Diablo demo conversion for Amiga!!!

[ecalius]

Hello Friends!!
After a long time I'm back, I'm the creator of "Meteor Defender", which I programmed in AMOS Professional un 2015, I tried to program "Gothikus: The Deeper Dungeons", the isometric clone Diablo type, but for lack of time, and why I became father again, not being able to sleep, not resting, etc, you understand me, I had to leave. Now, my children are bigger, and I have a little more time, so I'm taking advantage of it in a project, "Diablo" for our beloved "Amiga" platform, it will only be a level 1 conversion demo, programmed entirely in AMOS Professional. Here I give you the link to a vídeo of my channel, where I will show progress, a greetings!!! ;-)

[ Show youtube player ]

[Samurai_Crow]

Neat idea!

Will you be releasing the source code once it's ready?

[ecalius]

Hi!! I still do not know, because it's soon , the game will be compiled , and free digital download! ;-)

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by ecalius

free digital download! ;-)

Good luck with Blizzard / Activision behind your back

[malko]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Good luck with Blizzard / Activision behind your back

Do you think that they will jump on his back only for a 1 level conversion demo ?


By the way, here is the deepl.com translation of the small text going with the video on youtube :

Small preview of the Diablo game demo conversion, tested on my Amiga 500+, CPU 68020 at 21 MHz, 2 Mb of Chip, and 63 Mb of Fast. The game in principle will need 2 Mb of Chip, and 6 Mb of Fast. The development progresses slowly, you can see the kinematics in Half Brite mode of 64 colours, and the menu in 640x256 16 colours.!!;-)

[Twiggy]

This has the potential to be insanely brilliant. Best of luck with it.

[b0lt-thrower]

There are source ports of Diablo available now. There's a quick-and-dirty port for the Nintendo Switch, for example. See this video here:

[ Show youtube player ]

github repository for the "diablo player":

https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX

[Retro1234]

This is just an Anim and iffs of the menu

Diablo has a Mac 68k version? So it will run under Shapeshifter.

Unfortunately its probably only Mac PPC.

[roondar]

The key feature of Diablo 2 that will be difficult to emulate is the graphics system. It does two things that are fairly tricky to do quickly using native Amiga hardware: draw with lots of overlap (i.e. the isometric screen layout forces lots of transparent tiles in front of the player/monsters/etc) and draw large sections of the screen with different lighting levels whenever the player moves.

The dynamic lighting is probably going to be hardest to implement with any speed, but don't underestimate the cost of having to deal with transparent tiles the player/monsters can get behind.

Come to think of it, Diablo shows an awful lot of monsters on screen. That too will be tricky. On the other hand, the good news is that IIRC it doesn't actually run at 60Hz so you do have more time. That said, AMOS isn't quick and the PC version did require a fairly fast PC (for the time).

[Samurai_Crow]

There's one opportunity for bitplane optimized blitting that tha PC didn't have in its 16-bit screenmode. The lightsourcing can be done to only the last 2 bitplanes in EHB and the base colors drawn in the other 4 bitplanes. This also allows the hybrid blitter/hardware scrolling techniques to be used on the base colors also.

[b0lt-thrower]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

This is just an Anim and iffs of the menu

Diablo has a Mac 68k version? So it will run under Shapeshifter.

Unfortunately its probably only Mac PPC.

Yes, it is PPC-only.

Originally, Diablo required a pentium class machine and at least 8mb RAM.

However, with the right coders, perhaps an optimized version could be created for the Amiga...?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

There's one opportunity for bitplane optimized blitting that tha PC didn't have in its 16-bit screenmode. The lightsourcing can be done to only the last 2 bitplanes in EHB and the base colors drawn in the other 4 bitplanes. This also allows the hybrid blitter/hardware scrolling techniques to be used on the base colors also.

This is true, but I'm still really doubtful. Drawing most of two bitplanes on an OCS machine takes up a significant part of total available resources given you're using EHB.

Note: I'm not trying to tell people not to try this, I'm pointing out that Diablo is deceptive - it does a lot more work than you might think. Getting a match to that on a system that has a graphics system and a CPU that are much slower for these kind of operations, while using (essentially) a compiled form of BASIC seems a lot to ask.

Remember, Diablo required a 60Mhz Pentium class processor. That's on the order of 10x faster than a 68030 and probably slightly faster than a 50Mhz 68060 (this is debatable, though). It was also made in C and part assembly. Like I said, it seems a big ask.

If I had to do this, I'd start with the hard part - get the main screen going. See if that, coupled with the light sourcing, works and is still acceptable in performance. If that works out on the target hardware, then start adding (a stand in for the) player and monsters and projectiles and see what can be achieved.

[hooverphonique]

also, won't it look crap in 320x256?

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by hooverphonique

also, won't it look crap in 320x256?

I'm less concerned with the resolution than the color depth. EHB can't represent a spread palette very well and 5 bitplanes are a tight fit for the lightsourcing. It would definitely look better with AGA depth and rendering the inventory and stats to 2 AGA sprites for sidebars would be much faster.

[roondar]

I'd say the base idea has merit though, with a few changes this could still be awesome. The Amiga could use a isometric action based rogue-like. It may not be possible to make it 'Diablo', but a similar idea implemented inside of the systems limits would, IMHO, be a really nice idea.

Perhaps changing the idea a bit could make this work and lead to a nice game!

[Samurai_Crow]

I agree!

[ecalius]

Hello Friends, I am Ecalius !!!

After a long time I come back here, to inform you that the Diablo project, programmed in Amos Professional, is still alive. In fact, it will not be exactly like the original Diablo game, because I have added new things, and I wanted to do it in another way. As you know I am only a person who entertains himself creating games in his free time and when they let him do it. The project continues slowly but surely, the essence of the original Diablo game will remain. The game in principle will require an Amiga 500+, with a 68020 at 14 Mhz, 2 Mb of Chip, and less than 6 Mb of Fast Ram.
I work under the emulation of the E-UAE, in a 2006 iMac, with the configuration of an Amiga 500+, with a 68020 at 14.2 Mhz, 2 Mb of Chip, and 128 Mb of Fast Ram, and I usually try the game on my Amiga 500+ real, with ACAs 500 + ACA 1220 with 68020 at 17 Mhz, 2 Mb of Chip, and 63 Mb of Fast.
Here I leave the link of the video on the youtube channel:

[ Show youtube player ]


A greeting!!! ;-)

[Samurai_Crow]

Without lightsourcing it gets a lot easier!

[Pyromania]

Cool game, thanx.

[Twiggy]

Amazing work. Looking forward to it.