Conversion Capers: Rygar

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Trachu

considering 8c enemies this is what i have so far :P

Impressive work with only 8 colors. But there them at 16 colors!. We should stay at 16. With the layout that i've suggested we can use the 2 layout for both rygar and buddies. We can even have some buddies that uses all colors..

We should consider to have the most used of them mapped into that layouts. But if isn't possible to have same visual quality, we can consider to use 16 or even all of 32 colors for buddies too.

We cam even consider to use only 8 colors for each type of enemies, but move use the whole palette. Maybe one of them use first 8 colors, another color from 16 to 24, and on...

[Trachu]

If you would look at their look, enemies can be splitted into 2 groups one using red shades and another using blue shade, in theory we should be able to split them, however still the cost will be.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Trachu

If you would look at their look, enemies can be splitted into 2 groups one using red shades and another using blue shade, in theory we should be able to split them, however still the cost will be.

True, but with only 8 colors we'll have 2 less expensive blitting for each enemy.

So far we have a lot of power. Maybe we can left this card if we'll run under 50hz.

In order to get more free cycles, we can arrange the bottom portion of the screen, were lava is. If we remap them into only 8-16 colors, we can spare a lot fo dma slots.

[saimon69]

Have some bad news: going forward there are even green-ish enemies :/ And don't forget the blue giant!

My suggestion is to elaborate on the palette using the full range of enemies in the game rather than just a sample from level 1

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

True, but with only 8 colors we'll have 2 less expensive blitting for each enemy.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

You can change bobs palettes later as well as how they are blitted. This is secondary and is a very easily modified isolated piece of code anyway.

Do tests first in real game situation and then only degrade quality if needed.
You are putting the cart before the horse and if you have too many cycles you will have to redo all the work again...

You guys would save yourselves a lot of work by using test bobs/sprites first to prototype and validate technically in real gameplay situations. Decisions are easier with real game profiling data.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

You can change bobs palettes later as well as how they are blitted. This is secondary and is a very easily modified isolated piece of code anyway.

Do tests first in real game situation and then only degrade quality if needed.
You are putting the cart before the horse and if you have too many cycles you will have to redo all the work again...

You guys would save yourselves a lot of work by using test bobs/sprites first to prototype and validate technically in real gameplay situations. Decisions are easier with real game profiling data.

I'm working on current 16 colors bobs. As Trachu said, we're exploring new way to do things. This thread is not only about doing Rygar, is about exploring

[Trachu]

Sandruzzo: what i dont understand is why you need to have this 1-3-5 bitplanes and cannot do that on 1-2-3-4???
why you need to use 3 bitplanes, not 4?

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Trachu

Sandruzzo: what i dont understand is why you need to have this 1-3-5 bitplanes and cannot do that on 1-2-3-4???
why you need to use 3 bitplanes, not 4?

Because I can only inteleaved planes 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 in separated way. Or have one huge inteleaved bitmap.

[sandruzzo]

Just uploaded a new working in progress exe that show one enemy wich beahve like rygar arcade. Keep in mind that is "work in progress"

Into mi shared folder ther is rygar.adf

[saimon69]

I just tested, I guess the correct walk tiles still need to be set, together with corect parallax colors, weapon behavior with pressing up and down and (if i remember good) option to choose between up for jump or button 2.

By the way parallax looks beautiful

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Because I can only inteleaved planes 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 in separated way. Or have one huge inteleaved bitmap.

Just a quick point here. Unless you wish to separately move the odd/even bitplanes about (i.e. scroll planes 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 separately), this is not really true.

It is true that Denise sees bitplanes as organized in two sets: odd and even. However, this says nothing about their location in memory. The Amiga lets you set each bitplane pointer to any value in memory you desire.

You could have all separate bitplanes for a bitmap scattered all about chipmemory if you so wished (I personally wouldn't do that, but the hardware will let you do it just fine).

So, you can indeed create an interleaved bitmap consisting of planes 1-4 and a separate interleaved bitmap consisting of planes 5 & 6. You can display this as one normal 6 bitplane bitmap and you can blit to them as two interleaved bitmaps (just as you'd do using 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 as two sets).

The Amiga is very flexible when it comes to these things

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by roondar

Just a quick point here. Unless you wish to separately move the odd/even bitplanes about (i.e. scroll planes 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 separately), this is not really true.

It is true that Denise sees bitplanes as organized in two sets: odd and even. However, this says nothing about their location in memory. The Amiga lets you set each bitplane pointer to any value in memory you desire.

You could have all separate bitplanes for a bitmap scattered all about chipmemory if you so wished (I personally wouldn't do that, but the hardware will let you do it just fine).

So, you can indeed create an interleaved bitmap consisting of planes 1-4 and a separate interleaved bitmap consisting of planes 5 & 6. You can display this as one normal 6 bitplane bitmap and you can blit to them as two interleaved bitmaps (just as you'd do using 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 as two sets).

The Amiga is very flexible when it comes to these things

The problem could be the modulo, and since we have only 2 modulos, one for even and one for odd planes, how I can have this kind of layout?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

The problem could be the modulo, and since we have only 2 modulos, one for even and one for odd planes, how I can have this kind of layout?

Ahhh, I've been a bit of dummy I did kind of forget the modulo value for interleaved bitplanes is different for differing numbers of bitplanes.

Oh well, it can still be done - but would involve potentially wasting a bunch of memory that is hard to use for other things (by keeping the modulo the same for both the 2 and 4 bitplane bitmaps and using the memory space for two bitmaps of 4 bitplanes each).

So if you really wanted something like this, it can be done - but to be fair, if you wish memory use to be efficient you'll have to jump through quite a few hoops (such as using the now remaining space in the 2 bitplane with 4 bitplane modulo bitmap for its 2nd buffer).

This would work but is rather complicated. Not sure if the effort is worth the while.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by roondar

Ahhh, I've been a bit of dummy I did kind of forget the modulo value for interleaved bitplanes is different for differing numbers of bitplanes.

Oh well, it can still be done - but would involve potentially wasting a bunch of memory that is hard to use for other things (by keeping the modulo the same for both the 2 and 4 bitplane bitmaps and using the memory space for two bitmaps of 4 bitplanes each).

So if you really wanted something like this, it can be done - but to be fair, if you wish memory use to be efficient you'll have to jump through quite a few hoops (such as using the now remaining space in the 2 bitplane with 4 bitplane modulo bitmap for its 2nd buffer).

This would work but is rather complicated. Not sure if the effort is worth the while.

In fact the problem would be with blitter. In order to make an holl into only 2 planes, would be like doing it with 4 planes!

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

In fact the problem would be with blitter. In order to make an holl into only 2 planes, would be like doing it with 4 planes!

Actually that is not needed, but you are right that the blitter makes it pretty much impossible to do without having the same overhead as just using 2 separate planes.

You can use 1-4 interleaved and 2 further separate bitplanes using the right modulo and memory setup. However, this does mean you need to blit 3 times instead of 2 for each bob, so all blits require one additional blit* (note: you do not need to blit more words, you just can't do it in one go).

*) You can just blit all bitplane 1 lines in one blit and all bitplane 2 lines in another blit, this would cost the same amount of blitter cycles as one blit on two bitplanes, but would mean you lose the main advantage of interleaved blitting (i.e. needing just one blit for all bitplanes)

Like I said, it's probably not worth the effort to get it to work. 1-3-5 + 2-4-6 is much easier to do, is easier to set up in memory and saves you one blitter startup per bob.

[sandruzzo]

Working on clipping routine, almost done. Left clipping is using mask register to have it per pixel.

[Trachu]

Here is my variation regarding 8colour bobs

Luma information preserved, chroma rearranged.

Most changes happen to Ryggar where i had to resign from 3 shades of blue.
and he is blond :P

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Trachu

Here is my variation regarding 8colour bobs

Luma information preserved, chroma rearranged.

Most changes happen to Ryggar where i had to resign from 3 shades of blue.
and he is blond :P

Better oldest version. Better to go on with that.

About enemies some of them are one less frame. When rygar jump them they'll free. Like I said we miss that frame. If you take a look to the triceratop you can see it

[Trachu]

hmm someone probably did not rip them all. Is anybody here who could rerip all graphics and prites from rygar

As i said before 8+8 sprites requies that one of them would be extra half brighted, so i have created such version. Even 2 versions
I believe we could go with your idea.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Trachu

hmm someone probably did not rip them all. Is anybody here who could rerip all graphics and prites from rygar

As i said before 8+8 sprites requies that one of them would be extra half brighted, so i have created such version. Even 2 versions
I believe we could go with your idea.

Rygar is good! What about others? If we be with current gfx, could you reduce each enemy to 8 colors and "move" them into our 32 colors palette?