Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

I don't think you're supposed to swap out panels mid level, I was having similar issues - that's why I have a "Yes/No" actor-based selector instead of the panel-based one... (even if it appears not to be causing problems to begin with I think as the project grows in size, it probably will cause more.. When I had a Yes/No panel that I swapped the statusbar out for it worked fine for months.. until it didn't (it started throwing up visual glitches..)

I guess you could use big elements to cover your whole statusbar now if you want the same effect (now that they're unlimited)? Then they'd be loaded into memory with the panel and there wouldn't be the loading from disk weirdness.

[Lemming880]

That doesn't sound good. I thought the panel switch was a nice solution. But I'll try to use an actor.

[earok]

I need to take a breather for a few days.

- I'll take a good look at the 'pixel line' issue, it may take me a little time to solve, partly because I think the issue may lie within Blitz so I'll be replacing more of the Blitz routines with my own.

- Re: disk issue, I'm not quite sure about that either since I don't have a floppy-equipped Amiga to test with (just CD32+TF328). I think the drive light is emulated in WinUAE though? If it's reproducible in WinUAE then I should be able to solve it easy enough.

Out of curiosity, is this only happening on Kickstart 1.3 machines? Or on all floppy Amigas?

- As Mixel suggested, using numberfonts is probably the best way to solve the panel loading issue since there's zero loading at all (eg, you have a numberfont that's say 2560 wide and every 256 pixels is your replacement panel). Swapping out panels at runtime should in theory work fine work fine, I may need to test that.

[Lemming880]

Take a break np. Meanwhile I did another test with my latest adf in WinUAE for the floppy light, on stock A500 and A1200. In WinUAE you can't see the floppy light (I think) but you can activate the floppy sound and constantly hear it.

1.3 floppy light/sound (A500)

Test1:
Main menu at startup: Off
Level 1: On
Level 2: On
Main menu second time: On
Level 1 second time: On
Level 2 second time: On
Main menu third time: On

Test2:
Main menu at startup: Off
Level 1: Off, after picking up weapon: On
Level 2: On
Main menu second time: On
Level 1 second time: On
Level 2 second time: On
Main menu third time: On

3.1 floppy light/sound (A1200)

Test1:
Main menu at startup: Off
Level 1: Off, after picking up weapon: On
Level 2: On
Main menu second time: Off
Level 1 second time: On
Level 2 second time: On
Main menu third time: Off

Test2:
Main menu at startup: Off
Level 1: On
Level 2: On
Main menu second time: Off
Level 1 second time: On
Level 2 second time: On
Main menu third time: Off

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

I need to take a breather for a few days.

- Re: disk issue, I'm not quite sure about that either since I don't have a floppy-equipped Amiga to test with (just CD32+TF328). I think the drive light is emulated in WinUAE though? If it's reproducible in WinUAE then I should be able to solve it easy enough.

Out of curiosity, is this only happening on Kickstart 1.3 machines? Or on all floppy Amigas?

.

Have break, don't burn yourself out

I did a quick test in WinUAE (I don't have a real working Amiga) and disk drive noise/light happens on all machines to a degree. Kickstart 1.3 & 3.1 machines keep light on after I load level, but Kick 2.0 (37.175/37.300) don't.

If you try my game commit named 'Title Screen & Pause' and get a game over you'll see drive noise on Kick 2.0 machine, quiet otherwise.


Enable Floppy light in WinUAE under Misc - Native on screen display.

[domkid]

@earock, nice break...

[tomcat666]

Anyone tried os3.2 with the AGS game selector? I get file lock problems on the temporary file that AGS uses to launch games. So after first game is launched the AGS is not able to write to the file anymore and an error that it cannot write the file is returned. This works fine on all previous versions of the OS.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Anyone tried os3.2 with the AGS game selector? I get file lock problems on the temporary file that AGS uses to launch games. So after first game is launched the AGS is not able to write to the file anymore and an error that it cannot write the file is returned. This works fine on all previous versions of the OS.

Posted in wrong thread? This one is neither about OS3.2 nor AGS.

[tomcat666]

Sorry. No idea how this happened.

[DaveInFL]

@earock, I believe someone asked this question somewhere in this thread but don't think it was ever answered. Any chance of a MacOS version of this engine, or is that something that will simply not happen. Ok either way, but wanted to ask

[kriz]

Cant you run windows on a mac these days anyway ? Apple boot camp / Parallels Desktop or run VMWare or similar inside macos

[skyzoo73]

Will the scorpion engine be optimized more on the performance front in the future, in particular for low end Amigas like 500 and 600? I've always wondered.

[DaveInFL]

Originally Posted by kriz

Cant you run windows on a mac these days anyway ? Apple boot camp / Parallels Desktop or run VMWare or similar inside macos

Yes, but they tend to be resource hogs. Like I said, I'm ok either way.

[earok]

@Lemming @Ultranarwall thanks, that's helpful! I'm surprised that the Kickstart 1.3 doesn't seem to be a factor but it is interesting that it seems mostly related to levels. I'll solve it one way or another.

@DaveInFL A Mac version of the editor could come sooner or later but I'm aware of at least Mixel, if not others using virtual machines on Mac. In any case it's something to do after the engine is otherwise complete.

@SkyZoo73 I'm trying my best, and several Scorpion games are designed for A500 and do run reasonably well on it (Super Delivery Boy is probably the best optimized 50HZ / A500 Scorpion game, though IMO Amigo is reasonably good too). Scorpion certainly won't ever get to Factor 5 levels of optimization but IMO it's also more optimized than a lot of games that were released commercially, and there's still opportunity for improvement.

[DaveInFL]

Originally Posted by earok

@DaveInFL A Mac version of the editor could come sooner or later but I'm aware of at least Mixel, if not others using virtual machines on Mac. In any case it's something to do after the engine is otherwise complete.

Great, that sounds good to me

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

@SkyZoo73 I'm trying my best, and several Scorpion games are designed for A500 and do run reasonably well on it (Super Delivery Boy is probably the best optimized 50HZ / A500 Scorpion game, though IMO Amigo is reasonably good too). Scorpion certainly won't ever get to Factor 5 levels of optimization but IMO it's also more optimized than a lot of games that were released commercially, and there's still opportunity for improvement.

I think the performance is pretty great! So many of the classics ran at 25fps.. had small sprites/bobs, and they definitely didn't use EHB! It was pretty rare for games (of the appropriate genres) with big bobs/sprites to be running smooth 50fps on ECS if you consider the entire catalogue and not just the standout titles. Out of the 50fps ones its even rarer theyd have fancy parallax and some of the other things we have going on.

It's probably more about the individual devs optimising their games than Scorpion optimisations from now on I would've thought..? SDB does a really good job playing to the strengths of lower end hardware.. It looks like the same applies to Duckstroma, Abbey Des Morts etc too. I think you could probably make an incredible New Zealand Story, Rodland, Rainbow Islands style games targetting OCS/1MB too, we just need to wait for people do make them.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by Mixel

It's probably more about the individual devs optimising their games than Scorpion optimisations from now on I would've thought..? SDB does a really good job playing to the strengths of lower end hardware.. It looks like the same applies to Duckstroma, Abbey Des Morts etc too.

Yep, devs also need to do optimisation. To get Duckstroma to run 99% smooth I had to use 16 colour mode and the hardware sprites, which means no fancy foreground stuff (SDB has that and 32 colours).
Though I wouldn't mind an option to force 25fps mode returning to Scorpion engine

[earok]

Originally Posted by UltraNarwhal

Yep, devs also need to do optimisation. To get Duckstroma to run 99% smooth I had to use 16 colour mode and the hardware sprites, which means no fancy foreground stuff (SDB has that and 32 colours).
Though I wouldn't mind an option to force 25fps mode returning to Scorpion engine

I think it's technically possible already but not tested in some time - there's a variable called "FrameSkip" which I think if set to 2 will force 25FPS.

I do want to try and come up with a way of hybridizing 25FPS and 50FPS in Scorpion like has been done in other games. e.g. Battle Squadron's main game loop is 25FPS but the players move and shoot at 50FPS.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

I think it's technically possible already but not tested in some time - there's a variable called "FrameSkip" which I think if set to 2 will force 25FPS.

I do want to try and come up with a way of hybridizing 25FPS and 50FPS in Scorpion like has been done in other games. e.g. Battle Squadron's main game loop is 25FPS but the players move and shoot at 50FPS.

Is frameskip.. a different thing to Framewait? ..? Skip isnt in my standardlibrary. Skipping sounds like .. well, the opposite of waiting.

Huh.. It only just occurred to me how cool Frame_wait is if you can set it mid level I should be using it for slowmo effects!?

Experimenting with Frame_wait and it seems stable on much lower end systems even with EHB etc, just.. Running in slow motion.. If there was a way to x2 all timing based variables and animations that would be really cool for making a quick 25fps build.. Heck, If that was adjustable from a variable too you could even put the FPS option in a game's settings menu.. (is what I'm suggesting here exactly replicating what you'd get from frameskip anyway? I guess it is.. in which case ignore my rambling, lol)

[earok]

Sorry, yes you're right! I got the vairable names mixed up.

An early version of Scorpion did have a system that scaled actor speed and such based on whether you had it on 25fps or 50fps mode, so you could release a super smooth version for AGA (for example) and a less smooth version (but still constant fps) for OCS. The problem was it was just too difficult to scale everything and still expect it to behave the same way so I think the best thing to do is just to leave it to developers to hand craft and test 25fps versions if they really want to do that.