Scorpion Engine

[ElectricCafe]

Originally Posted by earok

I don't quite follow - do you mean, if it's possible to keep the game running at the same speed even if frames are being dropped?

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Daily check in:

* Some minor optimization tweaks to try and get scrolling and tile redraw going a little faster. If there's any weird glitches on tiles, please let me know.

* One major new feature - palette swap. For an entire animation, you can change all of the colors of a particular index from one to another, so that should be useful for enemies that have different colored outfits on different levels, or Street Fighter 2 like games where player characters can have different colored uniforms. However there are a bunch of caveats:

- The change is permanent but reversible, so if you swap 1 with 2, you'll want to swap 2 with 1 to reset to the default colors for an animation.

- Changes can be potentially destructive - if you were to change every color on an animation to a single index (so you had a frame that was entirely white), there'd be no way to make it look how it originally was.

- It could be very slow. I'd recommend doing the color swaps before the start of levels rather than in the middle of them.

- Only one copy of each frame is actually stored in memory, so using palette swap on an animation will effect every animation with identical frames. My recommendation is to actually make an animation with every frame an actor uses so that you can run the command once.

Thanks Earok, great work, these are big steps! Check out the footage below to see some palette swapped enemies:

[ Show youtube player ]

As you mentioned the swapping is slow but is fine if done at the start of the level.

[acidbottle]

Originally Posted by earok

I guess the fall through is probably something to do with platform_snap? If the value is set too low, you can expect actors to fall through platforms. I was thinking maybe I should ditch "platform_snap" as a global value and replace it with values that can be set specifically on each platform actor (so that it feels right with platforms moving at different speeds, different directions etc)

Hey earok. Am unsure if platformsnap is causing the issue since I do not actively use that var in any code, unless it does something passively that I am not immediately aware of. I started using cpu_path as platforms were moving further up as time moved on, when you stand on them, affected by gravity or something. It is a bit weird as I can put a powerup (that activates the offending actor) near the lift instead, then it works totally fine

Double Dragon looking sweet, crazy good work there by electriccafe!

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

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Daily update:

- Free chip ram and free other ram included in debug dumps

- Add21K is configured by default for running with "Run in WinUAE", though note that you'll need to delete your output folder before building again. The long and short of it is it'll save you 21KB of chipram. Exe2ADF -already- uses Add21K so there's no change made to ADF builds.

When I Run in WinUAE, even after deleting output folder the Amiga boots with "Recoverable Alert. Press left mouse button to continue.". Doesn't appear to be able to load add21k, as after pressing left mouse I haven't gained 21KB

*EDIT Ignore, I think I broke something at same time as updating

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by UltraNarwhal

When I Run in WinUAE, even after deleting output folder the Amiga boots with "Recoverable Alert. Press left mouse button to continue.". Doesn't appear to be able to load add21k, as after pressing left mouse I haven't gained 21KB

I think Add21k just closes the Workbench screen before opening the program and opens it again when it's done.

[amigaosx]

Originally Posted by earok

I don't quite follow - do you mean, if it's possible to keep the game running at the same speed even if frames are being dropped?

Yes, that's what I meant, I'm just starting to see the limitations with large bobs, and I was wondering if there's a way to skip frames to keep the speed of the game at least, just for a test.


Thanks for the updates to the engine!! keep them coming!
PD: Does anyone wants to start a Discord channel for helping each other develop games with this engine?
If @earok is ok with it I've created a server, invite link here: https://discord.gg/3BAxHDAY
Please let me know what you think.

[amigaosx]

Originally Posted by UltraNarwhal

When I Run in WinUAE, even after deleting output folder the Amiga boots with "Recoverable Alert. Press left mouse button to continue.". Doesn't appear to be able to load add21k, as after pressing left mouse I haven't gained 21KB

*EDIT Ignore, I think I broke something at same time as updating

I have this same issue, although the game runs fine after the warning.

[earok]

Latest update:

- For AmigaOSX and UltraNarwall: Add21K is optional and off by default, though again you may need to delete your output folder. Note that the only situation in which it'd actually recover any memory is if you're running Kickstart 1.3 (which always opens the CLI even if you don't call it, so it's off by default and basically just there if you're making an A500 game specifically).

- For ElectricCafe: Fixed incompatibility between CameraBox and Camera Interpolation commands

- General: The time taken to do a paletteswap should be lower if you're doing a bunch on the same animation concurrently. Though the time taken to swap a single color will be the same as before.


@AcidBottle it is sounding like an engine bug rather than something you've done, I don't suppose you'd mind giving me a copy of the game where the bug can be demonstrated at the start?

[ElectricCafe]

Originally Posted by earok

Latest update:

- For AmigaOSX and UltraNarwall: Add21K is optional and off by default, though again you may need to delete your output folder. Note that the only situation in which it'd actually recover any memory is if you're running Kickstart 1.3 (which always opens the CLI even if you don't call it, so it's off by default and basically just there if you're making an A500 game specifically).

- For ElectricCafe: Fixed incompatibility between CameraBox and Camera Interpolation commands

- General: The time taken to do a paletteswap should be lower if you're doing a bunch on the same animation concurrently. Though the time taken to swap a single color will be the same as before.


@AcidBottle it is sounding like an engine bug rather than something you've done, I don't suppose you'd mind giving me a copy of the game where the bug can be demonstrated at the start?

Cracking!

[ElectricCafe]

Originally Posted by earok

Latest update:

- For AmigaOSX and UltraNarwall: Add21K is optional and off by default, though again you may need to delete your output folder. Note that the only situation in which it'd actually recover any memory is if you're running Kickstart 1.3 (which always opens the CLI even if you don't call it, so it's off by default and basically just there if you're making an A500 game specifically).

- For ElectricCafe: Fixed incompatibility between CameraBox and Camera Interpolation commands

- General: The time taken to do a paletteswap should be lower if you're doing a bunch on the same animation concurrently. Though the time taken to swap a single color will be the same as before.


@AcidBottle it is sounding like an engine bug rather than something you've done, I don't suppose you'd mind giving me a copy of the game where the bug can be demonstrated at the start?

Earok - in this latest version I notice all my yield times are different (maybe twice as quick) so all of a sudden puches are being thrown at twice the rate!

I've tested this with and without the Interpolation on - so it's something else breaking 25hz timings

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

Latest update:
- For AmigaOSX and UltraNarwall: Add21K is optional and off by default, though again you may need to delete your output folder. Note that the only situation in which it'd actually recover any memory is if you're running Kickstart 1.3 (which always opens the CLI even if you don't call it, so it's off by default and basically just there if you're making an A500 game specifically).

Thanks for explaining

Think there is something wrong with the Scorpion builds after the 29th November though, I now get a not enough memory error to load .img after my title screen (exe2adf complile loads it fine).
Checking memory on title screen in 29/11 build I have 24KB, latest build only 18KB.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by amigaosx

If @earok is ok with it I've created a server, invite link here: https://discord.gg/3BAxHDAY
Please let me know what you think.

This has been attempted before, hehe. Tsak was talking about setting up an official one, and previously Kevin Saunders set a discord channel up with Nova Design at https://discord.gg/aURsyybJ - i think until Tsak & Earok roll out the real deal all the little ones are doomed to failure. (but i joined it anyway, lol!)

[amigaosx]

Originally Posted by Mixel

This has been attempted before, hehe. Tsak was talking about setting up an official one, and previously Kevin Saunders set a discord channel up with Nova Design at https://discord.gg/aURsyybJ - i think until Tsak&Earok roll out the real deal all the little ones are doomed to failure. (but i joined it anyway, lol!)

Yeah, I imagine. This was just an idea I had as I think this thread is getting huge, and with no documentation yet there's no other way that to ask here. Let's see what earok thinks.

[earok]

@UltraNarwall the amount of memory used by Scorpion is going to go up and down, mainly up as new features are added and there's optimisation done (in particular the inlining of functions which improves performance but increases the size of the executable).

Having said that, it should only be the amount of slowram memory increasing, chipram should be more or less the same as it always was, and there are some upcoming fixes for chipram usage that should reduce the amount of chipram used by 10K or so.


If anyone runs a discord, I'm OK with that. There may be an official one sooner or later but I'm certainly not opposed to any unofficial ones.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

Having said that, it should only be the amount of slowram memory increasing, chipram should be more or less the same as it always was, and there are some upcoming fixes for chipram usage that should reduce the amount of chipram used by 10K or so.

Good to know, excellent work as always.
It was just the weird behaviour of running via 'Run in WinUAE' button crashing with not enough memory, but via EXE2ADF file memory is fine.

Also how do I get a .dmp file that the 'Convert Dump' asks for?

[earok]

"Run in WinUAE" does run it from a virtual hard drive as opposed to a virtual floppy disk, that could be the reason why it's burning up more memory. It'll be worse on Kickstart 1.3 than other Kickstarts due to the CLI opening automatically issue.


My usual way of getting the debug dump is to assign the D key to the "debugdump" function.

[earok]

Latest experimental update:

- Some improvements for chipram usage (specifically, the buffers are a little smaller), didn't test extensively and results will vary but save around 10K chipram on the game I tested. Results will be higher on games that have smaller levels on either axis.

- Major new feature is "Cache Maps". What this basically means is that the last map you've loaded is cached into memory, so if you need to restart it (after losing a life etc), it won't reload from disk. This does come at the cost of memory but Scorpion maps compress very tightly (Amigo the Fox maps are approx 5KB when implode compressed) and it's from slow ram.

It is off by default, and it's highly recommended that you use it in conjunction with Implode (otherwise you'll be wasting a bunch of RAM).

Edit: Checked in some emergency fixes for audio and chipram usage

[Mixel]

Ahh, excellent new features!

Not sure when it happened but i have a new graphical glitch re: parallax, but it's only on "IsCloud" slices..

its.. slightly to the left, leaving a black chunk at the right? Ed: it's the black box to the right of the moon.

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

Latest experimental update:
Edit: Checked in some emergency fixes for audio and chipram usage

Not sure if the fixes went to github. The latest version I downloaded, all my sound effects are now crushed/distorted.

[earok]

Fixes for experimental for today:

- Distorted audio fixed (as an aside, audio is now trimmed so all silence is removed at the start and the end, not sure if this could cause any problems or not)

- Fixed issue with copper right edge

- Fixed the badly broken z-sorting

- Fixed sprite ordering. I'm hoping this doesn't have any flow on effects interfering with parallax etc but so far it seems to be OK


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Started working on a beat em up demo for the unofficial repo, should be out in maybe a day or two.

[malko]

Originally Posted by earok

[...] Started working on a beat em up demo for the unofficial repo, should be out in maybe a day or two.