Beats of Fire - Page 5

StingRay · 08 April 2013, 07:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Also, they could have used RNC propack like on the PC release, instead of using the crappy stone cracker 4.04 compressor......

Care to explain what exactly makes STC4.04 "crappy"? I'm all ears.

dlfrsilver · 08 April 2013, 07:45

RNC propack has a better compression, no ?

RichAplin · 13 April 2013, 08:21

Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga.

I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

viddi · 13 April 2013, 09:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichAplin

Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga.

I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

OT:
Hey Richard,
there is another interesting project going on:

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/sh...x-restoration/

Shinobi is one of my favorite CPC games ever.
You did such a fantastic job. Thanks for that.

spud · 13 April 2013, 12:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichAplin

Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga.

I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

I am too, although this new AGA project looks awesome so far, the original one I used to play with a friend on the A500 was a damn fine game in its own right in my opinion.

fryguy · 13 April 2013, 14:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichAplin

Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga.

I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

Seems like i was the only one i liked it. I thought it was cool with such large sprites at that time. I was annoyed by the fact that it wouldn't work if you had external memory enabled though.

BippyM · 13 April 2013, 14:22

I liked the original!

Lobotomika · 13 April 2013, 16:41

Never had the chance to like the original because it never worked on my 500+, not even when degraded and it played nothing like the original when I tried it at a friend's house. Whatever it was, it was NOT final fight. The shithead that coded the Amiga version must be jailed for that.

dlfrsilver · 13 April 2013, 18:02

yes the cracked version was not working on anything else than a regular A500.

fryguy · 13 April 2013, 20:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

yes the cracked version was not working on anything else than a regular A500.

Cracked versions worked with 512kb slowmem though, the original didn't.

leathered · 14 April 2013, 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichAplin

Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga.

I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

Thanks for posting Richard, I've often wondered what you would think of someone trying a new version.
Final Fight 68k divides opinion, so this is only my own. I think that among Amiga users those who were most happy had never played the original, whilst least happy are those who'd played the arcade first. I don't think that Final Fight 68k is a bad game, but as a conversion it fell short. It's not reasonable to expect perfection, but the amount acheived highlights the differences. It looks great and plays good, but if you're used to the original you can't fail to notice that it plays like a different game. I should point out here that I never played the Amiga version at the time.
I think these days that most Amiga users know what coders where up against back then. Hypothetically, if a software house told me I had to finish now I'd have to stretch what I've got over a few stages and that would be it. It wouldn't matter to anyone that I've worked on it for about a year. It baffles me to think that anything of quality was possible with such a short time frame and limited resources.
Animosity towards conversions has (probably) existed since they started, but it's perhaps more prevalent now with system owners expecting perfect ports of the oldies. It leads to all those sad youtube comments like 'it/they couldn't handle it' or worse.
I bought the ST version back in the day, then the SNES version. I'm actually good at the ST version (even if the scrolling makes my eyes bleed

). A few weeks ago I made a longplay of it with some demoscene music that failed the youtube copyright, but that's fixed now. It seems today is as good a time as any to publish it.
[ Show youtube player ]

I'm not a great coder, but I do have the liberty of time - until Capcom steps in that is. I'm not trying to re-write the history books; I am trying to push myself and create something decent first and foremost, and in my view the miggy version of Final Fight has room for significant improvement using more modern resources - 14+ MHz, AGA and cheap storage especially - whether I can deliver or not.
I still fire up the 68k version as 'research' and have a crack at finishing it - I've not managed that yet, it's somehow harder for me than the ST version! Maybe it's 'cos I play it on 030.

Lobotomika · 14 April 2013, 19:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by fryguy

Cracked versions worked with 512kb slowmem though, the original didn't.

Did not matter for this 10 year old kid with nothing but a kickstart degrader and no means to differentiate memory standards. Cracked versions failed too.

Also I love it when people go to great lenghts to do something like this instead of doing their job properly which they hate.

Conversions that suck will always be flamed. I never heard anyone complain about Strider on Mega Drive/Genesis. I wonder why...

TCD · 14 April 2013, 20:36

Imagine you are used to waste your money with friends on this:

and then you buy the Amiga version and get this:

Not to mention only one fire button. It's hard to be 'happy' with the conversion if you're used to the arcade. I guess it was about being able to have it on the machine of choice, but like other beat 'em ups showed later (even if all Amiga ones were more or less limited) it can be done in a nicer way (both graphically and control wise). You should have coded more shoot 'em ups Rich

Telemachus · 14 April 2013, 20:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

ideal would be to decompress the files from the PC release, and compare with what we have in the amiga files. (not counting picking the PC music files and convert them in order to add them on A1200).

I'm pretty sure the PC version is identical almost to the Amiga version but more frames.

Someone could take the better frames of animation from the PC version and convert to the Amiga and maybe cut less important frames and put better ones in place to keep the requirements roughly the same.

I think the frame cuts made in the Amiga version is the only major flaw with it.

I wonder if other assets could have been cut instead of character animation?

Retro1234 · 14 April 2013, 21:28

There arnt any better scrolling beat em ups on the Amiga so fair do's Rich

Not sure how many original versions there are but my Cyclone backup would not work on KS2.x
back in the day I use to boot street fighter Hold ctrl D swap disks and then type Final and it worked on KS2.x

JudasEZT · 18 April 2013, 19:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichAplin

Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga.

I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

I'm sure your wonderful translation of Double Dragon 2 qualified you to make this FinalFight. DD2 for Amiga was an accumulation of good choices. Its gameplay was like the first coin-op machine ( which played better than DD2-Arcade ) and help to forget completely the lame DD1-Amiga.

Personally I found FinalFight a good effort on Amiga. Very smooth, big sprites.. I appreciatted the difficult in convert a capcom coin op.
Even being a kid, I always though that work for USGold would have to be great in what is money and equipment.. but a hell in deadlines.

btw, I made a poll some time ago between the two best beat'em ups from Amiga. http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...ouble%20Dragon result was a bit unexpected... at least for me.

dlfrsilver · 18 April 2013, 23:39

Final Fight amiga is okayish on the code side, what it lacks is recoloring. i noticed that each or most usgold games lacked mostly in the graphic department.

Compare with a game like snow bros or Pang, ok, those are simpler, but the graphists made their best to "dress" the games. final fight with an amiga palette made by a good graphist would have made players more "conciliant" with the result.

But yes as a code program wrote from scratch in 6 months, it's nicely done. And i also myself acknowledge for the Double dragon 2 effort. The game is very good !

leathered · 27 April 2013, 05:24

Rich, you didn't ask me for my opinion of your conversion and I gave it anyway along with a long spiel justifying this one. I'd feel very wierd coming on here not knowing anyone and criticising someone else's effort in order to justify my own, and that wasn't the intention. I think that you appearing on here made it all more 'real'. I should be honoured that some good coders have bothered with this thread. I want to say thanks to all for support.

Before I start I'd like quickly say I'm sorry about the way I came onto this board, and I'm sure I've talked a lot of shit on the way to here.

I've half decided to stop Final Fight, and start to mould this into something new. There's enough here to say something quite nice should be possible. The first thing I would probably do is go back to the previous screen display routine as it was just a bit faster, I think I got 6 or 7 enemies on screen stable, no bob flicker whilst I was preparing the change. I can get 5 with the current setup, with one object on the screen running 25 fps smooth, but then you have to bear in mind the second player will also be a bob requiring a repeat of the player code - it should still be good for 4 baddies, or 5 with a little slowdown. The method I'm using now for static objects should mean they create very little extra hit to the performance, so the screen could be really busy.
The advantage of the other way was using sprites you could have up to 4 players, 6 or 7 bobs onscreen for the same fps - no contest for playabliity.
* Energy bars - I would just use block pasting in an unused part of the screen. Not as fast as a sprite overlay - no I would do that if I can; there's a vertical sprite multiplexer doing the rounds in Blitz2, I think I found it on the BSS.
* Shrink the sprites to fit into 64 pixel width maximum, you may have noticed haggar's fist appearing strange on the first WIP; this is because it is a bob when he punches, and the feet are bobs when he kicks. Could have been sprites, but I wanted them for other things.
* Parallax - using the copper for some coloured bars, would like to try scrolling them in some way. Horizontal multiplexing would not be possible using the sprites for the players anyway.

Everything could be optimised for speed and playability.
It could be something anybody could work on.
We could do new combos, characters, stages, features etc.

If I continue Final Fight, then I'll keep the current graphics setup and plow on. Tidy up the quirks, add the rest of the first stage, and it's characters. I'd welcome any help still, but I've always thought it would be less likely, copyright and the 'feeling of impending doom' are offputting, no-one wants to work on something that might not get done. This in part also accounts for starting a conversion and not an original, the work is there to be adapted.

So I'm setting up a poll, and will continue the project as a Final Fight remake until 2 months from now, so ending June 30 lets say.
As a little side project, I'll put haggar VS haggar into a little SF2 style. This shouldn't take too long, though I might end up taking a look at how the scaling floor is done, I'm sure it must account in some way for SSF2T's lag. But that would take longer.
I'll try to do it in a way that makes it easier for someone to look at, edit and continue; maybe I could do some kind of tutorial or something.

FInal Fight - could turn out to be a real peice of shit and you should be expecting a PD game written in Blitz Basic, not an arcade perfect conversion as such. I've got haggar using the bar, which appears strapped to his back at present, I'll get some footage of it soon.

leathered · 28 April 2013, 09:16

Energy bars - were probably all done using a sprite overlay in the original game. As you know I'm using all 8 sprites for the parallax. To make the energy bars:
* blit them onto the current screen (slowest method - consider all the player and enemy are blitted)
* block paste them into an unused area
* 'virtual' sprites set above the others

A mock up as to how they could work using 'virtual' sprites:

As you can see, the parallax layer has to be lower than the health bars. This would also be the case when displaying an enemy health bar below the players, so the parallax layer would have to go even lower! Instead of buildings in the background we could put in a little garden fence...
As a workaraound for this there could be 3 health bars, 1 either side for the players and one in the middle for the enemy. We don't need the timer as this isn't an arcade (neither do we really need the flashing 'go'. We can use the timer in sections that we need it such as the bonus stages (when there are no baddies).
A limitation of using sprites could end up being the number of colours used. If you imagine there are a few changing elements in the HUD; lives counter, the health bar. There are a number of methods to display these - a sliding bar that moves offscreen as the player loses health/ using different frames of animation for chunk of health lost. If several sprites are needed then they will have to be 3 colour. I'm going with black & whitish for now.

Doing this I think it's still possible to multiplex the parallax layer horizontally later - if the skill becomes acquired or I can ever be bothered to learn to program properly. I looked into this a couple of months ago. There are I think, no working examples of it in Blitz. The way to access the copper is pretty much the ASM route, bar some blitzized commands which can help facilitate it. Understanding would be one thing, but integrating it is another. Between the two it is a tricky exercise figuring out where you're going wrong. I might post the results of this if I get into it again.
The score panel is another thing, but that may just sit above everything else, out of the way.

leathered · 28 April 2013, 09:37

[ Show youtube player ]

Another video of the first section. Music from the second stage showcased (not optimised for SFX, a little choppy)

Completed:
* Basic AI for slash and Hollywood
* Destructable telephone box
* Useable pipe

To do:
* Hollywood's use of the knife
* Jake using doors
* Destructable bins and barrels
* Haggar's Splash move
* Intro & stage transition

- most pressing
* Tidying of the code, bug fixing, gameplay tweaks
* Put back the collision detection for baddies vs player
* Player hit + health loss routines

The code for this section is around 75% complete.

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08 April 2013, 07:45	#82
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	RNC propack has a better compression, no ?

13 April 2013, 08:21	#83
RichAplin Registered User Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: san francisco/usa Posts: 176	Yay it's awesome someone is having another go at doing Final Fight on the Amiga. I'm (be/a)mused by the level of hatred and venom the original Amiga version gets, even nowadays twenty-something years after its release. :-)

13 April 2013, 14:22	#87
BippyM Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Derby, UK Age: 48 Posts: 9,355	I liked the original!

13 April 2013, 16:41	#88
Lobotomika Registered User Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: in the past and present Posts: 122	Never had the chance to like the original because it never worked on my 500+, not even when degraded and it played nothing like the original when I tried it at a friend's house. Whatever it was, it was NOT final fight. The shithead that coded the Amiga version must be jailed for that.

13 April 2013, 18:02	#89
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	yes the cracked version was not working on anything else than a regular A500.

14 April 2013, 20:36	#93
TCD HOL/FTP busy bee Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Germany Age: 46 Posts: 31,522	Imagine you are used to waste your money with friends on this: and then you buy the Amiga version and get this: Not to mention only one fire button. It's hard to be 'happy' with the conversion if you're used to the arcade. I guess it was about being able to have it on the machine of choice, but like other beat 'em ups showed later (even if all Amiga ones were more or less limited) it can be done in a nicer way (both graphically and control wise). You should have coded more shoot 'em ups Rich

14 April 2013, 21:28	#95
Retro1234 Phone Homer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: 5150 Posts: 5,773	There arnt any better scrolling beat em ups on the Amiga so fair do's Rich Not sure how many original versions there are but my Cyclone backup would not work on KS2.x back in the day I use to boot street fighter Hold ctrl D swap disks and then type Final and it worked on KS2.x

18 April 2013, 23:39	#97
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	Final Fight amiga is okayish on the code side, what it lacks is recoloring. i noticed that each or most usgold games lacked mostly in the graphic department. Compare with a game like snow bros or Pang, ok, those are simpler, but the graphists made their best to "dress" the games. final fight with an amiga palette made by a good graphist would have made players more "conciliant" with the result. But yes as a code program wrote from scratch in 6 months, it's nicely done. And i also myself acknowledge for the Double dragon 2 effort. The game is very good !

27 April 2013, 05:24	#98
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	Rich, you didn't ask me for my opinion of your conversion and I gave it anyway along with a long spiel justifying this one. I'd feel very wierd coming on here not knowing anyone and criticising someone else's effort in order to justify my own, and that wasn't the intention. I think that you appearing on here made it all more 'real'. I should be honoured that some good coders have bothered with this thread. I want to say thanks to all for support. Before I start I'd like quickly say I'm sorry about the way I came onto this board, and I'm sure I've talked a lot of shit on the way to here. I've half decided to stop Final Fight, and start to mould this into something new. There's enough here to say something quite nice should be possible. The first thing I would probably do is go back to the previous screen display routine as it was just a bit faster, I think I got 6 or 7 enemies on screen stable, no bob flicker whilst I was preparing the change. I can get 5 with the current setup, with one object on the screen running 25 fps smooth, but then you have to bear in mind the second player will also be a bob requiring a repeat of the player code - it should still be good for 4 baddies, or 5 with a little slowdown. The method I'm using now for static objects should mean they create very little extra hit to the performance, so the screen could be really busy. The advantage of the other way was using sprites you could have up to 4 players, 6 or 7 bobs onscreen for the same fps - no contest for playabliity. * Energy bars - I would just use block pasting in an unused part of the screen. Not as fast as a sprite overlay - no I would do that if I can; there's a vertical sprite multiplexer doing the rounds in Blitz2, I think I found it on the BSS. * Shrink the sprites to fit into 64 pixel width maximum, you may have noticed haggar's fist appearing strange on the first WIP; this is because it is a bob when he punches, and the feet are bobs when he kicks. Could have been sprites, but I wanted them for other things. * Parallax - using the copper for some coloured bars, would like to try scrolling them in some way. Horizontal multiplexing would not be possible using the sprites for the players anyway. Everything could be optimised for speed and playability. It could be something anybody could work on. We could do new combos, characters, stages, features etc. If I continue Final Fight, then I'll keep the current graphics setup and plow on. Tidy up the quirks, add the rest of the first stage, and it's characters. I'd welcome any help still, but I've always thought it would be less likely, copyright and the 'feeling of impending doom' are offputting, no-one wants to work on something that might not get done. This in part also accounts for starting a conversion and not an original, the work is there to be adapted. So I'm setting up a poll, and will continue the project as a Final Fight remake until 2 months from now, so ending June 30 lets say. As a little side project, I'll put haggar VS haggar into a little SF2 style. This shouldn't take too long, though I might end up taking a look at how the scaling floor is done, I'm sure it must account in some way for SSF2T's lag. But that would take longer. I'll try to do it in a way that makes it easier for someone to look at, edit and continue; maybe I could do some kind of tutorial or something. FInal Fight - could turn out to be a real peice of shit and you should be expecting a PD game written in Blitz Basic, not an arcade perfect conversion as such. I've got haggar using the bar, which appears strapped to his back at present, I'll get some footage of it soon.

28 April 2013, 09:16	#99
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	Energy bars - were probably all done using a sprite overlay in the original game. As you know I'm using all 8 sprites for the parallax. To make the energy bars: * blit them onto the current screen (slowest method - consider all the player and enemy are blitted) * block paste them into an unused area * 'virtual' sprites set above the others A mock up as to how they could work using 'virtual' sprites: As you can see, the parallax layer has to be lower than the health bars. This would also be the case when displaying an enemy health bar below the players, so the parallax layer would have to go even lower! Instead of buildings in the background we could put in a little garden fence... As a workaraound for this there could be 3 health bars, 1 either side for the players and one in the middle for the enemy. We don't need the timer as this isn't an arcade (neither do we really need the flashing 'go'. We can use the timer in sections that we need it such as the bonus stages (when there are no baddies). A limitation of using sprites could end up being the number of colours used. If you imagine there are a few changing elements in the HUD; lives counter, the health bar. There are a number of methods to display these - a sliding bar that moves offscreen as the player loses health/ using different frames of animation for chunk of health lost. If several sprites are needed then they will have to be 3 colour. I'm going with black & whitish for now. Doing this I think it's still possible to multiplex the parallax layer horizontally later - if the skill becomes acquired or I can ever be bothered to learn to program properly. I looked into this a couple of months ago. There are I think, no working examples of it in Blitz. The way to access the copper is pretty much the ASM route, bar some blitzized commands which can help facilitate it. Understanding would be one thing, but integrating it is another. Between the two it is a tricky exercise figuring out where you're going wrong. I might post the results of this if I get into it again. The score panel is another thing, but that may just sit above everything else, out of the way.

28 April 2013, 09:37	#100
leathered Registered User Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: UK Age: 47 Posts: 304	[ Show youtube player ] Another video of the first section. Music from the second stage showcased (not optimised for SFX, a little choppy) Completed: * Basic AI for slash and Hollywood * Destructable telephone box * Useable pipe To do: * Hollywood's use of the knife * Jake using doors * Destructable bins and barrels * Haggar's Splash move * Intro & stage transition - most pressing * Tidying of the code, bug fixing, gameplay tweaks * Put back the collision detection for baddies vs player * Player hit + health loss routines The code for this section is around 75% complete.

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