Scorpion Engine

[lionagony]

Just wanted to mention that earok did a stream on Amiga Bill last weekend that is now up on Youtube [ Show youtube player ] As a new user of Scorpion I found it very helpful and learned a lot. He pretty much created the outline of an entire game from scratch live so it's a great video to get started.

[earok]

Thanks lionagony !

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Last few experimental fixes were:
- Fix for MML music (also includes ability to use audiodriver variable to determine if it's an Amiga driver or which one of the two Mega Drive ones)
- Fixes issue with missing pixels on column slice mode
- Further fix for hit boxes on retroanimator animations

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Well overdue, but 2023.4 has been soft launched. I'll do a more formal announcement in a couple of days if no breaking bug reports come through.

https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos

Official performance scores:
A500 PAL: 679 (2% improvement)
A1200 PAL: 1040 (<1% improvement)
A1200 + Fast PAL: 1628 (5% improvement)
Mega Drive (BlastEM/PAL): 938 (3% improvement)

Features:
* Improved copper rainbow support on Amiga, including being able to set any of the 256 colors and at 24 bit color depth
* Support for VGM music on Mega Drive (XGM driver from SGDK)
* Support for saving on Mega Drive (SRAM)
* Ability to support more than 32 active actors at one time
* Improved Cut/Paste/Undo/Redo functionality
* Support for byte arrays - this will be expanded in future with word array support

[maneus]

First I wanna thank you, earok, for your work on this engine. Great work.

I tried this engine to reproduce my old project from the S.E.U.C.K.(Shoot Em Up Construction Kit) back in the days.

I run into a little problem while creating enemies. I cant make them shoot against my player.

The enemies should emerge from a hole in the ground with a machine gun, shoot at the player and then disappear again when the player is out of reach. Am I correct in assuming that something like this is not possible (at the moment) with the Scorpion Engine?

I just can't get the enemies to shoot at me.

[earok]

Thanks for the kind words maneus

Should all be possible with codeblock scripting. Amigo the Fox sample is an example of a game with cacti enemies that enter and leave the ground which might be of some interest to look at, and shooting at the player is just actor -> shoot, choose the projectile type and set shoot at player.

edit: What acidbottle said below is very good advice

[acidbottle]

hey maeus, welcome aboard, good luck with that project, you will almost certainly improve on a SEUCK game tbh

What you describe is absolutely possible.

You would need to set an ontimer expire (0 frames) condition to the enemy actor. The codeblock would then check the x and y variables of the actor in proximity to the player.

I am the worst at describing the code needed for this but essentially it can be done.

[khph_re]

Fantastic work.
For comparison in terms of performance (assuming it's still calculated the same way):

22/08/2022

A500 = 303
A1200 = 488
A1200+Fast = 972

27/11/2023

A500 PAL: 679 (2% improvement)
A1200 PAL: 1040 (<1% improvement)
A1200 + Fast PAL: 1628 (5% improvement)

[maneus]

Thank you for your reply @earok and acidbottle.

I tried the shoot at player methode, you mentioned @earok, but the enemy actor will not shoot at me. ^^

I wanted to upload my project file, but the link to it is not show propperly at this forum.

Another question: Where I have to put in the licence key, I got from Patreon for 2023.4?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by maneus

I wanted to upload my project file, but the link to it is not show propperly at this forum.

Certain file hoster are blocked. You can always upload files to the zone (https://eab.abime.net/zone.php?) after joining the user group: https://eab.abime.net/faq.php?faq=vb...ezone_faq_item

[maneus]

Thank you TCD for your help. I joined now and uploaded the file.

Here is the link to my project file:shoot_at_player.rar

Maybe some of you can take a watch and try out, what exactly I did wrong?

In all those videos and projects about the Scorpion Editor, I never saw an enemy shoot at the player. And I really tried a lot before asking you.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by maneus

Maybe some of you can take a watch and try out, what exactly I did wrong?

You need a codeblock in the On Timer Expired (how often to shoot) bit of the soldier, use actor/shootprojectile, default projectile/default direction.

[Lemming880]

@maneus. Another way to make an enemy shoot is to link a codeblock to an animation frame.

Select an animation frame and at the bottom right you have "Frame:' where you can link a codeblock.

In the codeblock should be something like:
"Shoot the Actor's default projectile using default settings." The default settings can be set in actor page. Like "shoot at player". But it can also be set in the codeblock itself. So you have to experiment a bit.

If you want the enemy to shoot for instance each 30 frames, then you have to make an animation that has 30 frames in between frames.

Frames can be two things: an image and 1/50 of a second (or 60 on NTSC). It's one word for two things... like smurf.

[maneus]

Thank you @UltraNarwhal and @Lemming880.

I got it to work by codeblock.

[sokolovic]

I've recently played the Wonderwan B&W version of Makaimura / Ghouls N Ghost and I was thinking that this would be an interesting game to port using the Scorpion Engine (with some more colors of course).
Does anyone knows if the datas from this game have been ripped somewhere ? Can't find anything.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Does anyone knows if the datas from this game have been ripped somewhere ? Can't find anything.

Only Arthur sprite, so you'd have to rip it all yourself.
https://www.spriters-resource.com/wo...wsc/makaimura/

[earok]

2023.4 is now out officially, now with two (previously Patreon exclusive) demos. Full details below.

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https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos

Official performance scores:
A500 PAL: 679 (2% improvement)
A1200 PAL: 1040 (<1% improvement)
A1200 + Fast PAL: 1628 (5% improvement)
Mega Drive (BlastEM/PAL): 938 (3% improvement)

Features:
* Improved copper rainbow support on Amiga, including being able to set any of the 256 colors and at 24 bit color depth
* Support for VGM music on Mega Drive (XGM driver from SGDK)
* Support for saving on Mega Drive (SRAM)
* Ability to support more than 32 active actors at one time
* Improved Cut/Paste/Undo/Redo functionality
* Support for byte arrays - this will be expanded in future with word array support

In addition, Scorpion Engine now includes the previously exclusive Bullet Hell 2 (Amiga) and Real Time Scaling (Amiga/Mega Drive) demos.



Huge thanks to our generous Patreon backers, as well as our sponsors BitBeamCannon and DragonBox.de

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by earok

In addition, Scorpion Engine now includes the previously exclusive Bullet Hell 2 (Amiga) and Real Time Scaling (Amiga/Mega Drive) demos.

Is there some kind of migic involved in displaying all those bobs?

[earok]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Is there some kind of migic involved in displaying all those bobs?

It's a kind of magic.



The bullets leave a permanent trail "baked" on to both buffers, I don't do a blitter clear operation after doing the regular blit. To give the illusion that the stream of bullets is changing direction, I fire an invisible bullet to clear out part of the arc before firing a regular one to draw the new part of the arc.

Since this is a very Amiga specific trick, I can't replicate it on Mega Drive.

[Lineof7s]

I've been following along with interest for what feels like years now, but I check in on new releases now and then to see where things are at. Looking better than ever, so I'm having another peek.

Bit of a n00b issue though: if I load up a project and hit "Run in WinUAE", the first time it asks for the path to WinUAE, no problem. When it runs, though, I get the Kickstart screen and nothing else.

Figured it might have something to do with the un-set "Select WinUAE Config" option, but when I try that there are none listed to choose from. I tried saving a config from WinUAE in the Scorpion folder in case that helped (nope) and in the Editor folder (nope), so I'm kind of at a loss.

I've read all the README and README-adjacent text files I can find, and checked out what videos I could, but haven't tripped over the right combination of things that addresses my issue.

What obvious thing am I missing?

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by earok

It's a kind of magic.



The bullets leave a permanent trail "baked" on to both buffers, I don't do a blitter clear operation after doing the regular blit. To give the illusion that the stream of bullets is changing direction, I fire an invisible bullet to clear out part of the arc before firing a regular one to draw the new part of the arc.

Since this is a very Amiga specific trick, I can't replicate it on Mega Drive.

,

Interesting stuff

[earok]

@Lineof7s I haven't been able to replicate the issue you've reported, I've asked on the discord and no one there knew the cause either.

What version of WinUAE are you using? I'm currently on 4.9.1.

If you compile the game without having a configuration set, it should show under CDs and Drives an automatically set path to the output folder.

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Initial check in of 2023.5:

- OnFrame has been dropped from animations, in it's place you can add as many events to each animation frame as you want (this may not in of itself be that useful, but the system is going to be expanded radically over the next few updates).

- Can no longer use internal variables for panels - these variables are typically updated by the engine, which doesn't have the performance overhead of notifying the panels of a variable change, so assigning a panel element to have an internal variable usually wouldn't work as expected.

I haven't posted new keys yet - licence keys for 2023.4 will continue to work for the mean time.