Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

@Mixel cheers! It only took around half an hour to add, I can't remember if anyone had ever asked for that before but our mutual streamer friend did and so I looked into it.

I seriously thought (like, 100% convinced) it was on your todo list for ages, so assumed it can't be easy. But looking back through all the comms and here etc i cant find a mention of it anywhere, so maybe im just confused again lol.

Thats a seriously great feature though and will open up all sorts of awesome possibilities. I'm going to have the music from my jukebox fade the further you go away from it as a test!

edit: At some point recently the default emulation settings all stopped working for me and now i have to save winuae configs in each project folder.. which is not a problem, but it's coincided with an odd thing where i get a lot more visible framedrops on my A1200+fast profile than i used to get and i dont know if it's because of my winuae config (i dont think it is?) or something that's changed in Scorpion.. Where do I enable the interpolation feature you mentioned recently? (found it! going to test it now*) In case that smooths things out for me slightly.

[edited out the part where I was rambling/troubleshooting the frameskips] Phew, figured it out, it was a wonky winuae profile, its running as it did previously now!

---
One new thing about the acceleration behaviour of projectiles.. I have some projectiles that are cpu_pursuit direct - previously they'd start stationary(ish?) and accelerate even if they were told to "actor shoot projectile at player" - now they seem to come out at full speed - I think that's the only difference about them, but how can i recreate that behaviour? Maybe not "shoot" them at all but spawn them instead, but I guess I wouldn't get to take advantage of the projectile origin coords then?

[acidbottle]

@earok and neeso

Thank you muchly for those tips, it is especially kind of you to share your screen transition advice since I would never of thought of using a scrolling map for titles!!

@mixel

Had this problem with winuae to. Though Im not so sure its my profile at fault. It compiles and runs with winuae but noted frame rate has dipped massively in the past week or so. It was up to around when earok talked of interpolation I experienced hyper smooth scrolling, now it doesnt anymore ha!

[earok]

I don't know anything about the visible frame dips, I certainly haven't seen any myself, I might need to get a demo from someone? If it runs at 25HZ normally, I'd switch on interpolation via the camera follow command, but if it runs at 50HZ normally, something might be broken. (If you're not using sprites for your player character, I'd keep them turned off otherwise it will make things janky)

@Mixel Re: pursuit, I forgot that pursuit direct has acceleration when making a fix to a different issue, I'll need to come back to that.

Daily check in:

- Fix for issue reported by Lemming880 about projectiles being the wrong way when fired during a jump
- Added "open build log" button
- Updated the build log to include information about optimizing image sizes

It doesn't seem to be commonly known or understood that an image that's 16 pixels wide is twice as fast as an image that's 17 pixels wide (due to the blitter doing columns of 16 pixels at a time etc). The new lines in the build log will make suggestions about where you can shave pixels off to make performance savings like that.

[Mixel]

Thanks for looking into the pursuit speed.

I’m trying to troubleshoot the frame skips thing and work out if it’s a scorpion thing or an emulation one - but my system has maybe changed too much lately for me to be a good test candidate. When I use my user created A1200+1 profile the scrolling is janky even if I revert to Oct 10th scorpion build though..

But loading up that old build and saving as the WinUAE config that scorpion generated (?) brings my performance back to where I’d expect it to be. With the other profile I had nasty jerky movement on the octopus boss for example, but it’s fine now… So in my case at least it seems to be user error.. (did you intentionally stop the global emulation config settings from working, or is that just happening on my setup? They still work for me in 6.1 but if I don’t have a config selected in 7.0 it just goes to the kickstart screen)

Oh and that list of possible optimisations is a great idea! I knew about it but having it listed like that is really useful.. seen a load of places where it makes sense to do a little pruning!

[earok]

I honestly can't explain it. Can you post an example of a slow config and a faster config? The only difference I've made recently is using "-s filesystem:rw,DH0:" rather than "-m" on the command line to set how the output folder is mounted (in order to allow writing in that folder for debug dumps).

[Mixel]

I think it was windows task scheduling going haywire and just making WinUAE inexplicably crappy. I updated all my software/bios/motherboard stuff and tried retracing my steps and literally nothing I do, even after trying to recreate the bad config (because of course I overwrote it with a good one like a total spoon, doh!) makes it run as badly as it was recently.. (Mis was watching me play yesterday so at least there was someone to witness it and I don’t have to worry I’m losing my mind.

Sorry for my ramblings I’ll keep you posted if I ever work it out. I can safely say now though that I’m definitely not getting a noticeable drop in performance in recent Scorpion, it was just my pc/WinUAE one way or another. (The motorbike level was incredibly choppy.. Now it isn’t, which is a relief but not helpful to anyone else!)

[earok]

Ahh, okay! As long as it's OK on the -current- Scorpion, that's good, there's any number of reasons why the past few updates could have caused slowdowns. @acidbottle do let me know if you're clearly having frame rate issues with the latest Scorpion vs older Scorpions and I can take a look.


For anyone that doesn't really follow Scorpion on social media, just a bit of news you may have missed - there's a very cool Ruff N Tumble clone in development.

[ Show youtube player ]

IRN: http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/1...spiration.html

[malko]

Thanks earok

[earok]

Burned myself out with a fairly major update, arrrghh.. some of these could very well be broken, none are super well tested.


- Fixed bug (I think!) reported by Mixel preventing CPU accelerating bullets working correctly

- For movement types that don't use acceleration (notably "CPU" itself), acceleration lines are hidden now.

- Fixed bug reported by Czorny, couldn't set ANIM5 animation. ANIM5 animations aren't extensively tested but should work with most ANIM5s

- Added ability to fade music in sync with the level fade in/out. Set in codeblocks under audio -> autofade music (set to true). Requested by NEESO.

- Added ability to set the length of how long a level visually fades in and out (default is 24 frames as before). Set in codeblocks under display -> fade time.

- Can separately set syncing of fade in/out on music on panels. Do this on the panel settings rather than codeblocks.

[AmyMor]

Originally Posted by earok

Ahh, okay! As long as it's OK on the -current- Scorpion, that's good, there's any number of reasons why the past few updates could have caused slowdowns. @acidbottle do let me know if you're clearly having frame rate issues with the latest Scorpion vs older Scorpions and I can take a look.


For anyone that doesn't really follow Scorpion on social media, just a bit of news you may have missed - there's a very cool Ruff N Tumble clone in development.

[ Show youtube player ]

IRN: http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/1...spiration.html

Wow! Very nice! The potential of the Scorpion Engine is endless. I hope it can be customized a little more, as as it appears now it is too similar to Ruff'n'Tumble, even the way in which the enemies release the coins, practically a ripp.:Grande

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

Burned myself out with a fairly major update, arrrghh.. some of these could very well be broken, none are super well tested.

Woo! Nice update!

- Fixed bug (I think!) reported by Mixel preventing CPU accelerating bullets working correctly

Yup, that's back to normal now.

- Added ability to fade music in sync with the level fade in/out. Set in codeblocks under audio -> autofade music (set to true). Requested by NEESO.

Hmm, I didn't think I was particularly needing this but definitely going to experiment.


Can I make a QOL feature request? (not for now, hehe, unimportant really..)

A small window/palette that shows the Block/Actor grid allowing you to select them from there visually as well as the infinte lists you end up with in big projects. It isn't at all critical, but particularly my Blocks - oh boy that's a confusing mess as a list as i have a bunch of block animation frames and some totally abstract invisible logic things and without a way to jog my memory as to what's what it takes a while to figure out.

[earok]

@Mixel I'll need to think about it.

---

Daily check in.

- One minor fix. The auto fade ins/fade outs doesn't override the music volume variable. As a bonus to that, the fade in of music should never become louder than what you've set the music volume (so if you set your music to play at half volume, the fading in and fading out will never make it play at full volume).

- One minor optimization to Scorpion's virtual machine CPU, hopefully that won't mess anything up.

- One major new feature: The "For each actor" command under conditional.


Consider this case: You've got a smart bomb in your game that damages or destroys all enemies on screen. Implementing something like that before would have been tricky, using OnTimers and such.

We can now simply do something like:

Foreach actor of type "enemy_type_1" execute "damage_enemy_codeblock"


We can also run Foreach on ALL actors instead of a specific type, and then use the destination codeblock itself to do different actions based on the type of actor.


It should in theory be possible to do counts of actors this way, for example:

ActorCount = 0
foreach actor of type all, execute CountActor

And then "CountActor" would be just "ActorCount += 1"



Note that this only applies to "live" actors, it doesn't work on actors that have been recycled off screen.

[Mixel]

Oh WOW! For Each actor sounds like a great way to synchonise parts of boss fights etc.. (and controlling player drones in shooters!)

A while back I think you added support for Scorpion exes accepting command line arguments to run codeblocks? Did I imagine that? I cant figure out how to use it if so.

[earok]

Hadn't even thought of using foreach for a boss controlling drones, that could certainly be done.

There's certainly a lot of uses for it that may not be too obvious, eg it could be used for a splash damage rocket launcher (just do a foreach on everything in the scene, calculate the distance to the explosion and do damage accordingly)


There is an execute command and it has been used in my own projects (was used to make a couple of menu systems where SETENV is used to set an environment variable to be run in a batch file immediately after the Scorpion game is quit)

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by earok

Ahh, okay! As long as it's OK on the -current- Scorpion, that's good, there's any number of reasons why the past few updates could have caused slowdowns. @acidbottle do let me know if you're clearly having frame rate issues with the latest Scorpion vs older Scorpions and I can take a look.


For anyone that doesn't really follow Scorpion on social media, just a bit of news you may have missed - there's a very cool Ruff N Tumble clone in development.

[ Show youtube player ]

IRN: http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/1...spiration.html

Yeah seems a couple of things have passed EAB by, seems a shame I don't use Facebook that often.

maybe a separate thread with any projects or examples etc.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

There is an execute command and it has been used in my own projects (was used to make a couple of menu systems where SETENV is used to set an environment variable to be run in a batch file immediately after the Scorpion game is quit)

Aha! That’s great! I’m using PARAM to start at different levels.. is it possible to set 3ish Params though by putting 3 space separated numbers? Does amigados work like that I have no idea, lol. Ideally I’d be able to set level, music on/off and maybe something else from the startup-sequence. (This is only for debug purposes but it’d also be good if it comes to making a trainer, I guess!)

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Yeah seems a couple of things have passed EAB by, seems a shame I don't use Facebook that often.

maybe a separate thread with any projects or examples etc.

I think Scorpion is big enough that it could have a coders.scorpion section with subforums for projects and a subforum for earok to post releases in.. AND a subforum for us all to post tutorials in. When I'm in full flow i monopolise the thread here. - there were rumblings of a discord, but with this being the only 'officially sanctioned' place to talk about scorpion, its still better to post here than defaulting to DMing Earok, lol.. But.. They'd need to set local mods for the Scorpion section that actually, you know - understand Scorpion, so they can move things when they're posted in the wrong place, etc.

IDK how Earok & Tsak would want to do it, but given the amount of users Scorpion has here on EAB it seems smart, as half of us seem to be "new tech averse" to put it kindly.

---

Ooh, maybe a bug report? If I start my game from "Start_School" I get kicked out with "Unknown Opcode: 0" error.. I can't see anything obvious in the codeblock that's wrong, or changed since a couple of days ago when it worked. (uploaded to git)

[acidbottle]

Damn, been ill the past week and tonnes of stuff has been going on, great work earok! That ruff n tumble clone looks outstanding as well.

Now, onto the polish and general bugfix stage of development here and one issue that I'm ashamed to have hit a wall with is the centralising of my "actors/text sprite" after an event (usually death) is triggered.

This has to be simple! I did start with offsetting or spawning the actor near or on player, though obviously he is not always central on screen so that was a nope.

Back to the drawing board, using spawn on block or x and y co-ords are of no good since they are all relative to the map itself.

Was thinking of using collision boxes and snapping to screen but not tried that theory out as yet! Is there a way in visual scripting code and variables that checks the current screen area so I can centralise the text actor?

Thing I love about scorpion is that there is more than 1 way to skin a cat, just I always find the messiest!

[Mixel]

Idk how you’d skin this particular cat, like you say it’d be easy if your player was x/y locked to the centre of the screen as you could attach the writing to him.. I’d love an abstract viewport coordinate layer for spawning things too.. I hope Earok has ideas.

I think the only way to get fixed location UI layer currently is to use a mystifying copper UI overlay (see Amigo the fox’s life counter) which has some obvious limitations with width etc. what is the popup text/graphic size? (And have you used copper for anything else?) if it’s <32 pixels wide it could work?

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

This has to be simple! I did start with offsetting or spawning the actor near or on player, though obviously he is not always central on screen so that was a nope.

I experimented with something like this months ago, I think I spawned it on the player and in the objects spawn I set its position to camera_x +128 and camera_y -96 (half your Yresolution).

[acidbottle]

Sadly it is much bigger than 32 pixels, not entirely possible to even condense it down, could perhaps spilt the graphic up into 32x32 blocks!

Not tried a copper UI overlay, possibly needing a free spot on the palette for this to which could be a problem.

Actually thought there might have been a simple way that Id missed but am somewhat relieved that its not just me. If no solution via code then perhaps divert the text to a panel, not elegant for sure.

Bet earok loves us coming up with more issues than solutions

edit: Was typing this as you typed a workaround, thanks UltraNarwhal, will give that a try and see how it works out, much appreciated!