Scorpion Engine

[earok]

Latest experimental:

Amiga:
- Added the ability to set 24 bit with copper rainbows. Note that this *again* requires more copper moves, so I'd only recommend using this on games with one or two copper color changes. Also untested, but using that tickbox will add 24 bit to the sprite parallax as well (*not* index 0, just 29-31).

Mega Drive:
- Rewrote the 8 pixel parallax sliced mode to be *almost* entirely ASM, and to use 15 long writes to the VDP rather than 30 word writes. As such, the performance tester score is about 2% higher over 2023.3.

Universal:
- Variable Set is now a text box rather than a drop down, if you prefer to type or copy+paste the variable name.

[earok]

Latest experimental fixes a couple of issues regarding platforming:

- Bug reported by flibble wherein, if the very top of a jump arc is inside of a platform, the player would land in the middle of the platform rather than falling down again.
- Added option to jump controls (codeblock controls->jump controls) where you can disable deceleration in a jump. It can be turned on and off at real time if you have a need for that, and at some stage in the future I'll add something similar for ground movement so you can have the same slippery feeling on ice surfaces, for example. But the intention for this is mostly for situations where you might want to use the jetpack control type to emulate a hover car.
- Fixed bug reported by zooperdan where slopes were broken.

[earok]

Latest experimental:

Amiga:
- Untested, but E8Tracker variable is now available in codeblocks, allowing you to trigger scripted game events in Protracker songs. Note that this is updated once per frame, so I'd recommend not using this more than once in a single frame.

Universal:
- Fade In setting honored for both the top and bottom panel. This is a change large enough that it may have broken things, or there might be Amiga only or Mega Drive only bugs attached to the change. It also doesn't, as of yet, support fading out on the top or bottom panel.

[domkid]

Wip demo Beta 0.04 - Forest of Illusion on Amiga CD32
[ Show youtube player ]

[acidbottle]

Woah domkid, you smashed the code for rope swings, amazing job on that

Hope you can share your secret someday haha

[domkid]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Woah domkid, you smashed the code for rope swings, amazing job on that

thanks, yes, with a little help from earok

[earok]

Latest experimental:

Mega Drive:
- Minor improvement for 32X, added support for graphics mode where full alpha is the background rather than the foreground.

Universal:
- Reported by Lemming880: Fixed issues with the music volume variable.
- Added math function for square root.
- Added math functions for manhatten distance and exact (slow) distance

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by domkid

Wip demo Beta 0.04 - Forest of Illusion on Amiga CD32
[ Show youtube player ]

Amazing work on this dude!

Just hope it doesn't end up being another Commodore Amiga game demo stuck behind a subscription paywall, such as what happened to Castlevania AGA. Which is why we didn't feature it.

[acidbottle]

Just chiming in as I know there is some ill feeling with a certain Amiga magazine and exclusive demos.

Am pretty sure the Castlevania demo is up on itch.io (for the past month) and totally free to download. The magazine may, am not totally sure, have a different level added which is no big deal really. Am certain the final game will be available on itch, for free.

Have had the said magazine ask about a demo and gave it some thought to. At no point do they want exclusivity on release. That is to say that IF they somehow want to run a demo of one of my productions, they are totally happy with a demo release in conjunction with a totally free itch.io (or whomever) release at the same time. At least that is how I interpret it!

The magazine in question has been 100% supportive of Scorpion Engine so would not begrudge them an exclusive level demo here and there!

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Have had the said magazine ask about a demo and gave it some thought to. At no point do they want exclusivity on release. That is to say that IF they somehow want to run a demo of one of my productions, they are totally happy with a demo release in conjunction with a totally free itch.io (or whomever) release at the same time. At least that is how I interpret it!
!

That's not how it's worked before..

First tease -> Previews - > Demo -> Exclusive magazine Demo or latest preview ( Not on itch ) and all features MUST go through said magazine -> exclusive demo later released on itch.

Castlevania AGA demo "**UPDATED AUGUST 12**"
Updated 29 days ago
Status In development

New demo must be featured through said magazine which includes mentions and patreon links

[flibble42]

@Acidbottle Funny you should mention this, 12 Sept 23, I had a guy, Primax i believe, ask me all sorts of questions about OutRun 2d. Took me a while, but i finally figured out why all his questions seemed a bit off. I asked him if i was being interviewed or if he was just really curious, he said both. Seems he was putting together a potential article for a german website.

I told him that i had no problem with a video being posted as long as it was to show what Scorpion could do, but i would rather not have any promises made that the project would ever be completed.

It's all in the User-Projects on Discord.

To say the last few posts have me a little worried is an understatement.

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by flibble42

@Acidbottle Funny you should mention this, 12 Sept 23, I had a guy, Primax i believe, ask me all sorts of questions about OutRun 2d. Took me a while, but i finally figured out why all his questions seemed a bit off. I asked him if i was being interviewed or if he was just really curious, he said both. Seems he was putting together a potential article for a german website.

Annoyingly this is happening a lot now to both the Amiga and C64 scene. It doesn't matter who it is, I'll always be against paywall subscription demo's. Just look at the backlash Pure Dark is getting for putting DLSS 3 for specific games behind a paywall. You should not be paying to play an EXCLUSIVE demo. More especially when the rights are owned by Konami I believe?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Neil79

More especially when the rights are owned by Konami I believe?

If you mean Castlevania then it is Konami. They still sell the old games as a collection for example on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...ary_Collection

[Cris1997XX]

Seriously, why the hell do gaming magazines still exist? They're old hat by now, anyone can browse the internet or even pirate other people's stuff. Homebrew demos should be FREE no matter what platform they're released on

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Seriously, why the hell do gaming magazines still exist? They're old hat by now, anyone can browse the internet or even pirate other people's stuff. Homebrew demos should be FREE no matter what platform they're released on

You forgot some people suffer from collector syndrome and this gives them the chills, so is another market segment - might not make practical sense, i know, but even ourselves are still tinkering with almost 40 year old hardware... ^^

[earok]

I'm not an admin here so maybe I don't really get a say in what goes on, even in this thread, but -

I would prefer that this thread remained neutral on matters of Amiga politics, particularly for matters that don't pertain to the Scorpion Engine itself. There other other threads or subforums that may be more suitable to discuss issues around magazine exclusivity.

[Aarbron]

Magazine exclusivity:
First, sorry to post here but... we all grew up with multiple Amiga magazines and their fierce battles for exclusive coverdisk demos back then, so, to me it felt natural. I wasn't aware of the Patreon link until the issue dropped, but it'll be out for free on itch.io like any other update (I was under pressing family issues and at same time trying to provide something to show in the mag and thus I didn't inspected throughly all details involved).

Acidbottle is correct that the magazine is 100% supportive of Scorpion Engine with periodic diary/logs of CMO:Hex Night development, AmiGameJam, and the list goes on, so I didn't think twice in providing a demo for them, even inside a tight deadline. Didn't even thought of any possible backlash, as I got friends providing demos for Crash, Zzap!64 and other mags without any problems.

But again, my apologies if it looked like an odd move for something that was usually being free on day of release (and will be, obviously).

To the magazine staff that may be reading this: please don't take this as something negative, it was a great opportunity and a pleasure to be part of this (there was an interview, and coming articles about the game too, and other Scorpion Engine games of course, hence this is still in this thread, it's great).

Regards,
Dante - https://danteretrodev.itch.io

[earok]

Latest experimental update:

Amiga: Fix for issue reported by @Lemming880 where a panel could fade in multiple times if multiple fading panels are loaded at the same time (say, a top panel that fades in at the same time as a middle panel that also fades in)

Mega Drive: Begun work on VGM driver support. SFX is not supported yet, but you can load and play VGM files if you change the driver (project tab) from MDSDRV to XGM.

Universal: Space and Dash are supported in filenames. These are substituted with an underscore in codeblocks.

---

While I did want to avoid politics here, my own 2c is I can't see a difference between game demos and game articles being exclusive in a magazine.

[Aarbron]

Originally Posted by earok

Latest experimental update:

While I did want to avoid politics here, my own 2c is I can't see a difference between game demos and game articles being exclusive in a magazine.

Indeed.
I also understand that people have the right to dislike the temporary window of exclusivity.
But in the matter of "why magazines exist", nostalgically I like them to exist (physical, coming through mail, as non-practical as it seems) just like I like my physical Amiga hardware, my physical boxed games with manual, all part of a time capsule of the Amiga era where printed magazines where a key part. That's the appeal.

In this context, IMHO the mags didn't compete with Web sites such as IRN (apples and oranges), which are another esssential part of this community which are actually practical, thanks specially for Neil79 for the wonderful and continued support given to our games: if IRN asked for an exclusive demo to feature on the website I'd have provided it too, if that's make sense as an example).

Regards,
Dante - https://danteretrodev.itch.io

[earok]

I didn't post notes for the previous experimental update as it was Mega Drive only, but the latest update is Mega Drive and Amiga.

---

Update 1:

XGM driver includes support for SFX. This is, for all intents and purposes, the same as sample support on Amiga - 8SVX, MP3, WAV and OGG are all supported as import formats, so if you've already configured your game as one of these on Amiga, there's nothing that you need to do further to get SFX working on the XGM driver (you only need to substitute for Protracker songs for VGM songs). As XGM requires samples to be exactly 14,000HZ, samples are up or downmixed automatically.

There's still some updates to be done in order to support multiple channels and multiple priorities etc on VGM - I'll also make sure that these features, where applicable, are also added to MDSDRV and PTPlayer for Amiga

---

Update 2:

Latest update improves both Amiga (PTTracker) and Mega Drive (XGM) driver support.

Both the priority and channel fields are exposed for each sound effect.

Both drivers offer four channels. There is a difference here in that, leaving it blank on Amiga reverts to the original PTPlayer functionality (in that it picks a channel dynamically to squeeze into the music), but you can now force it to a specific channel.

With Mega Drive, leaving it blank will loop through all four channels, so in theory you should be able to have the last four triggered sounds playing all at once. But you can force it to a specific channel if you want.

Amiga has about 127 priority levels, XGM has 16.

This is not well tested, please do let me know if anything is not really working as expected.