Conversion Capers: Rygar

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

It was the first time for me

Well once Rygar is completed, it would be cool to try to port a game like Shinobi for example, or a capcom CPS game on A1200

We can try it on A500 too

We can start a tread like Codetapper did

[DamienD]

An arcade port of one of my favourite CPS games; Willow, would be awesome

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by DamienD

An arcade port of one of my favourite CPS games; Willow, would be awesome

well why not ? It's a cute game

[Jack Burton]

Black Dragon would be cool too, and maybe not that difficult to convert. Well, at least I think it wouldn't be worse than the atrocity we got. Amiga's Black Dragon port deserves to join Lem Lee in the Hell of Being Cut to Pieces !

[dlfrsilver]

Ok guys, but if i have to reverse engineer the tiles, i need to know what to work on !

a black tiger in 64 colors would be just awesome

For any CPS games, we should go using the 1200. It's the most suited machine.

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

...
a black tiger in 64 colors would be just awesome

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

I'm not against this on that. What it has been done it's done. We're here to have fun, and do our best. I don't think that 1mb chip is a great requirment. Maybe I'kk found that 1mb isn't necessary to do 64 colors conversion...

Sorry dude, you're missing my point entirely

You are perfectly welcome to code Rygar with whatever memory requirements you want, no complaints from me.

What Idrougge was saying was simply that if you raise the hardware requirements to more than what was available to development teams in the 80's, you can't really slag off their efforts too much when 1meg chip ram makes a massive difference to their 512k limit.

Denis didn't get what he meant by his comments.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

codetapper statement was :

I'm really curious to know what approach you personally would take if you had to convert this game to the Amiga! eg:

1) Would you go for 32 colours/half-brite/dual playfield mode?
2) What memory requirements do you think you could achieve?
3) What would you use the 8 sprites for?
4) Would you drop the parallax layer or make it smaller?
5) Do you think you could make a version of the game running at 50 frames per second or you'd go for 25 (or perhaps 25 for updating everything but smooth scrolling the screen at 50fps to fake it)
6) How would you handle the water animation? Would you use colour cycling?
7) Would you double, triple or even single buffer the screen?

512kb is not enough to make halfbright games. You need 1mb at least to make 64 colors games.

To key to these games is mostly having enough memory in fact.

Anima showed with Ghouls'n'Ghosts on Atari STE that the CPU is not the key, but the actual ram available.

Even in 16 colors, GNG requires at least 4mb of ram !



Well true. 1mb became the main standard in 1991, with Alien Breed release.
From then on, the publishers went doing 1mb games.



Tiertex = all done with the 68000 + 16 colors only (even Mercs had been thought to be ported to the Atari ST).

For the moment, What Sandruzzo is doing is so many times above anything we had back in the day.....

It also shows that sharing the same cpu confirms that it's not enough to make a good port.



His choice comes from the use of the 64 colors in halfbright. That's clever, because until now, all the amiga coders just bragged how impossible it was to make fast scrolling games on the A500 in 64 colors because 6 BPL is just too slow.

Sandruzzo just show how wrong they were !



There has never been a limitation from the start about the ram required to run Rygar.

this was not the feature posed by Codetapper when he opened this thread.

Originally posted by Idrougge: "Maybe, but by then you're no longer in a position to lay judgment on those who ported games in the 80s/90s."

That was what my post was in response to, please keep up

[sandruzzo]

We need a challenging arcade!

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

We need a challenging arcade!

my vote for Rastan

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

my vote for Rastan

More or less like Rygar

[saimon69]

I miss a decent shinobi port, and honestly that one does not even require EHB to look good Second candidate, black tiger/dragon
(note that in my opinion all this talk is hypothetic, Sandruzzo has its hands also on an AGA game right now)

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by saimon69

I miss a decent shinobi port, and honestly that one does not even require EHB to look good Second candidate, black tiger/dragon
(note that in my opinion all this talk is hypothetic, Sandruzzo has its hands also on an AGA game right now)

I did the full reverse of shinobi arcade assets. This one, in order to get really a great palette, will require an A1200.

64 colors in EHB will be really a minimum.....

Willow from capcom use 5mb of GFX (sprites+levels), 1mb of code, and the usual 256kb of samples+music.

I won't do Rastan. This game uses a truckload of 8x8 tiles, and i don't feel at all doing the whole puzzle.

such a game would need to ressource fully the 68000 code, and export all the tiles metadatas out of the game code to build up the levels.

Or, last possibility, use the method Anima used for Ghouls'n'Ghosts adaptation for Atari STE.

Lastly, i propose to port Rainbow Islands fully from the coin-op Since the Amiga version is not complete, and bring an AGA palette

[Foul]

I vote for Black Dragon/Tiger just after the best game ever : Bubble Bobble
When you see what the CPC can do ! --> [ Show youtube player ]
The Amiga port is correct but not perfect

Shinobi is an excellent idea too

Xain'd Sleena/ Solar warrior : [ Show youtube player ] could be an EXCELLENT idea... not even existing on Amiga... could be a real cool new game

But for now : Finishing 100% Rygar

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Foul

Xain'd Sleena/ Solar warrior : [ Show youtube player ] could be an EXCELLENT idea... not even existing on Amiga... could be a real cool new game

It does, just under a different name for some reason...

It's ok but not great... Soldier of Light

[sandruzzo]

What about a game like lotus for a1200?

[Foul]

Originally Posted by DamienD

It does, just under a different name for some reason...

It's ok but not great... Soldier of Light

Whhooo ! I didn't know ! thx !

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

What about a game like lotus for a1200?

ahaha You want me to reverse engineer Outrun assets ? lol

[roondar]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

His choice comes from the use of the 64 colors in halfbright. That's clever, because until now, all the amiga coders just bragged how impossible it was to make fast scrolling games on the A500 in 64 colors because 6 BPL is just too slow.

Sandruzzo just show how wrong they were !

The graphics certainly look very impressive in EHB, I'm really looking forward to playing it

As to 'impossible', I don't think anyone ever really said that. What people (me included) did point out is the performance difference: Blitter throughput for EHB is about 25% lower than in it is for 32 colour mode.

Which may mean downscaling the amount of on screen objects to keep it running at 50Hz. Then again, it may not - it all depends on how busy Rygar gets.

AFAIK, there are a few EHB games out there already. However, I never got why they didn't use EHB for the LucasArts stuff though - that would've worked quite well.

Originally Posted by DamienD

It does, just under a different name for some reason...

It's ok but not great... Soldier of Light

We'll have to agree to disagree there

Personally I think the Atari ST/Amiga ports of Xain'd Sleena are rather lackluster and even harder to play than on the arcade.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by roondar

We'll have to agree to disagree there

Personally I think the Atari ST/Amiga ports of Xain'd Sleena are rather lackluster and even harder to play than on the arcade.

What? I said that it's ok but not great...

I never said it's awesome.