soo... what about Final Fight?

[Master484]

To save ram you could have a character "bald" and several hair/whatever changes shapes to add and build before display

Yes, this too would be a good method for things like different hair colors.

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But yesterday I thought more about the sprite trick that you suggested, and I think it would actually work.

In a beat'em up game like this all BOBs are drawn in the Z-order, starting from the character that stands highest in the screen. And so, when the turn comes to draw the character whose hair is a sprite, all objects that are behind it have already been drawn. So then we draw this character, and then punch that hair-shaped hole to the bitmap, which erases all graphics that have been drawn to those pixels that the hair would cover.

And then we draw the hair sprite behind the bitmap, to that exact spot where the hole to the bitmap was made. And the sprite will show up in the right way, "on top" of everything else that has been drawn up until that point. And everything else that would still be drawn after this during the frame would correctly appear "on top" of the hair sprite, because it's located behind the bitmap.

And even if there would be two sprite characters overlapping, this would not be a problem, because the sprite channels used can be swapped at any time depending on who is in front of who.

So this way we can actually mix sprites and BOBs in a z-order sorted beat'em up game, which is great news.

Even entire characters could be made this way. Although maybe not on OCS, because the sprites are too small. But with 64pix wide AGA sprites at least two 16 color characters could be drawn using this technique, preferrably the player characters so that sprites get maximum use.

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Although the sprites that are used this way will need a 1-bitplane mask object that is used to punch that hole into the bitmap. (In Blitz this is easily done with: BlitMode = EraseMode)

But despite this it's a good trick to add more colors to on-screen characters in OCS 16 colors mode, in a game like this, where it has been commonly thought that sprites can't be placed in-between BOB objects. But if 32 color mode is used, then we get those extra colors anyway, and then this trick is not needed.

What about doing a small test on Amiga 500 with reduced screen size as well as bobs'? I could set-up and exe....

I can do the test myself with Blitz Basic. I already have good routines for z-order drawing from my earlier projects, so making a small demo with these graphics is quite easy. So if I have time I can make a small demo where sprites move left and right.

[trydowave]

Originally Posted by Master484

I upgraded the colors a little bit.

Here is the updated image with the new palette:



All colors remain mostly the same, I just changed the brightness values a little bit, so that the characters and the background now have slightly better contrast. You can see the changes most clearly in the house and in the legs of Haggar and Cody, which no longer "sink" into the background that much.

Also I improved some small stuff, like the window.

So okay, now I'm satisfied with the palette. You can make the game now.

I would of loved this 16 colour version back then... its a thing of beauty and just goes to show what can be done when theres the will (and ability) to do it.

Id love it if Richards code could be used with these gfx, music added and all the other bells and whistles in a new ECS 1mb version.

I can dream.

[saimon69]

If not him somebody could reverse engineer the game and add features...
actually was thinking it could be redone from scratch using a Metro Siege approach and reducing sprites size a bit

[sandruzzo]

SF2 Was ported on Amiga, would be better doing another one?

[Luca underdog]

mega cd version say 38 colors


amiga 27 colors
also with dithering and 32 colors the amiga version could look not bad

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Luca underdog

amiga 27 colors
also with dithering and 32 colors the amiga version could look not bad

The Amiga version has i think 11 colors added due to the copper in the score above, else is 16 colors - and not even good ones :/

[Luca underdog]

but its possible to use also the 11 colors in the same screen?

[Samurai_Crow]

Metro Siege uses 60+ colors in the first level based on a 4 bitplane, 16 color screenmode. It was all done by doing gradient shades of pavement and sky, along with palette entry reuse in the background imagery for 4 palette entries. Copper is a powerful ally.

[Luca underdog]

metro siege its made well, final fight amiga not

[Master484]

but its possible to use also the 11 colors in the same screen?

Amiga Final Fight uses 16 color mode, so the game area itself can only have 16 colors. But because the status panel on the top is a separate screen, it has it's own 16 color palette. But these two 16 color screen areas are totally separate, so you can't mix their colors.

However, if the game instead used 32 color mode, then you could have 32 colors for the actual game screen, and another 16 in the status panel, so 48 colors in total.

But 32 color mode uses more Chip RAM and runs slower, which is why many action games prefer 16 color mode + copper tricks.

metro siege its made well, final fight amiga not

[Retro1234]

How the fuck did he get so many big bobs on screen? nothing else even comes close.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

How the fuck did he get so many big bobs on screen? nothing else even comes close.

Riochard might have done something similar to what we did in Powder with a mix of enabled planes and masks so that some elements are only 8 or 4 colors hence take less time to blit; that and 25FPS

[gimbal]

It is incredible to me how much thought has to go into blitting objects on screen. The only things I have to worry about are that things stay properly centered while playing animations and such I do not envy people who made games for the Amiga or ST.