18 February 2019, 17:43 | #221 |
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Yeah, which surprises me a little. The Neo Geo graphics hardware can cope with it - there is no sprite flicker and no bitmap to render, so it must be entirely the CPU being overloaded. The stuff on-screen isn't that complicated, especially for a 12MHz 68000. There is even hardware acceleration for sprite animations.
I couldn't see any hardware support for collision detection though. Maybe it's there, I didn't dig very far. Maybe the coders just suck. Midnight Resistance is similar - the arcade board slows down more than the Amiga version, despite massive hardware acceleration of the graphics. Often there isn't even much going on. |
18 February 2019, 18:04 | #222 |
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Well, I didn't count the number of objects on screen in Metal Slug, but it seems to have tons of them. This could end up making collision detection a fairly hefty process to complete (though this doesn't go for all methods, most collision detection algorithms scale up poorly).
There's also the CPU load for keeping track of what object is where and which frame/scale factor to use. This could also take up quite some time given the large number of objects and elaborate animations/movement patterns. Another idea: they may have opted to use C for the main code. Which will work just fine, but if the compiler wasn't great it might end up slowing everything down. Of course, it's also possible the code is less than stellar - but that's hard to verify On a related note, Metal Slug is not locked to 30FPS (i.e. it's trying to do 60 but fails). Metal Slug 2 apparently runs@30FPS and has fewer slowdowns as a result. |
18 February 2019, 19:54 | #223 |
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The Neo Geo development wiki has a page about slowdown:
https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=Slowdown Here is a quote from that site: --- " Slowdowns are perceived during gameplay as slow picture updates (frameskip). On the NeoGeo, this happens when the CPU is not able to update the VRAM often enough to animate sprites smoothly. If a game wants to run at a constant 60 FPS (no frameskip), the calculations for a frame need to last less than 1/60 = 16.7ms. " --- Also the wiki says that Metal Slug 2 used a slow method to update the VRAM, which caused lots of slowdown. https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php...Vehicle-001/II So VRAM update speed seems to be the "bottleneck" that is the most common cause of slowdown in Neo Geo games. So bad programmers could easily make a slow game, despite having a million hardware sprites. And on Neo Geo everything that moves has to be made of sprites, including the scrolling backgrounds. So I would imagine that VRAM needs lots of updating all the time. |
18 February 2019, 23:12 | #224 |
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it seesms to slow down allways! Very disappointig
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19 February 2019, 00:28 | #225 | |||||
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Leaving objectivity aside, if we step back from the Amiga perspective for a while and just look at the games from an "objective" perspective, most Amiga games just don't fare very well. Frame update is a major factor — take any game released on more platforms than the Amiga and the ST, and the Amiga version will perform poorer. That is not just a matter of development resources, but the amount of effort needed to make a game with equivalent performance on the Amiga. Quote:
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19 February 2019, 02:24 | #226 |
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@idrougge & @Hewitson - I've moved my reply to a separate thread because this is getting far too much off-topic.
You can find my reply to idrougge here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=96392 @thread: no more off-topic about this point here from me. Carry on Last edited by roondar; 19 February 2019 at 10:09. Reason: Moved to a new thread |
19 February 2019, 08:34 | #227 |
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back to topic:
What people also forget when discussing a port of Metal Slug is, that the background is almost non repeating. There are almost no tiles, everything is custom. Means, you would need loads of RAM or streaming content from disk all the time. You would have reloads every few seconds, which would make this the shittiest of shitty ports. So, I don't believe in an OCS version that would do the game justice. |
19 February 2019, 09:30 | #228 | |
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Seems to use around 16 colours. The parallax seen in the first stage could be difficult to implement, but would be possible with a sprite layer. [ Show youtube player ] But then, people would complain about the lousy graphics for the sprites... Maybe somebody could do a makeover on them.. Last edited by Tigerskunk; 19 February 2019 at 09:36. |
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19 February 2019, 10:15 | #229 | |
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19 February 2019, 10:16 | #230 |
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It may be better to try and create a Metal Slug 'like' game that is not Metal Slug at all, but plays and feels (in so far as that feeling isn't based on the strength of NeoGeo hardware) similarly.
That way you can make something that works within the limits of Amiga hardware and not something that will always be considered a poor port. I know the NeoGeo Pocket version kinda is that, but it's still Metal Slug so like Steril said people will start to complain. |
19 February 2019, 12:25 | #231 |
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Game boy advance version
[ Show youtube player ] This make me think that an Amiga Version cold be possible, whiout being a direct conversion |
19 February 2019, 16:41 | #232 |
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That doesn't actually look too bad. The sprites are on the large side but there isn't too much on screen. They seem to have swapped the massive number of objects on screen for less linear level design and more exploring, to fit with the GBA hardware limits.
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19 February 2019, 17:11 | #233 |
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Even game boy advance version suffer of a lot of slow down, even with all that Hardware!
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19 February 2019, 17:34 | #234 | |
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No its your fucking opinion and not fact. There are more games on amiga than mega drive and snes combined. There are so many games in genres you would never se on a 16bit console. Alot of amiga(and other microcomps) games development have more incommon with modern indie games development than 16bit consoles. Just take amiga games like lemmings, another world, moon stone |
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19 February 2019, 22:24 | #235 |
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20 February 2019, 11:37 | #236 |
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20 February 2019, 11:56 | #237 |
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Yeah right, crack on then sandruzzo
Edit: oh, you are talking about the Gameboy version, ok then. Last edited by DamienD; 20 February 2019 at 12:15. |
20 February 2019, 12:38 | #238 |
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Yeah, the GBA version doesn't look too bad. Ditch the parallax, 16 colours + copper, target 25 fps...
Such conversions are kind of a lost art. A good example is Midnight Resistance for the Spectrum. The arcade game is way beyond what that system is capable of. Just 48k RAM, no hardware acceleration for anything... But it's rated as one of the best games on the system, because it made changes to suit the machine and maintain the spirit of the original. The GBA version of MS is the same. |
20 February 2019, 12:45 | #239 | |
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20 February 2019, 19:07 | #240 |
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Now we could try to talk about how we could have a Great Amiga 500 version of Metal slug.
I would try different layout, but with 256*192 screen size. Even though it seems small, with that we have a lot free dma cycles to use to have a lot of moving object on screen. We could try to have dualplayfield one for actuall gfx, and other for bobs. And if we interlace 2 background we can easly archive 16 colors, but we have to have stable 50hz |
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