Games that didn't scroll smoothly - why not?

[Old Fool]

Originally Posted by frikilokooo

ProjectX even slows down at some time,only in some occasion and slightly of course in any case it doesn't use parallax except some stars in the first level.

I haven't experienced any slow downs on my A500. Incredible fast movement what comes to sprites. Also that frantic "screen shake" mode (like in the hell level with the bursting volcanoes) is something that should be used more often in SHUMPS.

[Marcuz]

if i remember correctly, and i may not, there were some bit of slowing in the second level, when the big missiles were attraversing the screen, (what was it, left to right?)

[frikilokooo]

Originally Posted by Old Fool

I haven't experienced any slow downs on my A500. Incredible fast movement what comes to sprites. Also that frantic "screen shake" mode (like in the hell level with the bursting volcanoes) is something that should be used more often in SHUMPS.

The slow downs hardly notice them I repeat,for instance in first level when a lot of blue enemies descend from above and you destroy them producing explosions.I can't remember now another place but they exists.I play in my A1200 and my A500.Nevertheless hopefully all the games would be as smooth as ProjectX,it's an excellent game.

[Christian]

Yeah, loved Project X. What an amazing looking game but the original was a bit too hard for me (or I'm crap).

BS was ace too. I remember being very gutted when it wouldn't emulate properly (long time ago now). I think the bullets used to disappear or something. I can't remember what was added to WinUAE to fix that .... hmmm

Maybe the collision level option?

Always a laugh nicking the powerups from your mate in 2 player co-op mode, especially if he really needed them

[hitchhikr]

If you think there's any good schmup on Amiga then you really need to check most of the PC ENGINE & MEGADRIVE ones

Also Amiga arcade games lack of variety/ideas or surprise in general, that's why Project X or even Battle Squadron are fundamentally (and retrospectively) sub par games, not bad but not as great as they are portrayed. In the context of Amiga games they're pretty good but as soon as one watches the consoles Schmups of that time they suddenly become rather lame (Apidya escapes this ).

The Factor 5/Kaiko guys probably made the best arcade games on Amiga (Turrican series, Apidya, B.C. Kid) due to the fact that they really cared about what they where doing and that they were strongly influenced by the japanese console games.

Any arcade game running at 25fps doesn't deserve to be ranked among the best anyway, and for a schmup it's a fatal weakness (imagine the Turrican series running at 25fps !).

Jerkiest scrolling: Thexder.
Schmup made in C with a rather smooth animation: Sidewinder (was even entirely made with ROM libraries).

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Is this really the reason why they used mostly 25 FPS in their games? There isn't too much action i.e. in Gods. Ruff'n Tumble in 25 FPS makes more sense, there is a lot of action. But Core Designs Wolfchild used it too. It doesn't look soo fastidious, technically.

Gods was less than half framerate, as was Xenon II, etc. I think they managed to get Speedball 2 and Chaos Engine up to a whopping 25fps, reason must be they came after the introduction of the STE blitter.

Very good topic, this. Amiga hardware can scroll anything that, hm, moves. If it's done correctly, no scrolling routine takes more than 10-15% of a frame @ 5 bitplanes.

But it's not all laziness or lack of skill. Some studios had non-programmers design the game and force the design against the grain of the hardware. Unheard of on the C64!

With skill, and shrinking linearly with decreased scroll speed cap, a 5 bitplane, 8x8 tile level can be scrolled in down to 4-10 raster lines. Bigger tiles mean less cpu time.

Now, that doesn't mean the whole game will run in full framerate, unless you pre-plan how many objects will be on-screen for every level and scene and make the game to suit, like Turrican. Normally you design a game to have this and that cool scene ofc, that makes it more fun. But action games are also more fun with full framerate, so it's a balance.

Other games, like 3D games or the glorious Lemmings, don't need full framerate, naturally. (I'm still envious @ DMA Design for inventing a brand new concept in games, and rendering, with background animation, and an overall good game )

[s2325]

Only C64 version of Vixen have smooth screen scrolling and objects animation (but in bonus level you will morph to squirrel, not fox ).

[PowerPie5000]

I remember Monkey Island 2 having some pretty bad scrolling.... it would slow down and go a bit "twitchy". But it's still a great game and did not put me off from completing it a few times (on an A500)

[dlfrsilver]

Huge C coded script engine.....

[s2325]

For me worst screen scrolling have Carnage http://hol.abime.net/5522

[Nishicorn]

Some games are MEANT to scroll a character at a time - look at C64-version of Maniac Mansion, for example. It works perfectly, as the 'fadeout/fadein'-effect is also character-based.

To me, it would just look weird, if that game scrolled smoothly, ick. Not everything needs to scroll super smoothly.

Interesting topic anyway, considering you don't generally see smooth 2D-scrolling much anymore, there's always some kind of 'jerk' or such from time to time. Of course on real platforms like Amiga, Sega Dreamcast and C64, we still get to see the amazingly eye-pleasing, 100% smooth 2D-scroll, ahh.

If every game scrolled smoothly, it would lose some of its beauty, though, because it would be common, and thus.. boring. The non-smooth stuff is a great CONTRAST to the smoothly-scrolling stuff - how else would we know to appreciate the smoothness fully?