18 December 2015, 18:06 | #121 | ||
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The NGPC game is much more true to the Sonic spirit set by the Megadrive versions. Quote:
Amiga used to be synonym of advancement, breakthrough and future. Nowadays it's nothing but rose tinted glassed nostalgia, all its original spirit has been lost among those who claim to hold the torch of Amiga. Almost any other home computer scene nowadays are pushing things forward making the Amiga look like garbage from yesteryear. |
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18 December 2015, 18:17 | #122 | |
HOL/FTP busy bee
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18 December 2015, 18:18 | #123 | |
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Hehe!
No, really, I mean, if Kid Chaos can look good, why not a rendition of Sonic. I might give it a try at some point and post a mock up of the foreground and a couple of baddies with 7 colours - I might reconsider my shade choices though. Btw, I've counted the colours of some instance at Kid Chaos' 1st level, only the foreground, where there's some kind of water pool and they are 10 in number. How do you think they did that, I mean the extra 3 colours. Thx! Quote:
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18 December 2015, 18:24 | #124 |
Phone Homer
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Kid Chaos and Mr Nutz are excellant but if I remember Kid Chaos map is hard to edit using smaller tiles to make up larger tiles also theres no running upside down in aloop but realy love this game.Amazing for 7x8
Blaze seems to have everything but the parallax http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=80345 |
18 December 2015, 18:27 | #125 | |||
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FYI Sonic also used tiles within tiles, at the top level each map is made of 256x256 tiles, which are each submaps of 16x16 tiles, and those 16x16 tiles were in turn made out of 8x8 tiles! Last edited by Mrs Beanbag; 18 December 2015 at 18:36. |
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18 December 2015, 18:40 | #126 |
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Thx for the answers (it was 11 colours actually) - so, that copper trick (palette change) could be used to somewhat enhance the foreground palette as well and add some extra colours here and there?
Mr. Nutz is a full 50 fps game. |
18 December 2015, 18:56 | #127 |
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oh yeah, for some reason i remember a discussion about it not being on that other thread, must have been thinking of something else
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18 December 2015, 21:12 | #128 |
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I am sure the team (or maybe one guy) who did Mr Nutz, turned up at Ocean with an exact replica of Sonic, showing it can be done on the Amiga.
Recently been going through my Amiga mags, and I am sure I read this - possibly in Amiga Power |
18 December 2015, 22:14 | #129 |
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I recall pretty much reading the same story at some point.
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19 December 2015, 03:08 | #130 | |
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The top and bottom parts of the foreground use different palettes (grey/blue-ish at the bottom and green at the top. Lionheart uses vertical palette changes on probably every level. |
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19 December 2015, 14:23 | #131 |
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I'm sure it could be possible to make Sonic for Amiga, even if it was going to be stock A500. It will just need some technical compromise, maybe less layers for backgrounds and less colors for sprites, but it would be possible. Just as You mention, there is Kid Chaos, Mr Nutz and now Blaze. Three great examples that amiga hardware with knowledge could do those kind of very fast platform game.
So why it was not released, why there is no port? I believe it is because of busies - SEGA take care about their IP, just like if You want to play Halo You must buy Xbox, want Killzone - buy Playstation. Same rule go with sonic games for a very long time. Business is a war. |
19 December 2015, 15:21 | #132 |
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I think Sonic Chaos would be quite difficult to replicate on the Amiga, and that is an 8-bit game.
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19 December 2015, 15:42 | #133 |
Warhasneverbeensomuchfun
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Why ?The game is kinda slow (compared to previous games) and usually there's never more than 2 things moving on screen at the same time. The game feels so empty for most of the time.
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19 December 2015, 15:46 | #134 | ||
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obviously, before displaying anything, you must have an IFF screen with either the level blocks, and another one with the sprites, right ? what i meant is that BEFORE displaying anything, you could apply a copper palette change routine over those pages, like this : do copper palette change from line 0 to 127, 128 to 256 and so on, and then, ask the amiga to display the whole thing on screen. This is the technique used by Pang, which is using 64 real colors on screen, because it is performing 4 palettes changes on the 4 stripes composing the background graphics. Yes the Amiga is locked to 8 colors in dual playfield. But some games have proved it can be done via tricks. About Pang, it's not an EHB display, it's a normal 16 colors environnement but with copper palette changes. Shadow of the beast is actually doing the same, 8 palettes changes so it's 8x16 colors hence the 128 colors displayed at the same time on screen. Palette changes cost nothing since they're done in hardware, there's no CPU hits. You just have to set them up. By using the Beast trick, you should have all the original colors for level tiles and sprites. Beast shows that it's possible to have more than 100 colors and a parallax. And it has way more sprites going on screen than sonic. Toki has more than 32 colors for the main playfield, and 8 colors for the back playfield. I can speak about it, because i have ripped the full graphics of this game. It even does palette change with the copper on the main playfield ! Once again, it shows that you can break the 8 colors barrier on dual playfield mode. |
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19 December 2015, 15:48 | #135 | |
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But don't just look at the moving objects, look at all screen updates. The background in Chaos is updated a lot, and all that costs Blitter time on the Amiga while it is basically free on the Master System. Many of those background updates may be solved using colour cycling, but that also requires some thought in colour lay-out. You'll also have to mask Sonic as he passes behind objects. |
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19 December 2015, 16:11 | #136 | |
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1- Palette changes do cost. The copper takes DMA slots when it runs so this reduces the DMA bandwidth available for other things. For example: a 15 colors palette change every 30 lines costs the same as an extra 16 pixels on screen for one bitplane. That's not much but not nothing. Each copper color change takes two DMA slots, the same as an additional 16 pixels in screen width for two bitplanes. Also, if these lines are not static then it costs CPU to update them. 2- Palette changes every nlines do not allow all higher color games to be faithfully replicated. As Lady Beanbag and this kitten explained a few posts ago, the MegaDrive/Genesis can display 61 colors per scanline and any game which does combine these colors on the same scan lines cannot be replicated by simply changing the palette vertically. I am not saying this is the case with Sonic, it seems to me that it probably hovers around 32 colors per scanline, but it could be. 32 is already way too high for dual playfield to reproduce (even with sprites: the Amiga has too few of these kittens). Someone could take a hundred random pictures of Sonic 1 levels and do a color count per line, this would be helpful in determining the actual color constraints of a 1:1 visual conversion. As I said, the first level and possibly second seem within the Amiga very close reach (and I could be wrong) but this color counting would be a very good way to assess it. |
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19 December 2015, 17:16 | #137 |
CaptainM68K-SPS France
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64 colors, 4 palettes of 16 colors. As said, Beast is going way further than Sonic in term of CPU hits and colors on screen.
In sonic sprites have not that many frames (far from that), and i'm sure that the tricks can overcome the problems the amiga have taken out right off the box. |
19 December 2015, 21:31 | #138 | ||
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You can't change the palette on half of the tile set, and then copy individual tiles onto the screen with them keeping their different palettes. Games that use the copper to change the palette have to be carefully designed in order to work. Sonic is not so designed. And if we only have 7 foreground colours to work with, even with palette changes, it leaves us with very few colours for our moving objects, which could appear anywhere on the screen. It's do-able on static background graphics. If a game scrolls only horizontally, or only vertically, it's also do-able with careful thought. When you start getting into multi-directional scrolling maps, then it becomes a real headache because it limits which tiles can be placed where, and you've got to keep track of them. Lionheart manages amazing visuals by having backgrounds which are essentially monochrome, but with a colour filter that changes from top to bottom. That isn't going to be any help for a game like Sonic. |
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19 December 2015, 21:54 | #139 |
CaptainM68K-SPS France
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Ok
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20 December 2015, 14:52 | #140 | |
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25 FPS platform games in 5 bitplanes with lots of enemies and action do already exist. The fact that Blaze supports loops and background masking is nice but loops never presented any challenge, they are just a design novelty, not a technical one and masking also exists in many platform games. Blaze is great for many reasons, but its contribution are the full screen redraw at 25FPS and that it looks and feels like Sonic. The former is totally unnecessary (and undesirable) for Sonic, and the latter has nothing to do with technicity. Blaze feels (in terms of gameplay) like Sonic but that only proves its author's design skills. It was never needed to prove that Sonic was feasible on the Amiga in terms of gameplay. This much was always obvious. The challenge lies in compromising the original graphics and sounds as little as possible when translating it to the Amiga and the only proof that this can be done satisfactorily will be in the final pudding, not in any intermediate version. And let me repeat that Blaze is very nice, just in case someone thinks I am dissing it.. |
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