Scorpion Engine

[K1200RS21]

I had fun creating icons on 2023 games

https://zupimages.net/viewer.php?id=23/29/7i1u.png

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by PascalDe73

Hi,

Could someone make a nice icon for Castlevania AGA?

https://danteretrodev.itch.io/akumajou-dracula-aga

Many Thanks,

Best regards,

Pascal

I made two different sized icons.
Hope you like it .


https://eab.abime.net/zone/Castlevania-Icon.lha


Greetings,
Torti

[earok]

Important! Latest experimental brings a breaking change (apologies about this, it was bit of a sticky situation for a while so I thought I should just deal with it once and for all).

The jump control settings have been removed from the project tab. You can now only set these in the codeblocks -> set jump controls. By default, jump is set to "up or fire 2" on Amiga or "fire C" on Mega Drive.

Because the way the data is stored has been changed, if you were already doing that, you may need to manually reset the values in the command.

There is now a little more flexibility in that Mega Drive A-B-C buttons can all be set for jump (like in Sonic which has all of these set). I do also intend to add this flexibility to the attack button as well if (for example) you don't want it assigned to Amiga Fire 1 or Mega Drive B.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by PascalDe73

Hi,

Could someone make a nice icon for Castlevania AGA?

https://danteretrodev.itch.io/akumajou-dracula-aga

Many Thanks,

Best regards,

Pascal

Mon dieu, this is impressive ! Didn't knew that there was such an advanced project.

[earok]

Latest experimental check in is for Amiga only:

- New "sliced-fast" mode which improves performance over the regular sliced mode, but with considerably less memory savings than regular sliced mode.

In addition, both sliced modes are partially supported on tall levels. As long as the actor doesn't overlap the Y buffer (this is usually around 18 tiles by default), it'll render just fine. If it does overlap that boundary, part of the actor won't be rendered, but it shouldn't crash etc.

These upgrades are both part of the project for RetroAnimator support (which is intended to use sliced mode "under the hood"). Hoping it'll be up and running to some degree by the end of the month.

---

Update: Did another round of updates for sliced mode - it's now fully supported on tall levels, you should be able to use it exactly like any other render mode.

[earok]

Latest experimental update:


Major reworking of internal code to make animation handling (at the editor side, not the engine side) more "generic", in order to prepare for RetroAnimator support. This doesn't by itself add any new features to the engine, and I'm hoping this hasn't broken anything but please let me know if your game no longer compiles.

Fix for @msmalik681, using the <br> tag for line breaks in the "set string" command should work as expected.

[UltraNarwhal]

Do the player platform control types have coyote time built in, or do I need to add my own code?

[earok]

@UltraNarwhal they don't, it's planned as a future feature but hasn't been implemented yet.

---

Latest update:

* Fix for @basementApe, issue where graphics could glitch at certain Y positions
* Again, further work on implementing RetroAnimator. Still no new functionality, but if any of the recent changes have broken compilation, please let me know.

[earok]

Latest experimental update is more or less bug fixes

- Fix for bug reported by @Ray where level wouldn't be properly unloaded before loading the next level (this was triggering an error in Amigo the Fox).
- Fix for bug reported by @msmalik681 where a level running in the background would corrupt a "main" panel displayed over top of it (also related issue where having a middle panel and a top panel could result in a corrupt display below the middle panel.)
- Fixed bug reported by @basementApe where using sliced actors in asset bundles could result in corruption in other asset bundles (and more broadly, bug where using sliced actors in asset bundles wouldn't work at all)
- Added command to the base->advanced menu "Wait No Actors" which will cause a yield until no actors are running codeblocks (this is mostly for internal use, eg the engine uses it to prevent a level from unloading while there's an actor still running a codeblock, but I've exposed it in case anyone needs it for some advanced reason)

[earok]

Experimental update sponsored by BitBeamCannon, and it's a big one!

RetroAnimator - the animation kit used to create the animations in Metro Siege - is now also officially supported in Scorpion Engine. Simply put the project files in the Scorpion folder, and they'll work more or less like native Scorpion animations.

What RetroAnimator support brings to the table is the ability to construct large and fluid animations out of reused parts for a minimal use of chipram and disk/cartridge space. If you were to create a character with separate small images for each limb, the head and the torso etc, you can reuse those parts over and over and they'll only go on the disk once.

Some notes:
- July patreon goodie bag has been refreshed with the latest version of Retro Animator, and an example Scorpion project for Amiga and Mega Drive with the Retro Animator example is in there as well.
- Your ability to edit RetroAnimator animations is limited to just being able to configure settings like asset bundle, render mode etc. Use the RetroAnimator tool itself to edit frames.
- Performance is not optimal on Amiga yet, particularly with parts wider than 16 pixels, this will be worked on over time.
- On Amiga, there's a "fast" mode with fewer memory savings and a non-fast mode with more intense memory savings (the difference is just "fast" is interleaved).
- On Amiga, traditional render modes are available if you wanted to "bake" all of the parts into a single image (say, if you wanted to render some frames with sprites instead for example).
- Support is bleeding edge and could be unreliable for awhile.
- RetroAnimator supports multiple collision boxes, Scorpion only supports a single "melee" box. In future, there'll be the ability to use multiple collision boxes in Scorpion as well, but now now it'll only take the first box to use as the melee box.

[Silverstreak]

This is a great update, nice work.

[UltraNarwhal]

Experimental builds are missing the add [blank] image ability, throws error about missing image if you used one previously.

[earok]

Thanks @Silverstreak!

@UltraNarwhal skyzoo reported what I think is the same bug, and I've just checked in an experimental fix - please do let me know if it's still not working for you.

edit: checked in another update, invisible blocks weren't working correctly

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

@UltraNarwhal skyzoo reported what I think is the same bug, and I've just checked in an experimental fix - please do let me know if it's still not working for you.

Good news, it doesn't throw that error now. Bad news, you can't add any animation frames and compiled games animations are all wrong.


Looking forward to the multiple collision boxes feature, could use it for a vertical hud.

[earok]

Latest experimental:

- Fixed bug reported by UltraNarwhal where the ability to edit traditional (non-retro-animator) Scorpion animations was largely broken.
- Fixed bug where animation flipping on Mega Drive wasn't working (not sure if this was also a bug UltraNarwhal reported?)

---

@Ultranarwhal please let me know if that's all the bugs you were having, if there's still more bugs I may need a demo.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

- Fixed bug reported by UltraNarwhal where the ability to edit traditional (non-retro-animator) Scorpion animations was largely broken.
- Fixed bug where animation flipping on Mega Drive wasn't working (not sure if this was also a bug UltraNarwhal reported?)
.

Yep those were the bugs, now fixed.
Only remaining bug is the [blank] not displaying right on Mega Drive (and using next image down list), correct on Amiga. May be due to blank animation frame not showing name anymore?

[earok]

@UltraNarwhal sorry about that! Should be good now.

Latest experimental -


Amiga:
- Fixed bug with audio glitches.

Mega Drive:
- Rudimentary implementation of vertical column scrolling. This isn't well tested yet but it seems to work. You need to enable it with the Configure Screen function and then you can set the offsets with the Column Scroll function.

Unlike most parallax options, there's no handholding but there's no restrictions - once you've set the mode, you can set any word of VSRAM, foreground or background, to anything you want. There's also no automatic handling of the Sega hardware bug which glitches the first column on some consoles, how you cover that up is over to you.

Universal:
- The ability to set jump controls separately for each player is now there.
- Fix for issue where "[ blank ]" wasn't showing for a blank frame in an animation.
- Fixed bugs with blank image frames, in particular issue reported by UltraNarwhal where blank wasn't working at all on Mega Drive.



Edit: Did another update, since these changes are Mega Drive only I'll just update this comment rather than make a new one:

- Rewrote palette handling to use a single DMA transfer in the VBlank (as opposed to writing directly to the VDP at realtime). VDP dots from fades and color changes should be gone, or at least only appear in the overscan area rather than the main game.
- Fix for bug where the splash screen palette wouldn't be completely cleared when loading the first level.
- Load background function now works - you can change the parallax at real time on Mega Drive, but only if the parallax panel is assigned to a different map (you can create an empty map if you wish). It does take a second or two to swap, I'll consider seeing if I can make that faster in future.

[UltraNarwhal]

Excellent

Just noticed foreground isn't being drawn on Mega Drive.

[earok]

@UltraNarwhal I may need to get a demo, Mega Drive foreground does seem to be working okay at my side.

--

Latest update is for Amiga only:

CDTV/CD32 iso export has been added. Note that you do need to have appropriate files from the CDTV/CD32 developer discs (I can't say where and how to get these but it shouldn't be too difficult to source) in your Scorpion folder. It will tell you which files you need when you go to export to CDTV/CD32.

Note that the export only uses the CDTV.TM trademark (in order to support both the CDTV and CD32). I'm not totally sure if AGA games will work 100%, but in any case in the next day or two I'll add support for CD32.TM for CD32 only export.

[acidbottle]

Wow, cd32 export is pro awesome! I have some cd dev kit, hopefully the files needed are there. I tried to compile my own iso before and got nowhere, so that is super cool.