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One question about how amiga draws things: is it possible to draw a sprite with the depth between two different BOBS on the same playfield? I was under the impression that you draw sprites either on top or behind a playfield, that there would be no way to draw a sprite "between" BOBS on the same playfield.
If I am not wrong (and I really have no idea), then your idea of using sprites for an extra enemy won't work. Actually I believe you wouldn't be able to use sprites for anything but background or foreground scenery, or for a panel for lives/score etc on top of the gameplay area.
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I think you're right. Sprites can't be drawn between two BOBs because BOBs are part of the Bitmap, and dual playfield wouldn't really change this. Although I think sprites can be drawn to the area between playfields, or to front or behind playfields, but not between BOBs inside a playfield.
So my idea for using sprites for enemies or gameplay objects wouldn't actually work.
But this would free the sprites for other cool things; the best use for them would be "extra scenery" in the foreground and background, such as the street lamps in the first level or the flashing neon lights. Luckily sprite height is unlimited, so they would work fine for this purpose. And even the rain effect at the boss fight of the first level could be done with sprites.
Here's a gameplay video of the MegaDrive version:
[ Show youtube player ]
As you can see, the scroll stops at certain points on the level, and when I tried the game on an emulator, there is a slight about 100 milliseconds pause when the scroll continues after stopping...I think it creates or loads the next street section during this pause. So it could be that there is no tile creation at all, but each street section is a few screens long pre-made bitmap, and each level is split into multiple bitmaps like this.
Or at least that could be the most smart way to do it on the Amiga, a 4 - 6 screens long bitmap is possible, especially because it's only 3 bitplanes, consuming less RAM. And in fact I think Golden Axe on the Amiga has similar scroll pauses, sometimes with loading breaks.
Maybe I'll make a quick scrolling level with basic gameplay and AI in place, so that we'll get a better idea. Shouldn't take longer than a week.
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And about the question on Blitz speed vs Assembler speed: it would be cool if someone would make speed comparison tests on compiled AMOS code vs compiled Blitz 2 code vs compiled Assembler code, on basic tasks such as different math operations, variable handling, condition checking, loops and BOB blitting, with source codes available on each of three tests, so that everyone can evaluate the tests and verify the results on their own.
Then we would have some facts on the table on where the slowness of AMOS and Blitz is mostly located, and how serious it is, from a game making perspective.
