items, this would cover weird background transitions on some levels, so had to make the Amiga ver 16pix taller. It didn't affect gameplay too much I hope!

[skyzoo73]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

The real issue with Amiga port was the panel, the arcade has a kind of overhang for game items

Yes the top panel with the life bar and the scores are the thing that differs from the arcade but unfortunately you can't have everything from life. Keep in mind that then there is also a handful of extra lines between panel and play area due to the fact that there is the background made with all the sprites. Previously the extra lines between panel and play area were zero, but they caused glitches. It would be nice if Scorpion could somehow create a panel using the sprites and reuse them just below for the background but it is currently not possible. But who knows in the future this might change. By the way, the score panel is overlaid only in some levels, but in others it is similar to my version and does not overlap the game area.

[skyzoo73]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Well that's the important thing right there, maintaining enthusiasm and keeping the project momentum. Sounding like a tonne of progress has now taken place, great job Skyzoo.

Thank you,
I admit that in the past months I have not always had the necessary diligence to put myself to work on the game, between work shifts, family, finding the motivation was hard and I could devote little time to it . But I think this issue sooner or later coils everyone involved in game development. Keep in mind that this is my first attempt, and sometimes I face technical problems that I don't quite know how to solve so I make attempts, which sometimes succeed but sometimes don't, and clearly the confidence in me wanes. Fortunately, sometimes things go right and I make progress, which helps increase my determination to complete this project.

[acidbottle]

Originally Posted by skyzoo73

Thank you,
I admit that in the past months I have not always had the necessary diligence to put myself to work on the game, between work shifts, family, finding the motivation was hard and I could devote little time to it . But I think this issue sooner or later coils everyone involved in game development. Keep in mind that this is my first attempt, and sometimes I face technical problems that I don't quite know how to solve so I make attempts, which sometimes succeed but sometimes don't, and clearly the confidence in me wanes. Fortunately, sometimes things go right and I make progress, which helps increase my determination to complete this project.

Well that perfectly describes the world of solo game developing I would say, certainly I know exactly that same feeling

[skyzoo73]

small update May 26-2024

I was not at all happy with the player's jump,
so I modified it.
For now I am satisfied with it.

[ Show youtube player ]

[jotd]

it really looks very good already! AGA dual playfield 16+16 for the win! but if it's Scorpion, then background is probably "just" sprites, which is good too. You have to make a good usage of sprites in 16-bit games as they can't be used for characters because of the color limitation.

[skyzoo73]

Originally Posted by jotd

it really looks very good already! AGA dual playfield 16+16 for the win! but if it's Scorpion, then background is probably "just" sprites, which is good too. You have to make a good usage of sprites in 16-bit games as they can't be used for characters because of the color limitation.

Yes I am doing it with S.E., no dual playfield.
It is too limiting in the number of colors, in Trojan I am using 128+16 colors. Being able to reuse the same sprites in multiple parts of the screen, in theory should be possible but at the moment not with S.E.
But I think you already know that better than me!

And by the way I love your conversions, keep up the good work !