NeoGeo Metal Slug conversion to Amiga 500 - madman task ;-)

[DeaTure]

Originally Posted by nobody

It can look good with 8 colors, just needs hell of a lot of work, i can't imagine anyone recoloring all these assets for fun. Then how would anyone fit all the frames at 512k. Probably just play a bit, then stop-load next assets, repeat.

Also need to rethink about the 2nd playfield and do it as tiled backgrounds (almost) from scratch.




This is how it would look with 8+7 colors, can't have everything i guess. Well i think it would be acceptable.

Imgpix a playstation 1 developer tool is a very good recoloring tool.. I believe it would do a pretty good job here.




this is a 16 color screenshot

[nobody]

I converted manually, not using any auto-recolor application. There is no auto-recolor application that will do better or else you lose details and except that your converted image is around 1 million pixels. The Amiga has only 64 thousand or so.

PS Even Irfanview simple "decrease color" can do something similar if i use 1 million pixels.

[DeaTure]

Originally Posted by nobody

I converted manually, not using any auto-recolor application. There is no auto-recolor application that will do better or else you lose details and except that your converted image is around 1 million pixels. The Amiga has only 64 thousand or so.

PS Even Irfanview simple "decrease color" can do something similar if i use 1 million pixels.

I agree completely, a tool will never do it as good as in hand.. here is a tool color reduction of enemies in 8 color, i know i am a coder and therefore i find this acceptable :P

[nobody]

It can be done decently in 8+7 colors. Sure, cut corners here and there, drop a massive amount of frames, drop some backgrounds etc.. Also I think it has more "character" than using 16 colors. Question is who will do such a task.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by nobody

It can be done decently in 8+7 colors. Sure, cut corners here and there, drop a massive amount of frames, drop some backgrounds etc.. Also I think it has more "character" than using 16 colors. Question is who will do such a task.

Ace Rimmer would have a good go at it.

[DeaTure]

It is quite a task, it is currently not something i would have the time or energy to do

just a preview of 8 color bobs on 8 color background

[nobody]

Surely is a madman's task as the title says lol. Talking about 2 years of work.

[sandruzzo]

Main character can be made by HW SPRITES with its' own 16 colors! I think 8+8 colors works well!

[Tigerskunk]

Maybe I am alone here with this opinion, but I think in this case (and for probably every other port you could imagine) 8+7 looks horrible and would be a shame for the Amiga.

For something that looks like that in the end, I wouldn't want to even begin coding this, knowing I will be working on this project for the next two years at least.

I mean, come on. This wouldn't even have parallaxing.
And would use up six fucking bitplanes for something that looks like it's been made on a ZX Spectrum.


This would be using 5 Bitplanes, but also no parallax.



Well, that problem with the memory is a bit worse here, I concur. But I'd rather take less enemies and less crazy actions the player and enemies can do and go for this graphical quality. And like I said before, converting assets would be a breeze.

And this quick conversion even uses up colours for the HUD. Which I would put under the screen somewhere.

Yes, you have big objects to blit, but..

* 240 x 160 means lot of free dma
* can use a triple buffer (again, not that huge for that size, 72kb. Need to add some margin area for objects to enter and leave, though.)
* All bullets should be drawn by a sprite multiplexer and don't need to be blit.

[nobody]

Probably you are talking about some A1200 version with extra ram right? 5 bitplanes on a game that creates a mayhem on screen on A500?

[sandruzzo]

@Steril707

With copper you can have tons of colors. With 32 colors, maybe some sprites can be used for parallax

[Master484]

5 bitplanes on a game that creates a mayhem on screen on A500?

Amnios.
http://hol.abime.net/3265

At times screen is full of stuff, with even ground shadows for all objects. But indeed it's a little bit slow, I think 17 FPS all the time, with slowdowns.

---

Also people have mentioned that Ruff 'n Tumble engine would be great for Metal Slug, because it has lots of action in 32 colors. So some time ago I tested it to see how much it can draw before slowdown happens. And here is a screenshot that I took when I noticed slowdown on Level 3:




So there are 7 big enemies and 2 smaller ones + that big "pop-up turret" in the bottom left corner + 2 player bullets. And Player is a sprite.

And when the screen got this crowded, then some sort of frame-skip started to happen. But it was quite hard to spot. It's a 25 FPS game, and when 25 FPS slows down, it's hard to notice.

So I think the Ruff'n Tumble engine could handle it...with the object amounts of Metal Slug I think it would still be 25 FPS, although with more frequent slowdowns...but then again the original Neo Geo game also slows down often, so it's not a shame if the Amiga version too would be a little bit sluggish.

And maybe 32 colors would indeed be the best color mode for this game...the only problem would be to fit enough GFX to Chip ram, but if it can be done, then 32 might be the way to go. And of course copper tricks can still be used in 32 color mode too.

[nobody]

These games have 1/10 of the graphics you need in RAM for Metal Slug. That Ruff screen uses 9-10 tiles of 16*16 all around that just repeat on screen, while Metal Slug requires much, much more. Plus enemies are a lot smaller than (some) gigantic sprites of Metal Slug. 20*24, on Metal Slug probably is bullets size lol. That tank alone on Steril's screenshot is 80*48, the tank above that is 168*100

[Tigerskunk]

Yep, whether you use 3 or 5 bpl, all these objects and their crazy many animation frames are to big for the A500s chip RAM.

In the end you will have to decide where and how you set your compromises.

[aros-sg]

Grayscale!






That is 7 colors.

With video players like VLC you can see how this looks in motion by making it play video from Youtube and then apply effects (saturation, posterisation).

[rare_j]

Not only is it impossible, but with Metal Slug Infinity being released for android imminently, it's not a good time to be taking liberties with their IP either.

Metal Slug Infinity trailer: [ Show youtube player ]

[zero]

Originally Posted by nobody

This is how it would look with 8+7 colors, can't have everything i guess. Well i think it would be acceptable.

If that came out back in the late 80s it would have have some of the best graphics of the era on the Amiga.

Here's Midnight Resistance for comparison:

[roondar]

Originally Posted by zero

If that came out back in the late 80s it would have have some of the best graphics of the era on the Amiga.

Indeed, it looks pretty nice for what it is. Nicer than I had imagined it would look.

Plus, there is no requirement to keep all the colours the same all the time. You could have them change between sections. Kind of like how Turrican I changes the background colour if you enter a cave, but then for the foreground layer as well.

Sometimes I do feel us current Amiga users are a tad hard to please.

[Tigerskunk]

While that is certainly not untrue, the thing is that we are in 2019 now, and not in 1989.

I guess everybody needs to find his or her own way of setting "boundaries" of what someone finds acceptable or not for an Amiga game in this day and age.

Off course I am only talking for myself here, and what kind of port I would try to make happen. And I have no idea if this is really making more sense or not than anybody elses idea. It's just how I would try to do it...

In the end, if you feel that your idea is the perfect way you would attempt a Metal Slug port, then by all means do it...

Because to me, the person who creates something is 1000 times more important than the person who only talks.
And I am bound to finish Inviyya, so I won't start a Metal Slug port anyway in the near future, even if at the moment I'd love to have a try at some demo.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by zero

If that came out back in the late 80s it would have have some of the best graphics of the era on the Amiga.

Here's Midnight Resistance for comparison:

Wow. That looks like a C64 game.