gods scrolling question

[vulture]

The game is simply awesome. It's just that the scrolling isn't smooth.

[kamelito]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

While I will openly admit that Gods is my favourite Amiga game of all time, I will also go on the record to say I've never noticed any choppiness with the frame rate.

Then again, I can't tell the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS in modern day games either. It's just something I don't pick up.

Then an Atari ST would have been enough for you

[Amicol]

I love Gods, but it's one of the few games I prefer on PC DOS.
Great sound fx and 'in-game' music when connected to a CM-32/64, also full screen.

But the scrolling isn't any better than the Amiga version...

[Mrs Beanbag]

the thing is, as has been discussed in other threads, we took 25fps and even 16fps to be acceptable and normal in those days. 50fps was relatively rare, even though it was the norm on consoles.

[vulture]

@Mrs Beanbag

Well, you're right that those refresh rates were acceptable those days, but there are already more than 150 games verified to be @50 on miggy with Toni's winuae method, that's not rare imo. Out of the more well known titles, those with less than 50 fps seem to be the minority and they include 3d/pseudo 3d titles which are hard to gauge. Unless of course you mean on home computers in general - on that I agree.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by vulture

@Mrs Beanbag

Well, you're right that those refresh rates were acceptable those days, but there are already more than 150 games verified to be @50 on miggy with Toni's winuae method, that's not rare imo. Out of the more well known titles, those with less than 50 fps seem to be the minority and they include 3d/pseudo 3d titles which are hard to gauge. Unless of course you mean on home computers in general - on that I agree.

Question is: does it matter? Gods became an instant legend even with a shitty scrolling

[Galahad/FLT]

Whilst Gods in 50hz would have been nice, i think the speedup in the scrolling would have altered the game.

It wasnt meant to be a frenetic platformer, it wss more a puzzler platformer, you certainly couldnt compare it to Zool which was all about speed.

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

This should be at worst two days of work (worst case: one week) even in assembly language provided the code is modular. Just these two changes would provide a massive speed boost compared to the ST making the decoupling of gameplay and display more valuable to pursue.

They didn't bother using the hardware scrolling on the STE either!

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by frank_b

They didn't bother using the hardware scrolling on the STE either!

Very few bothered with the STe. By the time it was released, the ST was already in sharp decline, and having to cater for single side and double sided floppy users was extra expense as it was.

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Very few bothered with the STe. By the time it was released, the ST was already in sharp decline, and having to cater for single side and double sided floppy users was extra expense as it was.

Which was my point.. Write for the lowest common denominator. Pretty much the bitmaps motto. Decent games otherwise.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by vulture

@Mrs Beanbag

Well, you're right that those refresh rates were acceptable those days, but there are already more than 150 games verified to be @50 on miggy with Toni's winuae method, that's not rare imo. Out of the more well known titles, those with less than 50 fps seem to be the minority and they include 3d/pseudo 3d titles which are hard to gauge. Unless of course you mean on home computers in general - on that I agree.

In fact i was about to write "on home computers", a lot of people were still playing on Sinclair Spectrums and others in 1991, indeed there are a lot of 50fps games on the Amiga but unlike on the consoles it was still not an expected norm. Standards did improve as time went on though, maybe we could go through the list of 50fps games and plot a graph of what years they came out. Then everyone started wishing we had a "Sonic beater" and then 50fps suddenly became something everybody cared about.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Whilst Gods in 50hz would have been nice, i think the speedup in the scrolling would have altered the game.

It wasnt meant to be a frenetic platformer, it wss more a puzzler platformer, you certainly couldnt compare it to Zool which was all about speed.

You can have a slow game with smooth scrolling, it would just be a bit easier on the eyes. But adapting an existing game to run at higher frame rates with the same dynamic is not necessarily an easy task. If the characters always move at multiples of 3 pixels per frame it would be simple enough, but that's not very likely.

[s2325]

[Mrs Beanbag]

ok i've actually gone and done the research, and the figures are as follows (number of 50fps games per year):

1987: 2
1988: 7
1989: 11
1990: 19
1991: 21
1992: 25
1993: 37
1994: 18
1995: 11
1996: 5
1997: 1
1998: 1
2000: 1
2001: 1

*The ambiguity is "Turbo Trax", which is the name of two different games and i don't know which one it means.

[vulture]

Great job there Mrs Beanbag! Turbo Trax in the list is this one: http://hol.abime.net/1529

so it's 11 for 1995

I've still quite a few to test of which most seem to be 50 fps, I just need to verify them before adding them to the list. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be more than 200 games of the well known titles, in fact, more like within the 250-300 range when this list has been "completed". Of course, if we start counting amos or backbone games and such, the analogy won't look good, that's why I'm insisting mainly on games that were actually popular to a degree and they are the ones that built Amiga as a gaming platform anyway.

[Mrs Beanbag]

the earliest multi-way scrolling game in the list is Rock 'n' Roll (1989). Great Giana Sisters (1988) holds the title of earliest 50fps platform game.

The two games from 1987 are very primitive looking (by later standards) vertical scrolling shmups scrolling within a massive border, in not very many colours. Presumably using the blitter to do all the work. It's easy to forget how much progress in quality was because of software techniques rather than hardware, and it's amazing how long the Amiga lasted as a popular gaming platform.

[vulture]

indeed!

Also, you may update your stats, add 1 to 1998 when ACSYS demo was released (just added it to the list). Not a full game, I know, but a very impressive looking demo running at full fps!

I wonder if we could convince the creator to continue on it if we could get a bounty going and fulfill it!

[jotd]

If you want smooth scrolling & ingame music & copper effects & extra levels play Gods Deluxe

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

the earliest multi-way scrolling game in the list is Rock 'n' Roll (1989). Great Giana Sisters (1988) holds the title of earliest 50fps platform game.

The two games from 1987 are very primitive looking (by later standards) vertical scrolling shmups scrolling within a massive border, in not very many colours. Presumably using the blitter to do all the work. It's easy to forget how much progress in quality was because of software techniques rather than hardware, and it's amazing how long the Amiga lasted as a popular gaming platform.

Zamuel_a patched (or) Great Giana Sisters for Atari STe. You can find lot of comments regarding code in thread: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26360 and video: [ Show youtube player ]

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Smooth scrolling with jerky sprites can look worse imho, especially if it's the player character, it would look terrible.

Absolutely but that is not what I meant.
I meant to keep computing gameplay at its current rate but updating the screen at a higher frequency.

Sprites too would move smoothly.

That is not easy obviously because this might require some form of interpolation to smooth out trajectories but I must say I would be very curious to see the result.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Absolutely but that is not what I meant.
I meant to keep computing gameplay at its current rate but updating the screen at a higher frequency.

Sprites too would move smoothly.

That is not easy obviously because this might require some form of interpolation to smooth out trajectories but I must say I would be very curious to see the result.

That would be very interesting to see, if it were possible. I know that i have this problem myself, because Alex has been going on about converting Mr Beanbag for PC or mobile platforms, the problem is it is hard-coded to run at 50fps so if it has to run on anything with a different refresh rate either everything will be the wrong speed, or animation and scrolling will be jerky. Scrolling would be easy to fix, i could adjust some parameters and it wouldn't change the game dynamics, but it would not be so easy to do that for anything else. Interpolation is also quite tricky, because there is really no concept of "a bob" as such in the game engine, each moving object adds images to a draw list every frame, so an object can have any number of bobs (including none) so there is not a logical correspondence between the images on one frame and the next. So there is not a nice, general way to do it.