Terraria on Amiga

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I was referring to leaving out most of the crafting recipes (and therefore items). Yes, a Terraria Light would make the Amiga look bad, considering that you can probably do all of the game mechanics properly. ... Stripping away such a core element leaves you with a shadow of the original. ... No need for stripping away core mechanics like crafting.

Obviously crafting is an important part of the mechanic. I wouldn't suggest leaving it out, it's just the sheer number of different items that might be problematic. Although i haven't counted them.

That's why i suggest not pretending it's Terraria in the first instance. "Terraria Light" may well be more damaging from a PR perspective than "Amigaland" or whatever else you could call it.

I'm actually thinking now about how it could be possible to create an effectively infinite map by fractally generating it as you scroll and compressing/decompressing player map changes on the fly.

EDIT: there are about 2800 different items*. that would take almost half a meg of chip ram just for the graphics (16x16, 4 bitplanes plus mask). Doable on A1200 at least.

*2829 different items, of which 882 are pc only and 39 are console only. http://terraria.gamepedia.com/List_of_items

[Thorham]

The source code I have here gives me 2288 item IDs (probably different game version), and 1074 recipes based on doing a count of Recipe.addRecipe(). Perfectly doable, but A1200 with fastmem and HD/CF is certainly the minimum. Perhaps, maybe, A500 with fastmem and HD/CF is possible.

Hand made game worlds can be limited to the amount of RAM the user has, or the map can be loaded/saved in compartments of a couple of hundred kb each, where each compartment also has shape definitions. Loading and saving a couple of hundred kb isn't slow, so should be fine, and can be combined with saving player made changes in some efficient format.

And yes, calling the thing Terraria doesn't seem to be a good idea

[Mrs Beanbag]

there also seem to be quite a lot of functionally duplicate items (i.e. many items that do exactly the same thing, only with a different appearance, or in a different colour). So we could probably trim the list down quite a bit without losing anything important to the mechanics. There are a number of purely decorative items that don't do anything at all.

[lordofchaos]

Ok maybe Terraria-lite doesn't seem quite appropriate, how about AmiTerra?

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

there also seem to be quite a lot of functionally duplicate items (i.e. many items that do exactly the same thing, only with a different appearance, or in a different colour). So we could probably trim the list down quite a bit without losing anything important to the mechanics. There are a number of purely decorative items that don't do anything at all.

What about the plausibility of animated block tiles? More memory I know, but otherwise things might look a bit static.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

tbh i get the impression Terraria doesn't do anything an Amiga can't do, only that it does everything on such a massive scale. Even a "small" Terraria map, for instance, is 4200x1200 blocks, which if it were 1 byte per block would take 5Mb in memory.

I know nothing about the game but if it was possible to use a byte or two per block I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not 1990 anymore, if a game requires 16 or 32 mb of ram that shouldn't be a problem.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

there also seem to be quite a lot of functionally duplicate items (i.e. many items that do exactly the same thing, only with a different appearance, or in a different colour). So we could probably trim the list down quite a bit without losing anything important to the mechanics. There are a number of purely decorative items that don't do anything at all.

Hopefully this is easy to find in the source code.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I know nothing about the game but if it was possible to use a byte or two per block I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not 1990 anymore, if a game requires 16 or 32 mb of ram that shouldn't be a problem.

Sure it is. Why have it require that much if it's not necessary?

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Ok maybe Terraria-lite doesn't seem quite appropriate, how about AmiTerra?

Not bad, but no crafting reductions. It's just not necessary. A recipe is nothing but a structure that says which tools and items are used to produce which item. This is almost nothing in terms of CPU requirements (really, a C64 can handle that EASILY). It just takes some memory. With less then a hundred kb you can easily have a thousand+ recipes.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I know nothing about the game but if it was possible to use a byte or two per block I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not 1990 anymore, if a game requires 16 or 32 mb of ram that shouldn't be a problem.

or if it requires a 1.6GHz PC, that's not a problem either... i kind of feel this misses the point a little.

the Amiga is a computer from 1990, and not everyone has 16 or 32 mb of RAM in theirs. i would aim to make it run in 8mb tops. but if it could run on a stock A1200 then all the better.

i'm starting to think about how Sonic the Hedgehog stores its levels now, it uses a weird hierarchy of map blocks, the largest of which being 256x256 (pixels). so the individual level maps take hardly any space at all. With such a scheme, the equivalent of a 4200x1200 map of 8x8 blocks would only take about 10kb (assuming you use a word per block for more than 256 different block types). But then we need to think about how to handle player modification on sub-block scales.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Then we need to think about how to handle player modification on sub-block scales.

Also bear in mind that each block in the world needs to be updated at each frame if it's currently doing something (some blocks might, for example, need to fall when unsupported, grass may need to grow on newly placed dirt, monsters need to roam wherever they are and if they affect the landscape around them then that needs to be kept track of... that sort of thing).

Of course, all this could be faked to save on CPU time, but getting the balance between a believable world that's happening all around you and reducing resources is quite an act.

D.

[Mrs Beanbag]

oh yeah, i've been watching videos of it on youtube, there's definitely a lot going on.

blocks don't seem to care much about being supported though, and i don't think you need to update everything every frame. most blocks seem pretty inert unless you are directly interacting with them.

we are going to have to make some compromises, obviously. it's a matter of prioritising.

[lordofchaos]

What about the liquid physics? Water displaces dynamically depending on the players actions, removing/adding blocks etc. Need some kind of pre-calculation routine causing a slight pause in gameplay.. Similar to worms?

[Mrs Beanbag]

dynamic water is a difficult one

[ancalimon]

I guess an Amiga with a ppc processor would be useful for Terraria.

[Hewitson]

Unfortunately everyone seems to have misinterpreted my post. I wasnt saying "who cares if it uses more memory than it should", I was saying that using a large amount of memory would be preferable to having a butchered, watered-down version of the game.

[lordofchaos]

Given that most people here use WinUAE or have access to it, RAM shouldn't be a problem should it? I imagine it's next to impossible to know how much RAM would be needed until any actual work started.

[Galahad/FLT]

People say "watered down" but really thats not the case.

Less colours, no paralax, less samples......still the main mechanics of the game are still present.

Smaller world? Every version has different sized worlds so thats not an issue.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

People say "watered down" but really thats not the case.

Less colours, no paralax, less samples......still the main mechanics of the game are still present.

Smaller world? Every version has different sized worlds so thats not an issue.

An huge part of Terraria is the dynamic water - while excavating underground opening a water stream over your head is certain death You remove that and another "few" things and it's not Terraria anymore.

Also, the generated worlds are MASSIVE and they're entirely loaded in RAM on a PC. Removing the free scrolling world would also be an huge no-no imho

Maybe on a 030 1200...

[Vot]

It would be a big undertaking but really does the whole level need to be in ram.

Make hdd a requirement and just stream in what is required.
Games like farcry 2/3 etc on the xbox360 constantly stream in the level data.

Nothings impossible its just how much effort whoever writes it wants to put into the engine.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by jbenam

An huge part of Terraria is the dynamic water - while excavating underground opening a water stream over your head is certain death You remove that and another "few" things and it's not Terraria anymore.

Don't see why the water would be a problem.

[nobody]

I feel an A500 could do this game. Nothing special graphically, only needs some really clever programming to fit to 1 mb or 2.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Don't see why the water would be a problem.

Ever played Terraria? It has quite good water physics, which while basic when compared to more modern games aren't exactly light on a 7MHz 68000