Beats of Fire - Page 7

leathered · 01 May 2013, 13:55

The sprites are 64 pixels wide and can be any height. To make them 64 colours you have to attach two, one on top of the other. You can have different frames next to each other, taking up a further 2 sprites, and so on. The Amiga has 8 sprites, meaning the maximum width is 256 pixels for the parallx background. There are ways around that, which are beyond me I'm afraid.
The Amiga is able to choose the order of the sprites and the playfield. Using Blitz and the HRM it's not too much of a trial, Blitz provides commands for accessing the appropriate registers.

AMCAF maybe supports it, otherwise I'm not sure if you can do it with sprites in AMOS. You have to turn vsprites off I think, but I'm not sure about prioritising the sprites/playfields. AMCAF supports other cool stuff, like using more than one fire button.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

I belive there are some screens/levels/rooms without any parallax could more colours be used on these screens?

EDIT: I think it depends. The sprite hardware handles things independently of the blitter etc, so having no sprites doesn't always mean there's more power left for the bobs etc. That's the beauty of sprites though, they can give you a bit more 'edge'.
But if there's fewer bobs onscreen then yes, I think more colours can be used. And you're right, there are screens when there's 1 or 2 bosses.
I'd really love to get more colours in this thing.

leathered · 14 May 2013, 10:34

[ Show youtube player ]

Early version of Sodom's stage.
Turrican3 has been helping with the graphics, I thought Sodom's stage would be a good one to get ripping with mame and was amazed at the speed he managed to do it, even ripping the crowd as a separate layer with only mame and greenshot. I think that since then he's been using kawaks - thankyou fishyfish.
Turrican3 also improved the details of animations for Haggar, who looks a lot more solid now.
Sodom's stage is atm a roughly hacked version of the previous wip, and inherited it's problems.
Focusing on just the 2 characters I was able to fix a particularly annoying bug that halted the progress. This also fixed the previous wip, which is now stable, however the bug seems to have re-surfaced in Sodom's stage.

I think the thing to do here is port it back.

@boo boo
This would be one of the areas in which a greater customisation is available - we went for parallax scrolling but could have tried more colours.

The wip is almost ready for a playable demo. It would help me improve the mechanics if I can get a few people to play it and get some feedback.
There is some gameplay there, and the most roughly cut energy bar you've ever seen. Collisions are on and the enemy is pretty fierce, you can die very quickly. Bugs are still numerous, of course.

TCD · 14 May 2013, 10:42

This looks really nice Lielo

I don't have the time to help with playtesting right now, but all the best for the remake

leathered · 14 May 2013, 11:06

No worries TCD, I've still got to finish the demo before playtesting

Reido · 14 May 2013, 11:29

Looks great looking forward to the demo!

dlfrsilver · 14 May 2013, 11:32

yes me too !!! what i saw is already incredibly good !!!

turrican3 · 18 May 2013, 12:15

yes leilo did an incredible job, and i will do all i can to help.

final fight aga is yet incredible, and i'm configent that he will be more incredible later.

leathered · 06 July 2013, 13:58

A quick update of the progress, just so you know that there is some.

For a long time I wrestled with a couple of major bugs without doing much else, it became quite a stagnant affair until I switched tactics and re-wrote several sections. The problems are (hopefully) fixed and I've been able to press on somewhat with tidying up everything else. I've been busy with a lot of other things besides this, and must confess I've let the summer get to me - especially easy to do that when all you've got going on is the slog of de-bugging.

The game has some restart code which flushes and re-loads the the graphics and appears quite clean, this is an important step in getting the transitions to other stages to function properly and that shouldn't be far away now, and I will begin putting Sodom into the game tonight. I'll stick my neck out here and say that this will be at a presentable state in about a week (or 2

).

ATM the enemy attacks far too quickly. The collision/combo system resembles the arcade less than it formerly did because of changes made to speed up the code. I'm not overly concerned about this right now, I've been making notes of how the combo system could work and will try that when I get the stage transitions working. I think it matters more that the game remains playable rather than attempting to copy the arcade combo system 100% accurately.

Turrican3 has re-done the graphics for Haggar again, making him look quite different to before. I'm excited about getting this done, the pace is picking up again and I estimate the demo to be around 85% complete.

Expect a few bugs, and for certain elements to appear quite different from the arcade. I won't be able to get the energy bars working as sprites just yet- that will have to remain an experiment, but there will be one - and probably only one for now.

Finally to wrap up the earlier statement about ditching this in favour of a new game using the engine - I've (obviously) decided to continue Final Fight. Thanks to all that lent an opinion to this; there is some truth to all of the comments made.
Ultimately I would have to continue developing the engine with either option, and I've been able to develop something of a game plan as far as the new game goes. You will probably see something of it emerging quite soon as I plod along with FF AGA. I'm encouraged by the interest in working on new projects, I hope to see some collaborations further down the line, be that with me or otherwise.
As for the Haggar vs Haggar diversion - I may have some use for that when it comes to making this thing 2up, but not yet. There were just too many bugs to address to make such a distraction worthwhile.

I'll get back to you with a demo asap

lesta_smsc · 06 July 2013, 14:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lielo

A quick update of the progress, just so you know that there is some.

For a long time I wrestled with a couple of major bugs without doing much else, it became quite a stagnant affair until I switched tactics and re-wrote several sections. The problems are (hopefully) fixed and I've been able to press on somewhat with tidying up everything else. I've been busy with a lot of other things besides this, and must confess I've let the summer get to me - especially easy to do that when all you've got going on is the slog of de-bugging.

The game has some restart code which flushes and re-loads the the graphics and appears quite clean, this is an important step in getting the transitions to other stages to function properly and that shouldn't be far away now, and I will begin putting Sodom into the game tonight. I'll stick my neck out here and say that this will be at a presentable state in about a week (or 2

).

ATM the enemy attacks far too quickly. The collision/combo system resembles the arcade less than it formerly did because of changes made to speed up the code. I'm not overly concerned about this right now, I've been making notes of how the combo system could work and will try that when I get the stage transitions working. I think it matters more that the game remains playable rather than attempting to copy the arcade combo system 100% accurately.

Turrican3 has re-done the graphics for Haggar again, making him look quite different to before. I'm excited about getting this done, the pace is picking up again and I estimate the demo to be around 85% complete.

Expect a few bugs, and for certain elements to appear quite different from the arcade. I won't be able to get the energy bars working as sprites just yet- that will have to remain an experiment, but there will be one - and probably only one for now.

Finally to wrap up the earlier statement about ditching this in favour of a new game using the engine - I've (obviously) decided to continue Final Fight. Thanks to all that lent an opinion to this; there is some truth to all of the comments made.
Ultimately I would have to continue developing the engine with either option, and I've been able to develop something of a game plan as far as the new game goes. You will probably see something of it emerging quite soon as I plod along with FF AGA. I'm encouraged by the interest in working on new projects, I hope to see some collaborations further down the line, be that with me or otherwise.
As for the Haggar vs Haggar diversion - I may have some use for that when it comes to making this thing 2up, but not yet. There were just too many bugs to address to make such a distraction worthwhile.

I'll get back to you with a demo asap

This is great news! I recall an interview with the coder and he mentioned something about difficulties in making a better version of the game ported to Amiga so you've certainly taking him up on that challenge!

Galahad/FLT · 06 July 2013, 22:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

This is great news! I recall an interview with the coder and he mentioned something about difficulties in making a better version of the game ported to Amiga so you've certainly taking him up on that challenge!

With respect, Richard Aplin didn't get to write it for AGA, considering the A1200 hadn't even been released at the time of Final Fight, he wrote it for OCS/ecs.

Not to knock the efforts of this version obviously, but I'm pretty sure had Richard had the opportunity to write it for AGA, he would have produced a better version than the one he did.

TCD · 07 July 2013, 00:14

I honestly didn't get why Richard opted for a fixed palette for all levels. That made the game pretty dull visually and with the usual Amiga one-button 'issue' nothing to write home about.

All the best for getting this one done and I think with CD32 pad support this could become the progressive Beat 'em up on the Miggy

Lord Aga · 07 July 2013, 10:49

The original OCS conversion is a great shame for Amiga. It was aiming for 1:1 pixels at the cost of everything else The result is Final Fight graphics (almost, since the colors ruin it a fair deal) on the Donkey Kong engine. Terrible game. No playability at all.

The graphics should have been scaled down in order to lighten the load (like Sega and Nintendo did) palettes fixed, and gameplay done a lot better.

lesta_smsc · 07 July 2013, 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

With respect, Richard Aplin didn't get to write it for AGA, considering the A1200 hadn't even been released at the time of Final Fight, he wrote it for OCS/ecs.

Not to knock the efforts of this version obviously, but I'm pretty sure had Richard had the opportunity to write it for AGA, he would have produced a better version than the one he did.

Would it be worth Lielo approaching Richard for a collaboration!?

Havie · 07 July 2013, 10:52

This is looking amazing! It also gives hope to us no ASM programmers (stopped ay Z80 on the Speccy) that arcade quality stuff can produced in Blitz basic.

You are inspiring me to revist my Target Renegade remake (PC only at the moment) that has be languishing in development hell since the birth of my son (an embarrassing time ago).

Coagulus · 07 July 2013, 11:09

It's the progress of this that has kept me going with my Amiga programming in Blitz also. And Lielo has provided assistance for my JetHunt AGA version too.

Can't wait to play this the demos already felt great.

leathered · 08 October 2013, 12:45

(Dull thud of head rolling into bloody basket)
You may have noticed that my self imposed deadline passed a looong time ago.
With 2 holidays back to back and feeling I’d turned a corner I was certainly over optimistic. Well, taking my laptop camping turned out to be a far less productive experience than I’d hoped (power supply fried due to a dodgy cable- we camped in one of those wooden (plastic actually) pods with electricity). Prior to that I pushed the version I had going as far and as fast as I could, ultimately running into problems due to not checking the work thoroughly enough. So eventually I tucked tail and began much of it again – slower, and hopefully better.

The most recent development is using the 2* bandwidth bitmap fetchmode to give the cpu a bit of a breather. Happily this results in the frame rate being more constant with more happening on screen (and less glitching). It also meant I had to switch to a 256 pixel wide display; meaning the background in the first stage can no longer be loosley termed as using parallax scrolling, it really is a static background now. Happily the display still uses 8 sprites and is well centred

Regarding a collaboration with Rich Aplin, I think it's a fair assumption that he's unlikely to return to Amiga programming just to help with this. That said I'd greatly welcome some inside knowledge as to how he achieved the exchanging of characters in memory during gameplay, there is great variety in this respect during a single stage and especially for 1MB. But what I'd really like to see is an updated version of Double Dragon 2 with the missing moves from Amiga DD1 put back in, and maybe the spinning kick from the arcade. I'm probably very peculiar in that I prefered DD1 to play because of the larger amount of ways to dispense with your opponent.

The new self imposed deadline is 21st October, it should be ready to roll before that and when that happens I'll make it available. While Turri buzzes away with the final GFX I'm fixing the last known bugs (for now!) and tying up loose ends. The demo is at alpha stage but if you'd like to playtest then let me know some way (Batman style light projection is preferable but will accept other means) and I'll wrap up the files and send you a link – don't want to zone it yet as it will quickly be superseded.
I'm afraid there is no ADF version as yet, it will certainly require more than 1 disk or quite a cut down to fit on to 1. Testing right now will require having workbench installed and having some knowledge of CLI if you want to boot it that way. Controls will be posted at a later date and I'll update the first post then.

turrican3 · 08 October 2013, 17:02

i did at my best mate, i hope amigans will like it.
But i think they will appreciate the effort.
You did a really great job.

sokolovic · 09 October 2013, 10:23

Great job indeed... Could be funny to have also a CD32 version with the MegaCD tunes. Don't know if it is possible...

I'd love to see a briliant conversion of Ghouls'n'Ghost on the Amiga too... I don't know the policy of Capcom but maybe they can release the rights for such a little market...

Anyway, if I can help, I'd love too.

leathered · 09 October 2013, 12:44

I greatly appreciate all the support , but this code has yet to prove itself conclusively of being able to go the distance as far as the full game is concerned. With the demo almost finished (which it may remain for a long time) I've got a lot of other things to look into before trying to proceed. I'm feeling atm that Blitz is better geared towards programs where the entirety of the graphics etc. reside in memory. Blitz coding is a double edged sword, you get all sorts of help with setting up the environment and getting things running – and finding sources and examples is pure gold (the manual is always not very helpful). But to try anything not well documented/sourced is a slog – you are in an environment where you can use ASM but the integration with the Blitz semi 'fire and forget' methods requires knowledge a step up (or down, strictly speaking) from what BASIC programmers are used to. It remains however a great environment to tinker with ASM.

Sokolovic – I'll send you a link, but we're very close to just putting this out now, warts and all.

leathered · 21 October 2013, 12:39

Finally, here is the promised demo. Apologies for being so slow!

There are a number of bugs, but hopefully nothing game breaking.

I'll post a bit more info when I get the time.

http://www.lostinthefens.com/FFAGA_A...A_ALPHA1.5.zip

08 October 2013, 12:45	#136
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	(Dull thud of head rolling into bloody basket) You may have noticed that my self imposed deadline passed a looong time ago. With 2 holidays back to back and feeling I’d turned a corner I was certainly over optimistic. Well, taking my laptop camping turned out to be a far less productive experience than I’d hoped (power supply fried due to a dodgy cable- we camped in one of those wooden (plastic actually) pods with electricity). Prior to that I pushed the version I had going as far and as fast as I could, ultimately running into problems due to not checking the work thoroughly enough. So eventually I tucked tail and began much of it again – slower, and hopefully better. The most recent development is using the 2* bandwidth bitmap fetchmode to give the cpu a bit of a breather. Happily this results in the frame rate being more constant with more happening on screen (and less glitching). It also meant I had to switch to a 256 pixel wide display; meaning the background in the first stage can no longer be loosley termed as using parallax scrolling, it really is a static background now. Happily the display still uses 8 sprites and is well centred Regarding a collaboration with Rich Aplin, I think it's a fair assumption that he's unlikely to return to Amiga programming just to help with this. That said I'd greatly welcome some inside knowledge as to how he achieved the exchanging of characters in memory during gameplay, there is great variety in this respect during a single stage and especially for 1MB. But what I'd really like to see is an updated version of Double Dragon 2 with the missing moves from Amiga DD1 put back in, and maybe the spinning kick from the arcade. I'm probably very peculiar in that I prefered DD1 to play because of the larger amount of ways to dispense with your opponent. The new self imposed deadline is 21st October, it should be ready to roll before that and when that happens I'll make it available. While Turri buzzes away with the final GFX I'm fixing the last known bugs (for now!) and tying up loose ends. The demo is at alpha stage but if you'd like to playtest then let me know some way (Batman style light projection is preferable but will accept other means) and I'll wrap up the files and send you a link – don't want to zone it yet as it will quickly be superseded. I'm afraid there is no ADF version as yet, it will certainly require more than 1 disk or quite a cut down to fit on to 1. Testing right now will require having workbench installed and having some knowledge of CLI if you want to boot it that way. Controls will be posted at a later date and I'll update the first post then. Last edited by leathered; 09 October 2013 at 12:45.

21 October 2013, 12:39	#140
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	FFAGA Alpha demo Finally, here is the promised demo. Apologies for being so slow! There are a number of bugs, but hopefully nothing game breaking. I'll post a bit more info when I get the time. http://www.lostinthefens.com/FFAGA_A...A_ALPHA1.5.zip

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Beats of Rage engine for OCS/ECS.	Toni Galvez	Amiga scene	17	12 January 2015 01:58
Absolutely NOTHING Beats The Real Thing	Amiga1992	Retrogaming General Discussion	24	18 February 2014 11:35
Beats of Rage OS4.x	fitzsteve	Retrogaming General Discussion	1	23 December 2011 00:09
You know it really beats the hell out of me !!	synchro	Amiga scene	6	11 May 2006 16:01
WinUAE - HD, and WinUAE Beats me	Mr.B	support.WinUAE	19	26 October 2003 17:49

14 May 2013, 10:34	#122
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	[ Show youtube player ] Early version of Sodom's stage. Turrican3 has been helping with the graphics, I thought Sodom's stage would be a good one to get ripping with mame and was amazed at the speed he managed to do it, even ripping the crowd as a separate layer with only mame and greenshot. I think that since then he's been using kawaks - thankyou fishyfish. Turrican3 also improved the details of animations for Haggar, who looks a lot more solid now. Sodom's stage is atm a roughly hacked version of the previous wip, and inherited it's problems. Focusing on just the 2 characters I was able to fix a particularly annoying bug that halted the progress. This also fixed the previous wip, which is now stable, however the bug seems to have re-surfaced in Sodom's stage. I think the thing to do here is port it back. @boo boo This would be one of the areas in which a greater customisation is available - we went for parallax scrolling but could have tried more colours. The wip is almost ready for a playable demo. It would help me improve the mechanics if I can get a few people to play it and get some feedback. There is some gameplay there, and the most roughly cut energy bar you've ever seen. Collisions are on and the enemy is pretty fierce, you can die very quickly. Bugs are still numerous, of course.

14 May 2013, 10:42	#123
TCD HOL/FTP busy bee Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Germany Age: 46 Posts: 31,518	This looks really nice Lielo I don't have the time to help with playtesting right now, but all the best for the remake

14 May 2013, 11:06	#124
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	No worries TCD, I've still got to finish the demo before playtesting

14 May 2013, 11:29	#125
Reido Registered User Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: Dublin/Ireland Posts: 403	Looks great looking forward to the demo!

14 May 2013, 11:32	#126
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	yes me too !!! what i saw is already incredibly good !!!

18 May 2013, 12:15	#127
turrican3 Moon 1969 = amiga 1985 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: belgium Age: 48 Posts: 3,913	yes leilo did an incredible job, and i will do all i can to help. final fight aga is yet incredible, and i'm configent that he will be more incredible later.

06 July 2013, 13:58	#128
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	A quick update of the progress, just so you know that there is some. For a long time I wrestled with a couple of major bugs without doing much else, it became quite a stagnant affair until I switched tactics and re-wrote several sections. The problems are (hopefully) fixed and I've been able to press on somewhat with tidying up everything else. I've been busy with a lot of other things besides this, and must confess I've let the summer get to me - especially easy to do that when all you've got going on is the slog of de-bugging. The game has some restart code which flushes and re-loads the the graphics and appears quite clean, this is an important step in getting the transitions to other stages to function properly and that shouldn't be far away now, and I will begin putting Sodom into the game tonight. I'll stick my neck out here and say that this will be at a presentable state in about a week (or 2 ). ATM the enemy attacks far too quickly. The collision/combo system resembles the arcade less than it formerly did because of changes made to speed up the code. I'm not overly concerned about this right now, I've been making notes of how the combo system could work and will try that when I get the stage transitions working. I think it matters more that the game remains playable rather than attempting to copy the arcade combo system 100% accurately. Turrican3 has re-done the graphics for Haggar again, making him look quite different to before. I'm excited about getting this done, the pace is picking up again and I estimate the demo to be around 85% complete. Expect a few bugs, and for certain elements to appear quite different from the arcade. I won't be able to get the energy bars working as sprites just yet- that will have to remain an experiment, but there will be one - and probably only one for now. Finally to wrap up the earlier statement about ditching this in favour of a new game using the engine - I've (obviously) decided to continue Final Fight. Thanks to all that lent an opinion to this; there is some truth to all of the comments made. Ultimately I would have to continue developing the engine with either option, and I've been able to develop something of a game plan as far as the new game goes. You will probably see something of it emerging quite soon as I plod along with FF AGA. I'm encouraged by the interest in working on new projects, I hope to see some collaborations further down the line, be that with me or otherwise. As for the Haggar vs Haggar diversion - I may have some use for that when it comes to making this thing 2up, but not yet. There were just too many bugs to address to make such a distraction worthwhile. I'll get back to you with a demo asap

07 July 2013, 00:14	#131
TCD HOL/FTP busy bee Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Germany Age: 46 Posts: 31,518	I honestly didn't get why Richard opted for a fixed palette for all levels. That made the game pretty dull visually and with the usual Amiga one-button 'issue' nothing to write home about. All the best for getting this one done and I think with CD32 pad support this could become the progressive Beat 'em up on the Miggy

07 July 2013, 10:49	#132
Lord Aga MI clan prevails Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Belgrade, Serbia Posts: 1,443	The original OCS conversion is a great shame for Amiga. It was aiming for 1:1 pixels at the cost of everything else The result is Final Fight graphics (almost, since the colors ruin it a fair deal) on the Donkey Kong engine. Terrible game. No playability at all. The graphics should have been scaled down in order to lighten the load (like Sega and Nintendo did) palettes fixed, and gameplay done a lot better.

07 July 2013, 10:52	#134
Havie Registered User Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: UK Posts: 1,893	This is looking amazing! It also gives hope to us no ASM programmers (stopped ay Z80 on the Speccy) that arcade quality stuff can produced in Blitz basic. You are inspiring me to revist my Target Renegade remake (PC only at the moment) that has be languishing in development hell since the birth of my son (an embarrassing time ago).

07 July 2013, 11:09	#135
Coagulus Gets there in the end... Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Wales Posts: 862	It's the progress of this that has kept me going with my Amiga programming in Blitz also. And Lielo has provided assistance for my JetHunt AGA version too. Can't wait to play this the demos already felt great.

08 October 2013, 17:02	#137
turrican3 Moon 1969 = amiga 1985 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: belgium Age: 48 Posts: 3,913	i did at my best mate, i hope amigans will like it. But i think they will appreciate the effort. You did a really great job.

09 October 2013, 10:23	#138
sokolovic Registered User Join Date: Aug 2013 Location: Marseille / France Posts: 1,415	Great job indeed... Could be funny to have also a CD32 version with the MegaCD tunes. Don't know if it is possible... I'd love to see a briliant conversion of Ghouls'n'Ghost on the Amiga too... I don't know the policy of Capcom but maybe they can release the rights for such a little market... Anyway, if I can help, I'd love too.

09 October 2013, 12:44	#139
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	I greatly appreciate all the support , but this code has yet to prove itself conclusively of being able to go the distance as far as the full game is concerned. With the demo almost finished (which it may remain for a long time) I've got a lot of other things to look into before trying to proceed. I'm feeling atm that Blitz is better geared towards programs where the entirety of the graphics etc. reside in memory. Blitz coding is a double edged sword, you get all sorts of help with setting up the environment and getting things running – and finding sources and examples is pure gold (the manual is always not very helpful). But to try anything not well documented/sourced is a slog – you are in an environment where you can use ASM but the integration with the Blitz semi 'fire and forget' methods requires knowledge a step up (or down, strictly speaking) from what BASIC programmers are used to. It remains however a great environment to tinker with ASM. Sokolovic – I'll send you a link, but we're very close to just putting this out now, warts and all.

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)