26 December 2014, 01:28 | #1 |
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Conversion Capers: Mayhem in Monsterland
Time to resurrect this idea and see how the coders in here would approach converting this famous C64 game.
First up, [ Show youtube player ] to familiarise yourself with the game and all the tricks. At first glance (level 1), it seems a trivial job, probably a 16 colour screen (as it only scrolls horizontally) but there are a number of issues if you dig deeper or know the game well:
Obviously with only 16 colours on the C64, it's not at all difficult to simply draw the entire screen and have it look identical in 4 bitplanes, but to do everything at 50Hz you would have to have some tricks. Dual playfield would make a few things much easier, but sacrifice colours. If enemies were drawn in dual playfield, you would be severely restrict their palette. Could you make the game look good enough? So over to you, what screenmode, what would you use sprites for etc etc... Last edited by TCD; 26 December 2014 at 04:06. Reason: Fixed minor typo |
26 December 2014, 21:03 | #2 | ||||||||||
Natteravn
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The scrolling title screen with the big letters in front are already challenging on the Amiga. There are not enough sprites for it. Drawing with the blitter might be too expensive. Double playfield - too few colours. Quote:
A problem with porting from the C64 is also that tiles are usually 8x8 pixel based. You would probably have to redesign everything on a 16x16 or 16x8 base. Quote:
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It's a really wide waterfall. I have no idea here. Redrawing the whole screen is certainly no option. Maybe sprites, as the pattern is repetitive? Quote:
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Otherwise I would use sprites for the effects when you jump onto a monster and some fragments are flying away. Maybe the waterfall..? |
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26 December 2014, 21:17 | #3 |
Beyond Mutton
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Great topic!
I would do the waterfall effect with color cycling, reserving, say, 5 colors and dont use them around the waterfall area, switch the cycling on and off around the waterfall. Once away from waterfall, 5 colours set to normal palette use. The rotating pickup stars I would do with 1 bitplane animations, just write them directly to the screen each animation frame, (the other bitplanes would be clear). If you design the star animation system to only update 1 or 2 tiles per frame, you could have a decent amount of stars without spending too much processing time, once collected the animation could change to a dissolve animation without extra cost. |
26 December 2014, 21:50 | #4 | |||||
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Didn't see that far into the video, but if using a single playfield I guess you'd just have a carefully drawn area to ensure the sprite went behind the first few bitplanes? (probably bitplanes 0 and 1) Quote:
Enemies and the main character appear to be 16x16 pixels in size, so a single sprite for each one. For the bigger enemies, I'd use 3 sprites (they don't appear to be wide enough to require 4) for them. |
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26 December 2014, 23:49 | #5 |
Going nowhere
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Awesome looking little game. Basically it entirely depends if youre intention is a 1:1 conversion or you intend to amiga-ise it.
that title screen you could get away with making it 32 colours and judicious use of the pallete, thus moving the bitplanes for tha background and not affecting the logo stuff. if you were to do it Amiga style graphics, then youve got some probs. fucking awesome looking little game so late in the c64's life |
27 December 2014, 00:08 | #6 |
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Thanks for your comments guys, I have done a little reading in the "diary of a game" section in Commodore Format and early on they mentioned it was 8 pixels/frame scrolling not 16. Unless they increased it later, that might be the limit.
Something I read also suggests the stars were changed to sprites later in development (as it was using up too many characters). That means they avoided lots of enemies in those areas and had groups of stars done with sprites (as the C64 has a physical limit of 8 across, and Mayhem takes up 2 at all times). Almost all sprites in the game are standard C64 dimensions of 24 pixels wide x 21 high. And many are doubled vertically and/or horizontally. The game arranges 8x8 tiles into blocks of 32x32 pixels, and a map is 256 blocks wide (so approximately 25 screens wide) but there are vertical strips of control codes in the map which presumably trigger things like palette/music/enemy boss changes etc. And yes, these guys (Apex) were pretty much the best in the business in regards to perfectionism and technical tricks! Last edited by Codetapper; 27 December 2014 at 00:38. Reason: Added width of map information |
27 December 2014, 00:22 | #7 |
Phone Homer
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Just for fun I put a scrolling Demo in the Zone the Joystick controlls the direction and speed
Just for fun I might add a Sprites/hero -might not see if anyone else picks its up- I think title screen can be dual playfield - tile set is only about 9 colours |
27 December 2014, 01:01 | #8 |
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Where did you get all the levels from? There's an app someone wrote (mayhemeditorv2) but it doesn't work properly on my PC, presumably some libraries/dlls missing.
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27 December 2014, 01:03 | #9 | |
Zone Friend
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http://csdb.dk/release/?id=101863 |
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27 December 2014, 09:53 | #10 |
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If i remember correctly Mayhem used some colour tricks on the C64 to fake more than 16 colours.
If you look closely at Mayhem you will see colours used that the C64 never had and it's very clever, it appears to be some kind of dithering or alternating colours trick! So an Amiga conversion would need to use more then 16 colours to reproduce the full range of colours the C64 had ingame, or use some kind of colour hack like on the C64. If you look here- http://www.psytronik.net/main/index....e-64&Itemid=57 It says one of the features of the game is-> Non-Standard C64 Colours! Last edited by hansel75; 27 December 2014 at 10:04. |
27 December 2014, 10:05 | #11 |
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The most known trick was to use different colours on alternate lines, which then got mixed in the output due to how the PAL signal is decoded. So you could get quite a few shades in between. Doesn't work the same way with NTSC though.
Also this may or may not be implemented accurately in various emulators (in the first post you can see a clear horizontal line pattern for example, those are probably intended to be mixed if it were viewed on a TV). |
27 December 2014, 10:12 | #12 |
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Apparently the Wii VC version of Mayhem is not very accurate compared to a real C64, colours are wrong etc-
[ Show youtube player ] |
27 December 2014, 10:58 | #13 |
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Is that written in AMOS? (cause of the amos.library in libs: )
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27 December 2014, 11:05 | #14 | ||
Phone Homer
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Yep |
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27 December 2014, 11:43 | #15 |
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16 colors can do this game nicely as long as you use a sophisticated palette like dawnbringers 16. Look in the example that this game uses this palette (yes it is the same 16 colors all around).
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27 December 2014, 12:08 | #16 |
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You can throw these frames into the demo if you want to
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27 December 2014, 12:13 | #17 |
Wonderful World Of Amiga
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The closest you'll get to Sonic/Mario on the C64...O.K there was Great Giana Sisters, but Mayhem In Monsterland had bi-directional scrolling..
Definately one of the best C64 games. Even when many developers had abandoned the C64, the Rowland Bros (John & Steve) continued to push the humble 64 to the limits. No one knew the bread box better than them. I continually supported the C64 and even purchased the disc version (which I still own) of the game from Apex Computer Productions back in 1993... Most notably remembered for the amazing Creatures games which made the 64 do things nobody could have imagined. The Rowlands designed, coded and composed everything themselves to give the player the best experience ever! You got your money's worth when you bought their games. Mayhem In Monsterland did appear a few years ago for mobile phones, but it would be a pleasure to play the game again on the Amiga. Mayhem was a cool 64 mascot....it's a shame the dwindling 64 market deprived the 64 community of a sequel |
27 December 2014, 12:31 | #18 |
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Mayhem and Creatures use VSP scrolling trick. Which causes some C64s in the wild to crash. But VSP saves raster time in scrolling and is very useful for this kind of game.
I don't think the gameplay was particularly that great in Mayhem, but in Creatures I thought it was perfect. Very challenging game and superb level design. I am surprised after reading the techincal discussions on this thread that an Amiga remake might have to leave out or tone down some of the effects. The C64 trumping the Amiga? I am impressed. |
27 December 2014, 13:49 | #19 | ||
Natteravn
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With a maximum of 8 pixels/frame we only need to update six 32x32 tiles in the border every four frames. When using double-buffering that would be three 32x32 tiles per frame. Then scrolling is no longer an issue. Quote:
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27 December 2014, 14:49 | #20 |
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Great Topic! Mayhem is for sure one of the technically most impressive games on the C64.
Just some ideas:
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