Metro Siege: new arcade quality a500 brawler!

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by roondar

It's a pity that 3 button joysticks are so rare on the Amiga, sounds like you could've used an extra button or two

Impressive number of animation frames there. Does that include the... Oh, I forgot how it was called in those streams I watched all that time ago... Let's say "smart" frames - where you're moving part of the object around rather than having separate frames for everything?

Every frame is a combination of images individually positioned for each frame. (Modular animation as Mike calls it). The "Alex" character has about 150 different images used to create the different animations (Once again, 75 images doubled for flipped images).

So each character when drawn to the screen will be from say 6 up to 14 different images individually blit, so with 2 playable characters and 4 enemies it's not uncommon to have to do 60 or more blits to render a frame.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Basically it really depends on the game.

That's true..

Originally Posted by Tsak

In regards to moving objects using the full vertical width is not so much of an issue, regarding you copperise colors not used by bobs. That's what we also do in Metro Siege,

Yep, I know how you are doing this (read your nice overview on this).
But I'd say the amount of leeway you have with 15+1 colours is very very different from 7+1.
If you'd were to use 4 static colours for BOBs, and have 3 dynamic ones, I reckon that the game would still look very bleak and tile'y, since you'd have defined y-zones of color interacting with those 4 static colours you already use for your BOBs.

I don't say it's impossible, and it can probably done in a nice way for one level.
But keeping this colour scheme interesting for a whole game with 6 to 8 levels with different themes seems very very difficult to me.

I tried for a year, and I failed.

Originally Posted by Tsak

That's true. But at the same time I think there hasn't been really many new Amiga games that attempt to do this properly. I.e. modern 8-bit looking PC indies actually do a heck of a lot more than what an actual game working on an 8-bit console would be able to do. That is really fast movement, a ton of objects on screen, a ton of particle effects, screen shakes, detailed and fluid animation with great feedback and other 'juicy' stuff.

Yep, stuff like that is nice.

But, like I wrote, Amiga games are supposed to look a certain way. I think most people would be a lot happier to see something competing with an SNES (or even NEOGEO) game than a gameboy or NES styled game with lots of juice effects.

I'd be happy enough to see that broken up a bit, though. So all power to anybody attempting this.

Originally Posted by Tsak

I think the reason people embraced the recent galaga clone is that it indeed attempts and succeeds to replicate some of these tropes and tricks.

Yeah, but will that work for a "bigger" release?

[vulture]

@alpine9000

quick question, what if the player is pushing forward and fire while not in range for a grab? Will it perform a regular attack then? I suppose it should

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by vulture

@alpine9000

quick question, what if the player is pushing forward and fire while not in reange for a grab? Will it perform a regular attack then? I suppose it should

He still does the grab attempt move.

[samo79]

@Alpine9000

Did you ever think to add (optionally) a support also for the keyboard ?
This kind of game could be even playable by just using the keyboard, and in that way we will not have any limitation with the buttons for punch/kicks/jump

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by samo79

@Alpine9000

Did you ever think to add (optionally) a support also for the keyboard ?
This kind of game could be even playable by just using the keyboard, and in that way we will not have any limitation with the buttons for punch/kicks/jump

The game supports keyboard and cd32 pad, we haven’t explored additional control buttons yet, but plan to.

The main goal however is for it to be awesome with two buttons.

[vulture]

@alpine9000

thx for the reply, obviously I'd have to play it to get a feel of how it actually works. I just imagine it could be a little counter-intuitive to walk around and having to stop moving the stick to throw punches. In any case, really thrilled with Metro Siege, I hope we'll get some later level screenshots at some point.

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by vulture

@alpine9000

thx for the reply, obviously I'd have to play it to get a feel of how it actually works. I just imagine it could be a little counter-intuitive to walk around and having to stop moving the stick to throw punches. In any case, really thrilled with Metro Siege, I hope we'll get some later level screenshots at some point.

You don't have to stop moving the stick forward to throw multiple punches, if you hold the stick forward and keep hitting the attack button it will attack.

To do a grab the stick needs to go from idle to forward while the attack button is down.

[vulture]

@alpine9000

That's fine then, thx for the clarification!

[Tsak]

Hey guys, time for an update

Ever since Amiga Bill's latest 'Matro Siege' playthrough stream, we got loads of comments and questions regarding the game's music.
So I've decided to upload a small video to showcase some of the work that has been done already.

The following track will be recognised by those who've seen the teaser trailer or watched Bill's plays. However here it is signifficantly expanded (and a lot more complete). It consists of 2 parts, the second of which we haven't showed to anyone yet. Both parts play just before lv1's boss-fight, with part 2 (which is now the bulk of the track) looping until you reach him.

[ Show youtube player ]

And for those who'd like to skip directly to the second part to hear the brand new 'juicy' stuff go to 1:49

A few tech details, thoughts and trivia about this track and the game's music in general:

• It has a clean runtime of 3:44 mins (without taking into account part 2 looping), consists of 24 original patterns, 33 positions and occupies 42,3kb in Chip RAM.
  
• The track is converted to P61 and used in-game under that format. P61 conversion does a massive optimisation to the mod's pattern data (from ~1kb cost per pattern down to a few bytes) and cleans up unused patterns and instruments. In it's unconverted form and with the extra stuff manually cleaned up, the song is actually 80,1kb (37,1k of which are the instruments and the rest the pattern data)!
  
• Those with a keen ear will notice that the track is heavy on ST instruments (albeit often modified ones). The reason behind this is part choice (part lazyness) and a big part of the experimental process for this OST. Starting this track my goal was to quickly test and verify the style plus I was interested to keep a more authentic and familiar sound. Going forwards and with the rest of the tracks underway, already being build with original samples, there is a chance of revisiting it and replacing some ST stuff (or perhaps not ).
  
• Speaking of style, this result was partly Mike's request. He asked for a classic 80's rocking theme. Me being a more 'progressive/math' oriented guy I ended up fusing a tiny bit of this influence into the mix as well (eventually)
  
• In general and besides this specific track, the whole style is not set to stone yet. It will probably end up being a mix of various genres ranging from rock and progressive to funk, jazz and beyond (depending on the level and situation). Obviously in this equation, influences from other similar games will play their role as well. F.e. I'm personally very fond of the Japanese interpretation of those genres in the respected games of the 80s and 90s era.
  

[nikosidis]

The bass is fantastic!! Very, very good song. Keep on the great work!!

[Predseda]

You are really universal artist. Not sure if better graphic or musician.

[skan]

Killer track! Kudos!

[robinsonb5]

Yeah that is really nice. In the 90s many of us would set ripped game music playing in a modplayer while working on other stuff just for general listening enjoyment - and these tracks would definitely have made it to the playlist!

[Tigerskunk]

Great stuff, Tsak.

[alpine9000]

I am guessing I have listened to that tune even more times than Tsak, and I’m still not sick of it

[viddi]

Awesome soundtrack!

[saimo]

@Tsak

Really high quality music. Also, it fits the game perfectly. Congratulations! And thanks for the prog-rock vibes.

[Tsak]

Thanx everyone!

Originally Posted by Predseda

You are really universal artist. Not sure if better graphic or musician.

Well, most people know me in the Amiga scene as a pixel artist, it was about time to showcase the other part as well

Originally Posted by saimo

@Tsak

Really high quality music. Also, it fits the game perfectly. Congratulations! And thanks for the prog-rock vibes.

You're welcome
I've noticed that Skillgrid also shares similar sensitivities

[redblade]

Hi great audio.

Any chance of a screen grab of one of the character sprites to see how you have them set up??

Thanks