Tech demo of my game

[VincentGR]

I made an install with the generic WHDLoad as mentioned above.
It runs perfect on 020/FPU JIT.
Will try it on the real thing BlizzIV tomorrow.

[malko]

Originally Posted by pixie

I tried to make an adf out of it but it wouldn't fit so I made an hd floppy but then it wouldn't boot, so I made an hd folder, and it run. But then I couldn't run with just 512k I add to up it up to 512k+512k, perhaps due to be run from hd.

You can create an ADF out of the demo folder and it will fit in a standard size ADF. Simply you have to delete all the files that begin with a "._" which are useless files on the Amiga (used by the Amiga MAC emulator).
Then you can boot directly from the ADF an a standard A500 configuration (512+512). It even boot on an 512k only config.

[pixie]

Originally Posted by malko

You can create an ADF out of the demo folder and it will fit in a standard size ADF. Simply you have to delete all the files that begin with a "._" which are useless files on the Amiga (used by the Amiga MAC emulator).
Then you can boot directly from the ADF an a standard A500 configuration (512+512). It even boot on an 512k only config.

When I tried it didn't fit, but I only deleted those on the root directory... now i see those extra files scattered all over the place.

[abu_the_monkey]

@remz

loving you work thus far

[B2k_ad]

Originally Posted by remz

Good news: the playable demo of Hamulet is available for download in the latest issue #10 of the WhatIff magazine: http://whatiff.info/

Feel welcome to give it a try, and thank you

Thank you so much!
By all the tiny details one can tell how much Love was packed in to it.
And the visuals are simply impressive.


The only (hopefully constructive) feedback i would have: The sound effect when you lite up a torch on the wall is a bit massive and breaks the Music a bit too long.
But i feel bad for saying it because everything is made with so much attention.


If there would be a patreon or commercial release i'd say: shut up and take my money!

[alexh]

Originally Posted by VincentGR

I made an install with the generic WHDLoad as mentioned above.
It runs perfect on 020/FPU JIT.
Will try it on the real thing BlizzIV tomorrow.

It shouldn't need WHDload. The author is still active and any issues with compatibility or extra features should be passed on to him.

[carlosgod]

Had a chance to play with it. Even after the novelty of the whole HAM mode graphics thing started to wear off, I still found the demo to be quite addictive and despite dying a lot, I ended up messing around with it a lot longer than I thought I would! I like the whole floor switch mechanic puzzle thing - very nicely done.

My additional thoughts (please ignore if you already plan on implementing in future releases):

1) When your character die, can you make it so the character re-spawn closer to where you died? Having to go all the way back to the beginning is a bit too painful.
2) Will there be some sort of energy bar? So perhaps you can sustain a few hits before you die?
3) The character's sword didn't seem to work - not sure if that is because this part of the code isn't finished yet or if it's supposed to be ineffective against monsters
4) The monsters don't seem to be able to move vertically. Is that intended?
5) As someone mentioned, the sound effect for lighting the torches seems to have affected background music (ie, it stopped it). Not sure if that's intended.

Other than that - great stuff! I also noticed there's a lot of icons on the left. I presume the main character is going to have a lot of different tools to use, so can't wait to see what other things she can do and how it affects the game mechanics.

[Karlos]

Assuming for a moment you were to target AGA with some additional memory.

How feasible would it be to use this specific technique for a top-down shooter like the original alien breed games?

[Predseda]

Could any mod please rename this thread to Hamulet, if the author agrees?

[buzzybee]

Had some trouble getting the game to work, due to what seems like a corrupt archive. So first of all, thankyou @remz for troubleshooting.

Hamulet looks really cool. I reckon the technical achievement to get something playable out of HAM-mode is not to be underestimated, even more so with smooth visuals and without color artifacts. Congratulations!

The amount of love and detail put into the game already is obvious. This looks like something that could evolve into a special puzzle game.

[remz]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Could any mod please rename this thread to Hamulet, if the author agrees?

Predseda: Yes, I agree: I don't think I can rename the thread myself, so let's see if a moderator agrees.

Everyone: Thank you very much for all your comments and feedback. I do read all of them and I'm taking notes for fixing and enhancing all the playability and gameplay issues. And also for designing and continuing the game of course.

About memory requirements: The game just barely fits on a kickstart 1.3
one floppy drive with 512KB machine; however, it won't have sound effects (because not enough ram available). I'm hoping to be able to keep this "minimum specs" throughout the development of the game, we'll see how it goes

About HAM-8 and more powerful Amigas: yes I think it would be possible to have HAM-8 'action' game on AGA machines. Combined with larger AGA sprites, faster CPU, and more memory, a base A1200 (or CD32) could potentially make a very impressive step-up over Hamulet.

Thanks again for the kind words!
Remz

[warci]

Just played it a little on my A1200, what a game!!! The quality is just incredible, like someone said before: feels like an indie game released on steam. Controls feel just right, gorgeous graphics and sound, I'm really blown away at both the technical achievement, the overall presentation and the quality gameplay. Big cudos man!

[Karlos]

@remz

About HAM-8 and more powerful Amigas: yes I think it would be possible to have HAM-8 'action' game on AGA machines. Combined with larger AGA sprites, faster CPU, and more memory, a base A1200 (or CD32) could potentially make a very impressive step-up over Hamulet.

I wasn't even thinking HAM8 to be honest, I was just thinking of the same technique in HAM6. I assumed you might need the extra chip ram that comes with AGA for some of the precalculated data for a more action focused game. I'm thinking things like damaged tiles and so on.

It feels like there's an amazing 2D tiled-world engine in here waiting to break out.

[carlosgod]

Originally Posted by Karlos

@remz



I wasn't even thinking HAM8 to be honest, I was just thinking of the same technique in HAM6. I assumed you might need the extra chip ram that comes with AGA for some of the precalculated data for a more action focused game. I'm thinking things like damaged tiles and so on.

It feels like there's an amazing 2D tiled-world engine in here waiting to break out.

Agree, so many great Amiga OCS games are top down 2D tiled. The possibilities of this tech breakthrough is mind blowing.

However, when he mentioned about memory constraints for the current demo which has a small-ish world map, I started to realize that converting complex top-down games like OCS Alien Breed or OCS Chaos Engine (both of which are an exponentially larger game with advanced game mechanics and yet fits on just two disks) to HAM mode using this engine may not be as straight forward as I thought.

I would guess that converting late eighties top-down games like OCS Gauntlet to HAM using this engine is within the realm of possibilities as both are fairly similar in terms of game mechanics - at least at the current stage of Hamulet development.



However, we need to see how far the author can push this engine in terms of implementing more advanced/complex game mechanics. I'm hopeful though that we will see more cool stuff coming out of Hamulet.

[malko]

Nothing prevent the converted game to be adapted in order to have progression "check points" allowing the loading of next part .

[saimon69]

Some of the dynamics of this game reminds me a lot of ZX Spectrum game Android two: you can take hints from it
[ Show youtube player ]

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by carlosgod

I would guess that converting late eighties top-down games like OCS Gauntlet to HAM using this engine is within the realm of possibilities as both are fairly similar in terms of game mechanics - at least at the current stage of Hamulet development.

Problem is that the game relies almost exclusively on sprites multiplexing for all moving stuff (if I'm not mistaken), so handling enemies that move freely on screen is very tricky. I suspect that's one of the reasons the blobs in the game only move horizontally. Another one is copper. Enemies and objects need to be 3 colors. The game here uses copper in a very smart way to add more colors to each enemy and make them look multicolor. However that also creates problems with vertical movement. So overall it's quite tricky to use this engine for an Alien Breed or Gauntlet type of game. Though not impossible.

Anyhow, the projects seems that has made fantastic progress. Thumbs up and hoping we see more progress soon!

[TCD]

That's what ross mentioned when I asked/speculated about more action-ish games earlier in the thread. Still looking forward to see where this will end up and the current way it plays is quite impressive

[carlosgod]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Problem is that the game relies almost exclusively on sprites multiplexing for all moving stuff (if I'm not mistaken), so handling enemies that move freely on screen is very tricky. I suspect that's one of the reasons the blobs in the game only move horizontally. Another one is copper. Enemies and objects need to be 3 colors. The game here uses copper in a very smart way to add more colors to each enemy and make them look multicolor. However that also creates problems with vertical movement. So overall it's quite tricky to use this engine for an Alien Breed or Gauntlet type of game. Though not impossible.

Ah, so that explains the horizontal movement limitations for enemy sprites that we're seeing now

I guess you could allow for the enemy sprites to change color as they move up and down? But I suppose that would just look really weird.

That's indeed a tough problem to solve, but it seems like you might have an idea on how it can be done - hence the 'not impossible' statement?

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by carlosgod

That's indeed a tough problem to solve, but it seems like you might have an idea on how it can be done - hence the 'not impossible' statement?

The statement applies in case you compromise. F.e. leave enemy sprites be only 3 colors or make the sprites attached and manage to keep only 3 per scanline (somehow). 'Solutions' are far from ideal in this case.
If I remember correctly there was also another amiga shooter using ham and they used bob enemies there but with thick black outlines. Not exactly sure if that was indeed the case though.