Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by spoUP

Can you do a mac build of the editor?
We would like to try it out but we are on Macs!

If a Mac version isn’t soon, VMware Fusion is free now for intel macs and I’ve occasionally been using Scorpion in that and it works great. (WinUAE and fs-uae run terribly in VMWare, makes more sense to run the Mac versions of FS-UAE and just compile in Scorpion rather than using the “run in WinUAE/fs-uae” buttons in the Scorpion UI.

Edit: worth noting that Windows 10 is essentially free too if you’re just using it for something like this, you can just download it from MS and not activate it..

@earok the ramps are incredible!

[skan]

Awesome work! I sooo need some spare time to have fun experimenting ideas with this!

[earok]

Cheers all

Well overdue, but I've started to get AlarCity across to the engine.



Planning on releasing a small update in a couple of days with a raft of minor fixes (Simplistic snake sample game, ability to set Fire1 as jump for games without shooting, couple of bug fixes for the Backbone importer).

I've had talk with a couple of people about a potential Mac port, the problem is the engine and editor is still in a very fluid state so maintaining a Mac version simultaneously would slow down development of core features. I may come back to it later once it's in a much more mature state.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by earok

Cheers all

Well overdue, but I've started to get AlarCity across to the engine.

Oh wow, great news!!!

[nikosidis]

I'm sure this will boost Amiga development. Well done!

[Retro-Nerd]

This looks amazing. I hope we get some quality action adventures in Zelda or Square/Enix style at some point.

[earok]

That would be cool we'll keep improving the engine and adding more RPG features as we develop Scorpion.

Ahem, Scorpion Editor 2021.1b is out. Mostly a minor update with bug fixes and a new demo.

https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos/releases

Snake is not an advanced game, but the demo shows the flexibility of the level block system. Games like lode runner, bomber man and boulder dash should be perfectly possible.

[nobody]

With this covid condition, it's a good chance to draw some graphics to use it if i find the time to learn a bit how the engine works. You can guess the inspiration

[Mixel]

That looks incredible @nobody! I hope you do find time to learn Scorpion!

[malko]

Originally Posted by earok

Cheers all
Well overdue, but I've started to get AlarCity across to the engine.



Planning on releasing a small update in a couple of days with a raft of minor fixes (Simplistic snake sample game, ability to set Fire1 as jump for games without shooting, couple of bug fixes for the Backbone importer).

I've had talk with a couple of people about a potential Mac port, the problem is the engine and editor is still in a very fluid state so maintaining a Mac version simultaneously would slow down development of core features. I may come back to it later once it's in a much more mature state.

Wonderful !

Originally Posted by nobody

With this covid condition, it's a good chance to draw some graphics to use it if i find the time to learn a bit how the engine works. You can guess the inspiration

For sure you have been inspired by a legendary warrior
Beautiful artwork

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

With this covid condition, it's a good chance to draw some graphics to use it if i find the time to learn a bit how the engine works. You can guess the inspiration

I'm embarrassed to admit this but I thought the inspiration was Abbey Des Morts before I realized that it was actually Castlevania!

A couple of notes:
1) A weakness of Scorpion at the moment is there isn't a step-by-step guide to making a game from scratch. I may look at doing a rough video in the next week or so that goes over all the major points in the process (though such a video may become outdated quickly).

2) Technically, Scorpion could support stairs via the "Slopes" mechanic, Mixel's game already has a functional staircase. However, there's currently no support for walking past stairs without climbing them. Implementing something like that is something I haven't fully thought through.

(though I figure, you could maybe leave the bottom step tile off so you could walk past if you don't want to climb them, and just jump on to them if you do?)

[nobody]

Probably abbey des morts was inspired a bit from Castlevania and others like manic miner.
About the engine, i am trying to figure out what's going on from the examples when i have some time. I found that every frame has to be a separate png lol. Does it support 8*8 tiles? Just curious, i am drawing all as 16*16. Taking lots of inspiration from games like bloodstained (the NES look alike) and more.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by nobody

I found that every frame has to be a separate png lol.

Well, every other program that accepts sprite sheets requires to manually grab from the sheet each individual frame anyhow, so it's the same work required. There was an option in an early build of the engine where you could feed it a sheet and it would automatically pick up all frames. We may see to reinstate this option at some point.

Originally Posted by nobody

Does it support 8*8 tiles? Just curious, i am drawing all as 16*16.

Nope, it's only 16x16. Amiga draws these faster so there are very few Amiga games (if any) that use any other tile size.

Originally Posted by nobody

Taking lots of inspiration from games like bloodstained (the NES look alike) and more.

Really nice job there
If you found Backbone easy and had fun with it, then chances are you won't find Scorpion much more difficult to use.

[earok]

Everything that Tsak said just a couple of slight points on the 8x8 thing.

- Slopes, to a limited degree, could fake some 8x8 tiles (particularly on stair-like platforms). But this mechanic won't work for solid walls or ceilings.

- If you want purely decorative 8x8 tiles (non collidable), it could be a pain to manage, but you could do this:

* Create four layers in tiled for topleft, topright, bottomleft, bottomright
* On your tileset, for each of your 8x8 tiles, make four versions - one in each corner, with the rest of the tile as transparent.

Then you can overlay them in any combination on your map. It's not going to drain performance since the entire map will be "flattened" into a single layer when compiled.

We did something similar for Super Go Down The Hole, there's a bunch of map layers because there's tile edge decorations and some parts have all four decorations within the same tile position.

[d4rk3lf]

Ok,
I've asked Zener (creator of amazing Red Pill), so I will ask you too.

Is it possible for this engine to create something like NBA Jam for Amiga?
Here is how the game look:
[ Show youtube player ]

Now, of course I don't expect it to look like the arcade above
But more like this:
[ Show youtube player ]

It's 2vs2 basket.
I guess it's rather easy make players run around, but what about the ball? Can we create and arc motion of it when you are shooting from the distance?
For slaming, ball could be simply part of the character.

I am not expecting any kind of physics here, just arc motion between character and basket. Do you think it's possible?

[earok]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Ok,
I've asked Zener (creator of amazing Red Pill), so I will ask you too.

Is it possible for this engine to create something like NBA Jam for Amiga?
Here is how the game look:
[ Show youtube player ]

Now, of course I don't expect it to look like the arcade above
But more like this:
[ Show youtube player ]

It's 2vs2 basket.
I guess it's rather easy make players run around, but what about the ball? Can we create and arc motion of it when you are shooting from the distance?
For slaming, ball could be simply part of the character.

I am not expecting any kind of physics here, just arc motion between character and basket. Do you think it's possible?

I think, from a technical point of view, yes. Scorpion's codeblocks are turing complete so it's at least theoretically possible to do things like that.

But I don't think Scorpion would be the best fit for it. Scorpion is primarily an engine designed for 2D games, NBA Jam is a 2.5D game in that ball movement is on all three axis. So at the very least things like getting the sprites in the right order may be a pain.

[earok]

I was curious, so I had to do a rough and rapid prototype to see if a basketball game is possible.



Yep. You'd need a LOT of custom logic to get it working well, to the point it may still be better to make an engine from scratch for it, but it could work in theory in Scorpion.

[d4rk3lf]

Awesome.
Thank you so much for the time to do the test, and this engine.

[nobody]

I tried some "teleport", like in example player reach the bottom of the screen then i created a code: "player->set position y=0", then the player appears on top but some artifacts appear also here and there, something like ghost images of the tileset or the player.
Possibly a bug, or i did something wrong.

Just trying to figure out what's going on with some simple project first that uses various mechanics

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

I tried some "teleport", like in example player reach the bottom of the screen then i created a code: "player->set position y=0", then the player appears on top but some artifacts appear also here and there, something like ghost images of the tileset or the player.
Possibly a bug, or i did something wrong.

Just trying to figure out what's going on with some simple project first that uses various mechanics

It's almost certainly a bug at the Scorpion Engine end, what I *assume* is going on is that it's attempting to draw the player outside of the bitmap memory (which should be prevented, but maybe there's cases where it isn't)

I'll be doing a major update to the engine this weekend with all of my recent fixes, feel free to email me your source and I can investigate fixing that bug as part of the update too.

earok3d at gmail dot com