Dogfight II

[clebin]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Any update clebin; it is school holidays at the moment?

...seems this game is really rare considering the thread / requests dates back to 2004 etc.

Hopefully your friend can help us all with providing the full release / files as it needs to be preserved for the good of the Amiga community

Good point - it is school holidays! I'll message him today...

[DamienD]

Great stuff clebin, hope your friend can manage to find this

[DamienD]

Any luck clebin?

[AmigaHope]

Might be good to search old shareware compilation CDs from the region where this originated...

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by clebin

Good point - it is school holidays! I'll message him today...

Still nothing from your friend clebin?

He / you are our last hope for a full / working disk

[DamienD]

clebins; your friend seems to be the only person who has this working original.

Could you please try to get an .ADF made for the benefit of the Amiga community?

It really need to be preserved

[piratematt77]

Hi all,

I found the original disc I bought from a PD Supplier back in the day.

I've converted it into an .adf - I just need to work out how to upload it

[Aladin]

waou, very cool

thanks you

[piratematt77]

Uploaded to the zone

This should include all the assets.
It's a cracking game - just as much fun as it was back in the day.

I will say that it runs best on a stock 500
I suspect it doesn't time anything to the screen refresh, so even on my modestly accelerated A1200 it's unplayable and too fast

http://eab.abime.net/zone/dogfight2.adf

[piratematt77]

I'm mattmc77 from the earlier post.
Must have registered twice over the years without realising!

[clebin]

Originally Posted by piratematt77

Uploaded to the zone

This should include all the assets.
It's a cracking game - just as much fun as it was back in the day.

I will say that it runs best on a stock 500
I suspect it doesn't time anything to the screen refresh, so even on my modestly accelerated A1200 it's unplayable and too fast

http://eab.abime.net/zone/dogfight2.adf

Oh, you beauty!! Thanks so much for this. It really is an underappreciated little gem of a game.

Will fire it up as soon as I get a chance today.

[clebin]

Originally Posted by piratematt77

I will say that it runs best on a stock 500
I suspect it doesn't time anything to the screen refresh, so even on my modestly accelerated A1200 it's unplayable and too fast

I just had a look and as I remembered, it's actually uncompiled AMOS so will be easy enough to add a speed lock. I was able to find the main loop and add a 'Wait Vbl' statement. That was still too fast, but a second 'Wait Vbl' brought the speed down to roughly what I'd expect. I assume this is a terrible solution that's going to ruin the game on a 7mhz machine though.

I haven't touched AMOS in 25 years, but a few options spring to mind without digging into the code too much:

1) Do whatever is the correct way of locking the speed in AMOS!? Is there some kind of frame counter that you could use to time the game? (if FRAME_NUM % 2 == 0...)

2) Use CPU detection if possible, and only wait on 020+

3) Just have a separate a 020+ version.

3) Compile with the AMOS compiler so that (hopefully) a 7mhz machine can crunch through the main loop quick enough to make the double Wait Vbls work.

With the code, I guess it wouldn't be too hard to update it to run at 50fps. The whole game is only something like 1200 lines, including menu screen, load/save and the rest. Having said that, it's not commented and the variable names aren't obvious so it will still take a bit of time.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[piratematt77]

As it happens - I'm playing with AMOS again as I'm toying with the idea of joining the Amiga game jam.

I've installed the AMCAF extensions and they have functions which can tell how far the raster has moved.

You could use this to create an optional vbl and speed variable changes

[dalek]

Hooray, thanks piratematt77!