Turrican 2 AGA (PC-DOS conversion) - Released!

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by Muzza

The boss healths are 100% match for the original. It took a lot of time to check this. The weapon damages are also the same.

The difference is the firing rate.
In the Original, the Weapons have different firing rates,

so the Laser cannot be fired as fast.

That makes the Laser Total OP in the AGA version. (pretty neat tho)

Believe me, i play this game for over 30 years on a regular basis and showed Schlauchi a few things

(reported also major bugs on both Turrican collections (Flashback & Anthologie)


Not that this is a major bug (firing rate), besides;
i have people seen struggling with the "difficulty" which i found very amusing.


Guess that happends if you play a game for over 30 years.
Getting "pretty good" at it and knowing it inside out


I still enjoy this AGA version very much and most people will never notice the differences & bugs

Much love and major respect for doing this Muzza

Maybe i can get you a Mist FPGA in return. *fingers crossed*

Greetings, Torti

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

The difference is the firing rate.
In the Original, the Weapons have different firing rates,

so the Laser cannot be fired as fast.

It is not as simple as that. They actually have all the same firing rate in the original game (4 frames). The difference is that the original game only allows a single laser on screen at a time. My presumption was that they did this for performance reason (the laser requires a much larger blit than other weapons). In my version I allow more than one laser on screen, but to compensate I increased the firing rate to 6 frames.

One reason I did this was because I wasn't a fan of the weird effect in the original where nearer you are to the edge of the screen, the faster your shooting rate is. This happened because a new shot could not spawn until the last one left the screen.
Or to put it another way, if you stand at the very right side of the screen, and shoot right, you get a shot every 4 frames. If you stand at the very left side of the screen and shoot right, you get a shot only every 13 frames or so - this is the time it takes for the last laser shot to exit the screen.

The effect of this only really shows up when you are shooting across the entire width of the screen (like the W2-2 boss, or W3-1) and so certain boss fights could be easier in my version than the original if you are using the laser.

I could adjust my version to be like the original easy enough but it does then come with some unwanted side effects of the original. I went over all this again today frame by frame to check everything - and I found a couple of small differences in the multiple shot as well (such as mine moving 1 pixel slower per frame)

[lesta_smsc]

Amazing work - thank you!

I have yet to try this on my A1200 but I might stick this on RPi and run it on that for now which runs at 240p so hopefully can still appreciate the AGA and pixel-perfect gaming).

I must share this with a good friend of mine as this is one of his favourite games so I'm sure he'd appreciate playing it!

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by Muzza

The difference is that the original game only allows a single laser on screen at a time.

Exactly.

Besides, it´s your version of Turrican 2 and you can do whatever you want. ;

and is superbe fun to demolish those bosses in 5 seconds

Hehe

The Music volume menu is also such a nice feature

Thank you so much for this Muzza !!! amazing work !!!

[ScHlAuChi]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

Hi Muzza. Huge thanks for this
If you fall down there and direct turrican into the right side... there is NO WAY OUT !!!
In the original , there where steps to get back up,
BUT if you came down this Waterfall there is no way to get to the "droid friend"
to activate those steps again.

In T2 original the trigger-zone on the right side with the diamonds is what causes the paths to open and the stone platforms to appear.
In T2-AGA they seem open from the start causing this.
Normally you fall down and die unless you opened them.

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Exactly !

If you fall down the first Waterfall, there is a Block on the right side
to prevent the player to go inside the cave. That is what causes the "trap".


A different Question. Was it a conscious decision not been able to go through "the storm" in Level 1-1 ?

Would be fun for speedrunning.

Whatever decision is fine with me, it´s your version.

I am just curious

PS: I now have noticed that the problems on mist/er starts right at the beginning of the flying stages. in 3-1 its super small and very hard to see.
Obvious in 3-2 and kinda random in 3-3 if the glitch appears.
(i report it to robinson from the MiniMig Team)

Whats so different about the flying stages ? Again, just curious ?

Thank you Muzza,Ross, Schlauchi and everyone involved in this fantastic project

I love Turrican so (too) much and when i can, i will buy you a MIST FPGA in exchange for this AGA version. Shipping to Australia could be a pain tho

Greetings, Torti

[vroom6sri]

I seem to be getting some odd behaviour with the same game slots.

Yesterday I loaded up a previous save game slot at 4-1 and played until 5-1. I hit Escape after the message came up saying Game Saved and I checked what was showing against the save game slot before I turned off the Amiga. It showed 5-1 but the lives seemed to be a few less than I was on (I think I had 10 or 11 but it showed 7).

Today I went to pick up from my save slot at 5-1 but it was back to 4-1. This time I played it to 4-2 and paid more attention to my number of lives. I got to level 4-2 with 10 lives, waited for the Game Saved message and then hit Escape. I checked the save slot and it showed 4-2 which was right but only 7 lives which is what I started 4-1 with.

Strange!

[Torti-the-Smurf]

@vroom6sri

Lifes will not be saved; you will always start with 7 when you use the Saves.

Also,you loose all the "Secret Diamonds" you had collected, they are all gone.
Thought i might mention that; not that i use the save system anyway

That happends in alot of games.
If you are playing for exampe the Donkey Kong Country Games on SNes or
Super Mario All Stars, ect..ect.. You can have 99 Lives but lifes will not be saved;
You always start with a fixed amount of Lifes.

[Muzza]

It saves lives and silver diamonds. If those things are not restored then it’s a bug and I will fix it.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

A different Question. Was it a conscious decision not been able to go through "the storm" in Level 1-1 ?

I opted to not recreate things that seemed like unintentional behaviour of the original. It was interesting that some players never experienced the caves and didn’t know you were supposed to go back and down the waterfall.

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

PS: I now have noticed that the problems on mist/er starts right at the beginning of the flying stages. in 3-1 its super small and very hard to see.
Obvious in 3-2 and kinda random in 3-3 if the glitch appears.
(i report it to robinson from the MiniMig Team)

Whats so different about the flying stages ? Again, just curious ?

The flying stages all use hardware AGA sprites for the background parallax. The copper has to adjust the positions of the sprites several times per scanline. The copper also has to modify colours and handle scrolling splits (depending on the level). The timing of these copper changes has to be precise. My guess is that the copper timings are not perfectly emulated on the MiniMig but it could also be something related to AGA hardware sprites too.
It’s interesting that the Vampire had problems on the same levels before it was fixed. I don’t know if all Amiga FPGA machines descend from the same code of if it’s just coincidence.

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

I love Turrican so (too) much and when i can, i will buy you a MIST FPGA in exchange for this AGA version. Shipping to Australia could be a pain tho

I wouldn’t say no thanks. Glad you like the game.

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by Muzza

It saves lives and silver diamonds. If those things are not restored then it’s a bug and I will fix it.

No, i doesn´t but people will be happy about the fix

Originally Posted by Muzza

The flying stages all use hardware AGA sprites for the background parallax. The copper has to adjust the positions of the sprites several times per scanline. The copper also has to modify colours and handle scrolling splits (depending on the level). The timing of these copper changes has to be precise. My guess is that the copper timings are not perfectly emulated on the MiniMig but it could also be something related to AGA hardware sprites too.
It’s interesting that the Vampire had problems on the same levels before it was fixed. I don’t know if all Amiga FPGA machines descend from the same code of if it’s just coincidence.

That could be very helpful info for the MiniMig Team. I give this to Robinson, one of the Developers.

Originally Posted by Muzza

I wouldn’t say no thanks. Glad you like the game.

I will try.. sadly i am not rich - only in heart and with love for this project


(some Mist/Turrican AGA users could help with that !!!
Com'on Guys, it´s time to give something back !!!!)

Well... i will try it !! and give something back in return, you deserve it !

*fingers crossed*

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by vroom6sri

I seem to be getting some odd behaviour with the same game slots.

Yesterday I loaded up a previous save game slot at 4-1 and played until 5-1. I hit Escape after the message came up saying Game Saved and I checked what was showing against the save game slot before I turned off the Amiga. It showed 5-1 but the lives seemed to be a few less than I was on (I think I had 10 or 11 but it showed 7).

Today I went to pick up from my save slot at 5-1 but it was back to 4-1. This time I played it to 4-2 and paid more attention to my number of lives. I got to level 4-2 with 10 lives, waited for the Game Saved message and then hit Escape. I checked the save slot and it showed 4-2 which was right but only 7 lives which is what I started 4-1 with.

Strange!

I can confirm that Lives, Continues, Diamonds & Silver Diamonds were not being saved correctly. This will be fixed in an update. I can't find anything that would cause you to go from 5-1 to 4-1 though.

[john4p]

Could you also make this possible:



Because at least with CD32 controls (dedicated button for the surround shot) it doesn't work when you're moved by the water.
Or does that conflict with your automatic one button control (where surround shot is disabled once you're in motion)?

[vroom6sri]

Originally Posted by Muzza

It saves lives and silver diamonds. If those things are not restored then it’s a bug and I will fix it.

Thanks for the info, Muzza.

Having tested it again today I have the following observations (and 1 possible new bug) to share:

1.) It seems like the max number of lives that can be saved is 7. Anything below that saves as it's value. That may not be 100% accurate but certainly when I had more 10 lives it saved as 7 and when I had 3 it saved as 3.
2.) I ran out of lives on level 5-2 (due to possible bug below) but had a continue so used that but it restarted me from where the save game slot I used started me at which was level 5-1. Annoyingly the game then did a save so my progress to 5-2 was overwritten as 5-1 and with only the 3 lives default for (re)starting on Hard difficulty. Would it perhaps make sense to not save at the start of a level if a Continue has been used?
3.) I missed or fell off the final lift platform that takes you up to the battle with The Machine but the screen auto-scrolled up without me and started the fight sequence with The Machine but it seemed to class my player position as having fallen down that gap in the middle so I lost a life but then it restarted me from my last position which was still down the gap so I lost another life and another and another until they were all gone.

I hope the above might help with further enhancements to this absolute piece of magic.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by Muzza

It is not as simple as that. They actually have all the same firing rate in the original game (4 frames). The difference is that the original game only allows a single laser on screen at a time. My presumption was that they did this for performance reason (the laser requires a much larger blit than other weapons). In my version I allow more than one laser on screen, but to compensate I increased the firing rate to 6 frames.

One reason I did this was because I wasn't a fan of the weird effect in the original where nearer you are to the edge of the screen, the faster your shooting rate is. This happened because a new shot could not spawn until the last one left the screen.
Or to put it another way, if you stand at the very right side of the screen, and shoot right, you get a shot every 4 frames. If you stand at the very left side of the screen and shoot right, you get a shot only every 13 frames or so - this is the time it takes for the last laser shot to exit the screen.

The effect of this only really shows up when you are shooting across the entire width of the screen (like the W2-2 boss, or W3-1) and so certain boss fights could be easier in my version than the original if you are using the laser.

I could adjust my version to be like the original easy enough but it does then come with some unwanted side effects of the original. I went over all this again today frame by frame to check everything - and I found a couple of small differences in the multiple shot as well (such as mine moving 1 pixel slower per frame)

If You made next update, then maybe firing rate can be related to game difficulty? In hard mode, firing rate can be 2 or 3? Or maybe even 1?

[vulture]

Personally, I feel the firing rate is fine as it is, but that's just me.

[Retro1234]

This is coded from scratch ????

Amazing

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by vroom6sri

1.) It seems like the max number of lives that can be saved is 7. Anything below that saves as it's value. That may not be 100% accurate but certainly when I had more 10 lives it saved as 7 and when I had 3 it saved as 3.
2.) I ran out of lives on level 5-2 (due to possible bug below) but had a continue so used that but it restarted me from where the save game slot I used started me at which was level 5-1. Annoyingly the game then did a save so my progress to 5-2 was overwritten as 5-1 and with only the 3 lives default for (re)starting on Hard difficulty. Would it perhaps make sense to not save at the start of a level if a Continue has been used?
3.) I missed or fell off the final lift platform that takes you up to the battle with The Machine but the screen auto-scrolled up without me and started the fight sequence with The Machine but it seemed to class my player position as having fallen down that gap in the middle so I lost a life but then it restarted me from my last position which was still down the gap so I lost another life and another and another until they were all gone.

Thanks the expanded information.
For 1, I've fixed it already for the next update. Diamonds, Lives, Continues were not saving correctly. I pack the data into as few bits as possible, and there was a mistake that it thought the lives had only 3 bits (max of 7) rather than than 7 bits they actually had (max of 127 or 99 in reality).

For 2, continues always restart you at the first level of the world with score and diamonds reset to zero. I copied the way it works in the original. I don't really like it myself, but I'm not sure what would be better. If it was me I'd possibly drop the continues and have 100 diamonds give you an extra couple of lives instead.

As for it saving your game after using the continue, the save system is there to let you resume play if you have to turn off the machine. It is not intended as a way to endlessly retry the same level. I wish I could come up with an alternative wording for the saves to make this clearer. I can see it gets confusing with the continue system too, this really is the nature of adding something to an existing game rather than designing it from scratch. Which option is better, making you retry 5-2 with a single life indefinitely (basically making continues pointless)? or sending you back to 5-1 with three lives?
Maybe the answer is to forget how the original implemented continues, and just make you restart the same level with 3 lives no matter whether you use a saved slot or not?

As for your 3rd point, I saw this happen once ever during testing and then never reproduced it again (the player freezes when they touch the lift, so it should not be possible to fall off). I'll look to add some safety to try and ensure it cannot happen again.

[Lizart]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

A little request: Could you please add:

Shoot = Fire1 when moving
Lightning =Fire1 when still

to the customized CD32 pad controls as an option? It's nice to have a dedicated button for "Lightning", but it feels so intuitive to use it that way. I don't want to use the joystick & keyboard combined controls. Would be best of both worlds imo.

And maybe a slower text speed in the story?

Yes! That's what i miss too It would be great to add the "normal" Fire/Lightning Button as an option for cd32 controls

And once again - this port is state of the art coding

[vroom6sri]

Thanks, Muzza.

Thinking more about that sort of bug I reported with that final lift platform up to the battle with The Machine I think it was more like that I missed the platform rather than fell off it. I sort of made a half-hearted jump for it and didn't seem to quite get enough height to land on it but enough to trigger the lift and the screen to scroll upwards.

Regarding the save games and the continues would it be possible to only overwrite a save game slot if you are starting on a level that is higher than the one currently saved? That way you could choose to Continue from the start of the World to get in some more practice but if you then quit the game or turned the Amiga off you could still use the save game slot to start off at the furthest point you got to.

I'm looking forward to testing whatever you put in place as I love this amazing version of Turrican 2 and I'm looking for excuses to play it all the time!