New/undergoing projects

[jotd]

What would you like to see in the near future?

based on a list of stuff that I'm planning or that I've started and not completed.

[TCD]

I'll vote for Karate Champ but refuse to call you a bitch

[jotd]

The number of stars are indicative.

It could as well be "bozo".

I showed Karate Champ amiga port to my brother in law last week and I found new bugs when I thought I found them all already... Kind of depressed me even more.

Pity as the game is almost "code complete" but riddled with bugs.

[Gzegzolka]

Do whatever You feel You want to do and feel You can finish it. I accept Amiga games as they are, and I am happy with each little hack that improve them like jump button in Ruff n Tumble or cd32 pad support for every button in Aladdin. Probably there is a lot of small stuff that could be add or improved. I like also topic on adding audio tracks to games with music or sound effects opinions.

[gimbal]

So how would an AGA version of Cadaver work? What can be done to pimp it?

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

Do whatever You feel You want to do and feel You can finish it. I accept Amiga games as they are, and I am happy with each little hack that improve them like jump button in Ruff n Tumble or cd32 pad support for every button in Aladdin. Probably there is a lot of small stuff that could be add or improved. I like also topic on adding audio tracks to games with music or sound effects opinions.

that is the last "default" option: fix the stuff. A collection of small tasks. Audio tracks fall into the same category. Not going to give that up obviously. Thanks for your support.

Originally Posted by gimbal

So how would an AGA version of Cadaver work? What can be done to pimp it?

twofold: reverse-engineer the game more specially the display engine to display 8 planes instead of 4, and load AGA bitplanes instead of 16-color bitplanes (I wrote an unfinished remake & Kroah reversed the game even further so bitmaps were extracted).

The difficult part would be to find a better palette, recolor the game in the spirit of the original graphics, adding maybe touch of brighter colors like blue or red or green according to the object. There are a ton of objects. This is a big task. And A.I. programs aren't going to help if I understand correctly.

[Reynolds]

There is no need to make AGA version from Cadaver or Lotus games I think it will not raise any quality bars as we are talking top quality games especially in terms of GFX.
If there could be a wishlist of C64 games to be ported, I'd vote for Pooyan, Jungle Hunt, Save New York, Ghostbusters, Quest for tires, Fort Apocalypse and some other
Donkey Kong already have been done (my little daughter loves it) by Bignonia.
But, at the end of the day, it is up to you, what do you want to work on.

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Reynolds

There is no need to make AGA version from Cadaver or Lotus games I think it will not raise any quality bars as we are talking top quality games especially in terms of GFX.

Yes, those games are awesome.


But people loved Supercars 2 AGA because of the new colors. That's the same treatment I could do to Lotus. No better graphics, just more colors on screen.
Same for Cadaver (although more difficult to achieve, would need a real graphist I think)

If there could be a wishlist of C64 games to be ported, I'd vote for Pooyan, Jungle Hunt, Save New York, Ghostbusters, Quest for tires, Fort Apocalypse and some other
Donkey Kong already have been done (my little daughter loves it) by Bignonia.

Yeah, EAB is full of wishlists already I loved Jungle Hunt & Pooyan too. But not planning to port them. And if I ported them, I would port the arcade version.
Donkey Kong is already in the works from someone who does multi-68k arcade ports. If everything goes well, the amiga port should be pretty easy so why not?

But, at the end of the day, it is up to you, what do you want to work on.

Absolutely, but if the community expresses more or less interests in projects, that may help me decide.

[acidbottle]

Your work is great so whatever you create we are lucky to have!

Love all old arcade games so KC would be sweet, but of course my cheeky wildcard would be phoenix

[TCD]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Your work is great so whatever you create we are lucky to have!

Don't butter him up too much! Next thing you'll be peeling grapes and iron his newspaper

[jotd]

Phoenix was realy seriously considered, then dropped because I didn't want to reverse the game attack waves. But given what I could do with KC it may change.

[jotd]

BTW acidbottle was Wonderboy ever completed?

Poll strongly suggests that Lotus should be made AGA.

[gimbal]

Yeah so maybe not do Cadaver, it sounds like too much work for one person to do Especially since its a lot of graphics work instead of programming work.

You could still do the reverse-engineering of course, to have the info out there.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by jotd

BTW acidbottle was Wonderboy ever completed?

Yes, it was: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=112464
(how did you miss it...)

[Reynolds]

Talking about conversions... What about Sunset Riders or Rock&Roll Racing?

And I could extend endlessly my list

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Reynolds

Talking about conversions... What about Sunset Riders or Rock&Roll Racing?

And I could extend endlessly my list

Sunset Riders ? Mmmhh ressourcing the main program is needed, in order to rebuild and reassemble the graphics..... those are 8x8 tiles :/

[mcgeezer]

I don't know about them projects you've listed but if you wanted to Hyper Sports I'd help you out.

Lots of reasons to do it too.

1. Was never ported to the Amiga
2. No need for double buffering anywhere
3. Nicely broken up event makes it a good project to tackle but has some interesting challenges
4. Easily done on an A500 0.5 Chip
5. Resolution of 256x224 makes it perfect for the Amiga

Let me know.

[jotd]

Hey it took 10 posts to derail this thread to "please port this or that game"

@Graheme thanks for proposing but I'll pass. The game is great but not what I'd like to do.

@Denis, yes 8x8 tiles are the worst, and very common too. Xevious will certainly require AGA and a reduced color set so dual playfield can be used. Plus of course 8x8 tiles with individual color per tile. At least because I'm doing a port of a NeoGeo project that has an "agnostic" API...

@acidbottle: missed it somehow. Bought

Yeah so maybe not do Cadaver, it sounds like too much work for one person to do Especially since its a lot of graphics work instead of programming work.

You could still do the reverse-engineering of course, to have the info out there.

this is the most time consuming project. But also a work of love because I absolutely adore that game & more generally bitmap bros work. If a graphist could help I'd be delighted but maybe I'd have to prove that it's doable by mocking a 256-color engine with garbage colors so someone would commit and do the gfx. Sort of chicken and egg situation to be honest

The reverse engineering would only be partial. "just" intercept everything blitter/display/palette and redirect it. I've never done that without source code but CFou! did on EOB. It would also be fast enough because nothing scrolls and animations are at a minimum.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by jotd

Hey it took 10 posts to derail this thread to "please port this or that game"

We are getting better at this

[jotd]

The status on the projects

* Finish Karate Champ (4 votes): code complete, but lots of annoying bugs to fix
* Re-do Bagman so it runs properly on a A500 (1 vote): I could do it in a whirl with my previous arcade engines + the existing C++ code from the reverse. But interest is low.
* Port Pengo to the Amiga (5 votes): Reverse is partially done (I started it in 2010) and I improved at reversing Z80 with Karate Champ, so it would be a breeze with my previous engines.
* Port Xevious to the Amiga (7 votes): as explained above, a NeoGeo version (68k) is in the works and the author saw that it's agnostic enough so an amiga port is doable. I have a B/W title screen ATM but it seems to run
* Create AGA version of Cadaver (4 votes): SH*TLOAD OF WORK BUT I LOVE THAT GAME
* Create AGA version of Lotus (18 votes Wow!) I have the source code, no AGA assets but already colored the cars for SC2 AGA so maybe something like that could be done, plus nice additions like changing music, 1-player mode with big screen, reworked pics, etc...
* Port Donkey Kong to the Amiga (8 votes): same guy doing Xevious Neogeo port. Didn't start the work but would be much easier than Xevious. If Xevious is done, that one will be a breeze.
* Fix the zillion bugs left in whdload mantis: of course that will continue. I'm pretty sure alll bugs in the base will never be all closed but we'll try.