Scorpion Engine

[earok]

@Nobody not sure if you saw, but the game was on IRN: http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/0...ing-amiga.html.

Mixel also let me know that AmigaBill played your game on his stream (sadly I missed most of it)

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I've "soft launched" the latest Scorpion Editor/Engine, version 2021.2, to github, but I haven't officially announced it yet anywhere. In a day or two I'll do a video showing all of the major new features (and how they're used in some projects Tsak and I are working on), but it includes:

- Trigger any events from keyboard or CD32 pad buttons (super handy as a level skip cheat!)

- Improvements for the animation system, such as being able to trigger an event from any given frame (which is useful if you have, for example, a projectile that fires in the middle of an animation)

- Ability to override the default class of actor (eg, if you want an uncontrollable object to be treated as the player for camera tracking and such, you can do that)

- More control on how objects are handled when they've been offscreen for a few seconds (they can be trashed, or "recycled" so they're frozen on the map until you return to them, or simply respawned from the place they started from)

- New and improved movement types. "Pursuit direct" follows the player around in 8 directions (and can be used with acceleration for a heat seeking missile effect), "Accelerate" accelerates an object in one direction, 'Wave" is similar but with a sine wave effect.

- Combat enhancements. Ability to set the position that a projectile is fired from in any of the eight directions. Ability to set "autofire" so the player doesn't have to keep tapping the fire key for machine guns and such (also, on a top down movement type, the player will strafe while fire is down).

- Minor improvement to blocks, you can specify that blocks can't be hit by projectiles but still impede movement (for example, you could use this for water that can be shot over but not walked over)

- Much improved "yield" function in codeblocks. Essentially this allows you to pause the execution of a codeblock without pausing the game itself, allowing you to write entirely custom movement types for CPU actors (eg, in Pitfall I use this to pause the frog, make the frog turn, make the frog jump etc with constant delays between each action)

- Ability to set both the look direction or move direction of an actor (so you can do things like make a jumping enemy much more easily)

- Ability to edit map events (triggers for players entering certain parts of the map) much more easily from the editor itself, as opposed to needing to do this in Tiled.


Do let me know if you find any major issues, and I'll see if I can fix them before making the announcement video.

Download: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-ed...ive/master.zip

[Neil79]

Thanks Earok

Originally Posted by nobody

A small 3 level demo (no title yet) what i created so far. It's a port of a nice ZX Spectrum homebrew i played recently. Music is a placeholder.

Hey Nobody, what game is it a port of?

[nobody]

Yes i saw it was on indie retro news.
The game is this

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entr...lack_and_White

@Earok, one suggestion: when you have a long code block and e.g. insert or duplicate a line, move it, then the window automatically goes on top which is a bit of annoying (have to scroll down again looking for the line).

[earok]

@nobody I've now added that to the issues list. I may focus on usability improvements for the next update (better keyboard support and fixes for glitches like that in editor)

New update is out officially, along with a video of some of the new features (and a sneak peek at a couple of upcoming Scorpion Engine projects)

[ Show youtube player ]

[DamienD]

Awesome!!! Updates to Tsak's Chaos Guns

Been wanting this like forever as it's a cool game, now it looks very much improved!!!

[alain.treesong]

@earok
Impressive amount of work here. Great !

[earok]

Cheers Alain

Originally Posted by DamienD

Awesome!!! Updates to Tsak's Chaos Guns

Been wanting this like forever as it's a cool game, now it looks very much improved!!!

Tsak's done a massive amount of upgrades on it in just the past couple of weeks.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by earok

Tsak's done a massive amount of upgrades on it in just the past couple of weeks.

I love the original, very good for a Backbone game... in fact the best I've ever seen.

...but this new improved Scorpion version looks like da bomb!!!

[Predseda]

Sad we could not finish Chaos Guns in its initial scheme... it started as a 4 players splits screen simmultaneous game, idea came after we completed Hired Guns and were looking for something else to play. Unfortunately it was coded in a custom engine and after our coder left Amiga for good, we could not continue.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by DamienD

I love the original, very good for a Backbone game... in fact the best I've ever seen.

...but this new improved Scorpion version looks like da bomb!!!

Thanks
I think it's fair to say this video has only scratched the surface of what is currently implemented. Loads of really exciting stuff (I'm talking both for Chaos Guns and Scorpion here).

I had an absurd amount of fun working on this project lately. And it was the perfect opportunity to help with the development of the Scorpion engine as well (which is becoming ever more versatile and powerful).

On the matter of Chaos Guns itself, I haven't really decided what to do with the project. One idea would be to just redo the demo with all the new stuff and release it as a high-tier advanced example made with the engine, along with the other example games included. The other would be to continue down this path and actually realizing a full game out of this.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Tsak

On the matter of Chaos Guns itself, I haven't really decided what to do with the project. One idea would be to just redo the demo with all the new stuff and release it as a high-tier advanced example made with the engine, along with the other example games included. The other would be to continue down this path and actually realizing a full game out of this.

It's a no brainer from me my friend, the obvious best option is:

to continue down this path and actually realizing a full game out of this.

[earok]

Originally Posted by DamienD

It's a no brainer from me my friend, the obvious best option is:

to continue down this path and actually realizing a full game out of this.

This ^

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I've started posting experimental updates of the engine to a different repo, https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental, it doesn't include sample games and isn't extensively tested but if you want to use the bleeding edge version to develop your game, it might be of some interest.

I may update this every few days and the mainstream version every few weeks (after each of the sample games is properly tested)

Updates to experimental:
- Automatically reloads last opened project (can still switch projects by clicking 'close').
- Fixes for reordering lines of code, particularly when there's a scrollbar.
- Strafe fire is optional for "Control" type rather than mandatory.
- Projectile collision detection is a little better.

[Mixel]

I also third that opinion, giant example projects probably aren’t really much more useful than small ones from a learning perspective, unless you specifically want people modding your game. It looks amazing so I’d much rather just.. play it?

Although I wouldnt mind a demo with a ton of complex player projectiles in it, as shooters aren’t really represented in the demo projects yet.

Oooh experimental build!

[Tsak]

I think the inclusion of a much more advanced example can be useful as well. The way I'm approaching this is I'm trying to get all the game mechanics in first, like combat basics, enemy ai, needed stats, UIs e.t.c. and then I'll move on to context creation like levels, story, progression e.t.c.

So a possible demo example released will have everything included in a compact test level with all the examples in, meaning Scorpion users will gain direct and easy access to all features without having to track them down in between the level progression and the entirety of a complete game.

This also helps as people can go on and lift entire genral use codeblocks, actors e.t.c. or have a look at certain features and get a better insight of how these oprate and are set up. One problem with Scorpion is that not all operations and variables are transparent and tweakable, so if you try to push the envelope towards more complexity with your game, chances are you may hit a brick wall. Since creating a comprehensive guide and documentation is far off to the horizon (and a big task on it's own), the best bet a Scorpion user has (besides direct communication with Erik that is) might be to just have a look at an advanced example like that.

[Mixel]

That makes a ton of sense.. Like, a relatively feature-complete vertical slice instead of a whole game. I really meant, sharing an entire game's project files wouldn't seem necessary.. Complex demo projects are definitely *super* valuable. Can't wait!

Every time Erik's added a new example at least one thing in the codeblocks has blown my mind, haha.

[earok]

Originally Posted by Tsak

So a possible demo example released will have everything included in a compact test level with all the examples in, meaning Scorpion users will gain direct and easy access to all features without having to track them down in between the level progression and the entirety of a complete game.

Sounds good to me

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Today's experimental check in: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental

- EXE2ADF support, with one click you can package your entire game into a bootable ADF with Add21k and AmigaDOS blanked out (this will only work for single disk games of course)

- Expanded options for the Actor_SetLookDir command

• Stop_Moving, self explanatory
• Look_AtPlayer, makes actor look at player without changing movement
• Move_AtPlayer, makes the actor look and move towards the player

[earok]

New experimental update. https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental

Enemies now support "melee" hit boxes. This is a fairly minor update with potentially large ramifications. Asides from simply being able to detect if a player is being hit by a limb or a sword, it could be used to create enemies that detect you (you'd have a large melee hitbox that's on the side that the enemy is facing, and this in turn would trigger a custom event when the player overlaps that box).


Technically, a game like Street Fighter or Double Dragon might be possible exploiting this update - tricky though, especially when it comes to AI.

[earok]

Animated Blocks are now on experimental branch, they're considerably more performance efficient than actors so they're recommended for things like animated coins.

Some notes:
- The animation cycle is hard coded at 5FPS
- It works by essentially chaining blocks together in a sequence, for each block you just need to specify the next block in the sequence.
- Alternatively, you can have it trigger an event instead. So you could use it for a bomb like in Bomberman (have a series of blocks representing the frames of the bomb, and the last frame triggers the actual explosion)

[Mixel]

.. Ahh! That's great! I'm going to switch over my spinning coins. Might even go crazy and my my potion bottles bubble.

I think this is another method i could use for timed on/off platforms, is this going to be better or worse performance than having animating tiles becoming platforms on and off?

[earok]

Originally Posted by Mixel

.. Ahh! That's great! I'm going to switch over my spinning coins. Might even go crazy and my my potion bottles bubble.

I think this is another method i could use for timed on/off platforms, is this going to be better or worse performance than having animating tiles becoming platforms on and off?

Great

They would be a little less performance efficient than animated tiles, but they don't synchronise the way animated tiles do (eg, if you had a wide animated water top, it would look perfect with animated tiles but it could "break up" with animated blocks). Animated blocks are definitely more for collectables than for platforms.