NeoGeo Metal Slug conversion to Amiga 500 - madman task ;-)

[nobody]

I believe a Metal Slug on A500 would play like this, actually if you change backgrounds and dragons with soldiers, bosses with tanks etc you pretty much have Metal Slug. I think this game also uses 8+7 colors

[ Show youtube player ]

[Hewitson]

That looks pretty cool. I've never played it to be honest, I thought 21st Century Entertainment only published pinball games.

[zero]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Wow. That looks like a C64 game.

It was fairly typical of Amiga games of that era. People remember the exceptional ones that were designed for the Amiga hardware, but actually most were ports or at least designed to be ported to the ST and sometimes 8 bit machines.

Thing about Midnight Resistance is that despite everything it played really well, and that's what counts.

Also the arcade version didn't look that amazing either and had massive amounts of slowdown. The Amiga version actually has less slowdown!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Wow. That looks like a C64 game.

it looks like an ST game you mean

[sandruzzo]

With dual playfield, we can use 4 sprite for player and the others for parallax. Enemies and bullets on front layer

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Wow. That looks like a C64 game.

C64 version:

Hmmm.... Rose tinted glasses?
I get that too from to time, the C64 is pretty epic after all. But 16 bit graphics are a lot nicer

[Hewitson]

It would be fair to say that the above game is not a good example of either machine's capabilities.

[roondar]

Perhaps, but both of those games are in fairly representative of how games on these platforms looked at the time of publishing. Most 1989 C64 games look about the same or worse. This is also born out by the C64 version getting high marks for graphics. For instance, Zzap! 64 gave it 91% for graphics and called it 'very impressive' (issue 68, page 15).

More on point, I'd argue that even the best looking C64 games still don't look as good as that Amiga screenshot (from a technical perspective that is, art style used obviously has a major impact here). This is primarily due to the much higher resolution the Amiga uses for games compared to what C64 games almost all run in (320x<something> vs 160x<something>) and the high number of restrictions that C64 games face in terms of colour choices, both in terms of total palette and in terms of allowed choices per tile & sprite.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

[nobody]

Couldn't be much better on the C64. There are a lot of restrictions especially for sprites. On the Amiga is a 6/10 on graphics, on C64 is 9/10 (of the possibly best output on graphics).

[zero]

I thought Midnight Resistance on the Amiga had decent graphics. Not outstanding but they looked similar to the arcade, they were full screen and moved reasonably well. The game played well too, the controls were responsive and it didn't feel unfair.

I think it loaded everything into RAM too, at least I don't remember loading between levels. There were lots of unique bits on each level too, and simultaneous two player. It really was a quite decent port and Metal Slug is, for me, actually a less fun game.

[sandruzzo]

To do a Great Amigas' Metal Slug wheter 32 pure colors, 8+7 version, you have to design it around Amiga like they did for GBA

[Tigerskunk]

:d

[LongLifeA1200]

It's been a while since I've read this thread.

GBA Version
Since it gets mentioned quite a lot, I finally took a look at it. Something's missing, though. Another look at the original made it easy to see what; The backgrounds are an important part of Metal Slug.

Colors
This one is confusing. 32 colors I can understand and consider essential for a conversion like this. The 8+7, however, still leaves me wondering what exactly the final count would be.

8+7
I'm stuck with 7 foreground playfield colors for all moving objects. Very low for a conversion like this. Yet, if the framerate stays steady at 50-60hz, I can "flicker" two colors in the same spot to give the illusion of a third color. The two colors have to come from the 7 available and they have to be of the same brightness. Is that right?

Moving objects have to be stationary (not move) for 2 frames for the "flicker"-cycle to complete.

For the background playfield, I can use a separate 8 color palette, however, these can be changed multiple times within a single frame of the screen. When and how often, though? What would the x(horizontal),y(vertical) coordinates look like? Starting at 0,0 when would the next palette change occur?

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

It's been a while since I've read this thread.

GBA Version
Since it gets mentioned quite a lot, I finally took a look at it. Something's missing, though. Another look at the original made it easy to see what; The backgrounds are an important part of Metal Slug.

Colors
This one is confusing. 32 colors I can understand and consider essential for a conversion like this. The 8+7, however, still leaves me wondering what exactly the final count would be.

8+7
I'm stuck with 7 foreground playfield colors for all moving objects. Very low for a conversion like this. Yet, if the framerate stays steady at 50-60hz, I can "flicker" two colors in the same spot to give the illusion of a third color. The two colors have to come from the 7 available and they have to be of the same brightness. Is that right?

Moving objects have to be stationary (not move) for 2 frames for the "flicker"-cycle to complete.

For the background playfield, I can use a separate 8 color palette, however, these can be changed multiple times within a single frame of the screen. When and how often, though? What would the x(horizontal),y(vertical) coordinates look like? Starting at 0,0 when would the next palette change occur?

GBA Version
It Was mentioned, cos programmers built a great MS around this machine strenght. So should be for Amiga

Colors
There are a lot of tricks to have full 32 colors or more and have at least 50hz for scrolling and mains bobs'

8+7
Can be used to have a lot of enemies on screen running at 50hz. For background, if you change 8 colors every 8-16 lines you can archive tons fo colors.

So strength and weakness for each type of layouts

[sandruzzo]

If Metal Slug 1st Mission 1999, why don't have an Amiga version?

[ Show youtube player ]

[Retro-Nerd]

Jesus, they really burned the game series to the ground with all these reboots/remakes.

[sonninnos]

Instant dislike at the video due to disregarding aspect ratio.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

If Metal Slug 1st Mission 1999, why don't have an Amiga version?

Yeah, why don't you code that, Sandruzzo?

[rare_j]

Pocket Color versions would make a good base for Amiga version.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Yeah, why don't you code that, Sandruzzo?

Would be great to do one test level to see if Amiga can..