Conversion Capers: Rygar

[dlfrsilver]

or you go for an AGA version.....

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

You will most certainly have to make some sacrifices. I don't believe it is possible to have a 64 pixel wide 16 colour sprite background with 5 bitplanes for the game. There is not enough DMA time to reposition all 8 sprites across the screen. By my calculations, you can't even get a 256 wide pixel pattern in 32 colour mode. You might get 208 pixels but that's far too thin for an Amiga game!

So the background sprites really have to be 3 colours.

We can spare some cycles by turn off the 5th plane we sprite aren't there. Think about the upper portion of the screen and floor too.

And we have some left due to screen size. We do our best

[sandruzzo]

Now Rygar fall down into the floors' halls. If someone can provide me halls' coordinates and lenght, I'll insert them..

[nobody]

A clear plan what the hardware can do and what cannot do, and what is required will be nice. It's a big waste of time to do all graphics, palettes and then discover that the hardware can not do it. Better adapt the game to the hardware than trying to make a perfect conversion that cannot be done.

I don't know but with all these 32 color limitations maybe i would go for dual playfield if i wanted the background or else drop it completely or go for 16 colors for everything and use the sprites for background.

Dual playfield needs some ace job for graphics to look nice though and lots of copper magic to make it acceptable.

[sandruzzo]

In order to do rygar for Ecs we have to drop some features. Dual Playfield stole a lot of cycle since only 25% we'll be left.

I'll do some test with 16 colors for all and use 4 sprite of 3 colors hw for parallax. Just some visual test to see if gfx would be acceptable

[saimon69]

@Sandruzzo
In order to reduce the load, Powder implemented some methods in using reduced palettes on a 16 color screen using more or less bitmaps and enabling the use of several subpalettes of 8,4 and 2 colors; that could help

[sandruzzo]

@saimon69

Since not all screen is filled with enemies, we can turn on/off some bitplanes.It's up to us to work well with them and copper in order to have a lot of colors on screen

[Codetapper]

In 16 colour mode, the game will look awful, despite any copper tricks. There are simply too many enemies that can pretty much move over the entire height of the screen to allow palette changes.

The main game window is only 184 pixels tall, surely you can get 32 colours going correctly along with some sprites?

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

In 16 colour mode, the game will look awful, despite any copper tricks. There are simply too many enemies that can pretty much move over the entire height of the screen to allow palette changes.

The main game window is only 184 pixels tall, surely you can get 32 colours going correctly along with some sprites?

Some time we can turn on/off some bitplanes, we have to try. Floor for examples. We'll go for 32 colors..

Originally Posted by nobody

A clear plan what the hardware can do and what cannot do, and what is required will be nice. It's a big waste of time to do all graphics, palettes and then discover that the hardware can not do it. Better adapt the game to the hardware than trying to make a perfect conversion that cannot be done.

I don't know but with all these 32 color limitations maybe i would go for dual playfield if i wanted the background or else drop it completely or go for 16 colors for everything and use the sprites for background.

Dual playfield needs some ace job for graphics to look nice though and lots of copper magic to make it acceptable.

@Nobody we go for 32 color as you did with your wonderful job! Then we'll se if we can add parallax..

[nobody]

This is the palette i used for 32 colors. I expanded dawnbringers 16 palette to 32 and used the db16 palette for sprites.




sprites palette

[sandruzzo]

Good Job Mate! I'm waiting for the final gfx tiles and sprite to use!

[sandruzzo]

@Nobody

Can you provide me a 3 colors' parallax gfx? I'll do some test to put it into the game.

[sandruzzo]

Mates,

I'm waiting for graphics to use for the game.

[nobody]

I gave all the sprites in 16 colors and the palettes. I don't have the tiles even if i had them i don't have a program to make maps.

[Codetapper]

And I don't have the palette in the order you intend to use, so I can't remap level 1 and output a map either. What I need is a PNG or IFF file with the correct palette and then I can run the output again.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

And I don't have the palette in the order you intend to use, so I can't remap level 1 and output a map either. What I need is a PNG or IFF file with the correct palette and then I can run the output again.

@Codetapper, is nobody that is working on gfx, he has posted palette few post ago..

@CodeTapper, can you provide me a 4 sprites 3 color parallax layer? I would like to add them to background, to see if we can do it.

Can you converte it into .iff file?

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=216

[Codetapper]

That "palette" is useless to me. I don't have time to type in hex values to guess which order is supposed to be used when presumably Nobody has a file with the actual 32 colours in the order he wants.

That 4 colour background image won't work either, unless you are actually using 6 sprites to display it (but you've written 4). If you are using 4 sprites then you are using up 6 entries from your palette, so your 32 colours above has 3 too many. The only way around that is to use two 3 colour sprites for the first 32 pixels, and use up four 15 colour sprites for the other 32 pixels. Leaving only 2 left.

There seems to be a lot of confusion with the technical aspects of this project imho. Can't you just show everyone a demo of a 32 colour screen with a repeated sprite layer in the background and not worry about having the exact graphics for now?

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

That "palette" is useless to me. I don't have time to type in hex values to guess which order is supposed to be used when presumably Nobody has a file with the actual 32 colours in the order he wants.

That 4 colour background image won't work either, unless you are actually using 6 sprites to display it (but you've written 4). If you are using 4 sprites then you need to use 6 entries from your palette, yet it sounds like the 32 colours posted above is the actual amount. As I have said before, you can only use 32 colours if you are going to use 3 colours and transparent for the sprites.

I have 4 sprites left, 4 are used by rygar. Now don't bother about palette, I want to put sprites on screen and see if Amiga can handle all

[nobody]

Uploaded one rygar palette iff. 0-15 colors are sprites colors also Rygar sprites with 0-15 colors arranged

[Codetapper]

Check the zone for Rygar_Level1_V2.zip. It's not exactly what you want, because I have no idea where each palette entry is supposed to be. You will have to remap the colours to whatever the final place is.

But you don't need me to reconvert the map, the original 256 colour graphics are rygar_level_1_2816x192.png, the 32 colour remapped graphics are rygar_level_1_2816x192_32col.png and you can just alter Level_1_16x16_Tiles.png in your paint program and remap them and use those.

Also be aware those rocks that Rygar stands on are drawn on later by the game, so they are not currently in the map. Someone else is welcome to add them.