Richard Costello's Coding memories

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

So my hat is doffed to you sir for actually giving a shit about the job you had to do, and making a version for the Amiga could stand proud with the other versions released at the time.

Thanks for that, I was quite proud of MKII once it was released.

[jotd]

I remember buying the amiga original of MK I in april 1994 and having a lot of fun with it
(I remember the times when I could beat the arcade with 1 credit, maybe that's because of the amiga training: so you made me save money ).

MK II was an outstanding technical effort on the amiga (considering the cut-down that had to be done seeing how big is the arcade version), but my favourite Amiga version remains MK I (and yes now I remember the Brimble tune, better than the arcade version).

So thanks for sharing all this information and source code with us. Much appreciated.

[gimbal]

I only played the Amiga version of MK1 (and didn't like it much because of the one joystick button deal I had ), but I must say that there should be more of these threads. Thank you for letting us retro geeks and the few hobbyist game developers farking around here (including myself) get a little taste of the good old days! Makes me appreciate how easy it is nowadays to actually make a game

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

So, all in all how much frames per sprite for primal rage amiga ? doh

Had a look last night, the coin-op had something like max 450 frames per fighter, but its difficult to tell how many were included in the Amiga as the game logic needed all these frames but somewhere there will be a list duplicating physical graphics and equating them to game frames and I couldn't find it . Being 8 colour the frames were built from 96 byte characters rather than 128 bytes as per MK.

The reason why 8 colours was chosen was to save space and also because the 2 fighters were weird colours and didn't share skin tones as humans in MK did (MK had something like 6 colours per fighter + 3 skin tones making 16 colour inc. transparency). Thats why the characters compressed well because there were a lot of 0's due to reduced colour count.

Nick's compressor basically compressed all 0's into 1 bit and all other byte values into 9 bits. It also re-ordered colours (in Primal Rage) to maximise the compression.

I also came across the attached little text file which I created for the artists in an effort to explain to them the significance of how precise they needed to be when producing the graphics for the game. It gives you an idea of just how much thought had to go in to maximise everything. Would have been wonderful to have 16M colours to play with ... but then that would have removed the challenge

I cant run Primal Rage at the mo as my A600 is 1MB and I dont have an emulator setup, but as I recall the backgrounds ended up not having splits as someone couldn't be bothered to think about it on the art side - I gave them the option but from the screenshots they never got implemented.

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Makes me appreciate how easy it is nowadays to actually make a game

Easy nowadays ? you're kidding; it so much harder to make a game from a programming point of view than it was ever before; I worked as a DOS assembly and C programmer, and now on the next generation consoles and PC; I can tell you making a game now is sooo much harder, especilly if you do a 3D game in c++, with all the hot algorithms and techniques that are necessary for today's games (3D, lighting, 3d path finding etc...)

[dlfrsilver]

One question Richard, why does coin-op machine use so few RAM memory when the roms
are so big ? I mean we have way smaller programs on amiga, but they require 1mb/2mb ?

Richard, what is the latest revision of Primal Rage ?

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Jgames

Easy nowadays ? you're kidding; it so much harder to make a game from a programming point of view than it was ever before; I worked as a DOS assembly and C programmer, and now on the next generation consoles and PC; I can tell you making a game now is sooo much harder, especilly if you do a 3D game in c++, with all the hot algorithms and techniques that are necessary for today's games (3D, lighting, 3d path finding etc...)

I agree, but its the same for everything in life - working at the edge is hard no matter what or when but for different reasons. When I programmed games it was normal for a single game to take about 6-8 months with 1 programmer and 1 artist plus a couple of weeks of sound engineering. Today I imagine teams of people take much longer to build things much larger both in complexity and depth. Pushing the limits is always hard, but rewarding.

On a different note I do think that there is a place for "retro games" in the commercial arena. Its fine having some massive 3D world to explore for hours on end, but I was in an arcade last week which contained a couple of Sega Rally's, some cuddly toy cranes, air hockey and a bowling game. If the back wall had been full of Pacman machines etc I guarantee there would have been a queue of kids pumping 20p's into them.

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

One question Richard, why does coin-op machine use so few RAM memory when the roms
are so big ? I mean we have way smaller programs on amiga, but they require 1mb/2mb ? Richard, what is the latest revision of Primal Rage ?

There was only 1 release version of Primal Rage.

I just found the attached document which has made me laugh, I can be very sarcastic when agitated and comments by game testers always wound me up especially when things were being repeated towards the end of a grueling project after sleepless nights of work etc...I hated having to explain things to people who didn't understand what I was talking about.

Anyway the attached made me laugh, hope it does the same for you. Its a reply to Probe's QA department.

[Ricardo]

Also came across this which was my response to Probe's desire to make the game run in 1MB...Gives some interesting numbers, hope I'm not boring with you with all these ramblings

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

One question Richard, why does coin-op machine use so few RAM memory when the roms
are so big ? I mean we have way smaller programs on amiga, but they require 1mb/2mb ?

Because the Amiga is general purpose and has a disc drive. Coin-ops were hard wired, so nothing much changed hence their data and code was all in ROM for instant/fast access. The only RAM they needed was variable space really.

[dlfrsilver]

Ok, so far i own version v1.2 and v1.6

We lack the v1.4 lol

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

I agree, but its the same for everything in life - working at the edge is hard no matter what or when but for different reasons.

So true;

Originally Posted by Ricardo

On a different note I do think that there is a place for "retro games" in the commercial arena. Its fine having some massive 3D world to explore for hours on end, but I was in an arcade last week which contained a couple of Sega Rally's, some cuddly toy cranes, air hockey and a bowling game. If the back wall had been full of Pacman machines etc I guarantee there would have been a queue of kids pumping 20p's into them.

There is a place for 2D games, i would say, the gaming world would be better with 50% 3d games and 50% 2d games;
If i was exiled on a remote island, and could take 2 games with me, i'll take Shinobi and Street fighter 2 ce!;
One of my dream games sequels would be GODS 2 in 2d of course; and i tend to see the release of Doom as a good thing but also bad thing for the gaming world.
Thank you so much for sharing you coding memories with us, i do appreciate that even if i've never coded on an amiga; coding games was very fun before, now i don't see a difference between coding games, or coding financial application in Visual basic;

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Jgames

now i don't see a difference between coding games, or coding financial application in Visual basic;

1000% True

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Ok, so far i own version v1.2 and v1.6

Where is the version number displayed?

[dlfrsilver]

On the disk 1 label So far there has been 3 differents versions marketed by Time Warner

v1.2 bombs out right away on my A1230 (68030@50mhz+32mb fast). "1mb required mannn" ..... "shit, life's a b*tch lol"

BTW, your PDFs were "funny" ; this reminds me what i had to ask or explain to the 40 engineers that were working for me during my last job looool

[Ricardo]

Hmmm I only have a record upto version 1.5, see attached. But these versions are internal numbers and only small changes/bug fixes.

The external disc version may refer to something different.

According to the attached you cant abort from a paused game (by pressing A when paused) unless version 1.3 or greater.

[dlfrsilver]

Ok, ah it's a shame you don't have winuae emu, because i can create special disk images of my version 1.6.

copylock serial tracks are not a problem since they are not checked during the game

[Galahad/FLT]

Yeah I did the WHDLoad install for Primal Rage to get it onto hard drive and disk 1 had a Copylock track on it, but the game never actually checked for it.

Not the first game to do that, a couple of other installs I did had Copylock but nothing was ever done with the Copylock check (Cannon Fodder I think was another one)

[dlfrsilver]

Strangely, my standard version of Primal Rage (V1.2) has the disk 4 fucked up.
It's a mastering error as it seems. The disk read correctly, but hangs the game

[Galahad/FLT]

I cannot remember which version mine was installed from, but I had the original with about 40 others I bought on Ebay years ago, but it must work because I was able to complete the game.