Shadow of the Beast Legacy semi-project

[darkfalzx]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

Windows Build Is it just me or in the cave when punching enemies they die without your hand even touching the enemy? If i recall this on a real amiga you had to be exact in timing for your hand to touch the enemy for it to die?

The collision had been made a little more lenient to make the games less frustrating for modern players. This mostly works to the player's advantage, but there is one or two places in the game where it works the other way too - those need to be fixed.

Originally Posted by Lobotomika

At first I were uninterested in this but I downloaded anyway. Looks and plays decent except for the part the protagonist moves far too slowly on a ladder but I don't remember the vanilla all that much so that's a minor issue.

The speeds have been timed to be as close to the original as possible, which includes slow ladder climbing.

Originally Posted by Lobotomika

HOWEVER, never name your project SHADOW OF THE BEAST. Just imply that it's a beast remake and you'll be fine. I assure sony will hunt you down if you build this phrase, in that order, as your title and they have every right to do so unfortunately.

Maybe I should rename the packs something more neutral, like Owl Legacy.

Originally Posted by Lobotomika

Hold on, did you say two Barbarian games? As in including Barbarian II? I've not seen anyone care about that game except myself for the last two decades at least.

I am a massive fan of the second Barbarian game - it's the closest I ever came to playing a Metroidvania on Amiga. It's one of the best games on the system. Still own my original boxed copy: )

Originally Posted by ransom1122

Aah yes thanks. Got it. IS it just me or does sotb2 run a little too fast?

Um - I got the timings as close as I could. As far as I can tell SOTB2 runs quite close to the speed of the original.

Originally Posted by Neil79

Windows version comes up with an xinput1_3.dll not found. Gamepad support disabled error, then froze the computer



!CompMode.bat gives the same error, but game works fine

Did this not happen for you before? I really haven't changed much, except change the format of the container and included xinput file from DX9 in the archive. Try deleting it from the game folder - maybe it'll work that way. I will not include xinput in future builds. Also - what system are you running? This looks like Windows NT error dialogue.

[Neil79]

Nope never happened before, using the same system Windows 7.

Deleted the xinput1_3.dll and it works great! THANKS

[Lobotomika]

Originally Posted by darkfalzx

I am a massive fan of the second Barbarian game - it's the closest I ever came to playing a Metroidvania on Amiga. It's one of the best games on the system. Still own my original boxed copy: )

This is rather embaressing for me because it never occurred to me that B2 was a metroidvania. Probably because I hadn't played a metroid/castlevania game in my teens and never made the connection until today. Now that I do, it actually competes very well in this regard. The most recent metroidvania I've played is the Strider remake (2014) on PC and despite I love the strider franchise and Capcom and it's a fine game, it's still not as much fun as Barbarian 2. Play both today and this will be the case!

[darkfalzx]

Barbarian 2 was a fantastic but flawed game, which I would choose over many modern games of the similar genre.
Its biggest issue is the 1-button control scheme that ended up being super unresponsive and confusing due to a large number of move combinations. In the remake I'll probably streamline it and spread it across more buttons.
Another massive flaw were some of the smaller enemies early in the game (like slugs and spiders) that were almost impossible to fight against. You'd just get stun-locked and killed, or worse yet - get trapped at the bottom of a pit with one of those bastards, and have them knock you off the ladder for the next 10 minutes until you either die or get insanely lucky. Those enemies seem like they were a product of some miscommunication in the team. They are clearly killable, as can be verified by hitting them from a platform below theirs, but Hegor has no attacks low enough to hit them from a level playing field.
Lastly, the game does nothing to prevent you from getting trapped in a "walking dead" state, like misstepping, and triggering closure of a critical door. Or saving a game after a certain event, where upon restoring you find that your way is now barred.

Man, this sounds like a lot of fun to reprogram - I'd have a ball just handling the re-framing of the game to make it run in full screen, as opposed to a narrow slit.

[Ian]

Could not get on with barbarian 2 at all, like you say the controls were awful so I never bothered with it. I try it once a year when I forget how bad it is, and then give up again after a couple of minutes.

[darkfalzx]

We might be talking about different barbarian 2 games - there were two on Amiga and Atari ST. One was made by Palace, and was sort of like a very ugly flip-screen almost-fighting game (Barbarian 2: The Dungeon of Drax). The other was the Psygnosis game. It was a sidescrolling metroidvania game that looked like this:


Well - maybe we were talking about the same game, but those get confused a lot, so I had to make sure. Also - the Dungeon of Drax Barbarian game had two spiritual successor games released in recent years called Age of Barbarian. The price is pretty steep and bizarrely for a small indie game it has an always-on DRM system, but it just looks like something I'd play just because: )

[Ian]

I was indeed referring to the Palace game.

Not tried the other version.

[Lobotomika]

Originally Posted by Ian

I was indeed referring to the Palace game.

Not tried the other version.

Yeah I agree what you said about the palace one. Kids in my school loved it just because you could decapitate people. Oddly enough Psygnosis' Barbarian II also had decapitations probably because they somehow wanted to benefit from the common mix up between two games. This is lawsuit-worthy material nowadays.

You could decapitate certain types of enemies (but not others for some unknown reason, probably laziness or tight development deadlines) and there were actually a few enemies that could decapitate you in the late parts of the game unless you had purchased a helmet from the town which you never did the first time because it didn't seem to have any apparent benefits until you were one-shot and killed at some random moment you were feeling invincible. I still remember how I felt the first time it happened, nice memories.

Psygnosis' Barbarian II was also doomed because the prequel had terrible controls, by terrible I mean POINT AND CLICK kind of terrible (see the attached screen) so whenever someone wanted to specify the game as "the psygnosis version" there was a chance the other party would think about the first psygnosis game.

Originally Posted by darkfalzx

Another massive flaw were some of the smaller enemies early in the game (like slugs and spiders) that were almost impossible to fight against. You'd just get stun-locked and killed, or worse yet - get trapped at the bottom of a pit with one of those bastards, and have them knock you off the ladder for the next 10 minutes until you either die or get insanely lucky. Those enemies seem like they were a product of some miscommunication in the team. They are clearly killable, as can be verified by hitting them from a platform below theirs, but Hegor has no attacks low enough to hit them from a level playing field.
Lastly, the game does nothing to prevent you from getting trapped in a "walking dead" state, like misstepping, and triggering closure of a critical door. Or saving a game after a certain event, where upon restoring you find that your way is now barred.

I know what you mean but I don't know if these were flaws or deliberate decisions. There's no part in the game you can't kite the slugs and spiders to the opposite corner you want to go to and then attempt a quick escape. They were a pain in the ass but that was never a gamebreaker but I agree you wouldn't have to hit them at one precise frame of their jumping animation.

I don't remember that I've been trapped in this game but maybe I have. There were instant deaths like invisible pits and instant decapitations but I would know that I were fucked the instant I were unlike the beast series that would allow you to go on and on with no implication that the game can no longer be completed. Because of that I can only praise the beast series for their artistic achievements but as long as game design is concerned they're bad. Again, never had the same happen to me in Barbarian 2 so I don't know.

[darkfalzx]

One very interesting element of the first Psygnosis barbarian game is that the screenshots on the box are depicting it as a VERY different game:


Note the complete absence of the point-and-click interface, lots of enemies on screen, as well as graphical elements not present in the final game, like doors and rock-dropping hoppers.
Same story in Obliterator - the box shows it as a pure action game.
I wonder if the boxes had to be done before the game was even close to complete.

[s2325]

If I remember correctly game have slowdowns even with 2 or more enemies on screen. Maybe it's just copy+paste fun to show game graphics. Borders were often if not always removed from screenshots so maybe sometimes interface too.

[darkfalzx]

Originally Posted by s2325

If I remember correctly game have slowdowns even with 2 or more enemies on screen. Maybe it's just copy+paste fun to show game graphics. Borders were often if not always removed from screenshots so maybe sometimes interface too.

On Amiga and Atari ST both - Barbarian and Obliterator looked like they are held together with string and electric tape. You could easily glitch them out even without trying too hard. Same could be said about the c64 and ZX Spectrum games - I believe on Spectrum you could glitch through a wall and crash the game on the very first screen. Stability, speed and control-wise the PC version was the best, even if it wasn't nearly as nice-looking. In it all the icons were mapped to the F-keys. While not the best setup - it was still better than trying to play the game with a mouse.

I have recently replayed the Amiga Barbarian (1) - and it's an even sadder mess than I remember. Not only is framerate disgustingly low for such a simple game, but the control system is just a horrid mess. With only a tiny bit of fudging it could have totally been retooled for an Amiga joystick. The collision is a joke - in fact I'm unsure if there is a collision engine in that game at all, or each screen just has a simple set of if-then statements to determine walkable sections. Even such things as respawn system is broken on most screens. Remaking this game will be... interesting.

Have the makers of Barbarian ever been interviewed? I'd love to know how that game came to be.

[Quazar]

Hows the SotB project going?

[brett71]

Originally Posted by darkfalzx

One very interesting element of the first Psygnosis barbarian game is that the screenshots on the box are depicting it as a VERY different game:

Image removed

Note the complete absence of the point-and-click interface, lots of enemies on screen, as well as graphical elements not present in the final game, like doors and rock-dropping hoppers.
Same story in Obliterator - the box shows it as a pure action game.
I wonder if the boxes had to be done before the game was even close to complete.

Barbarian and Obliterator's interface was God-awful, and the game being so slow and unresponsive just made it totally unplayable. I remember booting those games up just to watch the intros or listen to the title music and then when it came to the point where I'm supposed to start playing the game, give the machine the three-finger salute and back to Workbench.

[Dunny]

Just want to add that it's not Android ART compatible (at least on Kitkat - I've not got Lollipop yet for my N7 2013).

Every time I try to do something (like start a game, or end a level, or cut through the inter-level scrolling text in SOTB1) it crashes 9 times out of 10, straight back to the launcher.

Not sure there's anything you can do about it though.

D.

[darkfalzx]

Originally Posted by Quazar

Hows the SotB project going?

The project is going slowly at the moment, but I get things in there in bursts. I guess I'll finish level 3 of SOTB3 next.

Originally Posted by brett71

Barbarian and Obliterator's interface was God-awful, and the game being so slow and unresponsive just made it totally unplayable. I remember booting those games up just to watch the intros or listen to the title music and then when it came to the point where I'm supposed to start playing the game, give the machine the three-finger salute and back to Workbench.

I've recently challenged myself to beat Barbarian without cheating - I'm not sure what's worse - how slow it is, or just how buggy and unintuitive. The collision is entirely random, as is the timing on Hegor's sword swing, and the scripting is near-broken.

Originally Posted by Dunny

Just want to add that it's not Android ART compatible (at least on Kitkat - I've not got Lollipop yet for my N7 2013).

Every time I try to do something (like start a game, or end a level, or cut through the inter-level scrolling text in SOTB1) it crashes 9 times out of 10, straight back to the launcher.

Not sure there's anything you can do about it though.

D.

What's Android ART? I have tested the game mostly on older Android devices running Android OS as old as Gingerbread. Also - please note there are TWO android builds - one is OUYA compatible, the other isn't. The non-OUYA build generally runs a lot better on phones and tablets, but you could try either.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by darkfalzx

What's Android ART? I have tested the game mostly on older Android devices running Android OS as old as Gingerbread

ART (Android Runtime) is a new Java Virtual Machine. Older Android used Dalvik JIT (just in time) to compile Java Bytecode at runtime into native code. ART uses an AOT (ahead of time) compilation which converts to native code at installation time. ART is an optional alternative to Dalvik for 4.4.4 KitKat but completely replaces Dalvik in Lollipop.

[darkfalzx]

Someone just posted some SOTB (PS4) concept art on NeoGaf.
Not to be overly harsh, but call me unimpressed: (
They should've really approached Roger Dean for at least some of this. Otherwise it looks fairly brown and generic. Totally not the vibe I get from the original games, which always had colorful elements, be it the background or enemies.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by darkfalzx

Someone just posted some SOTB (PS4) concept art on NeoGaf.
Not to be overly harsh, but call me unimpressed: (
They should've really approached Roger Dean for at least some of this. Otherwise it looks fairly brown and generic. Totally not the vibe I get from the original games, which always had colorful elements, be it the background or enemies.

Looks like they are channeling shadow of the beast 2's visual style more so than beast 1. Yup, should have asked Roger to help out.

[Djemps]

Yeah. I'm disappointed. There are certain qualities to the old Beast titles that are difficult to re-capture.

For me, I think it is the 'madness' of it all. Nothing makes sense. There is no explanation to anything. You could be dodging battle axes one moment, and flying around in a laser-jet-pack the next.

Big developers are now expected to present gamers will a fully fleshed out, 'immersive' world to inhabit. But that's the whole problem; Aarbron's world was a nightmarish schizo-tech fever dream. It was an unsettling game experience because it was so surreal.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by Djemps

Yeah. I'm disappointed. There are certain qualities to the old Beast titles that are difficult to re-capture.

For me, I think it is the 'madness' of it all. Nothing makes sense. There is no explanation to anything. You could be dodging battle axes one moment, and flying around in a laser-jet-pack the next.

Big developers are now expected to present gamers will a fully fleshed out, 'immersive' world to inhabit. But that's the whole problem; Aarbron's world was a nightmarish schizo-tech fever dream. It was an unsettling game experience because it was so surreal.

Indeed there is something to be said for leaving a bit of mystery; it allows the player to fill in the blanks himself. Beast 1 in particular fed my imagination as a child, as did many psygnosis titles. The melding of tech and fantasy always piqued my imagination.