Amiga 1942 conversion

[Frog]

Last minute surprises that aren’t very positive, but it’s great to read that you’re not giving up.
Courage! And congratulations for your perseverance

[agermose]

The hardware sprite character layer has been rewritten.
Thanks to a suggestion from Jeroen, the hardware sprites now mix DMA mode and manual mode.
It runs much faster now, and the game as a whole runs 50 fps.
Back to fixing bugs and finetuning.

[buzzybee]

Originally Posted by agermose

The hardware sprite character layer has been rewritten.
Thanks to a suggestion from Jeroen, the hardware sprites now mix DMA mode and manual mode.
It runs much faster now, and the game as a whole runs 50 fps.
Back to fixing bugs and finetuning.

I'm following this project since, what seems to be two years or so. Never provided any feedback, and felt like it's about time to thank you for posting updates regulary; and for all the time and effort you put into optimizing this game to such a degree, so that it feels like the original arcadegame.

Switching the way code handles sprites from manual calls to DMA-control, for example, is no trivial stuff. But it reduces CPU overhead considerably, and therefore it's worth the effort. Must have taken you days or weeks to get it right. It would have taken weeks for me, that is for sure.

I adore your dedication.

[agermose]

Originally Posted by buzzybee

I'm following this project since, what seems to be two years or so. Never provided any feedback, and felt like it's about time to thank you for posting updates regulary; and for all the time and effort you put into optimizing this game to such a degree, so that it feels like the original arcadegame.

Switching the way code handles sprites from manual calls to DMA-control, for example, is no trivial stuff. But it reduces CPU overhead considerably, and therefore it's worth the effort. Must have taken you days or weeks to get it right. It would have taken weeks for me, that is for sure.

I adore your dedication.

Thanks for the kind words.

You're correct. I have spent exactly 2 years on this (the rest of the team a bit less). My original estimate was 6 months, but some parts of the projects took much longer than anticipated, the 32 stages attack wave data in particular.
I also took a few months off to work on Outrun, which delayed this project. Working in our spare time obviously limits the productivity, but it's full steam ahead lately.

It's been a long journey for sure, but now the end is in sight.

Rewriting the sprite code took about a week :-)

[agermose]

Originally Posted by Frog

Last minute surprises that aren’t very positive, but it’s great to read that you’re not giving up.
Courage! And congratulations for your perseverance

Thanks man.

[apex]

Still hoping for it, pressing thumbs.

[agermose]

Implemented hiscores, end of game message and various bug fixes. The basic game is basically complete. Still a few things to work out before release.

[manossg]

Congratulations on reaching this point, looking forward to this!

[skyzoo73]

Originally Posted by agermose

Implemented hiscores, end of game message and various bug fixes. The basic game is basically complete. Still a few things to work out before release.

hiscores are saved automatically?

[agermose]

Originally Posted by skyzoo73

hiscores are saved automatically?

No they are not saved to disk.

[turrican3]

congratulation for your amazing work.

[agermose]

Originally Posted by turrican3

congratulation for your amazing work.

Thank you. All the great feedback and help from this forum and other places, help keep us going.

[nikosidis]

That is great news Been waiting for this one.

[Frog]

we can therefore hope to have 1942 under the Christmas tree

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Frog

we can therefore hope to have 1942 under the Christmas tree

Hope not will take a year then

[Frog]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Hope not will take a year then

hehe effectively it seems a bit delayed
it may be better not to hurry too much and release a quality game without bug

[agermose]

New in-game music has been delayed. Martin wants to get it just right.
I have spent the time fixing bugs in the meantime, and adding attract mode.

[spoUP]

Awesome! Looking forward to the release!

I remember playing this and river raid as one of my earlier c64 games. Good memories.

[Frog]

Back to the news.
Good luck in finalizing your project

[agermose]

Development update.
Feedback from testers came back: The game is too difficult.
I’ve been tuning the difficulty for a couple of weeks.
Martin is full speed on the music.
Stefan has been tweaking the attract mode.