Final Fight: Enhanced

[d4rk3lf]

WHOAAW!
This is incredible!

few questions:
Grab move:
I am so happy to finally see a (capcom style) grab move in Amiga beat 'em up. Amazing job! Will you include throwing over the shoulder, after grab move?
Buttons:
Will these be 2 buttons only game, or there will be a version with one button?
Hardware:
Does this mean that any Amiga 500 (except from oldest models) with 1MB chip + 1 MB (slow or fast) Ram will run it?

Again, congratulations for this update.
Gameplay really feel amazing, from I can tell, by just watching.

[vulture]

wow, that's just pure awesomeness!

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Buttons:
Will these be 2 buttons only game, or there will be a version with one button?

I really, REALLY doubt Final Fight would work with only one button. Beat 'em ups on NES, Master System and PC Engine beat 'em ups already struggled with two

[Brick Nash]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

WHOAAW!
This is incredible!

few questions:
Grab move:
I am so happy to finally see a (capcom style) grab move in Amiga beat 'em up. Amazing job! Will you include throwing over the shoulder, after grab move?
Buttons:
Will these be 2 buttons only game, or there will be a version with one button?
Hardware:
Does this mean that any Amiga 500 (except from oldest models) with 1MB chip + 1 MB (slow or fast) Ram will run it?

Again, congratulations for this update.
Gameplay really feel amazing, from I can tell, by just watching.

- All grab moves will be included.

- 2 Buttons only. Controllers are pretty cheap.

- 2MB of Chip RAM is needed. I'm not sure if it'd work with modded A500s which can access 2MB Chip RAM, but I'm not using anything else which is ECS specific (yet), so I don't see why not (I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say though).

I did try a 1MB OCS version, and it worked fine + had all the moves, but the CPU X-Flip was just too slow. It was never going to get any faster with sprites that size, and I got tired of fighting it, so using the extra ECS ChipMem to store mirrored sprites and make up for the Amiga's lack of hardware flipping functions seemed like the most sensible option.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by Brick Nash

- All grab moves will be included.

- 2 Buttons only. Controllers are pretty cheap.

- 2MB of Chip RAM is needed. I'm not sure if it'd work with modded A500s which can access 2MB Chip RAM, but I'm not using anything else which is ECS specific (yet), so I don't see why not (I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say though).

I did try a 1MB OCS version, and it worked fine + had all the moves, but the CPU X-Flip was just too slow. It was never going to get any faster with sprites that size, and I got tired of fighting it, so using the extra ECS ChipMem to store mirrored sprites and make up for the Amiga's lack of hardware flipping functions seemed like the most sensible option.

Would an AGA version using fastRAM bring anything new to the table (Aside from extra colors, which is still appreciated)?

[Brick Nash]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Would an AGA version using fastRAM bring anything new to the table (Aside from extra colors, which is still appreciated)?

Probably, but I've no interest in doing an AGA version. I never had an Amiga 1200, so I've no connection to the system or desire to make anything for it (It should run on AGA machines though).

I did make some graphical updates and used the colours in the palette differently/added more shading to some of the sprites, and used different background tiles here and there.

[sokolovic]

First thing : thanks for your work !

About AGA version, why not using Megadrive GFX assets for a quick enhanced AGA version ?

And yes, don't bother making a one button version. We are in 2023, not 1991. Everybody have at least a 2 button pad.

[jotd]

this looks amazing!

A few remarks:

- how is that different from original Amiga port? honest question. I know amiga port has poor A.I. also poor palette, but Richard Aplin is pretty talented. How did you manage to make it significantly better?
- AGA would have rocked, but most people tend to overestimate AGA. If you add more colors you add bitplanes and it can be slower... Very few action games use 256 colors for that reason.
- Be careful: WinUAE doesn't emulate chipmem latency. I tested my Xevious remake (fine on A1200 speed) and on my 68060 it had slowdowns when too many redraws were performed). Always test or make test on real hardware!

Keep up the good work Brick! and keep us informed here. Twitter sucks. EAB rules.

[Brick Nash]

Originally Posted by jotd

this looks amazing!

A few remarks:

- how is that different from original Amiga port? honest question. I know amiga port has poor A.I. also poor palette, but Richard Aplin is pretty talented. How did you manage to make it significantly better?
- AGA would have rocked, but most people tend to overestimate AGA. If you add more colors you add bitplanes and it can be slower... Very few action games use 256 colors for that reason.
- Be careful: WinUAE doesn't emulate chipmem latency. I tested my Xevious remake (fine on A1200 speed) and on my 68060 it had slowdowns when too many redraws were performed). Always test or make test on real hardware!

Keep up the good work Brick! and keep us informed here. Twitter sucks. EAB rules.

I don't think it's better per se, just a bit more of an arcade vibe. Plus, I've had much more time to include nuances.

It's nowhere near as technically innovative as Richard Aplin's game, and I'm sure if he had more memory and time he could have done a far better job than me. In fact, he's been incredibly kind and supportive of this project, and gave me some really good tips on fast tile drawing/screen clearing.

I actually bought an Amiga 600 a month or so ago and loaded it up with 2MB of ChipRam, but I've yet to test it as the disk drive broke, plus I need to find out how to squirt the code down the serial cable from Notepad++. I'm expecting it to be a bit slower on real hardware though (expect the worst etc),

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Brick Nash

I don't think it's better per se, just a bit more of an arcade vibe. Plus, I've had much more time to include nuances.

Yes, the palette looks much better. But has it more colors than the original amiga version?
It's super cool that Richard and you could interact. Always good to get good advice from a pro!

I actually bought an Amiga 600 a month or so ago and loaded it up with 2MB of ChipRam, but I've yet to test it as the disk drive broke, plus I need to find out how to squirt the code down the serial cable from Notepad++. I'm expecting it to be a bit slower on real hardware though (expect the worst etc),

Forget that. Just buy a CF-IDE adapter and a CF card, then a CF card reader so you can transfer the file from WinUAE to the CF card and boot from it. Much much easier.

You can also provide a beta to someone who can test. I can do that (but I have a A1200)

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by jotd

You can also provide a beta to someone who can test. I can do that (but I have a A1200)

You could make the AGA version if Brick Nash is inclined to.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

You could make the AGA version if Brick Nash is inclined to.

The only thing we need is the source code and some help from Richard Aplin

[jotd]

ECS to AGA could be achieved quite simply with

- ECS source code
- AGA assets compatible with current ECS assets to be placated 1:1 on the current game.

That's roughly how I converted Supercars 2 to AGA

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by jotd

ECS to AGA could be achieved quite simply with

- ECS source code
- AGA assets compatible with current ECS assets to be placated 1:1 on the current game.

That's roughly how I converted Supercars 2 to AGA

I doubt a mere coat of paint is what most people want, but even 32 colors would be great

[jotd]

Not talking about dual playfield, but single playfield, if you can do 32 colors on AGA, you can do 32 colors on ECS.

The limiting bandwith is the blitter, the blitter has the same speed between ECS and AGA (which is pretty lame as Commodore added 3 extra planes, but you have the same blitter speed to create a more colorful game. What a bunch of losers!)

On Supercars 2, they used EHB with 6 bitplanes for an already beautiful result. I added 1 more planes, which means 128 colors but had to keep emulating the EHB to 64 colors, which allowed to add a few colors for cars (reusing the same car sprite and extending the smart layout of bitplanes to create different colored cars with the same graphics, a technique where you can't use all the colors because of bitplane logic).

And the game runs not that fast in PAL on A1200/060 (it makes heavy usage of the blitter already, it's a miracle that it works on A500 with 6 bitplanes and a scrolling).

In NTSC it's smoother for a reason I don't understand (well, suits me!) I have to test 64 bit fetchmode, maybe it could speed things up for bitplanes. But I'm not expecting miracles.

Another example is my Xevious port. I'm using dual playfield for 32 colors, which actually uses 4+4 bitplanes and it's not that smooth either for that reason (and maybe I'm not as good with optimizing things than pro coders from yesteryear!)

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by jotd

Not talking about dual playfield, but single playfield, if you can do 32 colors on AGA, you can do 32 colors on ECS.

The limiting bandwith is the blitter, the blitter has the same speed between ECS and AGA (which is pretty lame as Commodore added 3 extra planes, but you have the same blitter speed to create a more colorful game. What a bunch of losers!)

On Supercars 2, they used EHB with 6 bitplanes for an already beautiful result. I added 1 more planes, which means 128 colors but had to keep emulating the EHB to 64 colors, which allowed to add a few colors for cars (reusing the same car sprite and extending the smart layout of bitplanes to create different colored cars with the same graphics, a technique where you can't use all the colors because of bitplane logic).

And the game runs not that fast in PAL on A1200/060 (it makes heavy usage of the blitter already, it's a miracle that it works on A500 with 6 bitplanes and a scrolling).

In NTSC it's smoother for a reason I don't understand (well, suits me!) I have to test 64 bit fetchmode, maybe it could speed things up for bitplanes. But I'm not expecting miracles.

Another example is my Xevious port. I'm using dual playfield for 32 colors, which actually uses 4+4 bitplanes and it's not that smooth either for that reason (and maybe I'm not as good with optimizing things than pro coders from yesteryear!)

Honestly, I wonder what Amiga's veteran programmers could be capable of doing with modern tools and things like MAME existing

[Howardphilips]

Wow, wow, wow! Thank you for this, Brick Nash.
This a feast for Amigans' eyes and ears, despite the palette limitations. Incredible!

[AnimaInCorpore]

Some food for ideas:

[ Show youtube player ]

I think this test would work on the Amiga 1200 as well.

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

Some food for ideas:

[ Show youtube player ]

I think this test would work on the Amiga 1200 as well.

That is fucking crazy
Can you compile that on Amiga? What about Street Fighter 2.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

Some food for ideas:

[ Show youtube player ]

I think this test would work on the Amiga 1200 as well.

Holy shit! That's some next-level stuff!