Better Outrun port for Amiga

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I don't mind it to be honest, it defines that "Amiga look". I'm not going to really call blocky graphics a good thing, it just looked cool to see sprites scale so smoothly (but blocky and jittery) on arcade machines at the time because there was nothing better

But you end up with one of 2 side effects:

1) The object just switches off (often before the road markings)

or

2) The object stops scaling and appears then to just "scroll" off the bottom/edge of screen

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Might be masochism but i dig that! Now, if the street sprites were A BIT cleaner, even better

Yeah man... that "street" if we can call it that way, is really weird looking.
Doesn't really make any sense, both visually, and in motion.

Why they didn't do regular street?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by DanScott

But you end up with one of 2 side effects:

1) The object just switches off (often before the road markings)

or

2) The object stops scaling and appears then to just "scroll" off the bottom/edge of screen

True, the world ceases to exist "behind the camera". But if you look at Lotus 2 you hardly notice any of that - because it moves really fast. That solves all problems, the framerate needs to be really good

[axilmar]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Proof that 'huge sprites' and 'smooth 3d motion' don't make a good game. What a mess!

Yeah, as a game, it wasn't particularly good. But the 3d motion in high speed was superb and highly reminiscent of arcade Powerdrift.

[axilmar]

Originally Posted by DanScott

I've investigated lots of methods of realtime bitmap scaling in various demos that I've worked on, and I can say for sure, there's no way on an A500, that you could implement any kind of real-time sprite scaling that would work for multiple on-screen sprites and keep a decent framerate.

The only real way is to use prescaled sprites, but you can look at how the sprites are constructed, and optimise the rendering and storage of the prescaled frames (for example, a palm tree, like in the 1st level of Outrun, could be built from 2 elements, the leaves area, and the trunk, which is slimmer and taller)

Unfortunately, with prescaled sprites, you don't get the "blocky" effect of objects that are passing Z=0 and coming close to the camera, which is evident in practically EVERY amiga sprite based 3d racer

What about partial blitting of sprites? i.e. to have a lot of different bitmaps for each roadside object, and blit the missing bitmaps with multiple overlapping blits?

For example, use 4 blits for a bitmap that is slightly smaller than an existing one, omitting/overlapping middle columns?

Also, what if scaling formulas are precalculated?

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by axilmar

What about partial blitting of sprites?

Yeah that's possible, but incurs some penalty.

Every blit you do, the width of the blit has an extra word (16 pixels for shifting into)

So if you had an object that was originally 64 pixels wide, your total blit width would be 80 pixels (5 words)

If you split that object into 16 pixel strips, you would end up with a total blit width of 128 pixels (8 words)

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by buggs

Maybe you'd like to have a look at https://github.com/HenrykRichter/Cannonball-C for an updated version (binary archive in release/). It sill requires tons of CPU (060) and Picasso96 in HiColor but renders faster than the MVG's old port and has all graphics enabled.

I have tried the released executables in WinUAE and in piStorm. Both have 320x240 resolution in 16bit (both RGB and BGR) defined for picasso96, but in both I get the error that it could not set atleast 320x240 resolultion in 16bits.

[eXeler0]

How much easier would this be if target machine was an A1200 with fast mem instead of vanilla A500?

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

How much easier would this be if target machine was an A1200 with fast mem instead of vanilla A500?

That is somehow already being taken care of:
Outrun AGA thread

However the 500 port is - at least for me - akin to heal an adolescent trauma; as i said porting Fedepede04 improved version would already be more than sufficient; if then the engine can be used to create derivative games even better

[gimbal]

Using the same code for different games creates the same game multiple times. You'll just be creating Turbo Outrun again. Not a new game but essentially a licensed rom hack. The whole reason why Lotus 2, 3, Jaguar, Test Drive, etc. have a reason to exist is because they each did the formula different. Same math principles but a different implementation. Different way the road is generated, different way the car physics are mimicked. And that created a different driving feel in games which are otherwise little more than hit the gas, try to stay on the road and don't let the timer run out going ever forward forward forward.

So no don't waste time trying to create reusable code. Properly document it so people can reapply it without having to reinvent the wheel.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Using the same code for different games creates the same game multiple times. You'll just be creating Turbo Outrun again. Not a new game but essentially a licensed rom hack. The whole reason why Lotus 2, 3, Jaguar, Test Drive, etc. have a reason to exist is because they each did the formula different. Same math principles but a different implementation. Different way the road is generated, different way the car physics are mimicked. And that created a different driving feel in games which are otherwise little more than hit the gas, try to stay on the road and don't let the timer run out going ever forward forward forward.

So no don't waste time trying to create reusable code. Properly document it so people can reapply it without having to reinvent the wheel.

Not necessarily: do some changes to graphic and gameplay (like have infinite run instead of an end game as an option), modify other cars behaviour and can add interesting variations; there is a darn full community customizing games (muGEN, dread,etc. ) so why not for outrun?

[ImmortalA1000]

Why doesn't someone just ask Shaun if he would or even could still do that sort of cutting edge game engine coding, ask him how much and raise a kickstarter or something. If you get that far then you can start discussing what OCS 2.5D engine can and can't do for you at x FPS.

I tried to ask him but the person doing the live chat with him streamed over the net was ignoring pretty much all of the questions asked in chat stream and making up his own questions.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

I tried to ask him but the person doing the live chat with him streamed over the net was ignoring pretty much all of the questions asked in chat stream and making up his own questions.

Sabotage!!!!!111 (kidding)

[buggs]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

I have tried the released executables in WinUAE and in piStorm. Both have 320x240 resolution in 16bit (both RGB and BGR) defined for picasso96, but in both I get the error that it could not set atleast 320x240 resolultion in 16bits.

Thanks for pointing that out. I could replicate the issue on one of my A4000's that has a ZZ9000. As it turned out, the Picasso96 function to find a good screen mode tends to fail entirely in some setups (i.e. p96BestModeIDTagList). I run my Amigas with P96 V2.0/2.1 and cannot say whether the recent P96 versions are fixed in that regard.

Anyway, I've uploaded version 1.2 to github that comes with a custom function for best screen mode selection.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by buggs

Thanks for pointing that out. I could replicate the issue on one of my A4000's that has a ZZ9000. As it turned out, the Picasso96 function to find a good screen mode tends to fail entirely in some setups (i.e. p96BestModeIDTagList). I run my Amigas with P96 V2.0/2.1 and cannot say whether the recent P96 versions are fixed in that regard.

Anyway, I've uploaded version 1.2 to github that comes with a custom function for best screen mode selection.

Thank you ! The game is now working (and VERY fast too, always on 30 FPS on piStorm emu68 core). However there is no music to be heard, regardless what is selected when the game starts...

[buggs]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Thank you ! The game is now working (and VERY fast too, always on 30 FPS on piStorm emu68 core). However there is no music to be heard, regardless what is selected when the game starts...

Mod music must be enabled in the settings (F5) explicitly.

As an alternative, I've updated the binary on Github to enable one of the mods by default. I didn't put the binary in an LHA archive file as of yet, though. Please be advised that you would need to delete an existing config (config.conf) to take advantage of the new default.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by buggs

Mod music must be enabled in the settings (F5) explicitly.

As an alternative, I've updated the binary on Github to enable one of the mods by default. I didn't put the binary in an LHA archive file as of yet, though. Please be advised that you would need to delete an existing config (config.conf) to take advantage of the new default.

Thank you very much. Did not know F5 Settings even worked, since in the version on vampire distribituion it did not. Also Wide Screen seems to work "to an extend" and 60 FPS also Great stuff.

Video of it running in 60 FPS on pistorm with Emu68 core:

[ Show youtube player ]

A few minor "problems" maybe, if you are taking bug reports:

- 60 FPS setting is saved, but when loaded next time it is not taken into account and the game runs at 30 fps.
- When in Widescreen the game sets the 398 x 224 video mode, but for some reason the right-most 12 pixels or so are not used so there is some space left there (you can see it in the video)

[buggs]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

- 60 FPS setting is saved, but when loaded next time it is not taken into account and the game runs at 30 fps.
- When in Widescreen the game sets the 398 x 224 video mode, but for some reason the right-most 12 pixels or so are not used so there is some space left there (you can see it in the video)

Fixed both. I also found a bug in the HiRes rendering code that led to crashes on AmigaOS.

If the screen is wider than the display area, then the content is now horizontally centered in V1.3.

Github updated: https://github.com/HenrykRichter/Can...nnonball13.lha

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by buggs

Fixed both. I also found a bug in the HiRes rendering code that led to crashes on AmigaOS.

If the screen is wider than the display area, then the content is now horizontally centered in V1.3.

Github updated: https://github.com/HenrykRichter/Can...nnonball13.lha

Thank you very much.

Everything working perfectly. Even hires mode. Altough we get only around 20 FPS with Widescreen + Hires on pistorm

But Normal resolution + Widescreen it hits 58 FPS quite nicely most of the times. Very smooth.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by buggs

Fixed both. I also found a bug in the HiRes rendering code that led to crashes on AmigaOS.

If the screen is wider than the display area, then the content is now horizontally centered in V1.3.

Github updated: https://github.com/HenrykRichter/Can...nnonball13.lha

There seems to be a bug with the Tunes, only First and Second tunes are loaded and can be selected, when selecting the third one it loads the 2nd tune, so it cannot be selected. You can see it also in the menu in the sound test section.