Scorpion Engine

[earok]

Update for experimental branch - https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental - is checked in. This is well overdue, but there's now copper skies.



There is a fair bit to it, and I may do a video covering it in future, but I'll go over the basics here:

1. The copper gradient color is fixed at 0, which is usually black in an Amiga palette. If you're using 0 as black, and you're using black on a sprite or tile, I'd recommend re-arranging your palette so black is something else.

You could use an ugly color you're definitely NOT using in the game for palette 0, since it's going to be overwritten by the copper sky anyway.

(Note that using a color other than black is usually not recommended since the color will reach to the edges of the screen. HOWEVER, I've used some copper tricks to avoid that. On all Amigas, the sides of the screen will be black even with a copper rainbow).

2. Use the eraser in Tiled to wipe out any of the tiles that would otherwise cover the sky, and set the copper sky from inside the editor. You'll need an image at least the height of the screen (any width) with your gradient. This is the one that I use, feel free to use it to test with.



3. Assuming you've done all that, your editor should look like this.



Note that, even though I've used an image with 24 bit color, it still downgrades to 12 bit color OCS in the game.

I think I can make it so that on AGA it'll use full 24 bit color, but this will take a little more work.

Edit:

Well, that was easier than I thought it would be. AGA copper skies are supported in the experimental version, note how much smoother the gradient is than in the GIF.

[gimbal]

The editor is looking very snazzy indeed.

[nobody]

Now the game has that familiar Amiga look (the 1st shot).

[Mixel]

SO happy about this feature and experimenting with it now.

Waaaaaaait!! It seems to autodetect AGA and use AGA if you enable AGA copper gradients but stilldoes it's best to do a 12bit version for ECS... Is that true? that's amazing!

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

Now the game has that familiar Amiga look (the 1st shot).

It was more or less a random sky I used but it does remind me of SOTB2.

Originally Posted by Mixel

SO happy about this feature and experimenting with it now.

Waaaaaaait!! It seems to autodetect AGA and use AGA if you enable AGA copper gradients but stilldoes it's best to do a 12bit version for ECS... Is that true? that's amazing!

Yes, it uses 12bit color on OCS/ECS and 24bit color on AGA depending on what's available. Though I figure it might be worthwhile making it so that you can use entirely separate images for each (eg, on OCS you might want to use dithering techniques to break up the color bands, which wouldn't make any sense on the AGA version).

[skyzoo73]

Will it be possible in the future to "copperize" more than one color index?

[earok]

Originally Posted by skyzoo73

Will it be possible in the future to "copperize" more than one color index?

I need to think about that more. There is a performance cost for each copper operation, which is slight but it does add up when multiplied over every line, so I don't want to push it too far.

If I end up doing sprite parallax backgrounds, I may make it so that you can change up to 4 colors per scanline (so the background and the three colors of a pair of regular sprites).

[Retro1234]

I thought I read once this was something you didn't really like and were not going to include

[earok]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I thought I read once this was something you didn't really like and were not going to include

You could be right. IMO, copper skies can look extremely amateurish, particularly when the colors stretch to both sides of the screen. But I think they can look good when handled well.

[Retro1234]

hehe

[Mixel]

Agh! this is extremely fancy!

I'm using a palette overrides to switch the copper shade depending on the colours in each map! My blue barge level is probably my only level that's going to use those two blues so normally the blue is copper for me.. But on that level I override the palette with my weirdest greens as the copper instead.

Originally Posted by earok

You could use an ugly color you're definitely NOT using in the game for palette 0, since it's going to be overwritten by the copper sky anyway.

(Note that using a color other than black is usually not recommended since the color will reach to the edges of the screen. HOWEVER, I've used some copper tricks to avoid that. On all Amigas, the sides of the screen will be black even with a copper rainbow).

You say not usually recommended, but is it likely to cause problems?


I have noticed that there's the return of that one pixel flash at the bottom you solved a while back.. The hacky way I'm stopping that from being obvious is to set the bottom pixel of a copper sky to be black.... But it's still a flickering 1px black line and that might be more obvious in a less dark game than CMO.

[nikosidis]

I like it Great job and fantastic program.

[earok]

I was hoping to release a major update this weekend but I ended up burning myself out a little bit on it, so I should put it aside for a few days. It seems many of the updates I've done recently have broken the demo games in various ways, so I really need to get all of that sorted out before I push out an update.

I'm getting excited with some of the recent enhancements though, I'm *almost* at the point where I can experiment with sprite parallax backgrounds.

[earok]

Experimental repository has the 'release candidate' for 2021.3, if I don't find any issues in the next day or two I'll make a video and publish it to the main repository.

Mostly minor bug fixes and performance optimizations. One new feature was the 'camera smooth' function has been replaced with a 'camera box' function that allows you to specify an area around the character that the character can move without scrolling (for example, if you had an eight way platformer, it's easier to make it so that the camera doesn't move up and down every time you jump).

Edit: Totally forgot that cursor keys, not number pad, is the default joystick control for WinUAE now.


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

[spotUP]

You’re doing an amazing job here earok! <3

[earok]

Hey cheers guys. spoUP, nikosidis, I always appreciate the kind words.

I've posted 2021.3 to the main repo but it isn't announced yet, I still need to do a video with the updates since last time. Mixel, UltraNarwall and NEESO games all had reported major graphical glitches with my previous experimental update, thankfully I've been able to resolve all of them for 2021.3.

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

Edit: And, here we go. 2021.3 is official.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Cobe]

Your engine looks awesome!

Originally Posted by earok

(Note that using a color other than black is usually not recommended since the color will reach to the edges of the screen. HOWEVER, I've used some copper tricks to avoid that. On all Amigas, the sides of the screen will be black even with a copper rainbow).

How do you achieve this on ocs?

[earok]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Your engine looks awesome!



How do you achieve this on ocs?

Cheers mate.

COPPER WAIT until left edge
COPPER MOVE color00 = sky
COPPER WAIT until right edge
COPPER MOVE color00 = black

[earok]

I'm getting closer to sprite parallax as an option (preview), I haven't quite decided on exactly how to handle it, there's certainly more than a handful of complications to fix.

I'm leaning towards this as a solution:
- Two sprites, 32x wide repeating pattern across the screen. Leaves six sprites available for other purposes (a tall and thin "foreground parallax" element, like the foreground plants in Apidya, might be a possibility too).
- Up to three unique colors per line.
- For reasons to do with limiting the number of copper operations per line - no compatibility with copper skies, so it has to be one or the other, but being able to set 3x colors per line should more than make up for that. (It means that color00 can't be set to a gradient, so you could leave this as black and cut holes in the sprites so that you get that black as a 'fourth color' on each line)
- Horizontal and Vertical background scrolling should be possible, but I'll need to experiment a bit there.

[malko]

Originally Posted by earok

Hey cheers guys. spoUP, nikosidis, I always appreciate the kind words.

I've posted 2021.3 to the main repo but it isn't announced yet, I still need to do a video with the updates since last time. Mixel, UltraNarwall and NEESO games all had reported major graphical glitches with my previous experimental update, thankfully I've been able to resolve all of them for 2021.3.

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

Edit: And, here we go. 2021.3 is official.

[ Show youtube player ]

Gave it a go yesterday and compile some of the examples.

Everything is running fine under "Win7 PRO N" + WinUAE 4.0.1 on my laptop.
Great work earok

Now need to find time to use it more seriously