Another Unreleased Game - Blaze

[mc68060]

But it's only 2 levels! I really can't understand why the author didn't finish it. I mean, the most important thing, the engine, seems to be pretty finished. Just add some more levels, sound fx, some bosses and there you go. I'm sure that back in 1993 when this game was created this surely would've sold lots of copies. The only problem I see is that all major publishers probably refused it lest Sega sue the sh*t out of them. But then we would have had something like The Great Giana Hedgehog :-)

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Yes, it does. I've tested it on my Amiga 500 with the original 1.3 256k ROM and a 512kb RAM expansion. It loads perfectly just like in WinUAE.

Is your bootblock standard?

Originally Posted by mc68060

Just add some more levels, sound fx, some bosses and there you go.

You're grossly under-appreciating the effort behind game design. The engine, many times, is NOT the most taxing and time consuming aspect of making a game.
If he was alone making this, I would especially find it difficult to find the motivation without payment and on a platform already winding down at the time of development.

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by Akira

Is your bootblock standard?

Yes. It appears to be a DOS disk with a standard startup sequence.

PS: Just tested Blaze under my standard-1200 WinUAE config and the game runs (it's too fast to play properly, though... Assembly "problems", perhaps?). This config is based exactly as a normal A1200 would be, down to the entire chipset, the Kickstart and the RAM. Whatever is causing the problem must be a tiny little thing. My money is on the disk driver or even brand... Has anyone been able to run this on a 1200?

[Leffmann]

It runs fine on A1200 if you turn off the CPU caches.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by mc68060

Wow, this is seriously amazing! It even has those Sonic loops! Definitely the best Sonic clone on the Amiga. Unfortunately, there are only two levels but it clearly shows that the A500 could have handled a Sonic clone. Great!

The game is indeed very nice looking and could have formed the base for a good platformer but there are many games on the Amiga which offer the exact same technical basis. The handling of loops is really a minor (technical) detail of a platforming engine (gameplay wise I agree though).

The hard part in replicating Sonic on the Amiga is not the gameplay or level design (which loops are a part of) but the rich color set of the two graphics layers and large number and size of moving objects on screen at times. This is where the difficulty lies and this game, although very nice does not demonstrate anything in this regard: its background layer is quasi empty.

This said, I think some levels of Sonic can be faithfully replicated. But many would have to suffer heavy compromises.

Originally Posted by mc68060

But it's only 2 levels! I really can't understand why the author didn't finish it. I mean, the most important thing, the engine, seems to be pretty finished. Just add some more levels, sound fx, some bosses and there you go

Because design is hard work! Simple as that.
Try it yourself: take an existing Amiga game for which a level editor exists and try to just make a small level. If you are brave enough, you can submit it on the EAB so we can judge its quality. You will very quickly realize that designing something fun and entertaining takes time (and/or experience).

Originally Posted by Akira

You're grossly under-appreciating the effort behind game design. The engine, many times, is NOT the most taxing and time consuming aspect of making a game.
If he was alone making this, I would especially find it difficult to find the motivation without payment and on a platform already winding down at the time of development.

Akira is very right. Good level design is hard, very hard, and takes a lot of time.
(Cf above.)

Gameplay design and level design are more important parts than the engine.
Even with the best of all engines a bad design will produce a bad game.
Even with a bad engine, great game play and level design can still produce a good game.

An engine is an enabler for design, it defines the limits within which game design operates. This is certainly an essential task but it is not the most important one.

[keithbugeja]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Gameplay design and level design are more important parts than the engine. Even with the best of all engines a bad design will produce a bad game.Even with a bad engine, great game play and level design can still produce a good game.

An engine is an enabler for design, it defines the limits within which game design operates. This is certainly an essential task but it is not the most important one.

I perfectly agree. The engine in Blaze is certainly nothing out of this world. The game uses a 32 colour (5-bitplane) palette for the foreground (water reflection simply reverses memory fetching and applies a bluish tint to the palette using the copper). The moon and background are actually made up of 3-colour hardware sprites (plus transparent) and a copper list, as somebody above mentioned already. This means they come almost for free, performance-wise.

The screen is re-drawn every frame, from 32x32 pixel blocks; there is no actual scrolling. This allows fully animated blocks without additional penalty and also means that blitter objects (Bobs?) need not save and restore the background. Per-cell flags determine whether a block is drawn behind the player character (without the use of a mask), or in front of it, in which case a mask is applied to scissor the tile. The collectibles are actual map tiles, not 'sprites'.

Many Amiga platform games seemed to shun complex surfaces with steep inclines (>45 degrees), the reason probably being that the vertical position of a player when 'in a tile' was a function of horizontal offset from the origin of the tile, which doesn't work well for steeper inclines. At least that was my conjecture. At the time, I thought the greatest challenge was getting the feel - as in dynamics - of Sonic the Hedgehog right. The game was basically written during the school summer holidays (I was still in 4th or 5th form, I believe), and a lot of the learning I did as I went along. I have made the source (the bulk of it, anyway) available as a pastebin here, (blog post) just before my A1200 gave up the ghost. The tools I used to design the level maps are unfortunately still on floppies, as are the assets and graphics of other levels I had drawn but never included with the demo.

Thanks everyone for the lovely comments; enjoy the game!

[Cobe]

Game is great as is. Though adding a few more levels would be awesome. I was never amused by Sega's "blast processing". Too many things going on and too fast for me to keep everything under control and enjoy. I like the best Master System's Sonic. Just the right speed for me. And Blaze feels and looks even better.

[Asman]

@keithbugeja

Thanks a lot for source code.

[edd_jedi]

Very kind of you to share the source code! I really think this game is good enough to finish. I'd be happy to help in any way I could, drawing sprites or level backgrounds etc.

As your A1200 has died, if you were willing to post the remaining floppy disks I'd be happy to archive them for you.

[keithbugeja]

Originally Posted by Asman

@keithbugeja

Thanks a lot for source code.

You're welcome! I'm sorry about the rest of the assets/tools - hopefully, if I can get my A1200 fixed, I'll put them online too.

[Asman]

Originally Posted by keithbugeja

You're welcome! I'm sorry about the rest of the assets/tools - hopefully, if I can get my A1200 fixed, I'll put them online too.

Thats sounds great. If I assume that I will finish my open projects soon then If you don't mind I will optimize a bit your source code.

[Gzegzolka]

I would love to see this game finished with more different levels themes and elements that affect gameplay. Also background picture could be changed to show something bigger, maybe with more colors or even many layers, anyway bit more stuff than just small gradient one object and black background. Oscar and Trolls got nice giant backgrounds.

[keithbugeja]

Originally Posted by Asman

Thats sounds great. If I assume that I will finish my open projects soon then If you don't mind I will optimize a bit your source code.

Please go ahead! I'm sure there's ample room for improvement.

Originally Posted by edd_jedi

As your A1200 has died, if you were willing to post the remaining floppy disks I'd be happy to archive them for you.

Thanks! I'll let a friend of mine take a look at the machine first. If he can't do anything about it, I'll definitely take you up on your offer!

[PortuguesePilot]

@ keithbugeja

I have the deepest respect for this sort of action. Sharing your (fine) work with the community is an invaluable gesture and benefits the community as a whole. I'm pretty sure that some of our very talented members will pick it up and give it the finishing that Blaze downright deserves. Cheers, mate!

[keithbugeja]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

@ keithbugeja

I have the deepest respect for this sort of action. Sharing your (fine) work with the community is an invaluable gesture and benefits the community as a whole. I'm pretty sure that some of our very talented members will pick it up and give it the finishing that Blaze downright deserves. Cheers, mate!

Thanks! I believe that by sharing, I can only learn from this very talented community.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by keithbugeja

I believe that by sharing, I can only learn from this very talented community.

Thank you for sharing the game like that.

I'll put it on Aminet, if you don't mind. Could you specify a license under which the sources and game graphics are released? Public Domain? BSD? GPL?

[Leffmann]

Thanks for sharing! With a more original hero, to not upset Sega, that game could've been a real hit on the Amiga.

[keithbugeja]

Originally Posted by Korodny

Thank you for sharing the game like that.

I'll put it on Aminet, if you don't mind. Could you specify a license under which the sources and game graphics are released? Public Domain? BSD? GPL?

By all means, please do! As for the licence, I would say BSD.

[Adrian Browne]

Those tools and graphics on floppies would sure help anyone thinking of continuing this project.

[Joe Maroni]

i just found one level on the adf...can anyone show me where to get to the 2nd level? if it exists...