Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

This is the longest standing consistent source of documentation.. Stuff has often been answered before but may not be easy to find the answers in such a big thread if you don’t know quite what to search for..

Sometimes you might get faster responses from the discord https://discord.gg/CA3Byf7P depending on who’s around to answer. Also asking people while they’re streaming can sometimes work too as they can maybe show you in real-time (depending on the complexity of the question) Earok and I both stream scorpion stuff on twitch, and more people will be soon I’m sure. There are some visual things that are actually pretty hard to explain in text I think.

[earok]

Part of the reason I resisted setting up a discord server for so long was precisely because this thread can be searched (here or on google) without needing to be a discord user, but admittedly it would be a bit hard to find specific solutions.

At some stage or another (and I've promised to do so whenever the Patreon crosses the first milestone, it's 80% of the way there), I'll set up a documentation site that may include an FAQ with solutions like how to do pseudo 8x8 platforms.

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Latest experimental is up, with a sound test keyboard sponsored by BitBeamCannon!




- The sound keyboard can be opened from either the Code tab or the Audio/Anim5 tab. It allows you to quickly test what a sound plays like at each of the 36 predefined semitones.

- The "class" type (actor, player, projectile etc) no longer displays Default. If you haven't manually defined the class, it'll still try to use use the most sensible default for the combination of other settings, but at least you can see at a glance what the class will be when compiled.

- Same as above, but for the "recycle" type too.


This will probably be the last major feature to be added for this iteration, I still need to do some testing and bug fixes before the next public release.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

Latest experimental is up, with a sound test keyboard sponsored by BitBeamCannon!

This will probably be the last major feature to be added for this iteration, I still need to do some testing and bug fixes before the next public release.

Some nice new features to use for my future games. Only glitch I noticed is after the splash screen it briefly shows ugly vertical lines.

If I update Duckstroma I'll have to use 2022.4 though, as I lose 30KB using parallax on the title screen.

[earok]

Originally Posted by UltraNarwhal

Some nice new features to use for my future games. Only glitch I noticed is after the splash screen it briefly shows ugly vertical lines.

If I update Duckstroma I'll have to use 2022.4 though, as I lose 30KB using parallax on the title screen.

I think that glitch is related to the new background/parallax swapping feature.. I'll fix it for sure before making 2022.5 public.

Part of the reason I was hesitant to add it at all is because I knew there'd be an additional overhead with the preallocated memory, in order to allow the developer to (potentially) use the largest parallax background on the level that uses the most memory. Those used to be counted together, so you might have had your largest parallax file on your smallest level and ended up with small memory footprint overall, but now they're not.


What I'm thinking of doing is adding a "memory unsafe" mode that doesn't allocate memory up front for things that get loaded and unloaded, and deallocates memory when levels/backgrounds/panels/music etc are unloaded.

This'll make it much easier to fit games into less memory, but also puts additional overhead on the developer to make sure that (for example) a player won't spend several hours playing through the game on an A500 only for it to crash on the final boss because the final boss level has the largest music, level etc.

[earok]

Latest experimental update.

- New feature: You can disable "preallocation" of memory. It simply means that it doesn't allocate all of the possible required memory up front, which will save on memory overall but it means that the developer will need to take responsibility to make sure that there is never a combination of levels/music/backgrounds etc loaded that will cause a crash at any part of the game on the target Amiga.

- A few fixes for bugs relating to loading backgrounds.

(Just realised there's a fix I still need to do to unload parallax from memory if swapping from a level that has parallax to one that doesn't)

[earok]

Latest check in is more or less bug fixes only. It's not well tested, but:

- Fix for Mixel's reported issue re: animations with 0 length frames not playing

- Fix for Mixels' reported issue re: animations linked to levels not display correctly if memory pre-assignment is turned off

- A few optimisations which should hopefully squeeze out a little more memory

[acidbottle]

I think there is an issue with setscrollspeed.

After setting horizontal and vert scrollspeed to 2, on event codeblock trigger, I yield for 1 frame before setting scrollspeed to 0. Sadly it carries on with speed 2. Not been able to fix, worse still it seems very intermittent and sometimes it does work, most not tho.

[earok]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

I think there is an issue with setscrollspeed.

After setting horizontal and vert scrollspeed to 2, on event codeblock trigger, I yield for 1 frame before setting scrollspeed to 0. Sadly it carries on with speed 2. Not been able to fix, worse still it seems very intermittent and sometimes it does work, most not tho.

I might need an example. Admittedly scroll speed isn't widely used, especially with diagonal direction, but I'll still need some way of investigating the project to find if the cause is codeblocks or the engine.

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Haven't been on stream in awhile, will go on at 9PM tonight (approximately 4.5 hours from now).

I'll be remaking the original parallax demo (https://twitter.com/earok/status/1378874623408828420) from scratch to work with the latest Scorpion Engine. It'll be worthwhile to do so because I don't really have any Scorpion Engine samples with multiple overlapping foreground and background layers like that.

[acidbottle]

Cheers eaork, will try and sort out a useful build to test as soon as is possible. It can be tricky to replicate but also seems to be a problem on 1 specific level, similar routines used on another level work with no issue at all!

Its a big one since once this is squashed the game will be completely playable from start to finish by the end of the week! (extensive playtesting, polish and minor bug squashing still to to).

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

- Fix for Mixels' reported issue re: animations linked to levels not display correctly if memory pre-assignment is turned off

Noticed linking animations to levels is bugged when used, the sprites don't load (memory is preallocated), only when they're unlinked.

[earok]

I've done a check in to experimental, which may fix some of the bugs reported by UltraNarwhal (and on Mixel's stream), but I need to test much more extensively. I'll spend the next hour or so doing some testing on all of the sample games.

Also did a bunch of tidy ups on Scott Pilgrim (also prompted by issues found on Mixel's stream).

If you happen to be online, and you're still having noticeable glitches with the latest experimental, ping me on discord, twitter or whatever, I'll investigate immediately.

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Stream announcement:

At 9AM UTC Sunday (Just under 24 hours), I'll be collaborating live with Bit Beam Cannon, doing work on the "Scorpion Boy" game for A500.

http://twitch.tv/earok




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EDIT: Had a closer look at what was happening on Duckstroma and realized what the bug was. I've checked in a second fix.

[earok]

Latest experimental check in is bit of a nasty work around - maybe an issue with the latest LTS version of Unity (though I haven't been able to replicate it in a fresh project), the UI selection goes wonky when at the far right hand side of the screen. I've padded the broken area with empty space for now, hopefully I can remove that whenever a fix becomes apparent.

[earok]

Latest experimental update:

- A revert of the Unity version used from 2020.3.36 to 2020.3.32, this resolves the UI issue where the cursor breaks at the right hand side (also have removed the black bar that was the original workaround for this).

- Fix for an issue where the bottom panel sometimes wouldn't display in a game with a low Y resolution.

- Includes the "parallax tricks" demo created with live on stream ( [ Show youtube player ] ), with environment art by BitBeamCannon!




I plan to go on stream later today (approx ~9 hours from now), but it'll just be a casual testing session to make sure the latest experimental is ready for public release.

[flibble42]

Probably a good idea on the revert, i mean what sort of mad person would use software that is in a constant state of develope.... never mind.


Just been playing and i think the right side bug is still happening..

[flibble42]

@earok

I love watching all these new features being added (parallax and all the automated systems for sprite control etc). However i have a request for what might seem to be a backwards step. I am reluctant to ask, in my brain it seems like a simple thing, but i know that it will undoubtedly have some knock on effects.

I would like to have manual control over sprite animation. My reasons, Fine control over cut scenes and the ability to create my own text print routines without using panels are two that i can think of now, probably many more in the future.

What my brain imagines and what the reality is are two very different things, here is what my brain imagines...

These are obviously on a per actor/player basis and would be set before spawning/changing an actor like all other settings..


actor_anim=
player_anim= True/false

If true Scorpions standard animation system is active.(Default)
If false Scorpions animation system is disabled.


actor_frame=
player_frame= number

Define the frame of the animation to be displayed.


I just remembered my other current use, i have a character that i need to be able to creep, that is, move 1 animation frame at a time when moved left or right.

I also imagine the text routine would be alot easier to handle if all 26 letters of the alphabet are in one animation and can be selected as needed.

Thanks for reading

[flibble42]

Yup the menu items on the right are still collapesing on themselves, in the code menu atleast.

[Mixel]

I had a similar need for manual control at one point and earok suggested numbered frames as individual animations, so they stay until replaced by another anim.. My boss healthbar is a bunch of animations called bosshealthbar01, bosshealthbar02, bosshealthbar03 etc.. then you can increase and decrease the value over time..

In my healthbar I have “Play bosshealthbar00 +enemyhealth on actor”, but you’d need some sort of cycling thing with yields I guess?

KrisRetro is using a similar system to make swinging on ropes work, I think.

[flibble42]

Yeah, not doing that, 52 anims for alphabet and then symbols, anim for each frame of a cut scene. This idea makes my skin crawl, i like to try and be organised, this is not.


This solution had occured to me by the way, and i rejected it. I may have to do a game presentation re-think.


I decided that until i get more familiar with Scorpions timing system and such i would try an original project, It's based on V-The Mini Series and planned to have multiple sections in different styles (a chance to use Scorpion in different situations), all linked together with cut scenes and text to recreate the flow of the story.


Anyway we will see.. Cheers for the input

[alexh]

Thanks for all the hard work in this area.

I'm still hoping that Tales of Gorluth series will come to Scorpion at some point. I'd happily contribute money / time towards such a conversion.

Gorluth is such a great bit of new IP for Amiga's but just held back a little by Backbone performance.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by flibble42

Yeah, not doing that, 52 anims for alphabet and then symbols, anim for each frame of a cut scene. This idea makes my skin crawl, i like to try and be organised, this is not.


This solution had occured to me by the way, and i rejected it. I may have to do a game presentation re-think.


I decided that until i get more familiar with Scorpions timing system and such i would try an original project, It's based on V-The Mini Series and planned to have multiple sections in different styles (a chance to use Scorpion in different situations), all linked together with cut scenes and text to recreate the flow of the story.


Anyway we will see.. Cheers for the input

That sounds like a nice project!

I specifically meant for the crawling, it'd be fine for that.

The way I've done animations is sometimes based on look direction, rigging up different animations to each direction.. That's how I'll be handling the characters in my visual novel, so I have directions for experessions/emotions (like how the player controls Little Big Planet) - This could be used for small popup cutscene windows, I guess, pretty easily..

Text rendering is a whole different can of worms. No idea how you'd do that, would depend on the project and I'd probably just wait until Scorpion can do it before trying a game that completely relies on text in the viewport.

As for the cutscene IDK what yours looks like but if you've seen the fullscreen animation demo that Neeso made (in the unofficial demos thing), you could use that system and have total control over whatever frame happens when and at what speed etc.. But it would be full screen.