gods scrolling question

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by jotd

Bitmap Bros coded all in 16 colors so they could port to Atari ST without changing a thing.

And VGA on PC, as it happens. I remember playing Gods on a college PC and, apart from lack of Amiga audio that I was used to from playing the Amiga version, it was also identical.

[Chrille]

@Dastardly:
Regarding to the Mega Drive/Genesis Port. True it runs with a higher FPS but also the game is at a too high speed. This is also bad behavior ... This reminds me on bad ms-dos games (nearly all ): If you have a higher cpu speed, the game speed also increases (up to unplayable).


@others: Yes, Gods and Xenon II have a bad playability due to lagging controls and jerky scrolling. But notice that a lot of amiga games run only at 25 FPS, for example R-Type. But R-Type has a smooth scolling and smooth sprite movement at 50 FPS. Only the enimies have 25 FPS. IMO this is okay and the gameplay is not made worse of that. Or Battle Squadron, it has also only 25 FPS (BOB-Movement). Sprites (the players ship, enemy shots and own shots) are at 50 FPS. This is simillar to some other games, e.g. Agony, Superfrog, Alien Breed. And most of the games could have been also improved.

According to the lag input lag in Xenon II or Gods, yes, the playing experience would have been a lot better ... But back in these days it was not well known, how scrolling and some special tricks are done on speeding up game engine. And as I said it is also a matter of taste, if you are extremely allergic to jerky scrolling (and/or BOBs) and input lags or not. On the other side the jerky scrolling in Gods must not have been done due to this bad stupid tile rendering/scrolling. Back in these days there were only some dozen games like Turrican (I, II and III), Brian the Lion, Z-Out, Apidya, Lionheart ... that were near to technical perfection. And at least Apidiya and Lionheart have some slowdowns (which could be also bad), if you are playing on a A500 without any turbocard.

IMHO Xenon II is not as bad as some of you say due to the amount of shots and these big enemies (and also the good game design). But both games could have been done much better, if they only would have known all these tricks and how Amiga DMA is working. But back in these days, they did not know it. I guess the main focus was on gameplay and not on technical aspects.

BTW playing on emulators is also (a little bit) worser due to higher input lag. I experienced that on playing Giana Sisters on Vice compared to a real machine. It is surprising which impact has a lag of (average) 30 ms compared to lag of (average) 10 ms on a real machine.

[Shatterhand]

Like I side, my problem is not just with the framerate. Brutal Sports Football doesn't have a good framerate, yet I love the game, because its incredibly fun to play.

Xenon 2 has NO good game design, it does nearly everything that a shoot'em up is supposed to do WRONGLY. The fact its slow and jerky only makes things even worse, but even if the game ran at 50 fps it would still be a crap game*

I don't think Gods is a bad game, I just can't see nothing of special on it, and I have zero problem with its jerky framerate. But Xenon 2 is just awful.

I always say I came from a japanese computer (MSX) to Amiga. I was used to play stuff like Aleste 1 & 2, Zanac, Space Manbow, Super Laydock.... Xenon 2 of course looked and sounded better (but not by THAT much to be honest when compared to stuff like Space Manbow), but gameplay is insanely flawed. It was really weird to see a 16 bits machine not being able to do a proper shoot'em up, a genre my previous 8 bits machine was inundated with.

* thats something I usually say about Project X. Technically it's a marvel, from the game design side, it's mediocre at best.

[Dastardly]

Yeah, I have to agree with Galahad about Xenon 2. That music was jaw dropping when it came out and I think that's something that a lot of people forget. That, along with the still great looking graphics carried it a long way. It has always been slow though and not the most playable shooter around.

It's the Shadow of the Beast of the shmup genre

@Chrille I agree about Megadrive Gods. A simple speed boost makes it a worse game. I'm sure silky scrolling would have been nice if it was originally part of the game, but I honestly couldn't care less. I love it as it is.

[Master484]

I mean, even on Amiga we already had Hybris and Battle Squadron when Xenon 2 was released.

Hmm, according to HOL both Battle Squadron and Xenon 2 were released at 1989.
http://hol.abime.net/72
http://hol.abime.net/1605

And if you look at the magazine review dates, the oldest Battle Squadron review is from November 1989, but most reviews are from the beginning of 1990. And for Xenon 2 the oldest review is from May 1989, with most reviews being from October 1989.

So it seems that Xenon 2 came out first, and then Battle Squadron. Although it's just a few months difference, so practically they were released around the same time.

But to understand why Xenon 2 was such a big hit, one has to look at the competition it faced around that time. Here is a list of all Amiga vertical shooters released at 1989:
http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?..._released=1989

And as you can see, in that list 2 games shine above the rest: Xenon 2 and Battle Squadron. All other games are mediocre arcade ports.

So in it's own way, I think back then Xenon 2 provided an almost "arcade-like" shooter experience: lots of firepower, lots of enemies to kill and loud music. And the slow framerate didn't matter because most other Amiga shooters of that time also run at 25 FPS or 17 FPS. So I quess it seemed quite fast by the standards of 1989.

And back then there surely were arcade halls in every country, but people couldn't directly compare the arcade games with Amiga games, because you couldn't do a side-by-side comparison like you can today thanks to emulators. Arcade games were played just for fun, not to analyze things like frame rate, sprite amounts and colors on screen. (unless you were a programmer of course)

I think at that time gamers didn't care about 50 FPS and only few people knew what frame rate even was. For example the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2 World Warrior too had a very bad frame rate, but still got pretty good reviews, and that was 4 years after Xenon 2. So I guess back then the scrolling of Gods too was considered smooth. Not Turrican-smooth, but smooth enough.

[Shatterhand]

You guys again are overstating the framerate thing.

1987 on NES:
[ Show youtube player ]

1989 MSX 2:
[ Show youtube player ]

1986 MSX 1:
[ Show youtube player ]

1988 MSX 2:
[ Show youtube player ]

1989 MSX 2:
[ Show youtube player ]

1987 MSX 1:
[ Show youtube player ]

This is what I was playing AT HOME when my father first got his Amiga. I can't state how much I was DISSAPOINTED when I saw Xenon 2... while I loved many of Amiga games, I was really saddened that my fav genre barely had anything that was even average, while my previous machine had a SHTILOAD of good shooters. Of course when I tried Battle Squadron I thought that one was incredibly good... but the only good one....

All the games I show here (and I could make this list a lot bigger) just TRUMP Xenon 2. They aren't "marginally better", they just DESTROY Xenon 2 regarding gameplay, level design, speed, action and all.

(For vertical scrollers, later I would enjoy Swiv too)

Back at the day I indeed didn't care about framerate. It was only with the internet complaining that I noticed Gradius games on MSX had "Jerky scrolling" (They were perfect to me... alas, I still don't care about the jerky scroll on those games, I still think they are insanely well playable). All I cared was to have fun with the games. And Xenon 2 was anything but fun to play.

[gimbal]

There was a Nes version of Zanac!? Damn it moves like the wind. The MSX version is slower, I like that one more actually. A recurring theme

For Amiga I enjoyed more Saint Dragon, R-Type 2 and Ilyad. Really hard as balls but excellent gameplay.

[Chrille]

Regarding Xenon II, when I played Xenon II back in 1990 I found it not boring (but may be I am not very objective as it was one of my first Amiga games and I never played it again seriously since then and I was very young ). May be it is too long ago, but I was impressed about the amount of shots at once (Do you know any arcade games which has that many shots at once around 1990?). It was even more than Armalyte (C64) and I did not realize that it was that jerky. But then I tried to code my own game. And when I looked at more detail, how it was coded, I was very disappointed. If they had only realized the players ship with a sprite instead of a BOB, than the game would have had much more better control (less lagging) like Battle Squadron.

Regarding SWIV, they used a cool technique: it becomes never slow, sometimes it has 25 FPS, sometimes 16,67 FPS and sometimes 12,5 FPS depending on the BOBs they have to render ... and SWIVs gameplay may be better than Xenon II, but on the other side you cannot compare these both games. SWIV is cool because you can play it with 2 players at once like Battle Squadron

And regarding overstating framerate, yes, I am a little bit allergic to low frame rates. It is absolutely okay, when scrolling and the important things run at 50 Fps like in Battle Squadron (players sprites and enemies shots) but it is not okay when the player's controls becomes worse (like Gods and Xenon II). 2D games need at least a full framerate with scrolling. The enemies are not that important. Therefore games like Superfrog, Zool, Alien Breed or Project X are okay.

When you compare Zool with Amiga and MS-Dos versions. The MS-Dos version sucks because you loose the overview due to bad scrolling ...

And yes I have no clear opinion about Xenon II and Gods . On one side they are not this bad and on the other side there is so much, the coders could have been improved ...

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by gimbal

There was a Nes version of Zanac!? Damn it moves like the wind. The MSX version is slower, I like that one more actually. A recurring theme

Have you played Zanac EX on MSX? Zanac NES is an enhanced port of the MSX Original. Then they ported the NES game back to the MSX2 with even more enhancements, calling it Zanac EX.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Have you played Zanac EX on MSX? Zanac NES is an enhanced port of the MSX Original. Then they ported the NES game back to the MSX2 with even more enhancements, calling it Zanac EX.

I did not, I am right now replaying the original MSX version after having my ass handed to me after only 2 minutes several times in a row by the NES version I will give it a try.

EDIT: I love it, but I suck at it I think I did play this one as a kid, the more spacey theme looks familiar.

[LeCaravage]

Tough game but not unfair.
The living and non living objects management is perfect and complex. You can come again in a place where you drop an item and retrieve it at the exact same place you left it.
Little drawbacks like an ennemy who can shoot you from the back or too restrictive decor/hero collision make me feel claustrophobic.

[gimbal]

Gods is tough for newcomers; when you know the spawn points it becomes pretty easy though. Especially when you get the spears and just stick with them, those things are murder machines.

Yesterday there was a game night at the office and I was playing the Snes version of the Chaos Engine on a retropie; it was fun to see how everyone got murdered by the game and I was blasting everything the moment it spawned because I knew the patterns A good way to score some reputation points with your nerd friends. Also sort of sad because nobody knew what the Chaos Engine even was :/

[jotd]

Paid to play Chaos Engine: dream job

[Dastardly]

Yeah I’ve played both The Chaos Engine and Gods to the point where I’m waiting for the monsters to spawn to greet them with a bullet/knife/spear to the face before they know what’s happening

Poor things. It’s unfair really.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Chrille

Sometime ago (in the 90ies) I looked at the code.

First Gods has not 25 FPS. It is even worser, Gods has 16,7 FPS, Gods needs 3 Frames to update the screen.

They made a fundamental mistake. Every frame they update the screen completely (this means they are rendering all tiles and BOBs, which is not as bad as they save some time for not refreshing BOBs). Some games do this also, but they loose too much time because they render the scrolled (shifted) tiles with the Blitter. AFAIR you would usually need a frame to render the screen with tiles, but they need 2 frames to render the screen.

Holy kitty, what an abomination.
Tile rendering must have taken at least 2/3rd of the rendering time if they did redraw everything for each frame. They could at least have used a background buffer to copy the background in a single Blitter pass...

Has anyone ever attempted to mod the game to use hardware scrolling and only rewrite the newly exposed tiles?
Obviously, one would need to keep the same frame rate for the game logic but at least the scrolling would be much smoother.

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I could never enjoy Gods. For me it was always a mediocre boring platform game.

Heresy! I officially dislike you very much!

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Xenon 2 is the most overrated piece of crap ever, I will NEVER understand how this game gets so much praise, I can only imagine Britain had no arcades, because anyone who had ever played any proper shmup would know better than to praise that huge turd. I mean, even on Amiga we already had Hybris and Battle Squadron when Xenon 2 was released. It just makes no sense.

Oh, disregard my previous remark, I still like you.

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

[snip] they tried to remake Speedball 2 at least twice and failed.... which makes me think they had no idea of what made Speedball 2 good at the first place.

I think this has more to do with the fact that these versions were contracted out to external developers rather than the long disbanded original team.

[Hewitson]

Oh yeah, Space Manbow! That's what you call a real shoot em up.