I will create a Batman the Movie Clone

[goncalo]

Hello all, I just signed up in this board.


And I would appreciate some feedback from you.


I love the Amiga since the 80s, and I still nowadays play some of its games on FS-UAE, one of them is Batman The Movie (the 1st and 5th levels only).


I'm a software developer and am creating a Game Engine from scratch on Linux that I'll use to create games for Linux, Windows, Mac OS, etc (Amiga not there (YET)).


It would be of course a free game, and it would be great if others would create levels for that game (the platform levels).


I've seen in a web search that some would love to have a new version of that game on this post: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1139255.


But would people like to play it on modern PCs, of should we only speak about real Amiga games here?


For the clone I would create it exactly equal, but maybe with a 640*480 resolution. Should I try to perfect the pixelart?


I would probably release a different version later but without the Batman stuff as that's a trademark, but at least the clone would be done.


Does anyone find this a good idea? I have videos but I haven't posted them as I'm not sure if I should post those things here.


Thanks.

[Valken]

Welcome and a good intro.

Would be great for an Ultimate or anniversary edition with all the fixings and maybe enhancements if possible.

You can check out a thorough review of all game versions here:

https://frgcb.blogspot.com/2014/10/b...cean-1989.html

You can find the map of the NES version here:

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#Batman

I could not find a fully mapped version from the Amiga or Atari ST version, but you can run an emulator in pixel perfect resolution, no scaling or filters, enabled infinite lives cheat and just run the maps to compare.

Maybe add some bloom, parallax, depth shading, with global illumination and it would look great as a neo retro game.

[goncalo]

Thanks for the feedback!

I have the first level already on my Game Engine's testing map, you can see it here:



Nevermind the anime screen, I usually have the habbit to put a frame from the current animations series I'm watching on each screenshot, this one was from November.

You can see that I've walked through those 1st level platforms with Erik the Viking (from Lost Vikings) for testing purposes, and even Sonit the HedgeHog:



I uploaded the level but am currently testing some water works (I'm finishing but still not online), this video is old (3 weeks now with waves, etc):



Once I finish doing perfect waves (which have nothing to do with Batman), I can start working with Batman the Movie related stuff, like:

- Shooting batarangs;
- Shooting bombs;
- Gas traps;
- Throwing the rope and balancing;
- Etc.

I can easily create later a clone of Batman the Movie's first and fifth levels (I won't create the other levels as I just play the platform ones).

I'll then find a way to let people create their own levels to share among us.

I would like to release a free version of this (obviously as I don't own Batman's copyrights and it's a game clone so it can only be free).

I'm a software developer, and I can easily create games from scratch, I'm creating now my own game engine from scratchin C and C++, because I plan to start creating my own games (to sell them later on Steam), but as kind of an excercise, I'll probably clone some Amiga games, at least Batman The Movie.

I'm thinking even creating a game similar to Batman the Movie (probably that could even use the same levels), but with different characters, etc.

But my free version of Batman the Movie would be more complete, with more traps, new stuff, so I'm curious to see if other players are still interested in this game 30 years later.

The only thing is that it would be for Windows or Linux.

I migrated the Amiga levels, and I plan to maybe perfect their sprites and tiles.

I plan to do more realistic water splashes, gas traps (or water vapor traps?), etc. But not escape from the original too much, at least on the beginner levels.

What do you think about this?

I know I'll play a lot this game clone once I finish it (as I love playing the original one), but am curious to see if others would like to also.

I could create a perfect clone, with very realistic stuff, but am not sure if I should stray too much from the original one.

Thanks!

[SSJTrunks69]

Is it hard to program game? and how much does it take for you to study it?

[gimbal]

@SSJTrunks69: that would be a question better served in its own thread, it is an opinionated question that would cause a derailment discussion in this thread.

[goncalo]

Originally Posted by SSJTrunks69

Is it hard to program game? and how much does it take for you to study it?

Well, @gimbal is right that would require a long answer. Anyway I can tell you that I don't use any game engine (I'm creating my own from scratch), so it's harder than if you would grab a game engine from the internet and start creating games (that would be slower, you could do less stuff in them, etc). And I can tell you also that I'm creating them using C and C++, languages that require for example that you do your own memory management and understand well how a computer works.

What for one person can look simple to another can look complex, so it's hard to answer that. I can only tell you that it's a lot harder than using simpler languages like C# or Java, etc, and that the game engine has already 200 classes, lots of abstraction in OOP, etc, don't know if this answers the question. I program computers since I was a small child.

I can tell you also that a good game developer should understand not only about programming but also Mathematics and Physics, specially if applying some laws of Physics to the game. For example, in this animated gif you can see some splash simulation on the water, this is done using Math and some Physics, I'm testing it still. Then it's applied to the game map using your abstraction abilities and problem solving capabilities (imagining how to make all this work), etc. But it's a lot of fun, for those who like it.



(Graphics were taken from the Amiga versions, and Sonic from Megadrive of course).

The important thing is that one day I'll clone Batman the Movie platformer levels and finally start playing some newer levels, I'm tired of the old ones.

[gimbal]

I did not say long answer, I said that it would cause a derailment discussion...

[goncalo]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I did not say long answer, I said that it would cause a derailment discussion...

True.


By the way, I came here searching for Batman the Movie Amiga sprites but didn't find them.


From time to time as an hobby I add new things to my game engine.


This rope system is copied from Batman the Movie but improved:
[ Show youtube player ]


This is an old video, it is much better now, and the quality was distorted by YouTube.


But I want the Batman remake to be better in certain things, like letting him thrown ropes when falling, possibly (optionally).



Is there anyone that is interested in creating maps for this game if I release it?

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by goncalo

Is there anyone that is interested in creating maps for this game if I release it?

Howdy Goncalo,

What does the dev environment look like, I assume there is a level editor available for Linux?
And just to avoid misunderstandings, on what platform are you looking to create these levels? Still Windows & Linux?
On Amiga and other retro systems with limited memory, you'd need to heavily reuse tiles of graphics to conserve memory. Probably not how you would create the maps on a modern high end PC. But by looking on the old video it looks like the game is built in a tile editor.
Do you have any videos that show the editor in action? That might be helpful for someone who wanted to join. ;-)

[goncalo]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Howdy Goncalo,

What does the dev environment look like, I assume there is a level editor available for Linux?
And just to avoid misunderstandings, on what platform are you looking to create these levels? Still Windows & Linux?
On Amiga and other retro systems with limited memory, you'd need to heavily reuse tiles of graphics to conserve memory. Probably not how you would create the maps on a modern high end PC. But by looking on the old video it looks like the game is built in a tile editor.
Do you have any videos that show the editor in action? That might be helpful for someone who wanted to join. ;-)

Thanks for the interest, it will still take maybe one year until it's functional because I'm developing the game engine with several remakes at the same time, one of Master of Orion (PC), one of PacMania (arcarde, haven't started it yet), Batman the Movie (Amiga), R-Type (Arcade), maybe Fernandez Must Die (Amiga), so that when it's ready it will be ready for several types of games.

But Batman the Movie will be the first.

Nobody needs to know how to even program.

Although I develop it using C++, I'm creating it data-driven, I was going to create a software to draw maps but I found an excellent one, Tiled, here's me creating Batman the Movie layers:


By the way you can see Rick Dangerous (from Amiga) tiles above, also, etc, I mix a lot of games there, and even Lost Vikings (Eric is my character there with Lost Vikings snails etc).

My test levels are a mixture of games. I even have Sonic in some sprites.

It generates a XML with the level info, and the person who creates it must have access to the tiles.

I'm thinking in distributing en executable (it will be completely free but not Open Source as I don't have time to make it Open Source and because I'll develop it alone), that allows people to create games, but it won't allow them to compile the games into a binary executable (as it would require a lot of work from me), so it's cool to play with games, create them, etc, but to comercialize any, would require work from me.

But for free remakes like Batman the Movie (Amiga), or Ruff and Tumble (Amiga, I'm thinking on it as the 2nd Platformer), I can distribute the engine with the sprites and tiles, so any person could create the levels and exchange them.

But to make it a complete binary I would have to join all those levels inside the executable to build a final release ready to play.

It works still only in Linux (will migrate it to Windows also), but the game engine is like this because it's just the backstage, because the final work would be a complete game.

But on Batman the Movie I'm only thinking on the platform levels, only platforms, platforms, platforms.

To avoid violating copyrights people would have the option to put the original mp3 playing inside the game, but I wouldn't distribute them inside of the executable.

And I'm not sure if I must transform Batman into a Ninja? To avoid copyright problems.

But it would be something like this.

Only a mouse is necessary nothing more.

The person edits the level, runs the executable with the new xml on the same folder, and tests it.

I must improve the sprites maybe for 640x480, the rope system will be better, I won't make it probably 100% equal, I'm open to suggestions but everything is possible I can do anything.

Now on tiled, we can set any tile square with certain variables, like rain=true (and rain will be born in that square), night=true (and it will be night?) or dark=true, or darkOpacity=128 form 255 and will be half dark, water=true (and will be underwater), etc, etc.

And the sprites will have variables defined on them while putting them inside the game, where we can use variables like "canFall=true" (if not they fly), I created a variable that is "stalker=true" hahaha, if it's a stalker the enemy will go after you. Well stuff like that. In Batman, enemies will have variables like "throwBombs=true", or "fireWeapons=true", or "onlyBornWhenNear" so that they are born only when we get close, etc, etc.

This will take some time yet, but as I told you, I can do anything, so everything is possible.

Sounds cool this way?

I can program but I don't have time to create 100's of levels, and I'm creating it because I'm tired of playing only 2 levels from the game.

So it would be great if others create levels for it, and for Ruff And Tumble cover later, etc, etc.

The problem is that it will be on new machines not Amiga, but I created a scanline effect, etc.

And it will be RGBA with transparencies (we can improve old Amiga games imagining we would be playing on new Amigas if they would still be released nowadays, which they aren't unfortunately).

So it would run on new hardwares, just like if it was a 2023 Amiga, just like our nowadays PCs, not for old hardware (which would limit me a LOT).

My ideia is to upgrade some of those old games, not a purist idea, but well intentioned, although not all would like it.



Maybe I could migrate it to old Amigas but it would be a lot of work one day but I doubt it would be advantajous.

But I don't use shaders/OpenGL etc, even the shadows and lights are made by hand so they could be migrated but old machines wouldn't handle so many things, these new remakes would have rain, shadows, lights, parallax backgrounds, effects, etc. Many memory would be used.

For example, shadows that are software rendered (fast on new machines):


And I can still reach 1000 FPS with all this, or more, with RGBA 640x480 on a simple small laptop with an I5 processor, and much more with better processors, the performance is great, but on old 16 bit Motorolas of course not. I'm building it thinking on new machines. The effects are software rendered and not hardware, I don't use accelerator cards though.

It's even easy to create collisions, we just need to create a sprite with a transparent background, and the game engine will make the snow fall on our sprites' heads and melt, it will automatically detect collisions.



All this have an huge cost for old machines. It will be very friendly for level creators or game creators.

But of course, it's not an Unity, as people can't program, they are limited to certain things.

I still haven't created a way to make the player fall or rise on inclined collision tiles if they have holes or inclination, etc, things to do, it's still working with only square collision tiles.

But easy to use stuff like water, bubbles, lightnings, etc:


I want the new Batman to have night, shadows, snow, rain, real time fire (not sprites fire):



(The gif image is delayed).

I have teleporting for some games like Lost Vikings and even zooming:



All this accessible on the game engine on the Tiled software, trough variables on each tile on the levels' creation.

I would like to use all these things on the new remakes, like realistic Retro-Style gaming.

I think it reaches 200 FPS if using only one of my I5 8 cores, with 2000 drops of rain in one screen, with 640x480 RGBA and 100 enemies, etc, not bad on new machines.

Rain is transparent and pixel level collision also:


And of course, I used tiles with the objects embeded, the worst way because I didn't care about memory, but people can add the objects separately, I simply got the levels from the Internet and divided everything and used, I even have repeated tiles there wasting memory, but because it is just for testing.

I also decided to use C++ and not just C, so that has a cost not in performance but memory sometimes, as I use some OOP sometimes (it's useful), so I'm not thinking yet in migrating to old machines nor do I think yet if that's necessary as we can have the originals anyway, and the improved versions on other machines.

But I could adjust the resolutions and colors, who knows, to make it more alike.

But I guess being remakes from old Amiga games, is cool anyway no?

Thanks.