Discussion: Rygar AGA Edition

[roondar]

Oh, that's a pitty. As I understood it, the 68020 shift operator was vastly quicker than the 68000 one. I'm probably wrong then, I've not done any AGA stuff yet.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by roondar

Oh, that's a pitty. As I understood it, the 68020 shift operator was vastly quicker than the 68000 one. I'm probably wrong then, I've not done any AGA stuff yet.

You are probably right that it's superior in a 68020, but I still doubt a software routine would beat the blitter. Things like clearing memory and being able to use the cache will beat the blitter...but not shifting large graphics 1 pixel.

If you look back in history of how Steve Bak did Star Ray on the ST, I beleive he pre-shifted the scene 1 pixel up to 16 pixels, then he was able to use a movem.l to fast copy a block of memory on a 16 bit boundary without shifting.

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[buzzybee]

Just a reminder: If you use the option to blit one additional prescrolled bitmap layer into a 4 bitplane viewport, you lose the option to use AGAs subpixel bits in BPLCON1 for smooth scrolling of 1/4 pixels - which could add a certain edge to your game.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by buzzybee

Just a reminder: If you use the option to blit one additional prescrolled bitmap layer into a 4 bitplane viewport, you lose the option to use AGAs subpixel bits in BPLCON1 for smooth scrolling of 1/4 pixels - which could add a certain edge to your game.

I don't use the sub pixel placement, but also I have an 8 bitplane view port.

After studying the arcade the background moves 1 pixel every frame and the foreground 2 pixels, which is a shame because I though the background was running at 25 FPS which loses me time

[LeCaravage]

Watched a longplay and I did not understand the bonuses/item/upgrade system.
I found this, you may already know it, but I post it in case :

http://www.hamster.co.jp/american_ha.../manual_06.htm

[DamienD]

This might also be useful but I'm sure mcgeezer knows most of this already: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Rygar

Information about Items and Enemies are probably most useful

Regarding the Bonuses; I didn't know about many of these... especially the "Hidden Parchment"

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by LeCaravage

Watched a longplay and I did not understand the bonuses/item/upgrade system.
I found this, you may already know it, but I post it in case :

http://www.hamster.co.jp/american_ha.../manual_06.htm

Originally Posted by DamienD

This might also be useful but I'm sure mcgeezer knows most of this already: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Rygar

Information about Items and Enemies are probably most useful

Thanks gents, yep I'm aware of both sites but thanks for taking the time to post them anyways... in case I didn't.

I have the scrolling fixed now... will probably post a short demo in the next hour or so.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I have the scrolling fixed now... will probably post a short demo in the next hour or so.

...can't wait to see this

[jotd]

I can't believe this. How can you work so fast with assembly & amiga hardware? How many people actually deliver like you?

[mcgeezer]

Here you go... the scrolling fixed.

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The background image is a little short as it needs to be extended by about 320 pixels.

Over the next few days I'll be working on palettes and gfx stuff as I prepare for the epic coding marathon that will be required.

Something a little different that I was thinking about was putting in some CD music for the AGA version. I have a particular liking to synthwave, cyper punk... so the likes of Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, Dance with the dead, are all close to my heart. But one artist that I particularly love is Dan Terminus and his music pretty much inspires me to code quite a bit, so after seeking permission to use his work I'll build these tracks into a CD32 version.

Starting track... as the story appears...
Rounds 1-4 Death by Distortion

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Rounds 5-9 Heavy Artillery

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Rounds 10-13 Pegasus Pro Ultra Fusion

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Then looped back to the first track... to round 27.

Personally I think it will make the game sound immense.

Edit - sorry just realised the seconds pointers don't seem to work on the YT vids for the Dan Terminus tracks... If you expand the comments you can then select the tracks.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Here you go... the scrolling fixed.

[ Show youtube player ]

The background image is a little short as it needs to be extended by about 320 pixels.

Over the next few days I'll be working on palettes and gfx stuff as I prepare for the epic coding marathon that will be required.

Amazing progress my friend in such a short period of time

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Something a little different that I was thinking about was putting in some CD music for the AGA version. I have a particular liking to synthwave, cyper punk... so the likes of Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, Dance with the dead, are all close to my heart. But one artist that I particularly love is Dan Terminus and his music pretty much inspires me to code quite a bit, so after seeking permission to use his work I'll build these tracks into a CD32 version.

Starting track... as the story appears...
Rounds 1-4 Death by Distortion

[ Show youtube player ]

Rounds 5-9 Heavy Artillery

[ Show youtube player ]

Rounds 10-13 Pegasus Pro Ultra Fusion

[ Show youtube player ]

Then looped back to the first track... to round 27.

Personally I think it will make the game sound immense.

Edit - sorry just realised the seconds pointers don't seem to work on the YT vids for the Dan Terminus tracks... If you expand the comments you can then select the tracks.

Yeah sounds cool, but I think it would be nice to have an option to either use these additional tracks or just switch off and stick to the original audio (for the purists of course)

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Yeah sounds cool, but I think it would be nice to have an option to either use these or switch off and stick to the original (for the purists)

Ofcourse!

[jotd]

BTW I created a small demo of the Rygar tune. ATM it's xm but it's only using 4 tracks and 2 for in-game. Not finished but is it worth going on?

(This is my first attempt at a module for years, and if you saw other forums you'll see that I had trouble with milkytracker but it seems all set now)

I haven't worked on effects, volumes, etc... but the intro notes look okay, and the fact I have used PSR something (yamaha) samples as often as I could (+ some bass I lifted from a 4mat module) makes it look like the original at least for this part.

The music is rather repetitive so there's not so much work for a "rough" module.

rygar.zip

[saimon69]

@Jotd
I did provide mcgeezer with the mod i prepared for the ECS version: it has also all interactions a bit like Bomb Jack Beer Edition (actually this came before that); is in the zone; it could need some love for some of the samples that i grabbed from mp3 of the songs, though.

And if you need some help in taming milky let me know, is my main weapon here

[jotd]

Okay, never mind, I really wanted to get back on mod tracking anyway.

[mcgeezer]

So over the last couple of nights I've worked on something which is pretty fundamental to smooth running games - Double buffering.

Although the video below doesn't look much different to the last one, there is a key important process going on with the way in which the display is rendered.

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I have the vertical beam waiting for line 103 which is roughly at the start of where the mountains need to be drawn with the blitter. Now without double buffering what you would see here is a tearing effect when the mountains are scrolled left or right because as the beam is racing down the screen the blitter is also racing down drawing the next set of pixels to the left or right, the upshot being that you get an unwanted crap effect.

Double buffering solves this problem. With it in place, the blitter is drawing the mountains to a hidden display field somewhere else in the Amiga's memory so that it doesn't effect what is currently on screen. When the vertical beam reaches the bottom of the screen we flip the display pointers which then instantly shows the display that was just rendered with the mountains. This process alternates every frame.

Show the front display, draw the back display.
Show the back display, draw the front and so on.

Anyway, that's double buffering, bit a of pain to get right but once it's done you kinda leave it alone.

Next I'll be fixing up some of the graphics and palettes, you'll notice the background is short on length and the temple scene has transparent blocks in the background - both need to be fixed, then it'll building in the sprite engine.

PS: The scrolling is actually very smooth, the video capturing stuff just makes it look a bit jerky so I might use another method to do a capture.

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by jotd

I heard Marble Madness was written in C

Original 95% C and 5% 68000, Amiga version 90% C and 10% 68000. (From an old CCI interview IIRC.)

[buzzybee]

You are making real fast progress here, congratulations!

[mcgeezer]

So I continued working on the scrolling routine late last night and have had a bit of time this evening too to work on it, I'm stopping now and going to enjoy a couple of beers and maybe play Transplant (I love that game).

In this update I've worked on the switching between rounds which is quite important for the game. I'm pleased to say that this is pretty much working barring the odd bug here and there. I haven't quite got round to finishing level 4 but you'll see from the video that it's almost there.

Those who know Rygar will know that every 4th level the background changes to something more static with a nice sunset and a silhouette of scrolling mountains.

This means I have to change the background blitter code somewhat, but not too much. What I'm attempting to do is have the sunset in 2 bitplanes / 4 colours and have the third bitplane scroll with the mountains. As I've found out I have to blit all three bitplanes because the Amiga scroll registers causes the static background to slide... so I have to blit two planes of the 96x84 sunset and then blit1 plane of the mountains underneath.

Gonna have a beer. Enjoy.

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[DamienD]

Very impressive indeed mcgeezer

I love the way you're tackling important game mechanics first like level scrolling; getting this running perfectly before moving onto the next big thing.

I'm no coder but your logic / approach is great; after the above, building / snapping on each addition function / layer etc...

I'm sure everything will come together nicely