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

[paraj]

RTG seems to work fine for me on pistorm32.

I guess each color entry should be filled like 0xaaaaaaaa instead of 0xaa000000, but shouldn't it only be slightly darker if you really have more than 8-bit precision? Really doubt much code actually does that... but could be wrong.

If you want to test the theory that that's the cause, try the Breathless RTG test build in sibling thread. It doesn't do it correctly either

[grond]

Originally Posted by paraj

RTG seems to work fine for me on pistorm32.

I guess each color entry should be filled like 0xaaaaaaaa instead of 0xaa000000, but shouldn't it only be slightly darker if you really have more than 8-bit precision? Really doubt much code actually does that... but could be wrong.

I could be just as wrong! My assumption is that some system-side code might rely on all bytes being repetitions of the top-most byte and take the bits from there. Of course, this might end in all colours being black but the way PC hardware is, setting the palette might be strange and some graphics card driver might do some AND-ing on the 32 bit value and use separate bytes (which should have repeated) to set different bits of the palette through different hardware registers. At least that would account for the one important variable here, i.e. the palette being correct on some RTG systems and not on others.

I remember that with the Vampires there were lots of swapped colour channels and such when trying to set up the RTG subsystem, many of them due to endianness being expected differently in P96 than it was in the hardware. The broken palette reminds me of those problems.

[Karlos]

It's a super trivial change to make, so I'll just do it as soon as I have a moment.

https://github.com/mheyer32/alienbreed3d2/pull/138

[Karlos]

Executable versions with the above change:

https://github.com/0xABADCAFE/karlos...esign/Game/bin

[paraj]

If that doesn't change anything (which I find most likely), you can try making the palette array static. Maybe the driver (or P96) is buggy in some way and only reads the entries later. In Breathless the palette array is kept around.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by paraj

If that doesn't change anything (which I find most likely), you can try making the palette array static. Maybe the driver (or P96) is buggy in some way and only reads the entries later. In Breathless the palette array is kept around.

Yes, I was thinking to make it a global (bss) anyway as at some point I want to get the palette fading and stuff working again.

[Angus]

Just my thoughts on the exe's I downloaded a couple of days back.

Both of them are very playable, but in RTG it is pretty dark and very contrasty with almost no detail in the shadows.
Amiga RGB is the opposite, bright as a button, perhaps a little washed out. This is on PiStorm32.

[Karlos]

I think we long established the need for a gamma control.

[Angus]

That would be awesome.

[pipper]

I think the idiom to copy the MSBs into the LSBs is just an approximation for the odd computation needed to do the real (x/255)*(2^32-1)

[abu_the_monkey]

@Karlos

regarding the potential bug with the min/max look, could you try the following in newplayershoot.s (line 190 ish) and test the spot in level G which caused you the issue?

				movem.l	(a7)+,d0/a0/d5/d6/d7/a6/a4/a5
				tst.w	d0
				blt		.nothing_to_shoot

				;tst.l	BulT_Gravity_l(a5)   ;disable auto-aim
				;beq.s	.skip_aim            ;disable auto-aim
				move.w	Plr1_AimSpeed_l,d2
				move.w	#8,d1
				sub.w	BulletSpd,d1
				asr.w	d1,d2
				move.w	d2,bulyspd

.skip_aim:
				tst.w	BulT_IsHitScan_l+2(a5)
				beq		plr1_FireProjectile

[Karlos]

I won't get a chance until later, maybe tomorrow

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I won't get a chance until later, maybe tomorrow

there's no rush.

it is just a quick hack to disable the auto-aim for projectile weapons.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

there's no rush.

it is just a quick hack to disable the auto-aim for projectile weapons.

I was going to add that exact thing as a gameplay option

With a cross hair, obviously

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I was going to add that exact thing as a gameplay option

With a cross hair, obviously

I did another quick and dirty mod with the 'cross hair' (green dot in the centre of the screen) and it is so much better in mouse control.
instant hitscan weapons still work as before with auto-aim but projectile weapons are much more user friendly.

[ Show youtube player ]

strangely there is 30 seconds of footage missing from this upload to youtube, but you get the idea hopefully.

[Karlos]

What about grenades? I think they might have some divergent behaviour due to gravity.

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

What about grenades? I think they might have some divergent behaviour due to gravity.

I didn't check, it was just a dirty hack to see if it would get rid of the projectile weapons becoming stuck at an extreme high/low, but will have a look.

edit: grenades still seem to work as the did before the hack.

[coachman]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

I did another quick and dirty mod with the 'cross hair' (green dot in the centre of the screen) and it is so much better in mouse control.
instant hitscan weapons still work as before with auto-aim but projectile weapons are much more user friendly.

[ Show youtube player ]

strangely there is 30 seconds of footage missing from this upload to youtube, but you get the idea hopefully.

Great, the green dot works perfectly. It looks a bit like laser aiming, so it's maybe even better and less disturbing than a traditional crosshair. For me, this is all that's needed.


However, I noticed that the shots are directed to the location somewhat lower than the dot. While the accurate vertical aiming is not that important in a close combat, it becomes critical for long range shots (trying to hit a monster from a safe distance).

[Karlos]

I am going to test today. I would still like to have the options to toggle aiming and crosshair*

With aim assistance enabled, we need to fix the clamping issues still.


*we're going to need another keybo^H^H^H^H menu screen.

[Karlos]

Going back to the janky palette issue under RTG, I have moved the LoadRGB32 data to a global (in bss) so that it's not a stack temporary.

Builds with these changes are here: https://github.com/0xABADCAFE/karlos...esign/Game/bin

Can these please be tested on the ZZ9000 and by anyone else that had issues with the darkness?