why Sonic wasn't possible on stock Amiga?

[lordofchaos]

Well this is fantastic, especially considering it's AMOS.

[ Show youtube player ]

The only thing preventing a conversion, is the time and energy required to invest in it, unfortunately most of us, if not all of us , are no longer teenagers with time-o-plenty on our hands. Maybe?

[idrougge]

I think you just wrote what I wrote, but at length.

Looking more closely at Sonic Chaos, it seems like it would be quite plausible on the Amiga if you decide to go with 25 fps. The enemies are few, and at that pace you have time to update background blocks and mask the character. It would also look prettier than Blaze, which has a "programmer graphics" air to it.

In a worst case scenario, you have to mask Sonic, animate ten (word aligned) rings, scroll sixten pixels and colour cycle the backdrop.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Well this is fantastic, especially considering it's AMOS.

[ Show youtube player ]

The only thing preventing a conversion, is the time and energy required to invest in it, unfortunately most of us, if not all of us , are no longer teenagers with time-o-plenty on our hands. Maybe?

There is no such thing as not enough time. ^^

We have plenty of time every day, but it is our priorities which decide what we do with it.

When we watch a movie instead of coding, we are choosing to prioritize that movie and to "waste" the corresponding time but that time exists and is fully available for coding/graphing/soundifying/designing/etc..

Some prioritization make sense, such as taking care of one's cubs and partner, but that still leaves ample room for active entertainment (cf above list) rather than passive (movies, reading, etc.). The appeal of "relaxing in front of TV" is strong but once you resist it to do create something of your own you will never regret it.

Write down in an excel spreadsheet how you spend your time in the evening and you will be surprised how much is wasted being passive

Regarding energy, it comes with practice. Train and you will have more, padawan!

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Well this is fantastic, especially considering it's AMOS.

[ Show youtube player ]

It looks astounding, but I must still check it on real HW to see if it is not an AMOS glitchfest. Is the code available, bychance?

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by idrougge

It looks astounding, but I must still check it on real HW to see if it is not an AMOS glitchfest. Is the code available, bychance?

I have the ADF, just zoned it.

Thread from which it came. http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=41747

[PortuguesePilot]

IMO, Blaze by Keith Bugeja really marks the standard gameplay-wise being virtually identical to the original Sonic game, with some aspects being even better.

Also, this proof-of-concept i found some years ago is not as technically impressive as some of the stuff you've all posted here, but since no-one mentions it, i decided to zone it:

http://download.abime.net/zone/%28sc...20Hedgehog.adf

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by idrougge

It looks astounding, but I must still check it on real HW to see if it is not an AMOS glitchfest. Is the code available, bychance?

I saw that proof on concept on YouTube about one year ago as well as the thread Kev(in?)G on EAB where he mentions working on it and the graphics look indeed faithful despite the low color count of dual playfield mode.

However, all available colors are obviously taken by the background and foreground and the reason why Sonic uses different colors is because it uses sprites. The number of enemies which can be drawn with the remaining sprites cannot be too high even with multiplexing so it remains to be seen if Sonic really is faithfully doable with dual playfield or if either the parallax scrolling needs to be sacrificed on the altar of color count or if it can be done with sprites or another trick.

By the way, KevG seems to have been banned, did he bite anyone? Sometimes when reading old threads it feels like half of EAB has been banned.

[idrougge]

I checked the AMOS demo on my A4000. Looks very convincing and smooth, apart from jittery scrolling of the mountains and the small clouds. Must be some AMOS thing.

[Kev G]

Hello everyone.

Its been along time since I was in here. I was banned for some years and was unable to post any comments. Anyway I have just re-registered under a different account so that I can join the various discussions.

Regarding the Sonic demo that I made some years ago I am considering going back to it if there is enough interest. However, you will have to be patient for an update because its been some time since I did any AMOS programming. Have to reinstall AMOS and all my old code that I backed up.

Kev G

[idrougge]

Welcome back, Kev. Could you publish the source? Just out of academic interest.

[Kev G]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Welcome back, Kev. Could you publish the source? Just out of academic interest.

Well I'll need a bit of time to have a look at it myself to figure out how I did it. From what I remember it was a bit 'glitchy' and there was no real map involved. Everything just wrapped around. It was just a demo really. What I need to do is design a multi-directional scrolling engine with a real map and see how fast I can get it running.

Its too close to Christmas to do any real programming now but I've got some time off work soon so I hope to get back to it then.

Kev G

[Retro1234]

If nothing else maybe you could help get the graphics to 7*8.

[lordofchaos]

@Kev_G Nice job on the sonic demo! Seems there's a lot of interest around Sonic of late.

I've just converted the Green Hill Zone tune on Octamed (should convert easy to protracker) if anybody wants to check it out. Tried to keep everything the original had, some compromises had to be made though...

[ Show youtube player ]

[Amiga1992]

That module is HUGE, it wouldn't be useful in a game :/

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Akira

That module is HUGE, it wouldn't be useful in a game :/

Hehe. Yeah just a little Could probably shave about 100k, maybe more. Trouble was I had to sample some of the chord sequences..Dam mega drive and it's many sound channels!.. 2MB Chip ram minimum perhaps

[saimon69]

I made this for another attempt of port sonic in 2008, chiptune, there are four stages, bonus stage and level completed but is unfinished and in xm format; i can re-engineer it to be used in .mod, and finish it; is only 34k

sth1_21.zip in the zone

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Kev G

Well I'll need a bit of time to have a look at it myself to figure out how I did it. From what I remember it was a bit 'glitchy' and there was no real map involved. Everything just wrapped around. It was just a demo really. What I need to do is design a multi-directional scrolling engine with a real map and see how fast I can get it running.

Its too close to Christmas to do any real programming now but I've got some time off work soon so I hope to get back to it then.

Kev G

best of luck!

tbh i wouldn't recommend using AMOS to attempt this, are you using a custom copper list btw or is it all blitter work on the background?

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

There is no such thing as not enough time. ^^

We have plenty of time every day, but it is our priorities which decide what we do with it.

When we watch a movie instead of coding, we are choosing to prioritize that movie and to "waste" the corresponding time but that time exists and is fully available for coding/graphing/soundifying/designing/etc..

Some prioritization make sense, such as taking care of one's cubs and partner, but that still leaves ample room for active entertainment (cf above list) rather than passive (movies, reading, etc.). The appeal of "relaxing in front of TV" is strong but once you resist it to do create something of your own you will never regret it.

Write down in an excel spreadsheet how you spend your time in the evening and you will be surprised how much is wasted being passive

Regarding energy, it comes with practice. Train and you will have more, padawan!

Hmmm, the force is strong with this one.. Then I must unlearn what I have learned.

[Kev G]

@lordofchaos... That music is wonderful

@saimon69... Nice and small which is good. I love chip tunes!

@Mrs Beanbag... I will be experimenting. I want to get it to run on an A500 so I think blitting the background would be faster. Don't ask me about custom copper lists because my knowledge is minimal. I did experiment a while ago and got a slice-HAM screen working (3 planes) that allowed each scan line to have its own palette of 7 colours. I have got a curved platform routine somewhere too. But like I said in an earlier post, I've got a lot of source to go through. All I will say is that it will be a case of trial and error.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Kev G

@Mrs Beanbag... I will be experimenting. I want to get it to run on an A500 so I think blitting the background would be faster. Don't ask me about custom copper lists because my knowledge is minimal.

Blitting is not faster than hardware scrolling. You can change the scroll registers with the copper, just as you can the palette registers.

One of my earliest pieces of Asm was a copper list generator that i loaded into an AMOS memory bank, it generated a dual-playfield screen with, i think, 64 layers background scrolling (foreground was static titlescreen). I have lost it now, sadly, it might be on a floppy disk in my dad's attic.