Scorpion Engine

[earok]

Originally Posted by TCD

Congratulation on the new release Very impressive that you still find ways to improve the performance

Thanks TCD, I appreciate it

There's a lot of Blitz code left to be rewritten in ASM, and possibly a lot of optimisations I haven't thought of yet, so hopefully it'll continue becoming smoother over time.

[earok]

Did a few check ins for the 2024.1 experimental version which may break things - I've been abstracting the code a bit so panels and talkpads on Amiga and Mega Drive share more of the same code (and thus there's fewer places where a feature or optimisation is only available on one platform or another, also it should keep it a bit easier to maintain with NeoGeo support looming).

It's very early in the experimental cycle so I may continue doing riskier stuff until it's time to get a new public release out there.

[earok]

Added new pattern movement feature to the experimental build.

[ Show youtube player ]

[earok]

I wanted to apologise for the lack of update notes recently - I've been focused on Neo Geo support lately, I'll get back into the habit of more frequent updates here once the Neo Geo side is a bit more stable and feature complete.

[earok]

Well overdue for an update.

Neo Geo / CD support is now official, albeit pre-alpha.

[ Show youtube player ]

Other updates:

- Can open sproject files directly from the Windows shell.
- Removed background tickbox from the animations tab. Instead, all sprites with a z-order of -1000 or less will be in the background.
- Pico-8 import support has been restored.
- Control1_HitButtons tells you which buttons have just been pressed.
- "Prevent Attack" toggle in the animation tab, allowing you to make it so some animations prevent the player from attacking.
- Added ability to view a level in the actor tab (mainly so that you can align the pattern movement type).
- "Alias" variable type (eg, you could make a variable called "actor_health" which is an alias for "actor_var1")
- Various bug fixes.

[jotd]

This will possibly allow to create great games with lesser overhead as the tile/sprite engine of the NeoGeo is less prone to tricks than the amiga (well I suppose that there are but...)

So probably less overhead of the engine compared to the amiga version and great games or ports!

Well done.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by earok

Well overdue for an update.

Neo Geo / CD support is now official, albeit pre-alpha.

[ Show youtube player ]

Other updates:

- Can open sproject files directly from the Windows shell.
- Removed background tickbox from the animations tab. Instead, all sprites with a z-order of -1000 or less will be in the background.
- Pico-8 import support has been restored.
- Control1_HitButtons tells you which buttons have just been pressed.
- "Prevent Attack" toggle in the animation tab, allowing you to make it so some animations prevent the player from attacking.
- Added ability to view a level in the actor tab (mainly so that you can align the pattern movement type).
- "Alias" variable type (eg, you could make a variable called "actor_health" which is an alias for "actor_var1")
- Various bug fixes.

So not followed this for awhile. Do the multiple systems allow you to create a game once and export it to amiga/mega-drive/neo-geo without change ? and then futher allow you to branch to add hardware specific extras ?

[earok]

@jotd Thanks! In general I've found the Neo Geo to be very simple to work with, and the sprite capabilities are fantastic.

@S0ulA55a551n To a degree. All of the game samples are intended to work across Amiga/Mega Drive/NeoGeo, but they've all received some platform specific work in areas such as music and parallax to fit each system's capabilities. The Gothicvania sample has three layers of parallax on Neo Geo, two on AGA, one on Mega Drive.

[Amigajay]

Great news! Wish i kept my Neo-Geo CDZ now it opens the floodgates for quicker and easier homebrew!

[earok]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Great news! Wish i kept my Neo-Geo CDZ now it opens the floodgates for quicker and easier homebrew!

Hey AmigaJay, it's been a long time!

If you're ever up for doing NeoGeo homebrew CDs, do give me a nudge. Might be an interesting challenge to see if a homebrew launcher is possible (unless someone's done it already)

I'm still waiting to get, I've been pledged a NeoGeo CD+SD reader by a generous supporter but I may also get a consolised MVS.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by earok

Hey AmigaJay, it's been a long time!

If you're ever up for doing NeoGeo homebrew CDs, do give me a nudge. Might be an interesting challenge to see if a homebrew launcher is possible (unless someone's done it already)

I'm still waiting to get, I've been pledged a NeoGeo CD+SD reader by a generous supporter but I may also get a consolised MVS.

Yeah, it’s been a while! I miss those CD32 game fixing discussions!

Never say never, although it’s a different beast to the Amiga. Homebrew wise there isn’t very much at the minute, with only 3-4 active people doing 1-2 games a year on average, and a couple of commercial games sold in the last few years too. But i can see this program opening the floodgates to the Neo-Geo scene, very exciting!

I have tried your program a couple of times, but my brain can’t get into gear, i think if i was 18 again i would have the patience to create and learn something from it, but i can’t play a game for more than 10 minutes at a time now so it’s really not gonna happen now

[earok]

I had been planning to get experimental into public, but a lot of bugs have popped up recently, so I'll delay until the end of next month and implement a few more features that I had planned for the following public release.

Latest changes to experimental:
- Arrays are supported for all variable types byte/word/long/fraction
- Images with custom masks (for bitplane translucency tricks) are trimmed to edge
- 'Safety rails' mode disables a few features that could cause glitches or crashes, but this can be turned off for advanced usage
- A lot of various bug fixes

[amigapd]

Hi, Hope this is the correct place to post this - I've been playing around with the scorpion engine and it has certainly come along way from when I first look at it - Earok you are doing a fabulous job.

My question is how do I add a count down time on the screen for a level.

I know on the maps section of the scorpion engine I can select an event such as lose life for the on timer box. However what I also want is a count down timer shown on the screen.

I have added a variable timer and I have set that to a number and got the variable to display on the screen by adding it to a panel.

However when I code the timer the whole game freezes until the timer runs out. The code block I attempt to use was as follows

While timer is not zero then.
Wait for 50 frames (1 seconds)
Set timer to timer - 1
End condition
Return

[earok]

Originally Posted by amigapd

Hi, Hope this is the correct place to post this - I've been playing around with the scorpion engine and it has certainly come along way from when I first look at it - Earok you are doing a fabulous job.

My question is how do I add a count down time on the screen for a level.

I know on the maps section of the scorpion engine I can select an event such as lose life for the on timer box. However what I also want is a count down timer shown on the screen.

I have added a variable timer and I have set that to a number and got the variable to display on the screen by adding it to a panel.

However when I code the timer the whole game freezes until the timer runs out. The code block I attempt to use was as follows

While timer is not zero then.
Wait for 50 frames (1 seconds)
Set timer to timer - 1
End condition
Return

Cheers mate.

Looks like you've almost got it right - but switch "wait" for "yield" command.

Wait freezes the whole game for that time, but yield lets the game continue running until the frame count is up.

[amigapd]

Thanks Earok,

Have got it working but changed my approach slightly.

In my startlevel code block I included

Set Countdowntimer to 240
goto -> Timercountdown

My timercountdown block of code is

While countdowntimer is not zero then
Yield for 50 frames
Set countdowntimer to countdowntimer -1
if countdowntimer == 0 then
Goto -> Killplayer
end condition
return

Seems to be working ok now -

I've also looked into the teleport code for the pipe and that seems quite straightforward and have been able to amend for new teleport locations.

[earok]

Great :

I have ended up rewriting the teleporter code at my side on the Amigo The Fox sample, but I haven't finished yet. Hopefully I will in the next few days.

[earok]

Well overdue for experimental update list:

I've checked in a major rework of the actor vs actor (not melee) collision system.

- It's a lot more simple, using a lot less code.
- It's generally faster, even though it hasn't been ASM optimized yet.
- But the biggest improvement is that it's a lot more accurate. Collisions are now checked every single frame, rather than split across two frames.

Because it's such a major overhaul, it's possible that's broken some things - I am worried I may need to roll back the changes, but hopefully not.


Sega Pico is an available platform, though not officially supported. All hardware functions except sound should work.

"Boost" can be set for each player controller to allow a player to move faster in any particular direction (useful for speed powerups)

Player_ControlX is a shortcut to Control1_X, or Control2_X etc depending on what controller the player has set.

Can listen to MOD files in the audio tab

Can set player direction to be "locked", which would be useful for games like Street Fighter where the player normally looks in one direction regardless of what way they're pressing the joystick

New Actor_Var6 is available. Actor_Tag is now read only.

Various bug fixes and improvements for all platforms.

"Camera Zone" flag on events can be used to make a camera snap to to that area, useful for things like teleporting into other rooms.

For loops are supported

Codeblock commands for finding and counting blocks of a particular type



Amigo the Fox demo was overhauled to use a lot of these new features, for example the tunnels system is no longer hard coded but reads from the Tiled map.

[Bubba'n'Stix 2]

Hello, I'm not asking the maker of Scorpion Engine to answer me but if someone was kind enough to do so, it'd be nice.
I'm trying to make something on the Scorpion Engine but It always takes me ages to just understand how to do the simplest thing and it's not encouraging.

Right now, I'm trying to change the palette and the program asks for an indexed palette, I've spent two days trying to just do that. I just couldn't find a way to index a png. I've tried online with several palette maker programs, I've downloaded shit on my computer that proved to be useless, I'm still unable to frocking change the palette.

How do I make an indexed png that will allow me to choose 16 colors + 16 sprite colors ?

[malko]

Given the changes/improvements that earok makes from release to release I don't know if it is still valid, but did you watch videos on YT about Scorpion Engine ?
Ex :
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=...v_14xc9ms8N8xp
Or
[ Show youtube player ]

[Bubba'n'Stix 2]

Yeah, I've watched a lot of Scorpion Engine videos on youtube.
From 2020.1 version, 3 years ago. I've forgotten a lot of things obviously.
I tried to find one about the color palette but i can't remember if I ever saw anything about it.

I haven't watched the one you gave me a link to. I will. And I think, that's the best thing I could do now.

Thanks.