Green Beret for Amiga

[Alpha One]

Hi, just played the game a little.
Did anyone notice that you can walk through the enemies when hitting space key all the time ?
Edit: Hmm if you die just press space key immediately and player wakens up without losing a life.
At least at the beginning of stage 1.

[Aarbron]

Originally Posted by Alpha One

Hi, just played the game a little.
Did anyone notice that you can walk through the enemies when hitting space key all the time ?
Edit: Hmm if you die just press space key immediately and player wakens up without losing a life.
At least at the beginning of stage 1.

I just fixed that space key issue and released an update, thank you very much.

On the link below, on Green Beret then "UPDATED MARCH 19":

https://danteretrodev.itch.io/

[Aarbron]

Posted MARCH 20 update with a new minor fix and polishing.

On the link below, on Green Beret then "UPDATED MARCH 20":

https://danteretrodev.itch.io/

[Aarbron]

And yet another, actually an alternate ADF release that contains the original arcade music (a military march) instead of the NES soundtrack included in the other releases. It's also the music found in C64 version, so many people has nostalgia for this music, not the NES music.

In the link below under the downloads section ( GreenBeret_OG_MUSIC_MARCH23.adf )

https://danteretrodev.itch.io/greenberet

[vulture]

excellent!

[zzbylu]

23.03 - gameplay:
[ Show youtube player ]

[btp]

I have fond memories of this game from the 8-bit machines.
Thanks for all your hard work to bring it to the Amiga!

[jotd]

arcade music is very well rendered. Game itself is very well done too. And I played a lot in the arcades back in the days, being able to complete all 4 levels once (after that difficulty was insane with all karate boyz all over)

Looks like there's a bug, or probably easier way to complete levels: if you die you continue right at the same spot, which allows to pass the first level boss even if you die.

Also sometimes you can kill karate guys when lying on the ground which is a big no no in the arcade.

[Aarbron]

Originally Posted by jotd

arcade music is very well rendered. Game itself is very well done too. And I played a lot in the arcades back in the days, being able to complete all 4 levels once (after that difficulty was insane with all karate boyz all over)

Looks like there's a bug, or probably easier way to complete levels: if you die you continue right at the same spot, which allows to pass the first level boss even if you die.

Also sometimes you can kill karate guys when lying on the ground which is a big no no in the arcade.

Thank you very much! DJ Metune is in charge of the music and it sounds great.

I did some measures as many people complained of "too hard". At least ensuring that people pass the first level... Which included easier karate guys (which is where everyone usually dies on gameplays that I've watched ).

Also posted yet another release that cleared the mess of having one executable for arcade music and another one for NES: I added a simple music selector at the beginning so you can choose between OG Arcade soundtrack and NES soundtrack (video below). I was not expecting it to fit (both soundtracks and the selector code/assets: as simple as it is, chipmem issues means every byte counts) but it did fit and so the game hardware specs should still be the same as always.

[jotd]

as soon as this is stable, I'll create a whdload version. Right now I'm feeling that it's too soon

In the arcade, passing the first level is fairly easy. Things get complicated at level 2 and pretty tough at level 3.

[Toni Galvez]

Originally Posted by Aarbron

Thank you very much! DJ Metune is in charge of the music and it sounds great.

I did some measures as many people complained of "too hard". At least ensuring that people pass the first level... Which included easier karate guys (which is where everyone usually dies on gameplays that I've watched ).

Also posted yet another release that cleared the mess of having one executable for arcade music and another one for NES: I added a simple music selector at the beginning so you can choose between OG Arcade soundtrack and NES soundtrack (video below). I was not expecting it to fit (both soundtracks and the selector code/assets: as simple as it is, chipmem issues means every byte counts) but it did fit and so the game hardware specs should still be the same as always.

Really an amazing job, well done.

[merman]

This is looking great.

I did notice a couple of things in the latest version.

1. On level 1, holding down on the early girders/platforms seems to make Green Bert jiggle/shuffle position?

2. If you die near the first set of missile transporters, the Captain with the flamethrower/special weapon on the second transporter doesn't spawn.

[Aarbron]

Originally Posted by merman

This is looking great.

1. On level 1, holding down on the early girders/platforms seems to make Green Bert jiggle/shuffle position?

Thanks for reporting! 1. That's a well known issue with Scorpion Engine. When put control down sometimes it goes down through the platform (even if "gravity" is 0), so I add "1" on Y upwards to prevent that. Which sometimes causes it to jiggle slightly.

On Castlevania I didn't add 1 on Y upwards so you can see in AmigaBill's streams that it goes through the floor in some points and everyone in the chat is "oops, bug found".

In the end, it was much better and less game-breaking to have it to jiggle a bit sometimes than to fall through the platform. Scorpion Engine doesn't actually has the animation slot for "down" so what we do is essentially a "hack" which switches the whole sprite for another one in crouched position, and this eventually causes the collision to break in the heat of battle. When you see it jiggling it's because it was about to go down through the platform but is being prevented to do so, for the benefit of the gameplay.

2. That absence of the flamethrower guy could be explained by the following code: when players die, I did a script that clears the screen of all enemies so you don't respawn on top of someone to die again. So, it was cleared and I'm glad that it works! But it doesn't works in all configurations and situations: again in AmigaBill's stream, for some reason it didn't worked and so it was just Bill dying and respawing again on top of someone and dying again, which was painful to watch... I asked Earok and he said that the For Each command used is really unreliable. So again, I'm glad it's working in latest version since it cleared even the weapons-carrying guy!

I was expecting way more complicated issues related to the change for a better horizontal resolution during gameplay. So far it's fine:

[DanyPPC]

More wide, coin'op was 256 pixel wide I think
Amiga has more horizontal pixel, but you can choose to make a perfect pixel conversion or use Amiga better resolution

[merman]

Originally Posted by Aarbron

Thanks for reporting! 1. That's a well known issue with Scorpion Engine. When put control down sometimes it goes down through the platform (even if "gravity" is 0), so I add "1" on Y upwards to prevent that. Which sometimes causes it to jiggle slightly.

On Castlevania I didn't add 1 on Y upwards so you can see in AmigaBill's streams that it goes through the floor in some points and everyone in the chat is "oops, bug found".

In the end, it was much better and less game-breaking to have it to jiggle a bit sometimes than to fall through the platform. Scorpion Engine doesn't actually has the animation slot for "down" so what we do is essentially a "hack" which switches the whole sprite for another one in crouched position, and this eventually causes the collision to break in the heat of battle. When you see it jiggling it's because it was about to go down through the platform but is being prevented to do so, for the benefit of the gameplay.

2. That absence of the flamethrower guy could be explained by the following code: when players die, I did a script that clears the screen of all enemies so you don't respawn on top of someone to die again. So, it was cleared and I'm glad that it works! But it doesn't works in all configurations and situations: again in AmigaBill's stream, for some reason it didn't worked and so it was just Bill dying and respawing again on top of someone and dying again, which was painful to watch... I asked Earok and he said that the For Each command used is really unreliable. So again, I'm glad it's working in latest version since it cleared even the weapons-carrying guy!

I was expecting way more complicated issues related to the change for a better horizontal resolution during gameplay. So far it's fine:

Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense.
Liking the choice of soundtrack too.
Looking forward to the final version.

[Aarbron]

Just passing by to let you guys know of this great video that AL82 Retrogaming Longplays did, really being awesome in Amiga's Green Beret, doing 2 full runs without losing lives (unless when it was on purpose to show the game over part, as a complete longplay). Coupled with a positive review in the video's description:

[ Show youtube player ]

Part at ~5:00 of video really shows some great skill while being pinned down by a paratrooper while under attack by ground troops too!

I'd say that AL82 is internet's Green Beret expert, having posted videos in the channel showing the completion of many other important versions of the game, including the extremely hard C64 version (hats off for that one). So, the playthrough of the Amiga version and the positive words were really important to me.

[ransom1122]

He uses save states, check out his about page in yt

[Aarbron]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

He uses save states, check out his about page in yt

Yeah, it's normal for longplay channels to use save states. But it's more as a matter of not losing recorded footage, with the save states mostly used in the pauses between levels.
Source: myself, I did recorded some longplays a while ago.

[jotd]

whdload slave is on the way.

I had a quick stab at it (no pun intended) and it's very well remade. I also think that it's pretty unfair. The shooters just stay and shoot, and shoot... making it very difficult to kill them.

In the original game, they shoot once, then they move.

Also when the character crouches, he somehow "shakes".

Also controls should be either buttons or joystick jump not both. You don't want to trigger jump with joystick when the button is mapped on it. That's the point of remapping buttons...

I'm pretty competent at the original game (completed the 4 levels) and here I don't even complete the first one... I hope this isn't the final version

[Aarbron]

Originally Posted by jotd

whdload slave is on the way.

I had a quick stab at it (no pun intended) and it's very well remade. I also think that it's pretty unfair. The shooters just stay and shoot, and shoot... making it very difficult to kill them. I hope this isn't the final version

I programmed the soldiers with a flag, they only shoot if variable "has fired"=0, if hasfired=1 they leave, which means one shot. But sometimes this trivial bit of code is just ignored. And you can see in Level 2 the Bazooka guys (check AL82 Longplay for reference) they only fire ONE SHOT with ABSOLUTELY THE SAME CODE as above (of the regular rifle soldiers). Such a mistery, little AI soldiers ignoring code that isn't ignored by other little AI soldiers.
Shakes are explained in post #113, in this thread, a few posts above.

I did an executable which is like you say, which is also the original controls setup (2nd button as flamethrower, not jump). It was requested by players as it's how you play on arcade and NES. I just need to create a little external program with an interface to select different control setups which are actually different executables (because Scorpion Engine doesn't has access to its control prefs at runtime).

So, for 1.0 is the stuff above, plus the timeout jet bombing (which is already in, just waiting for its sound by DJ Metune). And to fix some of the exploits found by AL82, which are actually kind of amusing. Were well know too, I just leave stuff like that in the end of the queue (low priority) if they are harmless or actually benefit the player (many AAA games have glitches exploited by speedrunners).