The Kiwi's Tale - Full length platformer for CD32

[Predseda]

A lot of secrets revealed! I must replay the game soon.

[Predseda]

How does Leopard Seal incident, mentioned in the intro, correspond with the original New Zealand story? I read Wally Walrus on Amiga NZS box. Was it different in various platforms?

Additionally - look at the Kiwi's name in NZS: he is Tiki Kiwi in all the boxed releases.
http://hol.abime.net/960/boxscan

But this official advertisement names him as Joey Kiwi. http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/adve...d_story_01.jpg

Seems the marketing guys in Ocean were on drugs

[earok]

Originally Posted by Predseda

How does Leopard Seal incident, mentioned in the intro, correspond with the original New Zealand story? I read Wally Walrus on Amiga NZS box. Was it different in various platforms?

Additionally - look at the Kiwi's name in NZS: he is Tiki Kiwi in all the boxed releases.
http://hol.abime.net/960/boxscan

But this official advertisement names him as Joey Kiwi. http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/adve...d_story_01.jpg

Seems the marketing guys in Ocean were on drugs

Eeep. I used the Wikipedia description of the game, which describes the villain as a leopard seal. That honestly makes slightly more sense - the Walrus is a northern hemisphere creature as opposed to the southern hemisphere Leopard seal, also the villain from NZS does not (so far as I can tell) have the distinctive tusks of a walrus.

Minor note since I'm updating the post anyway. These are what the random pickups mean:

• Green spiral - A pounamu (aka jade/greenstone) carving
• Buzzy Bee - This is the popular New Zealand children's toy
• Kiwifruit - Self evident
• Footwear - Depending where you're from, they're either Jandals (NZ), Thongs (Australia), or Flip-Flops (UK/US)
• Drink bottle - This is L&P, a popular NZ fizzy drink
• Rugby ball - Self evident
• Oscar statue - A reference to Lord of the Ring's success in that regard
• Rocket launcher - Self evident except for the letters "SPNKR" on the side. This is a Halo reference.

[capehorn]

In the Amiga version the protagonist was called Tiki, and the villian was a Leopard Seal (although I have also heard of it being referred to as Willy/Wally the Walrus). Here's a screenshot from the Amiga version

[PopoCop]

Earok wrote: "I presume the CD32 version will work fine on an A1200 with CD drive".

Can anybody confirm that CD32 version works on an A1200 with CD drive?

[earok]

Originally Posted by PopoCop

Earok wrote: "I presume the CD32 version will work fine on an A1200 with CD drive".

Can anybody confirm that CD32 version works on an A1200 with CD drive?

I'm 99% sure that, if your Amiga setup can play CD32 games with music (such as the CD32 editions of Zool), it should work just fine with this as well.

Having said that, tracker music for HDD Amigas is on the way.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by earok

Having said that, tracker music for HDD Amigas is on the way.

Very nice

[Predseda]

Erik, please could you provide us some nice picture for a CD jewel box?

[NeoHippie2016]

@predseda: good idea! @earok:

[earok]

I'm not confident about handling a jewel case myself, but I'm happy for someone else to have a go at it.

This is the original artwork for the title screen if it's any use - https://i.imgur.com/UHFk9B4.png

Also, I put it through the Waifu2X scaler to upscale it without (much) quality loss - https://i.imgur.com/Y78I7Oi.png

[Predseda]

I have a problem with CD tracks. I only hear the intro music (once), the levels have SFX only.

My configuration is Amiga 1200 with squirell-connected SCSI CD-ROM drive. I have checked if the CD is correctly burnt (aka if it contains all the audio) and it seems okay, my workbench CD-player plays the tracks without probs. Anybody else encountered this issue?

[earok]

Originally Posted by Predseda

I have a problem with CD tracks. I only hear the intro music (once), the levels have SFX only.

My configuration is Amiga 1200 with squirell-connected SCSI CD-ROM drive. I have checked if the CD is correctly burnt (aka if it contains all the audio) and it seems okay, my workbench CD-player plays the tracks without probs. Anybody else encountered this issue?

I've had something similar with real CD32 where sometimes the music doesn't trigger, but not that severe.

Have you tried running the game from HDD with the CD in the drive?

I'll be spending some time on the project soon to implement tracker music and a raft of bug fixes, I'll take another look at the issue then.

[Graham Humphrey]

Just on the subject of audio tracks, I did notice on my CD32 that when the audio track finishes on a level, it doesn't start playing again until you get to the next level or lose all your lives and continue. Is this a limitation of the Blitz CD commands? I was thinking of experimenting with these commands for my Maxwell Mouse project to see if I could get CD audio tracks in the game.


(By the way, look out for the March issue of Amiga Future if you would like to see a two-page review on The Kiwi's Tale...)

[earok]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Just on the subject of audio tracks, I did notice on my CD32 that when the audio track finishes on a level, it doesn't start playing again until you get to the next level or lose all your lives and continue. Is this a limitation of the Blitz CD commands? I was thinking of experimenting with these commands for my Maxwell Mouse project to see if I could get CD audio tracks in the game.


(By the way, look out for the March issue of Amiga Future if you would like to see a two-page review on The Kiwi's Tale...)

Well, damn! Will definitely keep my eye out for that. Thanks for the coverage mate.

So like, the Blitz Basic CD commands basically allow you to play X number of tracks from track Y. There's no real command for looping the same track over and over. I had some discussions with Cobe about it and I think all we came up with was

1) Manually looping the track (eg having a really really long repeating track).
2) Keeping an internal timer that counts down until when the CD stops playing, and starts it again.

2) might be tricky, though possible I guess. Main issue is the main game runs in Blitz mode and the CD commands are activated from QAMIGA mode.

[Predseda]

Or you can limit each the level time according to the track duration

[Cobe]

How's it even possible that it plays intro music at all on A1200? Is intro music cdda or mod?

Erik, are you using library or you're SendingIO to Cd.device?
If its library, what InitCD32 actually checks before PlayingCD32 when A1200 fools it.
And if you're SendingIO, is cd.device common to all cd-roms(squirrel and the rest of the bunch)?

How long do you vwait after playing track? With well burned cds I don't have to care, they play tracks always, but with badly burned cds that even struggle to load data, playing tracks is hit and miss.

Predsedo, could you try it with some cd32 emulator?

[earok]

Originally Posted by Cobe

How's it even possible that it plays intro music at all on A1200? Is intro music cdda or mod?

Erik, are you using library or you're SendingIO to Cd.device?
If its library, what InitCD32 actually checks before PlayingCD32 when A1200 fools it.
And if you're SendingIO, is cd.device common to all cd-roms(squirrel and the rest of the bunch)?

How long do you vwait after playing track? With well burned cds I don't have to care, they play tracks always, but with badly burned cds that even struggle to load data, playing tracks is hit and miss.

Predsedo, could you try it with some cd32 emulator?

This is an example from the source code - it drops out of Blitz mode, stops any currently playing music, loads the next level, plays music and then waits.

    QAMIGA
    if CDMusic
        StopCD32
    endif

    LoadBank #Bank_Map,Str$(Level)+".map"

    if CDMusic
        PlayCD32 data_levels(Level)\Music + 2
        VWait 150
    endif

    BLITZ

With that much delay I've found that it works most of the time on my real CD32 (which has it's original laser, hence it's not very good at reading CD-Rs).

So far as I can tell, Blitz's CD32 music library just uses cd.device. I think this is why there's a bug with Worms that assumes you've got a CD32 pad if you happen to have cd.device.

[Cobe]

I never used vwait longer than 100 but my old laser is pretty good.
I cant tell if it helps but the only thing I'm adding is that I put little vwait 25 after StopCD32.

And I have a question about cd.device(I'm missing a bit of basic Amiga cd knowledge here). When you install/mount cd in Amiga, do you always have cd.device?

[Cobe]

I've just experimented little more. I made wait after playing track adjustable from game.

And I have one conclusion. The higher track number is the more wait is needed.
This could explain why in Predseda's case only intro track is played.

In my tests with my game and tracks, my cd32 will play track2 with wait as little as 37 while for track5 it needs 83.

[earok]

That is weird as hell. Maybe there's a way to poll the cd drive to see if it's actually playing? Eg, so that we can wait until the music is going?