Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

I really like the optimisation tips thingy! The thing I was struggling with on stream was so earth shatteringly obvious once I realised, hahah. I’d set an actor count limit on dialogue trigger/teleported objects, which meant in an area with 6 doors 3 inevitably vanished! Doh!

Really loving some of these new features, the built in wraparound thing is really handy, particularly in wizonk.

[earok]

Glad that the latest updates have been helpful

No update today, but I remembered that I was meant to post my live stream where I worked on the Jazz Jackrabbit demo

[ Show youtube player ]

Ran into a couple of (since fixed) experimental Scorpion bugs but otherwise was reasonably happy with what I did on the stream, which include these topics for anyone interested:

• 32x32 pickups using blocks stitched together
• Pouncing enemy behavior
• Bouncing grenades that even deflect off slopes

[earok]

New experimental update comes with a new demo.



I've ditched the "bitplane masking" system that was used in the translucency demo and created a more powerful system for manually editing individual pixels of a mask (so it allows for everything the old system used to do and more). For example, it allows for effects like those fireballs which are actually one image with a custom mask so that the area surrounding the fireball lights up the background.

In short - previously it wasn't possible to make partof an image translucent, now it is.

[acidbottle]

Awesome and unexpected new feature, great work again earok

[griffon]

Oh my! I can add "real" light sources now!? awesome!

[domkid]

super great new feature, thanks for all your work

[nikosidis]

Looking great!! Scorpion space shooters next

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by griffon

Oh my! I can add "real" light sources now!? awesome!

As a fellow EHB user.. Our palettes are already set up right to use it. This is using a totally non optimal tileset.. but even then it looks pretty damn good..



It’s super easy to implement, I’m really loving this feature!

Does the white circle count as sprites? I’m not sure what the performance hit is for doing this but it’s soo niiiiccee..

[Samurai_Crow]

There's less of a performance penalty to alter just one bitplane than to alter all 6 by about 84% faster.

[acidbottle]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

Looking great!! Scorpion space shooters next

Watch this space (pun intended and not funny) nik

http://www.indieretronews.com/search/label/Star%20Force

[earok]

It's admittedly not going to be great for performance if it's separate objects, but about the same if you do a custom mask on one object (eg, like the fireballs in the demo, as opposed to the spotlight which is it's own object). I haven't thought of a clean way to make it blit only the relevant bitplanes as Samurai Crow suggested, that could maybe come in a future update.

---

Latest check in is bug fixes only (some glitches with loading panels and reloading levels). It's been a month since my last public update so I'll probably put a feature freeze on and only do bug fixes until 2022.2 is out.

[Mixel]

Double http there acidbottle, but I’m really looking forward to more scorpion shooters, also!

My initial thoughts re: very dark level were actually a bit off.. it’d be way easier to do that exact effect without EHB, once you add EHB into the mix it makes that very specific thing seem actually pretty difficult.. (because you don’t have full control over the second half of the palette) but it’s super interesting.

How easy would it be to have a game switch screen modes mid game, from EHB with one palette to 32colour mode with a different one on a specific level? Ideally I’d like to basically make the second half of the palette almost entirely black and the top half almost greyscale (because darkness desaturates anyway), so the level only appears when lit.. For super creepy subterranean stuff. It’s not critical or important at all lol, you’ve just opened up a possibility I never thought we’d get in Scorpion..



If I can recreate this effect from Zombie Holiday there’s basically nothing left from PGF that I can’t do better in Scorpion, and that makes me v happy, haha!

Edit: sorry, we posted at the same time, just saw this.. Aha I see, that’s all good re performance.. I can imagine making a custom “in the dark” Francis (or Anna) with a mask built in.. particularly if I need to use an entire other palette/screen mode for certain sections anyway.

[domkid]

@Earok, Since the last 2 or 3 versions 2022.2, I have a little problem reloading the level after the panel title screen ???
(at start up it's ok) , if you have some time, thank's

https://gitlab.com/_Z_TEAM/maria-renard-revenge

[acidbottle]

@domkid

I have exactly that issue also, corrupt screen when esc to menu and reloading the level. It doesn't always corrupt but is happening often.

Another weird, but non game breaking issue, concerns the height map size. I changed a map size from 224 to 256 and now when my platforms respawn at the bottom of the screen I see a flashing line of 1or 2 of pixels where the cloud re-emerges under the foreground layer. If I change some values about (like the height at which the cloud spawns back in, the entire cloud flashes and not just 1 or 2 lines. If I set it to re-spawn above the foreground layer there is, of course, no issue! The platform itself is on the object layer directly below the foreground, as is default.

ps thanks for that spot Mixel, now fixed

[Mixel]

I wonder if your glitches are connected to the one I'm having now..

I'm noticing aggressive glitch/screen flashes when "the seam" (18 tiles high in CMO) is just coming in to view on the top of the screen on levels with parallax..

[ Show youtube player ] - ignore everything green, that's WIP- (half way through fixing up some fog effects)..

I just upped this cmo build to github in case its useful for troubleshooting.

ed: Somehow by putting slightly different numbers in the csv this flashing stoppped happening, so you dont have anything to fix! Sorry, no idea what that was about.

[acidbottle]

Quick question

Is it possible and/or easy to restrict player movement type to 4 way only instead of 8 direction?

Thought the snake demo may give me a clue but appears the snake is made in blocks!

[griffon]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Quick question

Is it possible and/or easy to restrict player movement type to 4 way only instead of 8 direction?

Thought the snake demo may give me a clue but appears the snake is made in blocks!

I'm not aware of a command that does that directly. That being said, it can be emulated quite easily.

This codesnippet (set on player actor Ontimer 0) will prevent the player from moving in diagonal directions, effectively stopping him in place if he tries. You might want to convert diagonals in normal movement: in that case just changing a bit the ifs and the movement speed should do the trick.

The snippet assumes the player speed is set to 1 in all directions.

if control_x != 0 then
    if control_y !=0 then
        if control_x > 0 then
            set player xspeed to -1
        else
            set player xspeed to 1
        end condition
        if control_y > 0 then
            set player yspeed to -1
        else
            set player yspeed to 1
        end condition
    end condition
end condition

[acidbottle]

Awesome stuff griffon, thanks for that.

Unfortunately, while that works perfectly for platform control, it doesn't quite override the diagonals on regular control which I should have explained was using! Code just needs a tweak though, I suspect.

Much appreciated tho

[griffon]

Uh? That's quite odd, I did read that you needed that on normal 8-way control, and I did test it on a player actor of "control" type, and it worked for me.

Edit: I notice now that it should be "control1_x" and "control1_y". Maybe that's the problem?

[acidbottle]

Oh! Then that is very odd indeed. Definitely not getting the desired effect here. Did use the control1_x and y logic to. Will have a tinker tho, your logic seems sound and had done something similar but just for 1 axis and same result hmm