Turrican 2 MS-DOS AGA conversion

[paranoicb]

@Muzza excellent work my friend.
I tested it on my A1200 with a vampire V2 card and it works without glitches . I made a disk from adf file and booted straight from a cold boot. It works just fine. Compatibility is 100%
Just a request, please change the DOS sprite
My eyes hurt with this character .
Thanks for bringing this version to the Amiga.

[Amiga1992]

I gotta test this! Maybe I can finally play this one properly, as my main MS-DOS machine refuses to play it nicely
(I can only play it, so far, without sound. I have no idea why it doesn't let me use my Sound Blaster, anyone know how to configure it? I already messed with the config file)

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Akira

I gotta test this! Maybe I can finally play this one properly, as my main MS-DOS machine refuses to play it nicely
(I can only play it, so far, without sound. I have no idea why it doesn't let me use my Sound Blaster, anyone know how to configure it? I already messed with the config file)

Turrican 2 for DOS is really quite picky. I remember having a lot of issues getting it to work back in the day. Check you've got as much conventional memory available as is humanly possible, I seem to recall needing more memory free than the program claimed I needed before the sound worked.

Then again, note this is something I remember from about 25 years ago so it may not be fully accurate
This Amiga version is great though

[jotd]

Use DosBOX on a modern PC. No problem with Soundblaster it works straight out of the box. I mean I didn't test Turrican but I tested Supercars international and the sound worked perfect. It was certainly not speaker sound

[wairnair]

Ran it on real CD32 + TF330 030@50mhz, works absolutely smoothly and it looks fabulous!
I really hope you'll finish this project, you'd have a buyer for a physical version.

As a CD32 owner obviously my dream release would be a CD32 version with proper joypad controls, optional CD audio, and errm.. did anyone mention the original Amiga sprites?

[Apollon]

please develop the game as you intended. And don't listen to people who say do this do that... I think the original vga version is great as it was. I tested the game today from disk on my vampire 1200 and it ran perfectly straight away.

[va!n]

@Muzza:

I found out about your "Turrican AGA" project today by chance through a trailer on youtube. What can I say? I tested the ADF image of the preview using WinUAE - and it looks very promising!

I also thought about a possible implementation of paralax or dual playfields without using AGA dual playfield (FB/BG 16 colors).

Maybe some things could be done with only 1 bitplane using coppercolors - as well as with repeating background sprites.

(see my attached graphics / concept ideas and thougths)



Btw, i saw you are using the TFMX replayer to replay the 8 channel tunes. I'm not sure how much scanlines this replayer requires, but maybe the technique behind LSP (Light Speed Player) by leonard/oxygene is something that could save some scanlines.

Link to LSP:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=88177



Btw, the game is coded mainly in C ? Cool!

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by va!n

I also thought about a possible implementation of paralax or dual playfields without using AGA dual playfield (FB/BG 16 colors).

Maybe some things could be done with only 1 bitplane using coppercolors - as well as with repeating background sprites.

(see my attached graphics / concept ideas and thougths)

I did take a look at the parallax in the ship level and I think it can be done with hardware sprites moving at different speeds. There are even convenient blank scanlines between layers that will help.

Originally Posted by va!n

Btw, i saw you are using the TFMX replayer to replay the 8 channel tunes. I'm not sure how much scanlines this replayer requires, but maybe the technique behind LSP (Light Speed Player) by leonard/oxygene is something that could save some scanlines.

Link to LSP:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=88177

I had thought about this myself when I first saw LSP. It would be cool to do, but there are a few obstacles.
The convertor source (or even spec?) is not yet available. I'm not sure it would work with 7 channel tracks that require mixing on the fly, but it would perhaps work with the in-game tracks that don't use mixing. Likely not an easy task though.

Originally Posted by va!n

Btw, the game is coded mainly in C ? Cool!

I started in ASM and most of the foundation for initialisation, loading, scrolling, blitting is still in ASM. But I moved to C for the gameplay code. This made it a lot easier to tweak the enemies behaviour. The down side is that it does bloat the exe some more. But if it is the difference between finishing the project or giving up due to it taking forever, I think the Fast RAM requirement is worth it.


I haven't posted an update in a while, but I'm still making progress. I did a lot of work on boring behind-the-scenes things. For example, interrupts were a headache when it came to TFMX, the sound effects mixer and disk loading needing to play nicely together.
I've also done a lot of work on the tool I use to output data/code. For example, to handle bosses I've now got a system of defining frames (made from multiple images) and a variety of movement patterns, with a visual scripting language used to control when to activate frames/movements/weapons. This took time to get going, but will make later bosses easier to generate.

As for the game itself, you can now play into level 2, and a couple of bosses are working. Lots still to do though....

[AMike]

Originally Posted by Muzza

I haven't posted an update in a while, but I'm still making progress.

It's great that you're still working on it, after there hadn't been an update for a while I was afraid you'd stopped the project.

[NovaCoder]

Yep very cool project

[Muzza]

I've uploaded the latest version to the zone and to dropbox.

New features:
-The story intro plays at the start (including the terrible writing and dodgy character art)
-Level 1 Boss now working.
-Level 2 is working, including secret cave and the two bosses, but the last boss is missing some features.
-Bounce weapon works (but has no upgrades).
-Various bug fixes.
-Controls modified to be closer to original Amiga game.

Not yet done:
-Still no option to choose the character sprite.
-Still no CD32 pad support.
-You still cannot die.
-Weapon upgrades are lost between levels.

It has been quite exhausting getting this far. This game really has a lot of unique features, no enemy is just a clone, they all do something different. You don't really notice it as much playing when they all die so quickly, but writing the code for all the enemies, weapons and map features really revealed it for me.
An uncomfortable amount of time has gone just on getting the loading transitions working with audio/display/disk routines playing nicely together. I thought I had it all nailed, but just today found there is still a brief display bug transitioning from level 1 to 2, but only if you play do a proper playful (it doesn't happen if I cheat to skip to the end of levels)

Anyway, please let me know if it works, or doesn't work. I'm interested to know if there are still problems on 040 machines or not. I did make some potential fixes, but I really have no idea whether they worked. I thought I'd found a problem with the music on 040s using WinUAE, but then found that three different versions of WinUAE (including two that were the same version but 32bit/64bit) all gave different results, so I don't think its something that is easy to find under emulation.

I don't know how much Fast RAM this one requires, but the program size has gone up significantly. One of the next tasks is to make it load code per-level instead of being a monolithic exe which will bring RAM use back down.

Anyway, I hope some of you enjoy it. Feedback is appreciated.

[AMike]

Originally Posted by Muzza

It has been quite exhausting getting this far. This game really has a lot of unique features, no enemy is just a clone, they all do something different. You don't really notice it as much playing when they all die so quickly, but writing the code for all the enemies, weapons and map features really revealed it for me.
An uncomfortable amount of time has gone just on getting the loading transitions working with audio/display/disk routines playing nicely together. I thought I had it all nailed, but just today found there is still a brief display bug transitioning from level 1 to 2, but only if you play do a proper playful (it doesn't happen if I cheat to skip to the end of levels)

whooohooo..a new update. Thanks for the interesting insights. Will test asap and come back with a report. I can only test on 030/060 & V1200.

[AMike]

Impressive update - thanks, it feels exactly like Turrican II - even better in some places. Is it possible that your controls are even more precise? I made almost no mistakes in the jumping passages - I was able to rock through the levels very quickly and precisely. In the OCS version, I sometimes get stuck on some ledges. The music is just as good as in the original, the intro runs flawlessly and then the game starts automatically.

What I noticed:

• The beam upgrade doesn't work yet.
• The fish in the second level move a bit too fast and the water animation is missing when Turrican dives into the water.
• I'm not sure, but I felt that some enemies needed a little more firepower than in the OCS version. I didn't find that negative at all, but it was my impression.

In summary, a great port - I hope you continue and can finish the work.

Tested on an A1200/030 Kick 3.2 1233n55Mhz

A note to the other testers - my first copy didn't work properly - but after writing the disk a second time I was able to start the game without any problems.

[roondar]

Cool stuff, I'll be checking it out for sure.
As for the interrupt stuff, yeah that can get tricky for sure. Hope you find the issue!

[apex]

Fantastic game, fantastic port, hoping for a final to spend something.

[zzbylu]

Small gameplay....
[ Show youtube player ]

[Neil79]

Nice! :d

[Solo Kazuki]

Everything's ok... except intro. Ouch!
It's completely different style than in original and, to be honest, I don't like it.
And also, btw, original Turrican sprite looks better than this Franken-monster in tin can.

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

Everything's ok... except intro. Ouch!
It's completely different style than in original and, to be honest, I don't like it.
And also, btw, original Turrican sprite looks better than this Franken-monster in tin can.

He did say future updates will be looking to change the Sprite

[nikosidis]

Works great with my A1200 Blizzard IV 030.
Nice gfx