Scorpion Engine

[earok]

Experimental update for the day. Alpine 9000 graciously lent his time to help fix a few real hardware issues (also this thread helped - http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=93380)

- Fix for subpixel border issues on left and right in AGA, bringing copper bars, the background and the sprite parallax into alignment. I've also set WinUAE to use the "subpixel display emulation" configuration as the default.

- Slight optimization for 4BP parallax configuration (from a technical point of view, no longer uses two nop moves but one wait)

I've turned on AGA subpixel scrolling, I'll probably turn it off again or at least make it optional.

To give you an idea, this is what it looks like to scroll at 0.25 speed.



This is the exact same setup, but with AGA subpixel scrolling.



Smoother as it allows scrolling by 1/4th of a pixel, but it has some big downsides. Since it's obviously not possible to blit a bob by 1/4th of a pixel, the player character will look jerky compared to the scenery unless the player character happens to be a sprite (as above)

[Mixel]

Oooh! Subpixel scrolling breaks my brain, I dont understand rendering to less than a pixel size it's like magic. It's so smooth!

It's experimental so you might be aware of the things you're moving about to make other things work but I'm going to post a list anyway in case you're not.

This is on AGA and OCS.. (I thought it might be new aga bugs so disabled that to find out)

There are parts of my map where you and the other bobs disappear and the viewport freezes but the game is still running and you can walk out of it the glitchy areas and it resumes working normally. It seems to always happen within 1/3rd of a screen on the left side of all my maps.

My start scroll is just a black screen with flickery stuff on.. (possibly because it's only a screen wide, so it's getting caught by the left hand of map problem.)

When I start a level its usually a mishmash of the previous level and the one it's supposed to be. I think that's because all my levels spawn you at the extreme left of the map and the extreme left of the map is broken.
eg here:https://imgur.com/RShwHgb You can see the teleport that sends you to the right side of the screen works but the teleport that takes you to the left side of the map results in corruption. (sorry about the long gif!)

^ those three are possibly all just the same bug.

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The codeblock issue i mentioned last time - I've watched those beetles more carefully now and it's actually pretty interesting.. The roundzap sprite *sticks to the camera* and sometimes by jumping around etc it dislodges and activates the upwards zap.. !.. As seen here..

It seems way more sensitive about the palette of assets now.. Sometimes a sprite will spawn thats using a different palette arrangement and the colours go weird. - but I think that may only happen when the palette has gone off target partially already?

Everything else seems fine I think.

[earok]

Oh wow.. those are weird bugs. I assume it's all checked in to the repo? Does that starting level on the barge also use parallax? (I'm assuming it doesn't?)



The thing about sub pixel scrolling is that the native resolution of your monitor is much higher than an Amiga game running in the default low resolution mode. Hence, when it's scrolling by quarter of a pixel, it's actually akin to scrolling the low resolution display at a high resolution.. if that makes sense.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

Oh wow.. those are weird bugs. I assume it's all checked in to the repo? Does that starting level on the barge also use parallax? (I'm assuming it doesn't?)

They should all be happening on the version that was in the repo - I just uploaded a newer one with all the files’ palettes updated. That’s fixed the palette craziness problems.. (set Color still isn’t working though.. I thought it might if I did that with the files but it didn’t work)

The barge and intro levels use no parallax, nor does tunnels2, but the left side of the map is a no go zone on all of them. Fingers crossed whatever causes that is also causing that codeblock to be weird.

The thing about sub pixel scrolling is that the native resolution of your monitor is much higher than an Amiga game running in the default low resolution mode. Hence, when it's scrolling by quarter of a pixel, it's actually akin to scrolling the low resolution display at a high resolution.. if that makes sense.

Haha! It makes sense but that fundamentally butts up against how I thought resolutions worked. Particularly on things like CRTs. I thought if you set a resolution then a pixel is the smallest increment possible. Seems like a hell of a nice feature.. I wonder how many AGA games used it? Agreed it’s unpleasant if you don’t have a sprite for the player character.. I definitely need to turn it off, but it’s so nice as an option!

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One thing I just noticed.. SOME "set color" works, ie, the ones that happen in my dying codeblocks.. The ones that colour cycle stuff in the bg like the fire outside the barge and the lightning when you're talking to Lucy do nothing at all though, very weird.

[earok]

Well overdue for a daily update, I've pushed this to experimental and CMO branches

- Fix for potential memory error
- Fix for issue with left sides of the map not rendering
- Fix for sometimes setcolor not working

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

Well overdue for a daily update, I've pushed this to experimental and CMO branches
- Fix for issue with left sides of the map not rendering
- Fix for sometimes setcolor not working

Ty! Daily, weekly, monthly even, whatever’s best, you need to have breaks and a life and stuff, haha.

Those fixes worked perfectly, only 2 bugs I see now are the weird codeblock beetle zap bug and there’s a copper flash between level fades again now.

Info on the beetle codeblock glitch: its not a codeblock issue at all - it’s a sprite rendering thing - if I tell the animations (zapup and zapdown) not to autosprite they work as intended. If I tell either of them to autosprite the sprite that’s supposed to generate them and destroy itself (roundzap) sticks to the camera and whichever of the two I tell to be a sprite doesn’t appear properly. From my side it’s easy to just disable autosprite on them. (Maybe it’ll be an issue for someone else though?)

[earok]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Ty!

YW!

Update for today, checked into experimental and CMO:
- Fix for sticking sprites on levels with parallax (the 'zapper' bug)
- Fix for brief flashes when loading a level with parallax

[malko]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Ty! [...]

Funny meaning here (or is "ty" just the abbreviation of "Thank You"?)

[earok]

Originally Posted by malko

Funny meaning here (or is "ty" just the abbreviation of "Thank You"?)

TY is the abbreviation of thank you

New update to experimental only - https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental

1. Removed subpixel scrolling, it was a fun experiment but I think the complexity it adds ultimately isn't worth it.

2. Made it so that the IsPlatform and IsSlope properties of blocks are dynamic (which is to say, you should be able to destroy platforms or use animated blocks to make appearing/disappearing platforms).

3. Added a Codeblocks feature for setting the speed of actors/players/projectiles to fractional values. Note that you can still set speeds through SetVariable (to whole numbers) as well as use them in conditionals (again, as whole numbers).

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

1. Removed subpixel scrolling, it was a fun experiment but I think the complexity it adds ultimately isn't worth it.

RIP subpixel scrolling. I am probably not going to miss it, lol.

2. Made it so that the IsPlatform and IsSlope properties of blocks are dynamic (which is to say, you should be able to destroy platforms or use animated blocks to make appearing/disappearing platforms).

Yessss this is going to be great! Going to get so much mileage out of that. Will try swapping my on/off platforms to this system today![/quote]

3. Added a Codeblocks feature for setting the speed of actors/players/projectiles to fractional values. Note that you can still set speeds through SetVariable (to whole numbers) as well as use them in conditionals (again, as whole numbers).

Also going to get a lot of use out of that.

One question about animations.. a few of my animations I’ve been using the sprite’s position relative to the 0,0 point to make things move along hand animated paths.. how resource intensive is that? It seems a good way to make really frequently repeated smooth movements, but if it’s taking up loads of chip I’ll have to be careful.. (now we can set a melee box on the actors, it seems a really fast way to get interesting attack patterns, just requires careful hand animation.) eg I used it on the zombie spit as the only other way I could think to do that would be fine tuned “cpu_platform” logic, but that seems like it’d be more intensive if there’s a few zombies (also cpu_platform type) it adds a stop-frame feel to the process but would definitely like to know if it’s a very bad idea to overuse.

[earok]

Originally Posted by Mixel

One question about animations.. a few of my animations I’ve been using the sprite’s position relative to the 0,0 point to make things move along hand animated paths.. how resource intensive is that? It seems a good way to make really frequently repeated smooth movements, but if it’s taking up loads of chip I’ll have to be careful.. (now we can set a melee box on the actors, it seems a really fast way to get interesting attack patterns, just requires careful hand animation.) eg I used it on the zombie spit as the only other way I could think to do that would be fine tuned “cpu_platform” logic, but that seems like it’d be more intensive if there’s a few zombies (also cpu_platform type) it adds a stop-frame feel to the process but would definitely like to know if it’s a very bad idea to overuse.

The compiler stores one copy of every image in the project.gfx file - so an animation that repeatedly uses the same image isn't going to add a lot to the memory usage.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

The compiler stores one copy of every image in the project.gfx file - so an animation that repeatedly uses the same image isn't going to add a lot to the memory usage.

Excellent.. that’s what I assumed.. this seems like it might be the best way to do a lot of shooter drone like animations too and small enemy “flight paths” then, just takes a strange process to animate them.

It’s weird how many old games had “flying” enemies that were borderline stationary but just sort of jiggle about a bit. Bats/bees in superfrog etc.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

2. Made it so that the IsPlatform and IsSlope properties of blocks are dynamic (which is to say, you should be able to destroy platforms or use animated blocks to make appearing/disappearing platforms).

This doesn't seem to be working for me.. They stay in the state that the main (the tile i select in the tileset) is/was? trying the animated tile method and have used them in the sky above the telephone cable/ramp at the start of Tunnels1. Tried isSolid and isPlatform and no dice.. So i might be doing it wrong? (i tried ones that start off and ones that start on, and even tiles that reference different tiles to the one that's the stamp, if you see what I mean)

[earok]

Originally Posted by Mixel

This doesn't seem to be working for me.. They stay in the state that the main (the tile i select in the tileset) is/was? trying the animated tile method and have used them in the sky above the telephone cable/ramp at the start of Tunnels1. Tried isSolid and isPlatform and no dice.. So i might be doing it wrong? (i tried ones that start off and ones that start on, and even tiles that reference different tiles to the one that's the stamp, if you see what I mean)

The update was for blocks, not tiles. It should be possible to make the properties dynamic on animated tiles too, but I haven't done it yet.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

The update was for blocks, not tiles. It should be possible to make the properties dynamic on animated tiles too, but I haven't done it yet.

oooohh.. sorry! That makes WAY more sense! I forgot I made it of a combination of blocks and actors previously to make the animation work so had tricked myself into thinking that was already how it worked!

I need to keep much better notes.

[earok]

New update for experimental only: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental

A) Animated tiles now animate the IsSolid and IsPlatform properties (so you can construct appearing/disappearing bridges using animated tiles without using blocks at all)

B) There's a new "OnAnimReset" property of tiles. Point this at a codeblock, and it'll execute that codeblock every time the animation resets to the first tile.

I may need to rethink B a bit, and may replace it with something different.

There's some complications in allowing it to execute a codeblock on any specific frame of the animation. A compromise might be to allow a tile animation to have one tile that triggers a codeblock (but no more).

[Mixel]

Daaamn you’re on a roll! I’ll try using that codeblock hook to make noises. I’ll make some sort of spatial noise on/off variable so they don’t spam the audio channels when you’re nowhere near them. I might be able to use the tile method to replace both the others now in almost all cases..

I think the blocks will be best used for things like collapsing platforms you need to be able to see through to the bg.. the tiles have their entire 16block appearance baked in, but will be much easier to keep synced up.

One potential “problem” (not really in my case) I noticed when I was trying to use tiles before they were implemented - the 12 second upper limit is maybe short if it’s accommodating an in state (with a wait) an out state (with a wait) and the animation. It works fine though.

Hmm the blocks being able to dynamically change between platform, ramp etc.. if you had a ramp.. and you cycled through different types of ramp.. I wonder what happens lol.. I have a few ideas for that if it does anything at all.

[earok]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Hmm the blocks being able to dynamically change between platform, ramp etc.. if you had a ramp.. and you cycled through different types of ramp.. I wonder what happens lol.. I have a few ideas for that if it does anything at all.

It might not work so well if there's a situation where a player is standing on a ramp that raises underneath him (the player might not lift up with the ramp). But you could potentially do something like make a staircase that raises out of the floor when the player triggers a switch elsewhere.

I've had some thought about the limitations with 12 seconds, not being able to trigger codeblocks on every animation frame etc, I'll rewrite the animation system at some point to lift those restrictions.

[Mixel]

This is an odd one. Many updates ago the "ladderoff" codeblock you mostly made for CMO, the "Set player_yspeed -5" stopped working, so since then I used Push player 3 pixels for 3 thingies there. I think this most recent update, or maybe the one before it, stopped both methods of jumping off the ladders from working? I've tried some other variations (like trying to detect player direction to trigger it instead rather than control1jump etc) and they don't work either..


But general set player_yspeed -5 definitely works, as that's what I use to bounce you out of toxic pools, so.. Hopefully you know what's happened.



The animating tiles are working absolutely great. So many weird things you can do with timings with a system like this!

[earok]

Experimental update:
- Tile animations no longer limited to approx 12 seconds
- OnAnimFrame property added (can trigger a codeblock on any specific frame)
- OnAnimReset property removed as now redundant (safe to delete this from tilesets)

I'll focus on bug requests from mixel, neeso games and czorny next. After that I may look at some more parallax enhancements and get ready to treat it as official.