Replace single color backgrounds with multi-colored ones

[CFou!]

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.

[CFou!]

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.

why not 2 external editable files with colors list?
First for Sky levels and second for cave levels...

[rothers]

I assume the Amiga could send code to the genlock, so a little assembler hack on the level complete stages of games could change the background? Or did it not work like that?

[john4p]

Originally Posted by rothers

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

Only if the Genlock-emulation incl. the new enhancements would be ported to an ARM emu like UAE4ARM (which can be run on the Mini).
With the preinstalled emulator it's not possible.

Originally Posted by rothers

I assume the Amiga could send code to the genlock, so a little assembler hack on the level complete stages of games could change the background? Or did it not work like that?

AFAIK the genlock hardware is just a "video mixer", it only takes input (from two sources) but doesn't send anything back.

[john4p]

@CFou! & Psygore: Would it be possible with WHDLoad to replace the Turrican extra life-graphic with the one from Turrican II (and also replace its collection-sound with the "one up"-voice sample)?

=>

Or is the palette a problem?

(off-topic, but additionally to the copper-background this is the one change I was hoping for when I heard about Turrican being released for PS4&Switch)

[Dan]

As far as i understand: genlock is a device which combines the output from the TV/VCR/Camera with the amiga output, and displays them both on the TV.

[ Show youtube player ]

Software like CheatEngine or ArtMoney can monitor the winuae's memory and find the level values in it ...

In a theory:

To have different Genlock picture for each level, someone could write an windows app which has the needed information on where to find the memory byte which contains the level information.
(the app would need to be written flexible so that it can be used for more games)


What Winuae would need to do is to have a trigger (keypress) which would let it to reload the genlock picture.

The windows app would then copy the level picture as the picture defined in the image file settings, and send a keypress to the winuae window to reload it.


The problem is how to find the memory location where the level byte is saved.

For the Giana sisters game, the level memory location looks like this:



The address in this example is 7fff74ab, with 0 as lvl 1.
My assumption is that the visible text "t SVOR", "t SKOL" and "BRUECKE2" will always be in the same memory location, and therefore the level byte could be located by searching for one of these.

(p.s.this may need testing with different memory configs)


The steps needed for this approach would be:

• Start winuae.
• Start the monitoring app.
• Select the game you want to play (in the app)
• Launch the game (eventually start the 1st level) - winuae
• Let the app locate the level byte.

After that the app takes over and monitors the memory, copying the image file after the level change, notifying winuae that the image has changed.

So "theoretically" it could be done in this way.

[john4p]

^ Yes, it'd definitely be possible to do it this way. Thank you for the elaborate explanation and video.

[Dan]

Hehe, when i started replying to this thread, you have not written your answer to rothers.

It took me a bit to test and take the picture and find the video ...

There is something that i would add to my previous post:

Winuae would need to have a way to change the genlocked color index ... remotely, for my theoretical example.

[john4p]

Originally Posted by Dan

Winuae would need to have a way to change the genlocked color index ... remotely, for my theoretical example.

Yes, that would be necessary, but it could be combined with the pic/video to be shown so that a config-solution would be sufficient.
After an optional comma after each genlock media file in the config you could change the genlock_effects-values.

Example:
genlock_media0=C:\bg\bg0.png,5
genlock_media1=C:\bg\bg1.png
genlock_media2=C:\bg\bg0.png,0,3
[...]

Alternative: a single genlock_media_list-parameter that has each file (incl. the optional genlock_effects-change) separated by semicolon.

Now we'd just need one (mappable) button for cycling through the defined media-files and another button to enable/disable the background (as suggested by TCD) because not every part of a game may be suited for custom backgrounds at all.
In the example above the first two pics would use palette index 5 for transparency and the third pic would use index 0 and 3.

This should be all that's needed on the WinUAE-side.

[rothers]

You may as well make a theoretical piece of hardware which talks to the genlock via the parallel port.

You could then scroll the background and change it as you please. The hardware supports all this in theory. The genlock just being a more advanced bit of hardware which can accept commands in 2022.

[john4p]

Originally Posted by rothers

You may as well make a theoretical piece of hardware which talks to the genlock via the parallel port.

You could then scroll the background and change it as you please. The hardware supports all this in theory. The genlock just being a more advanced bit of hardware which can accept commands in 2022.

True, but you could also just do this with 2 Amigas. Both take the same input. One Amiga runs the game, the other scrolls the background according to your inputs. Then the standard genlock hardware is sufficient.



Concluding this thread with this video of Turrican world 1 with a different animated background for each level:

[ Show youtube player ]

[TCD]

Originally Posted by john4p

Concluding this thread with this video of Turrican world 1 with a different animated background for each level:

[ Show youtube player ]

Great video to show what would be possible

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by john4p

Concluding this thread with this video of Turrican world 1 with a different animated background for each level:

[ Show youtube player ]

the background....fits in perfectly, looks great.

[pixie]

This rocks!

I've tried to use an image as backdrop, and while I can see it, it scales it and it don't retain the square pixels..

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by 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?

I did it long ago - bubble bobble with bubbles video for the background. I did it 3 years ago.


https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=99339

[Gzegzolka]

Awesome work ^^ Does it work only with games that have only single color background or can game with gradient be hacked to have that feature too. Like first remove gradient effect, replace it with single color, and put new background layer?

[Dan]

If people are interested in creating art for different single colored games, maybe we could ask toni to implement 2 commands for the winuae debugger.

One which will monitor a memory address and construct a filename according to the value of that address - e.g.: level_01.png
Whenever the value changes, a new name would be generated and this would be assigned to the genlock to use/load.
In this way we could have different images for each level.

The 2nd command would simply change the base folder, where the level_01.png~level100.png are stored.
(so that each game can have their own level images.)