How arcade to Amiga conversions should be.

[Toni Galvez]

Some day I will want to convert some of this games for Amiga 500, but I will need some ASM coder.

Now I am more interested on make some game of my design.

[Gzegzolka]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

this is best when the game is designed with the Amiga in mind, conversions are always going to be a compromise on something.

also a pre-AGA arcade game should be converted to OCS, really.

Yes, "compromise" is good word here. When I writre about AGA I do not mean that there should be constant 256 colors on screen (it could very nice "eye-candy" achivemnt, but gameplay is more important for me). I mean that You do not need to keep only 16 colour palete for everything. You could use 16 colours per sprite but make different elements use different palete. You could have more colours for backgrounds and less for sprites - look at Agony where You have stuning vistas, well animated main hero sprite and very simpe sprites for enemy "ships".

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Pang use a routine which allows WAY more than 32 colors on screen. Pierre Adane used a trick for that. That's why the screen are as good as the coin-op original.

I was talking about the game play

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

look at Agony where You have stuning vistas, well animated main hero sprite and very simpe sprites for enemy "ships".

Agony is a good example of a game where everything went into the graphics and nothing into the game play. Same for ProjectX. Both very crappy shmups.

[Toni Galvez]

I like very much Battle Squadron, Hybris and Apidya, maybe the best horizontal shmup.

I dream with a game like Gradius, Star Force or Salamander on Amiga.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

I like very much Battle Squadron, Hybris and Apidya, maybe the best horizontal shmup.

I dream with a game like Gradius, Star Force or Salamander on Amiga.

Apidya is great. I was playing it just the other day on whdload. Still as bright and cheery as ever.
Please do, a sweet new shmup on an amiga in 2015 would be mental.

[Amiga1992]

People still think that color reducing graphics is all it takes to convert games?

[Toni Galvez]

Originally Posted by Akira

People still think that color reducing graphics is all it takes to convert games?

Not in my case, I have a lot of games developed in my back.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Agony is a good example of a game where everything went into the graphics and nothing into the game play. Same for ProjectX. Both very crappy shmups.

Project X is rubbish but I think Agony is actually quite a good game.

[BigFan]

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

Not in my case, I have a lot of games developed in my back.

And you're too shy to name them.

Some day I will want to convert some of this games for Amiga 500, but I will need some ASM coder.

Now I am more interested on make some game of my design.

Sure. Everyone is dreamin' these days.
The numbers of asm coders on 68k is dying. Good luck in finding some fools to do your work, unpaid of course.


If you know about game development, about amiga 500, you should be able to figure out that A500 has a 12bit color gun. That is 4096 independent colors. It is a fraction of what you have been using when converting in 24bit mode. Most colors in your conversions can't be displayed on any native a500.

With reduced color space the graphics result in less contrast or more diverging colors. Your example shows what it looks like on a1200 with reduced colos, not necessary though.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by BigFan

The numbers of asm coders on 68k is dying. Good luck in finding some fools to do your work, unpaid of course.

hey! i'm up for it!

[TCD]

Originally Posted by BigFan

And you're too shy to name them.

He mentioned some in his member introduction thread:

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

I started making games in 1994 and I have 29 comercial games in my career. I started making graphics/sound for games for PC (using Amiga to make graphics and sound), on 1999 I worked on Gameboy Color games (Turok 3, Tintin, UEFA 2000, Radikal Bikers) and GBA game (Asterix & Cleopatra). Later I moved to PC, PSP and mobile industry. Now I am working on Joyco Games with two friends (Rhino and MAC) we are part of the Batman Group in the demoscene. http://joycogames.com

[Toni Galvez]

Yeah, thanks, I have named some of them

[jimmy2x2x]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

hey! i'm up for it!

This I would love to see!

With the Pedigree of you, this could be amazing
☺
You should make it happen, nemesis or rastan are both Excellent candidates

[nobody]

Rastan screens are better than the final fight ones you posted before, still too saturated and eye-popping. Your eyes will bleed if you play with these reds for an hour or so. Cannot really tell the difference between foreground/background.
You have to drop parallax scrolling I suppose to make them work though except if you use some tricky copper effects like the ones in Lionheart or some tricks used in Risky woods. You really need a top coder to have this results on Amiga 500.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Akira

People still think that color reducing graphics is all it takes to convert games?

I see a lot of discussion about amiga ports between amiga users are just about the graphics.

I mean, I see people complaining about how Final Fight looks bad but the gameplay is ok.

WTF.

The graphics on the amiga version of Final Fight are pretty acceptable IMO, but the gameplay is AWFUL.

I can live with graphics that are a lot scaled down as long as the gameplay is good. As accurate as with the arcade game, but it has to be GOOD.

Super Street Fighter 2 on Amiga is a very good example of this. I am pretty sure that is a bad port and it could had been better. The graphics are awful (the ECS version looks *really* bad), but the gameplay is *excellent* and it plays a lot like the arcade version.

So its good enough to me.

So before discussing graphics in an Amiga port, the first thing people have to think about is what compromises have to be made, how to make the control scheme work and how to keep gameplay good.

*then* you can start worry about the graphics

[nobody]

Code is the hardest part, that's why there are lots of graphics artists and so few coders, maybe 20 to 1 or more. Even people that don't know how to draw or don't know principles of pixel art can have graphics by converting existing artwork, same does not happen with code.
Then on the PC world nowadays with programs like Fusion, Game maker etc there is little need for programming to make a game so everyone is focused on having good graphics for their games.
Graphics is the one thing everyone can evaluate but you cannot evaluate the code because you cannot see it, or even if you could it wouldn't make any sense if you don't know to code.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by nobody

Graphics is the one thing everyone can evaluate but you cannot evaluate the code because you cannot see it, or even if you could it wouldn't make any sense if you don't know to code.

You may not be able to see the actual code, but you can see when a game is running at a lower than acceptable framerate. Even in the 80s programmers tried to have their game run in 50/60fps. There is absolutely no excuse for anything lower than that with todays hardware.

[s2325]

I like this fake "insert coin" in Venus - The Flytrap. Any other Amiga game have something like this?

[Retro-Nerd]

Rainbow Islands has "Credits".

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by s2325

I like this fake "insert coin" in Venus - The Flytrap. Any other Amiga game have something like this?

quite a few arcade conversions had that, Rainbow Islands to name one that comes to mind.