Compileable version of Alien Breed 3D II - The Killing Grounds

[Angus]

Very grateful for the time and trouble you chaps have already put in.

[Karlos]

There's still plenty on the to-do list for when free time pops up.

I wanted to work on levels again since we just got the whole thing updated to allow all these graphical overrides per level.

[AlphaAmiga]

Is a pistorm32 and pi3a powerful enough to give locked 50fps? Even when using Karlos mod version with all the extra bells & whistles?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by AlphaAmiga

Is a pistorm32 and pi3a powerful enough to give locked 50fps? Even when using Karlos mod version with all the extra bells & whistles?

If you have one, give it a go, why not? /Zoidberg

[AlphaAmiga]

Originally Posted by Karlos

If you have one, give it a go, why not? /Zoidberg

Haha, good old Futurama!

Currently don't have a piStorm32, I am on the lookout, but don't know if should get a unit that some sellers have with a 3a or get a unoccupied card and source a pi4b separately .(I may never need a 4bs power/Ram, but it would be a potential nice to have).

Just wanted to see if anyone had similar setup to give an indication on direction best to go.

When I do eventually get one, I'll let you know how it goes!

[Karlos]

I assume that it's going to be a better experience than 060 at least.

[Dunny]

I have a PiStorm32lite with Pi4b and yeah I get a solid 50fps in RTG mode. In AGA it's lower (lowest I've seen is 37fps but it's more often than not 45+) so I'd guess that the Pi3 would suffer in comparison.

But yeah it will still spank an 060 of any flavour.

[Karlos]

At some point over the weekend, I'm going to start adding support for the zone errata concept to the C build. The first thing I'm going to add is a list of secret zones. There will be a secrets count, followed by a list of zones (along with an indication of whether it's the upper or lower), each of which is considered the entry point to a secret area. The first time you enter one of these zones, it will be considered as discovering a secret area.

The original game doesn't really have the concept, but it's always been possible to define areas of a map that are optional and only reachable in some particular way, which is basically the same thing.

[Angus]

Very cool.

[Karlos]

I wonder if it's better to have multiple short arrays of zones having a given property, or one single array of properties indexed by zone ID. That will always be 256 entries and use a regular array dereference to find the extra properties of the zone. The multiple short arrays would have to be walked to find the matching zone number.

The array is likely to be sparse, so it's really a question of whether it's better to keep the data as compact/sequential access-friendly as possible, or just simplifying lookup matters more than the cost of random access.

I'm probably grossly overthinking it because this is a once per frame sort of deal tbh.

[samo79]

@Karlos

Is it possibile to start working in getting rid of misc.resource
to facilitate the way to run it on RTG? :-)

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by samo79

@Karlos

Is it possibile to start working in getting rid of misc.resource
to facilitate the way to run it on RTG? :-)

It's already running on RTG. The biggest issue there is the menu still. It's rendered by the native chipset still.

[samo79]

Originally Posted by Karlos

It's already running on RTG. The biggest issue there is the menu still. It's rendered by the native chipset still.

Yep, however that misc.resource it's also an impediment if we want to start testing it on NG machines

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by samo79

Yep, however that misc.resource it's also an impediment if we want to start testing it on NG machines

It sounds like the NG machine is the problem. Why remove bits of the OS that legacy software still uses?

[Karlos]

I will take a look and see what can be done, if it's not strictly needed, it's one less dependency to worry about.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I will take a look and see what can be done, if it's not strictly needed, it's one less dependency to worry about.

So, you can theoretically manage without it, but all the two player mode has to be disabled as well.

[samo79]

Originally Posted by Karlos

It sounds like the NG machine is the problem. Why remove bits of the OS that legacy software still uses?

misc.resource is most probably only availible on AmigaOS 4.1 for classic Amiga, but not on the machine i'm currently testing for (Sam440)
The misc resource arbitrates access to serial and parallel hardware, as an RTG sofware maybe there would be a better alternative solution for 2 players gaming without banging serial or parallel ports

[Karlos]

Why not provide an emulation for the 68K side?

A full blown network stack solution is only going to hamper it I on existing 68K and nobody contributing has any desire to do that

[abu_the_monkey]

what actually happens when trying to start it in os4?

under emulation (of os4 classic) on an RTG screen, it starts into the credits screen, though it is a slide show. I didn't let it run for that long but, it didn't crash.
on AGA screen modes it displays garbage for the menu and does the same as trying to use mode promotion (i.e. the border displays but no 3d render screen)

the only thing I can think of as a 'hack' would be to defer taking over the serial port until a multiplayer game is selected.

the target system is classic systems after all, so...

[Karlos]

We need RTG menus and I'd say just disable two player mode if misc is not available. Without a full network multiplayer model, it's not a game you are going to start and then decide you want a multiplayer game. You have decide before you started it because it involved getting two machines in serial cable distance.