Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by Neeso

Hello people, I have been lurking the conversation for a while now, it was about time to register

Hi! Great to see you here.

[Samurai_Crow]

@Neeso

Welcome!

[earok]

Welcome Neeso!

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Daily update to experimental: Options are now unlimited instead of hardcoded to 8, which may be useful for things like inventory screens, password screens etc.

Say if you had a grid like this:

1-2-3
4-5-6
7-8-9

If you have OptionStepX set as 1, and OptionStepY set as 3, you can move the option pointer around as a grid, and it'll wrap around both the left/right and top/bottom edges.

Note that I may change it up a bit more, there's a potential issue in that uneven sized grids might not work as expected.

[breech]

I came across Youtuber KAIZEN35 who has rendered a model Cyclone from Mospeada/Robotech for use in a Scorpion game!





[ Show youtube player ]

More Dev vids in their profile KAIZEN35

[earok]

It's pretty interesting, I had never really considered that someone might use 3D models for their Scorpion images.

It does remind me that I really need to add some options for having huge bobs on screen that can scroll in an out of view without being entirely cut off, I've also been asked about that by some other people too so I've put that up the list a little bit.

[Neeso]

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome!

Speaking about (fake) 3d in Scorpion..


https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpxiwmkd8i...droid.gif?dl=0

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

Say if you had a grid like this:

1-2-3
4-5-6
7-8-9

If you have OptionStepX set as 1, and OptionStepY set as 3, you can move the option pointer around as a grid, and it'll wrap around both the left/right and top/bottom edges.

Niiice! Something odd is happening here. My main menu currently goes:

0-3
1-4
2-5

So X step 3, Y step 1 should work..? (it used to anyway) The Y step 1 works perfectly but X doesnt do anything (it still makes the noise though)

Same happened on my Yes/No menu, it would only let me do left/right movement (even though both X and Y were set to 1) if I set the Y step to 0. I might've done something wrong.

[earok]

@Mixel It has to be in the order of 0-1-2 on any row, it won't work with 0-3-5 etc. It's still experimental so I may throw out that system and rewrite it to be more flexible.

@Neeso really like the 3D stuff

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

@Mixel It has to be in the order of 0-1-2 on any row, it won't work with 0-3-5 etc. It's still experimental so I may throw out that system and rewrite it to be more flexible.

Ahh that’s nice and easy to fix then I’ll just swap my numbers around.

[earok]

Experimental update - I've jacked with the menu option system again, but hopefully for the last time.

Option Step X / Option Step Y fields have been removed entirely, replaced with an Option Left/Right/Up/Down setting for every option. This allows you to *exactly* define how you want a joystick action to move from one option to a next, and would allow you to do things like have non-rectangular grids (eg, you might have a password screen with say 8 options on every row, but the bottom row is just "submit" and "cancel" buttons).

Edit: Just checked in a minor update so that the display of options in the editor is properly 0-indexed, oops.

[Lemming880]

I also started making a platformer with scorpion this week. Scorpion looks very promising. And finally an engine that can make games run smooth on A500! Great work earok!

My first few questions are:

-Can I make the screen resolution 320x256?
-I want the player to keep jumping when holding the jump button. Is this possible and if so how do I do this?
-I want an enemy patrol to turn around at end of a platform (without using a block to bounce to). Maybe add this option at the actor collision? Although it's not a collision but it would still be logical to have it there.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by Lemming880

-I want an enemy patrol to turn around at end of a platform (without using a block to bounce to). Maybe add this option at the actor collision? Although it's not a collision but it would still be logical to have it there.

Hi! Great to see more of us.

https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...&postcount=385 - the solution for actors staying on platforms.

Originally Posted by earok

Experimental update - I've jacked with the menu option system again, but hopefully for the last time.

Oh wow! I like this implementation a LOT! This is going to be suuuuper helpful for my other project! (and the password screen of CMOhn!)

[Lemming880]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Hi! Great to see more of us.

https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...&postcount=385 - the solution for actors staying on platforms.

Hey and thanks. It works now. I didn't think of looking at the options for collision down.

[earok]

Originally Posted by Lemming880

I also started making a platformer with scorpion this week. Scorpion looks very promising. And finally an engine that can make games run smooth on A500! Great work earok!

My first few questions are:

-Can I make the screen resolution 320x256?
-I want the player to keep jumping when holding the jump button. Is this possible and if so how do I do this?
-I want an enemy patrol to turn around at end of a platform (without using a block to bounce to). Maybe add this option at the actor collision? Although it's not a collision but it would still be logical to have it there.

Welcome, Lemming880! And thank you.

- There's no support for 320x wide, the engine is all designed around 256x wide (adding 320x wide would be complicated, so far as having less sprites available, less DMA time, needing to rewrite the copperlists for all bitplane modes to support sprite parallax in both 256x and 320x wide etc).
- The engine is hard coded to expect a jump press as opposed to a jump hold for a jump, but you could probably do something like:

* Create a codeblock like this

if control_y < 0
set player_speed to -3
endif

* Attach that codeblock to the 'on frame start' event of walking/idle animation frames

[earok]

Time for the latest experimental: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental



Large bobs can move in and out of the RIGHT side of the screen without suddenly "popping" into view.

Some notes:

* Obviously, large bobs are extremely expensive. I wouldn't recommend using large bobs unless you're aiming only at extremely high level Amigas or 25HZ games (setting frameskip = 2)

* As stated, only the right hand side is supported. Left side should be possible, and I might investigate in the next couple of days, but it isn't done just yet. I may not do top and bottom at all.

* It could still pop in and out of view when you're vertically scrolling and the bob is split by the vertical wrap around (every 18th vertical tile).

* It could cause some display glitches, if you get any weirdness and can make me a demo of the glitch, please let me know so I can debug a little further.

[Lemming880]

Originally Posted by earok

Welcome, Lemming880! And thank you.

- There's no support for 320x wide, the engine is all designed around 256x wide (adding 320x wide would be complicated, so far as having less sprites available, less DMA time, needing to rewrite the copperlists for all bitplane modes to support sprite parallax in both 256x and 320x wide etc).
- The engine is hard coded to expect a jump press as opposed to a jump hold for a jump, but you could probably do something like:

* Create a codeblock like this

if control_y < 0
set player_speed to -3
endif

* Attach that codeblock to the 'on frame start' event of walking/idle animation frames

Thanks earok. It works! Your code only works for holding up so I also added the same code for 'control1jump'. I prefer holding for jump so you can never miss a jump by pressing too early. I think it creates better flow.

Shame that 320 isn't possible. Maybe I'll lower the Y resolution to get a more widescreen view.

[earok]

Experimental update for the day: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-experimental

- Oversized bobs can scroll smoothly in/out from the left
- Fixed bugs relating to oversized bobs on either side of the vertical split (every 18 tiles)

Do let me know if this causes any glitches, it seems to be okay from my (limited) testing. It doesn't currently handle tall bobs scrolling in from the top or bottom.


Also - added an option to allow for jumping on button held down rather than just on button hit, it wasn't too hard to do so I figured I should just go ahead and do it

[Lemming880]

Thanks for adding the option for jump on hold. Btw is it save to use the experimental version or would it be wise to keep using the official version?

[earok]

No worries @Lemming880

Experimental gives you the latest-and-greatest features but hasn't been tested against all of the sample games, so it's very much a 'at your own risk' thing.

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Check in, resolved SOME blitter bugs (not 100% sure that it's totally fixed)

New feature: Ability to add "blank" images to animations. This might be useful for projectile effects like in Turrican where the number of projectiles in a stream is "doubled" by blinking every frame.

[earok]

Done another quick update which seems to have fixed more blitter issues.

Just going to put this out there just incase anyone has anyone has a Scorpion game ready to go - I'll be with my Amiga at the Auckland Indie Game Showcase. If you've got a demo with at least a level or two of gameplay you'd like to contribute, I'll load it up on my CD32+TF328 (020 / 8MB fast) and let the public play it on a revolving roster of games.

So far I've got one or two of my own games, CMO:HX and Super Delivery Boy lined up.