Amiga Robocop game, rework.

[Konrad]

Progress is looking great. This really improved alot.
Although I fear the game will struggle on an A500 with all the enemies and bullets on later levels.

Did you already test how many enemies and bullets you can manage simultaneously on screen?

[roondar]

It looks very nice with the parallax like that. However, if that is Dual Playfield on an A500, I'd be interested to know how you are planning to deal with the enemies and their colours?

[seko]

I just wanted to show parallax. The amiga 500 is not enough for more color and parallax. But I have an opinion. i'm working on it.

[DJ METUNE]

This looks promising! I have always wanted to see a proper arcade port of Robocop on Amiga. Maybe that parallax is too luxurious for OCS in such way.
I hope this will not end only as a tech demo.

Great music conversion Simone !! You've managed to bring the charm of the original arcade music. Though you've some reuse of chord samples in wrong places sometimes. I hope you'll sort that out.

[seko]

In progress.

Not bad.


Latest status
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* Robocop, collision detection enemies fall and die.

* Protracker routine issues. stoped music and soundfx in game. protracker routines issues for kick rom 1.3 . i dont know .



*I removed the parallax effect from the Robocop rework game. parallax is not enough for the amiga 500. However, I made improvements to the colors on the parallax screen.




New Video
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[ Show youtube player ]

[jotd]

beginning to look like a game!

[rothers]

You could def fake that parallax via various means. Sprites are the obvious first way but maybe making it a 2 colour image too? Some copper shading on it perhaps?

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by rothers

You could def fake that parallax via various means. Sprites are the obvious first way but maybe making it a 2 colour image too? Some copper shading on it perhaps?

I am sure that's all great advises, but why is the parallax so damn important?
Look.. there is 2 background goes at different speeds - wow!
Let's ruin the whole game.
Please, call Michelangelo off... as he is no artist without parallax.
Maybe in the day when first cartoons was produced, or Charli Chaplin or Buster Kitton had nice parallax effects, for the effects in their time, that they REALLY needed to convey the depth, I can understand.
Yeah, I know.. in the 80's and early 90's, kids compare what chipset had more parallax.. and some drolled over it.. I can't understand.
Even then I couldn't understand.

Common man, give me some descent port, in gameplay value, forget about freaking 2 sprites moving at different speeds.

Of course Rothers, you realize that all above is not really connected to you.
I just used your post to react to stuffs I think it's too damn overacted.

[saimon69]

Seko, i think some copper work might improve the landscape; just make it end a bit before the top building windows and add some dithering to the horizon lighter area

P.S. is your landscape routine vertical scroll ready? You will need it to be for latter levels;
plus if you need some hints how to speed up the rendering try to get in touch with Colin Vella or 10shu, they are working on Super Metal Hero on Blitz too

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I am sure that's all great advises, but why is the parallax so damn important?

Because it looks nice...

I am on your side though, that a game doesn't really need parallax. But if the game runs well as it is, it's a nice add on.
OCS doesn't have enough oomph to do justice to most arcade games when converting them, though, so I'd always go non-parallax for a non native (read: made especially for) OCS Amiga game.

On the video with the parallax above, what you don't see is that every enemy would have to share the palette with the foreground here, and that would probably look hideous.

[rothers]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I am sure that's all great advises, but why is the parallax so damn important?

Because if he can do it, he should. The opening level is what people will see and it'll make many old Amiga owners smile when the see that parallax.


Also, it's just two 3 colour sprites & maybe a copper rainbow, it's not a big deal in terms of power but it'll look good.

[jotd]

graphics matter. Else we'd all play "Stick Fighter" and would be happy with it. Great job so far.

The problem is re-creating all levels is pretty tedious once the initial thrill is gone. So hold on and make it happen

[roondar]

Graphics on the Amiga (and all other retro platforms for that matter) are always a compromise. Though I like how parallax effects look, I'm personally fine with a non-parallax, but more colourful, screen. Others might prefer the parallax with fewer colours.

At any rate, I'd much rather see a good version of Robocop without parallax than no version or a poor version with

[vulture]

I like how this progresses a lot! Regarding the parallax, well, if it doesn't fit, leave it out. An idea would be to add a few clouds as sprites in the sky to fake it a little. Also, a subtle copper gradient would be nice too.

[DanielAllsopp]

Nice thread! I started reworking Robocop earlier this year too, mainly to increase my 68k abilities (which are still severely lacking, after on and off for the past two years) and as some sort of hobby to get away from Swift and iOS.

Bit of background; I had been using the assets from Super Star Wars but couldn't find a complete and decent tile set to work with after successfully implementing sprites and basic blitter work so Robocop was the next best thing I could think of at the time.

This is AGA, single playfield and in 64 colours. Parallax is done with 64 pixel wide sprites. There's some issues with the cloud speed which I should really fix too.

As you'll see from the video, I gave up when it came to restoring the background using the blitter.

[ Show youtube player ]

I'll get back into it at some point I'm sure, but at the time I was happy I'd managed to get the tile map working and scrolling correctly.

Good luck with your port, it's already looking great!

[Bren McGuire]

holy shite robocop is tripping balls!

Originally Posted by DanielAllsopp

As you'll see from the video, I gave up when it came to restoring the background using the blitter.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by DanielAllsopp

I'll get back into it at some point I'm sure, but at the time I was happy I'd managed to get the tile map working and scrolling correctly.

Good luck with your port, it's already looking great!

Will provide you all mod files by then too!

[Havie]

It's fine to talk about using sprites in Blitz for backgrounds but unless you on only using e 8 hardware sprites then it is complicated and you lose them for the game which I sense you may need.

I have yet to find out how to reuse sprites in Blitz so if someone can show how to do it then that would be great! Or do we have to resort to 68k?

[jotd]

As you'll see from the video, I gave up when it came to restoring the background using the blitter.

not a problem right? just copy the background before blitting ALL the objects, then restore it before blitting all the objects at the next frame. And it should be possible to use the CPU to copy the data back & forth without shifting, picking a larger area but 8 pixel aligned. If there are many objects on screen, design some algorithm to start blitting to already backed up areas, and back up / restore other areas (far away) with the CPU while blitter is working. Was probably discussed somewhere here before.

Easier said than done, though. AGA attempt is looking great. ECS WIP too, but targetting ECS for arcade ports like Robocop is masochism...

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by jotd

Easier said than done, though. AGA attempt is looking great. ECS WIP too, but targetting ECS for arcade ports like Robocop is masochism...

Beg to differ, because this game did came out in the wake of Amiga as Game platform so there was an expectation to have a near 1:1 arcade port on OCS/ECS; it can come out pretty good if we get rid of the parallax OR seko use two three color sprites for it (will need some online assembly in my opinion, though)

Plus [now let the slaughter begin] i will like to see more an hybrid between the arcade and the home version, with added the identikit, the thermal scan and the hostage situation; THAT was the Robocop version we amigans (at least me) were expecting ^^