Beats of Fire

[leathered]

Great - but first we need the graphics re-worked. You can help by gettin them colours reduced...

[dlfrsilver]

no pb tomorrow i will continue to do perfect rips of the rounds up to level 6

btw, in the levels, some sections are shared all along : ex : inside the train. This once tiling is done will seriously reduce the gfx size

And then, i will try to see what i can do here, maybe a little miracle

[leathered]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

btw, in the levels, some sections are shared all along : ex : inside the train. This once tiling is done will seriously reduce the gfx size

No shit

[dlfrsilver]

sans déconner ?



well, stopping the kidding hehe

about the requirements, do you agree with the fact that capcom games runs better from hard drive, and that trying to do a floppy (ADF) release is a bit killing..... We all use CF cards, or any big "hard drive-like" hardware, and we all have big memory (16mb or even more like 32mb).

Do you plan to use this for this FF aga?

[leathered]

Don't worry if you can't get 32 colours, just as close as you can without losing the definition.

[dlfrsilver]

ok definition you mean keeping the color patterns ?

[leathered]

That's right. Just so long as we don't lose the depth - it can be fixed by hand later =)

[Amiga1992]

This definitely works out then.
It all depends on how many colors each character uses. The main characters (Guy, Haggar, Cody) will be the ones you look at the most so they should look fab all the time and probably have more colors than the baddies. Baddies perhaps can be sorted out with 4 colors. If you set 3 4 color palettes that's 12, plus the 6 from the main charachter is 18. That leaves you with 14 colors for the stage!! Even if you had 10 colors on teh stage it could work out (and you can have one extra baddie palette)

As said before, it's all in the reworking. Currently I don't have time to help out on the gfx rework, if my schedule frees up and you guys are still working on stuff, I'll give it a go. I used to love that (converted gfx to limited shit like NGPC).

[Reido]

Played the demo, looks really promising keep up the good work!

[turrican3]

Merci pour ton aide denis !
Thanks for your help denis !
Can't wait to see this great game on aga.

[Raislin77it]

just today i've found this page about final fight the arcade

http://tcrf.net/Final_Fight_(Arcade)

Setting FF8084 to any non-zero value will enable a stage debug display. This will display hitbox information for all objects and some additional stage info.

it seems useful :P

[leathered]

@ edd_jedi – I can make a video but if anyone wants to just go ahead. I know I've put a few up on my channel but I'm not bothered about having them exclusive or whatever.
@ Bamiga2002 + laffer – What really got me about Final Fight is just how involved the gameplay is, a real precursor to StreetFighter 2. I think a lot of people (and in particular the Amiga mags of the time) missed that. It's primarily that which I want this game to capture.
@ Jbenam – Glad you liked the music, it was certainly no worse than the arcade tune I remade, and smaller. It would be a lot better done by a real tracker man.

@ dlfrsilver - re. fast ram etc. - Until there is a finished version of at least the game engine there seems little point in getting distracted. I'd rather push on with creating a stable engine and get the gameplay nice. Fast ram + fast system means all sorts of exciting possibilities (possibilities being the key word here) for the graphics – but that won't make any difference if the game blows. There's no point in giving the poor thing an identity crisis at this stage.
That means the intended is platform is vanilla AGA, so why not .adf?

Even so, I think you'll find that creating several sprite packages for each level is unnecessary; as I said, there will be a lot of colour overlap. It just seems sloppy.
But I'll eat my words if it becomes necessary in the code – say the 'sprites' (which could then be loaded very tidily as a large package for each stage) was the only way I could manage to get them
into the memory efficiently. But right now with it all to do, this seems like a way out of coding.

You probably think I'm a masochist and we all have our preferences. This is as much for a hobby as anything else – there doesn't seem much point in making it easy. (Perhaps a strange thing for a Blitz coder to say) I know you want to just remake everything in 64 colours, but if I start that now and it fails it's another waste of time. I'm treading carefully – I know it's a pain, and a lot to ask.
There's always the possibility of a deluxe version later – if the thing works, after which it may be liberating to try.

@ Akira – re. Gfx; That's pretty much it, and well put. I'll try to document the colours used in some way soon. re. The music, I said I'd like the drums & bass unaffected, but actually anything goes. You can try out a track with the demo by re-naming it to the mod in the sounds file.

@ Raislin77it – Thanks for that! Got a debug version of MAME running but haven't yet managed to access the stage debug display you mentioned. However I've been able to access the alternative scroll test and object test which is very useful (for Guy at least, I can't seem to select any other character). It shows the animation of each move relative to the starting position. Wish I'd known about the scroll test when I was trying to screen capture every stage (what an amateur!).

[dlfrsilver]

i understand now what i found between each of the sprite frame. It's the hitbox and camera values... can it be implemented on amiga ? i wonder.....

[leathered]

It seems like you have more of a handle on how the arcade machine works than most anyone. I'm not actually sure what those values mean...
But I'm fairly confident that as a player I can get across the gameplay. One of the best resources was actually the old Snes SF2 players guides - a great amount of detail there as to how the combo system works. Final fight has a basic implementation of that.
I guess the hitbox is to do with collision detection and camera is maybe scrolling?
I was using a 'hitbox' (rectshit in blitz) in the early stages but it proved very slow for multiple characters. I found that 'proximity detection' was much faster and does basically the same thing.

[leathered]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

i understand now what i found between each of the sprite frame. It's the hitbox and camera values... can it be implemented on amiga ? i wonder.....

It may perhaps confirm one thing however, that the 'hitbox' values are changing depending on the animation. If that's true then this engine is indeed using something very similar, which clears up a concern - I've been wondering if the arcade used something like sprite to sprite collision detection (and it could well do, in combination with the hitbox or otherwise to regulate the 'depth' of the characters on screen). Camera is also plausibly this 'z buffer' depth.

The 'proximity detection' used in this engine basically detects the difference between the character x,y and z co-ordinates and detects a collision based on the result during attacking frames. The size of the collision area depends on the attack, but needs some refining especially regarding the standard goon attacks which are 'one size fits all' right now.

[leathered]

All right, I've got a plan (which under no circumstances shall we stick to)...

Denis – carry on 'sipping' the backgrounds from the roms, creating 64 colour sets of the stages and the characters however you see fit. My thoughts: Go ahead with creating an individual palette for each stage. If from there you can come up with a general character palette that works across the board even better. And if you start running out of colours you can always resort to the sort of palette sharing discussed earlier.

Turrican3 – the 32 colour version is still the work horse and will go ahead. The gfx will need to be re-worked as before. A few more goons, and a shed load of backgrounds...

Akira – you know your thing. And if you get time (how dare you) then help with the pixel work would also be welcome.

The focus is on HD version first, and hopefully with some careful packaging of the files (and reduction of the content) there can be an .adf version later – if people want it.

Basically, ignore what I said and just help make it all work however you can. I'll take some time to experiment and try to learn something new- it will be like going to Yarmouth. We've bashed out a lot of ideas and I think we just need a bit of time to relax and try things. I don't want to be working on more than 1 version of the game but if by the power of grey skull the 64 colour version becomes viable then you're all just going to shoot me. If the gfx are there I can experiment, and the code will be (mostly) be portable.

Does that sound rosy?

Now if you aren't all plotting to kill me already, maybe we need a name... how about the Goon Squad! No..? What about 'Tapeshit' software? Howling Wind and the Wrong 'un?

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by Lielo

All right, I've got a plan (which under no circumstances shall we stick to)...

Denis – carry on 'sipping' the backgrounds from the roms, creating 64 colour sets of the stages and the characters however you see fit. My thoughts: Go ahead with creating an individual palette for each stage. If from there you can come up with a general character palette that works across the board even better. And if you start running out of colours you can always resort to the sort of palette sharing discussed earlier.

Turrican3 – the 32 colour version is still the work horse and will go ahead. The gfx will need to be re-worked as before. A few more goons, and a shed load of backgrounds...

Akira – you know your thing. And if you get time (how dare you) then help with the pixel work would also be welcome.

The focus is on HD version first, and hopefully with some careful packaging of the files (and reduction of the content) there can be an .adf version later – if people want it.

Basically, ignore what I said and just help make it all work however you can. I'll take some time to experiment and try to learn something new- it will be like going to Yarmouth. We've bashed out a lot of ideas and I think we just need a bit of time to relax and try things. I don't want to be working on more than 1 version of the game but if by the power of grey skull the 64 colour version becomes viable then you're all just going to shoot me. If the gfx are there I can experiment, and the code will be (mostly) be portable.

Does that sound rosy?

Now if you aren't all plotting to kill me already, maybe we need a name... how about the Goon Squad! No..? What about 'Tapeshit' software? Howling Wind and the Wrong 'un?

i'm ok with road map, i'll continue to do my best to help...
I don't think it will be a necessary to kill you. For the moment.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Lielo

All right, I've got a plan (which under no circumstances shall we stick to)...

Denis – carry on 'sipping' the backgrounds from the roms, creating 64 colour sets of the stages and the characters however you see fit. My thoughts: Go ahead with creating an individual palette for each stage. If from there you can come up with a general character palette that works across the board even better. And if you start running out of colours you can always resort to the sort of palette sharing discussed earlier.

Turrican3 – the 32 colour version is still the work horse and will go ahead. The gfx will need to be re-worked as before. A few more goons, and a shed load of backgrounds...

Akira – you know your thing. And if you get time (how dare you) then help with the pixel work would also be welcome.

The focus is on HD version first, and hopefully with some careful packaging of the files (and reduction of the content) there can be an .adf version later – if people want it.

Basically, ignore what I said and just help make it all work however you can. I'll take some time to experiment and try to learn something new- it will be like going to Yarmouth. We've bashed out a lot of ideas and I think we just need a bit of time to relax and try things. I don't want to be working on more than 1 version of the game but if by the power of grey skull the 64 colour version becomes viable then you're all just going to shoot me. If the gfx are there I can experiment, and the code will be (mostly) be portable.

Does that sound rosy?

Now if you aren't all plotting to kill me already, maybe we need a name... how about the Goon Squad! No..? What about 'Tapeshit' software? Howling Wind and the Wrong 'un?

Ok, i'm back on track Yesterday was a 'reconfort' day (Turrican 3 will understand it from the PM i sent him )

There is no problem, i will continue to make perfect rips of backgrounds and sprites for this game

i'll keep in touch

[dlfrsilver]

Ok, i have sent to Paul the graphics (levels) i ripped up to now, with no compromise on colors, and better, the levels are now 224 pix in height (this will fit the amiga screen).

There is between 19 and 53 colors mostly on each stage as said, i will continue to rip and make perfect level maps, best than everything you can find on the net. I'll continue the sprites once finished with the levels, because those are way longer to rip, and i want to make it perfect

about them, there won't be any animation frame lost You wanna know why ?

Because inside your program, you will code simply that the image 'X' must be played 3 times, and i will then be able to removed the duplicate frames from the sprite image file and then it will seriously decrease the sprites files size and the amiga will have no problem at all to play the sequence

Let me know what you think about this very neat idea And Turri3 too

[leathered]

Thanks for the bkg's, quite a privilege to see 1 of those for the first time. I said the same to Turrican3, but as far as I know, the backgrounds for the arcade are not available on the net anywhere. Turrican3 ripped a good deal of the moving/foreground objects, so you won't need to get those (of course if you want to for the sake of completeness that's up to you - you're not exactly slowing me down). Anyway at some point I'm sure the arcade rips would be appreciated out there somewhere.

Re. the sprites. You can send the whole image file or you can cut the duplicate frames - but (and for the same reason I said no kidding before) as you've pointed out; I'm obviously not putting any duplicate frames into the Amiga's memory! For the 32 colour version there will likely still be some cuts, unfortunately. But nothing too drastic. Nice work!