Playstation Resident Evil on Amiga!

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Overall, I fail to see any solid reason that would justify the need of a high-end Amiga for such a port! Literally, Resident evil 1 is the least taxing game I can think of for PSX's power! Of course from this statement to actually porting such a beast (with all it's cutscenes and animations) would be a gargantuan task. But this is most notably an issue of will/manpower/relevance, i.e. has nothing to do with Amiga's or PSX's abilities...

This is yet another reason why I started this thread, because I too thought this would be possible. I have continually stated the 33MHz speed of the PS, not to mention the screen modes. The only area that perhaps the PS succeeds the Amiga is the FPGA driven side. < That stated I do not think they use much of that when running Resident Evil.

Tsak, Makes some very valid and great points here about what is needed and why. I have both PC and Playstation Versions. < They look almost identical. I have always believed that Amiga could do this video game. I also think that if an Amiga version was ever produced, that it would attract a lot of attention.

One other thing I feel is worth mentioning, the Amiga could easily handle all music, speech and sound effects.

[MigaTech]

Also check this link out, it explains why this video game is simply awesome! I was also thinking shame they didn't do an arcade version, then we could of Mamed it !

How the F*** are they allowing downloads when copyright should still be in effect? If it isn't then someone could start work on an Amiga port of Resident Evil. They state that the PC version was constructed using Playstation port and that PC looks superior due to screen resolution. < I thought other than this, they are virtually identical.

http://www.old-games.com/download/6152/resident-evil

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

This is my thought to prerender everything put might not quite work as I'm pretty sure the PSX uses real 3D objects and and all the prerendered sprites throughout the game would take up a lot of space.

Space is not an issue, but RAM is. However the game can load any needed stuff with each screen or set of screens (means there's no need to load from the get go all prerendered sprites). I'm sure 1,5- 2mb are more than enough to allow you to play a few rooms without any loading interruption. And as I already mentioned there's not even needed to go and prerender all 3d objects and anims to perfection. With clever compromises any smoothness or detail lost will be hardly noticable.

Originally Posted by MigaTech

This is yet another reason why I started this thread, because I too thought this would be possible. I have continually stated the 33MHz speed of the PS, not to mention the screen modes.

I think there's no real comparison between the Amiga and PSX, the later has specialised custom harware to pull off it's magic (just like the Amiga has it's own), so the CPU speed is not much relevant here. Plus for a nice Amiga port you'd still need to make a lot compromises. Unless you make it for 060 in which case I too think a 1:1 port could easilly be created. But where's the fun in that?

[zerohour1974]

Good luck trying to get Capcom to allow such. They are like Konami and Square Enix immensely defensive of the IPs and they would issue Cease and Desists as soon as look at you.

[Retro1234]

Would definitely make a cool demo to just Run around the house - Ripping everything would be a pain in the butt - would be interesting to see just how many frames to walk around the whole house. I wouldnt know how but if scaling were possible this would help cut down on frames.

Maybe if replaced the background files in the PSX game with just something blank this would help Ripping for the main sprites.

Originally Posted by Tsak

Space is not an issue, but RAM is. However the game can load any needed stuff with each screen or set of screens (means there's no need to load from the get go all prerendered sprites). I'm sure 1,5- 2mb are more than enough to allow you to play a few rooms without any loading interruption. And as I already mentioned there's not even needed to go and prerender all 3d objects and anims to perfection. With clever compromises any smoothness or detail lost will be hardly noticable.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by zerohour1974

Good luck trying to get Capcom to allow such. They are like Konami and Square Enix immensely defensive of the IPs and they would issue Cease and Desists as soon as look at you.

Not entirely true. If it was why did they allow that Amiga version back in the Amiga Format days? < It was promoted through the magazine, and it was at the time when Resident Evil was at its most pinnacle.

You also have to take into account that they are clearly allowing downloads on this title, just by using the link provided further up this thread.

Consider into all this that the original title it now over two decades old, I do not think Capcom would bother if a small outfit, was to attempt a retro Amiga version.

[Dunny]

I take it you've never heard of Megaman then? A remake had to be renamed in order to get published. Capcom are vicious protectors of their I.P.

But let's discuss RE. Technically, it might be possible but you'll be needing a pretty beefy Amiga to run it. I'd not bother with pre-rendered sprites, as each model would need to be drawn at every x/y/z position in order for perspective to be taken into account, along with every frame of their animation too. You're talking millions of images. Loading them all in per scene would take ages even from HDD.

You could cut that down with some scaling, but that would look just awful at low resolution.

From looking at some videos, there seems to be a few hundred gouraud and flat-shaded polygons per scene. Maybe up to a thousand for busy and complex stuff.

With a decent 3D engine, flat-shaded could be done but again, you'd need a pretty hefty Amiga to pull it off.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I take it you've never heard of Megaman then? A remake had to be renamed in order to get published. Capcom are vicious protectors of their I.P.

OK, so in this case then they could call it "Regeneration Evil" < What do you think?

[nobody]

Maybe Capcom didn't care because the Amiga demo was a joke and market was too small. Even if they see an Amiga version running they wouldn't care. But the problem isn't Capcom. The problem is you need a team working for 2 years (for free) on a high end 040/060 with 3D to get this going. This is not Donkey Kong, you need 3D to make a proper version or forget it and do something like NES R.E.

[ Show youtube player ]

[trixster]

I made you a quick video of Resident Evil on an Amiga running FPSE:

[ Show youtube player ]

It's on a 400Mhz PPC. Sound doesn't work sadly as I don't think the old WarpOS version of FPSE supports it. I can't work out how to get fullscreen Warp3D working with this hardware so this is software rendering.

[Retro1234]

I would chip in for some kind of pre-rendered demo or even if it comes to nothing. I cant spare much time but I must admit its an idea ive been toying with for some time and Tsak mention it as well, I think a cool demo could be pulled off.

have a look at these rips
https://www.spriters-resource.com/mo...n/sheet/18947/

and check out Resident Evil 2 on gameboy Advanced - is this real 3D?

Theres a guid to ripping Gameboy Advance sprites and like most console sprite ripping the guy uses a emulator turns of the background and just grabs the on screen graphics - could be a starting point.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Would definitely make a cool demo to just Run around the house - Ripping everything would be a pain in the butt - would be interesting to see just how many frames to walk around the whole house. I wouldnt know how but if scaling were possible this would help cut down on frames.

Scaling isn't needed in most cases, large part of the game rooms are just overhead/isometric like, so if zero scaling would applied you could get away with it. Scaling would only be needed in very selected corridors where you move towards the camera or perhaps large rooms where the size difference when going from one edge to the other is quite noticable.

Also the main concern (for RAM) are not the overall needed frames for the complete house but in each individual room. You can reload a completely new set of anims going from one room to another.

Now for the character anims themselves, it's 16 directions (for super smooth 360 turn around) x walking/attacking/standing still/geting hurt frames. Obviously it's huge, huge, HUGE ripping work to do (if you consider you'd need perhaps around 200 frames per character for each individual room).

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I would chip in for some kind of pre-rendered demo or even if it comes to nothing. I cant spare much time but I must admit its an idea ive been toying with for some time and Tsak mention it as well, I think a cool demo could be pulled off.

have a look at these rips
https://www.spriters-resource.com/mo...n/sheet/18947/

Hmm, no these can't do the trick, too few and no 360 directions. But generally yeah, the rips would look similar.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

and check out Resident Evil 2 on gameboy Advanced - is this real 3D?

Hah! Well, GBA is similar in terms of horsepower to SNES with some limited 3D texture mapping abilities (whatever it's 16.8 MHz 32-bit ARM7TDMI cpu allows basically). I think the game uses real 3d characters. However this got me thinking. How taxing would it be to render a low poly 3d texture mapped character on a still screen? I bet that a 030/040 with (again) NO 3d card could possibly pull this off without issues. With pre-rendered anims however it could still possible even on a 020.

Originally Posted by nobody

Maybe Capcom didn't care because the Amiga demo was a joke and market was too small. Even if they see an Amiga version running they wouldn't care. But the problem isn't Capcom. The problem is you need a team working for 2 years (for free) on a high end 040/060 with 3D to get this going. This is not Donkey Kong, you need 3D to make a proper version or forget it and do something like NES R.E.
[ Show youtube player ]

Or this: [ Show youtube player ]

[Retro1234]

I may look into ripping from the GameBoy Advance version at some point.
Would you take a guess at the dimensions of a Sprite sheet with say 200 of the frames and what colour depth would be acceptable.

I may be wrong but creating a 3D wire frame for these would be hard! unless you can extract the data from the original - maybe the wire frame was based on real humans.

[MigaTech]

@Tsak and @Retro1234, You both really seem to know your stuff when it comes to making this a possibility on the Amiga!

Some of that information was like whoa!! It is really fascinating to see you both working together to work out how certain aspects of how this video game, can be accomplished.

I do believe this is now in very capable hands indeed!! < If you succeed in making a playable Demo or even the full game, you shall go down in Amiga History.

[Dunny]

I agree. The proof, as they say, is not in the pudding but in the eating. I await a playable demo with great interest.

So who's actually going to write this?

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I may look into ripping from the GameBoy Advance version at some point.
Would you take a guess at the dimensions of a Sprite sheet with say 200 of the frames and what colour depth would be acceptable.

200 frames is a really rough estimate. The size largely depends on the room and perspective. For a demo I'd choose a single room where you'd have space to move around and the sprite being realatively medium sized, say able to fit 48x64. If the walk cycle is made 8 frames per direction (x16 directions) this would mean 28 frames per 320x256 sheet which translates to 4,5 sheets total (containing 128 48x64 frames) for the complete 360 walking cycle.

Now for color depth, 16 colors are enough, so let's say 4 bitplanes.

Here's a quick test I made:


It's 32x64 size, 16 colors and It's cut out and resized from this pic here : https://lezisell.deviantart.com/art/...-I-P-411477399

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I may be wrong but creating a 3D wire frame for these would be hard! unless you can extract the data from the original - maybe the wire frame was based on real humans.

Perhaps someone has managed to remake the meshes already. It would be a lot of work to redo them from scratch though. Even so, I cannot help much here as I am more of a traditional pixel artist guy
However if someone with 3D skills could step in and provide the sheets I could help with the conversions.

Originally Posted by MigaTech

@Tsak and @Retro1234, You both really seem to know your stuff when it comes to making this a possibility on the Amiga!

Some of that information was like whoa!! It is really fascinating to see you both working together to work out how certain aspects of how this video game, can be accomplished.

I do believe this is now in very capable hands indeed!! < If you succeed in making a playable Demo or even the full game, you shall go down in Amiga History.

Thanx, but my input is more "academic", plus the help I can provide limited. I have already my hands full making other Amiga games

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Now for color depth, 16 colors are enough, so let's say 4 bitplanes.

Here's a quick test I made:


It's 32x64 size, 16 colors and It's cut out and resized from this pic here : https://lezisell.deviantart.com/art/...-I-P-411477399

Simply Awesome work !!

Originally Posted by Tsak

Perhaps someone has managed to remake the meshes already. It would be a lot of work to redo them from scratch though. Even so, I cannot help much here as I am more of a traditional pixel artist guy
However if someone with 3D skills could step in and provide the sheets I could help with the conversions.

Please let there be someone who can help with the 3D sections of this video game!

Originally Posted by Tsak

Thanx, but my input is more "academic", plus the help I can provide limited. I have already my hands full making other Amiga games

You are way too modest, you deserve all the praise there is for the effort you have show so far. Simply amazing, you are very talented!!

[Tsak]

Aaand, here's another quick test from an animated Resident Evil character gif I found.



Took me just 5mins to rip from the gif, do the conversion to 32x64/16 colors and reconstruct the anim. So you see, if you have the meshes/anims and the correct angle for each room it's pretty straight forward to export, convert and re-use!

Here's the original gif: http://i.imgur.com/widAMdb.gif

My conversion anim is obviously jerkier as I limited number of frames from 30 to 9. But as you see, the anim is still perfectly legit!

And here's the thread I found it in: http://lgt.createaforum.com/tools-23...dit-3d-models/

Basically the guy gives a tool which can rip the meshes from the original game, so someone could easilly take the assets/anims and make similar exports.

Originally Posted by MigaTech

Simply Awesome work !!

You are way too modest, you deserve all the praise there is for the effort you have show so far. Simply amazing, you are very talented!!

Now, now, please don't get too excited. I trully didn't do anything hard or groundbreaking here. This is just a mental excercise, (doesn't mean it will actually happen) so keep your expectations grounded. My point is to prove that a small demo can be made possible with Amiga's limitations in mind and still look quite faithful, without the need of realtime 3d gfx.

Originally Posted by Dunny

Not really. I see many threads come and go where someone's enthusiasm for the Amiga causes them to ask "Why isn't <game x> on the Amiga? The Amiga could totally nail it!" followed by many old-hands explaining why not, with more enthusiastic chaps explaining how it could be done (often with totally impractical solutions - such as rendering 3D models as sprites in every conceivable position, rotation and animation).

Agreed, though I'm not claiming it's easy, or more practical than using real 3d, just that there are middle ground solutions well within the abilities of low end Amigas. As I mentioned again and again already it would take a ridiculous amount of work (and storage) to do anything more than a tech demo. But for a couple of rooms and the specs I provided you simply don't need 3D renders in every conceivable position, rotation and animation, just a couple of exports in a fixed perspective

To take what I'm saying one step further, 16 colors are ideal for the character to be made into a sprite (instead of a bob), which can offload the blitter even further. Also means that a possible demo could run pretty well even on an unexpanded A1200. Having said that, I'm pretty well aware that with some rooms where the characters are quite big, the 2mb limit might be too much of a bottleneck for full anims under my proposed method.

Originally Posted by Dunny

2. The people shouting about how the Amiga could totally do <game x> have no clue about programming in general, let alone programming for the Amiga.

I'm not sure if I should take this personally (anyway, no offence taken). I'm no coder but I'm pretty firm I know my stuff/Amiga limitations (having spend the last 8 years working on actual Amiga games helps here). Unless you can prove me wrong of course, feel free to get technical

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Tsak

I'm not sure if I should take this personally (anyway, no offence taken).

None intended - you're clearly aware of why this won't work. It's a great idea for the very few rooms where perspective doesn't come into play - but RE, as you know, is very cinematic with many camera angles and many scenes that play to the strengths of the 3D renderer which just cannot be done practically on an Amiga.

Sadly, we see this scenario all too often - a lot of excitement and pretty much zero results. I'm not expecting this to turn into a port of RE to the Amiga. Quite the opposite

[Retro1234]

If someone did want to go 3D maybe create a 360 Rip this could be used as a basis of to create a 3D skeleton/object.