Replace single color backgrounds with multi-colored ones

[DisasterIncarna]

if those PNG's work well, is it viable to also support animated GIF's? might be interesting for some space games like rtype to have extra animated stars or something similar.

[john4p]

Video files are already supported. But I agree, GIF-support would be nice.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by john4p

Video files are already supported. But I agree, GIF-support would be nice.

No. (EDIT: none of features will happen that are only needed to support this weird use case)

Just choose some video codec that does not use lossy compression. Identical results.

[john4p]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Just choose some video codec that does not use lossy compression. Identical results.

True.

Originally Posted by rothers

You should add some awesome pixel art as backgrounds, loads freely available online. A nice dark set of mountains would look awesome in Turrican.

It's not dark, but here is world 1 with some mountains (couldn't find a better pic):

[ Show youtube player ]

[vulture]

Huh! That looks very nice indeed!

[DisasterIncarna]

surprised, it actually looks really good.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by john4p

It's not dark, but here is world 1 with some mountains (couldn't find a better pic):

[ Show youtube player ]

That looks a lot better than I would think it could. If there's a way to change the background per level automatically it would improve the experience a lot.

[DisasterIncarna]

all thats needed now tbh is some kind of "Event" trigger system added to some whdload slaves that mark certain events in games (change of level, a scroller starting/stopping or whatever), Events which do nothing and dont do anything good or bad on real hardware, but perhaps these Events could be read/detected by WinUAE and automagically toggle on/off these new options for adding new effects, or change from 1 png/video to another.

[Retro1234]

That does look Really good. Like I say would love to see this on real hardware.

[DisasterIncarna]

whats the corret way to use this? when i try adding a video or png my background is always replaced by a solid blue color.

EDIT: Ok got png's working, its video files im having issues with, anyone know what the correct format/codec/etc has to be?

EDIT2: Got the videos working by just checking the OUTPUT prefs to see what codecs WinUAE supports there and assumed this works the other way also for genlock video input, which it does, i converted to CINEPAK to test and....it worked.


just tried with a quick convert using...

ffmpeg -i spaceloop.mp4 -c:v cinepak -an -vf scale=320:256 spaceloop.avi

and got this for a first attempt. (no audio because im a moron recording the wrong audio device)
[ Show youtube player ]

Attempt no2:
[ Show youtube player ]

[vulture]

Nice, very nice!

About the background change, maybe the easiest way is with a couple of hotkeys moving to next/previous image from a list

[john4p]

Cool effects on Deluxe Galaga indeed, very atmospheric!

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

all thats needed now tbh is some kind of "Event" trigger system added to some whdload slaves that mark certain events in games (change of level, a scroller starting/stopping or whatever), Events which do nothing and dont do anything good or bad on real hardware, but perhaps these Events could be read/detected by WinUAE and automagically toggle on/off these new options for adding new effects, or change from 1 png/video to another.

Yes, that'd work. I'm sure Toni is not interested to invest that much effort though.
Maybe 10 pics/vids that could be defined in the config and switched through by key presses (incl. turning them off) would be something that could be negotiated?
edit: Like vulture just suggested, too.

Originally Posted by TCD

That looks a lot better than I would think it could. If there's a way to change the background per level automatically it would improve the experience a lot.

That would be the ultimate improvement.
For Turrican in particular only levels 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3 are candidates though since the later ones all have multi-colored backgrounds (except for the world 5 sky but replacing that leads to gfx problems in other parts).

[TCD]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

Attempt no2:
[ Show youtube player ]

That looks very good.

I think a hotkey to swap the background and a hotkey to turn it on/off would be the best solution inside of WinUAE. Looking forward to what's possible using WHDLoad

[rothers]

ffmpeg -i spaceloop.mp4 -c:v cinepak -an -vf scale=320:256 spaceloop.avi

and got this for a first attempt. (no audio because im a moron recording the wrong audio device)
[ Show youtube player ]

This is awesome.

[Psygore]

Here the Great Giana Sisters slave supporting backgroung color gradient, set custom4=1 to use it.

Maybe you have a better palette, it could be included.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Psygore

Here the Great Giana Sisters slave supporting backgroung color gradient, set custom4=1 to use it.

Maybe you have a better palette, it could be included.

Thank you

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by Psygore

Here the Great Giana Sisters slave supporting backgroung color gradient, set custom4=1 to use it.

Maybe you have a better palette, it could be included.

ooooh new toys, nice, like your default selection already, now the rush for everyone to play everything they own to find similar titles to give a new lick of paint.

[john4p]

The 100% Amiga solution. Looks perfect and is a huge improvement to the game. Merci beaucoup!

Hope this solution can be added to other slaves of single color background-games, too.

[lifeschool]

This is an interesting topic, and one which I was thinking about recently too.

When they 'converted' Fire and Ice to the A1200/CD32, they masked out the backgrounds and used the extra bit plane on the A1200 to put a high colour image behind the game. As the bitplane used it's own independent colour palette, the colours in the game were unaffected.

I think Gremlin also did this when they made Zool A1200. They just added a huge screen in the background which scrolled slowly in the same direction as whatever input was being received by the controller, so the sprite and the background moved at the same time.

I'm sure the function to matt out plain backgrounds can be used on most solid background games within WHD and even without a genlock, using a copper list. With something like Turrican, each level loads by itself, so it might not be so hard to put some flags in the code when each level loads, which changes the copper list or switches it off.

For Giana, the game has outdoor and inside levels, so it might not be so easy to get a good copper list for both types of levels without hacking the code.

[rothers]

Turrican with the background graphics really make the foreground graphics pop.

Fascinating hardware feature, kind of amazing it's not been done before now.

Very nice way to make deluxe versions of games. In theory do/could those min-amiga clones support this?