Scorpion Engine

[Neeso]

@breech: that's awesome! If someone manages to make a puzzle game we have all genres covered (well almost!)

@Mixel: thanks for sharing, very interesting!

Question: I was trying to setup a dialogue with characters pictures using the elements inside the (dialogue) panel and control them using counters (0-1 to toggle a certain picture on/off) but those seem to be ignored completely.

To make sure I also tried with the same elements/variables of the hud with no luck.

Does anyone have ever tried to achieve this?

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by Neeso

To make sure I also tried with the same elements/variables of the hud with no luck.

Does anyone have ever tried to achieve this?

I don’t think it works yet but Earok hinted at this sort of stuff being the focus for the next big update.. http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=805 - in that post..

I’m super excited about that too because of the flexibility it should give me when working on Visual Novels.. (I might use them in CMOhn too, like in Cave Story!) I have tried putting dialogue text on full screen graphical menu panels, and that didn’t work at all.. I’m guessing text doesn’t currently play nicely with anything else at all?

[Neeso]

Thanks @Mixel, I wasn't looking for the feature itself (portraits), just the ability to use the "Elements" inside a dialogue panel which doesn't seem possible or is just not working.

I will wait for the real feature then

[earok]

Found some time in my holiday to do a little bit of work on Scorpion, these are checked in to experimental:

A) Ability to add unlimited elements to a panel (more than just 8). This *might* be useful for some sort of inventory screen where you've got a grid of items, but it hasn't been extensively tested.

B) Very much a "use at your own risk" kind of thing, but you can now run AmigaDOS commands inside Scorpion. I may potentially remove it again. The use case I had for it was setting environment variables for a Scorpion game boot menu.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by earok

Found some time in my holiday to do a little bit of work on Scorpion, these are checked in to experimental:

B) Very much a "use at your own risk" kind of thing, but you can now run AmigaDOS commands inside Scorpion. I may potentially remove it again. The use case I had for it was setting environment variables for a Scorpion game boot menu.

I would not remove it, rather make it limited unless someone want to do a dopus clone using Scorpion ^^ however, if you think of a limit case such as Doki Doki literature club, might come handy

[Lemming880]

Found something strange. When I set an animation to 'Only Sprite', the black color in my graphics changes from greyish black to pitch black. My graphics have 16 colors. Color 0 is pitch black and I don't use it for the graphics, just as background around the play screen. Color 15 is greyish black and that's the one I use for the graphics. After setting an animation to Only Sprite, color 15 changes to color 0.

[earok]

Color15 is not part of the sprite color palette, only colors 16-31

What you're describing may make sense since a Bob can use color 15 but a sprite cannot. So the black you're seeing must be a different color in the range 16-31

[Lemming880]

Yea I just found out that you added the same colors from 0-15 to 16-31. I understand now that sprites use slots 16-31. But whatever colors I try, and completely remove pitch black from the palette and the sprite, the sprite still has pitch black. I will investigate further.

[earok]

The other thing it could be is from the parallax palette (which uses 0, 29, 30 and 31)

[acidbottle]

A little taster of something I'm working on. An arcade port of Star Force.

Help needed though. I have used the bump player and v axis trick but need to also have the map camera move left and right. The code for follow camera and camera box can do this easy on its own. However, it does not function when I start using the v scroll.

I believe it is doable until someone says it isn't

[Mixel]

Woo that looks great!

Have you tried using a codeblock in the player ship actor as a 0 tick repeating timer event that sets player_yspeed to -2 or whatever, and have the camera just follow the ship and setting a massive camera box?, I have no idea if this would work well in a vertical shooter as I've not tried it, but it.. Might work?

[Lemming880]

Originally Posted by earok

The other thing it could be is from the parallax palette (which uses 0, 29, 30 and 31)

Found a solution. I removed colors 29, 30 and 31. And I've put greyish-black on 12 and 28. So I lost 3 colors for sprites but it works.

[acidbottle]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Woo that looks great!

Have you tried using a codeblock in the player ship actor as a 0 tick repeating timer event that sets player_yspeed to -2 or whatever, and have the camera just follow the ship and setting a massive camera box?, I have no idea if this would work well in a vertical shooter as I've not tried it, but it.. Might work?

Thanks Mixel

Actually it is everyone's creations in scorpion that have inspired a lot. It is simply incredible what is being achieved. To code this in Blitz, assembler or anything else would have taken 10 times longer!

Anyways, you also helped inspire a half decent workaround, woohoo! By using 2 separate code block activations within the actor's leave screen parameters, the x axis is now shifting back and forth. Only trouble is, it is on leave screen so the ship is having to reach the very edge of the playfield to activate the move. Camera box isn't playing dice, for my purpose, so far but its a good start.

Also a good shout with Aesprite, fantastic program for creating game sprites and handling palettes that is

[earok]

Wow, looking really cool!

I'd personally try something like this on every frame:

camera_y = camera_y - 1
player_y = player_y - 1
camera_x = camera_x + control_x

You could maybe make the starfield parallax, vertical parallax is theoretically possible but untested (it'd also burn up a fair amount of DMA since it'd be on every single line of the display).

It'd also be extremely limited as you'd essentially just have a repeating 32x32 pattern vertically and horizontally down the screen, but it would mean that your starfield would scroll slower than the asteroid bases.

Edit: Alternatively, if you had a static starfield that didn't move at all, you could have a non-repeating pattern vertically, though still one horizontally

[acidbottle]

Brilliant, thanks earok!

I actually wasn't sure if it was possible to have 1 giant non repeating pattern scroll underneath, but if so then that is definitely the way to go.

Still not managed the perfect x axis scroll but it is definitely possible and am very close, probably easy enough with the correct logic and codeblocks.

Is it theoretically possible to load a new palette per level to? Not tried to yet but just wondering.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Thanks Mixel
Actually it is everyone's creations in scorpion that have inspired a lot. It is simply incredible what is being achieved. To code this in Blitz, assembler or anything else would have taken 10 times longer!

TY! Agreed. It's a massive game changer and I wouldnt be here without it. (on EAB/making Amiga games, I mean, lol)

Anyways, you also helped inspire a half decent workaround, woohoo! By using 2 separate code block activations within the actor's leave screen parameters, the x axis is now shifting back and forth. Only trouble is, it is on leave screen so the ship is having to reach the very edge of the playfield to activate the move. Camera box isn't playing dice, for my purpose, so far but its a good start.

I'm glad you're getting there working out how to do it.. Earok's method is more efficient than anything I'd have thought of, haha. I was going to suggest like a band in the middle of the map that if actorX left then it would add something to camera_x.. Somehow. The sort of thing you just end up iterating on a million times until you get what you want.

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Brilliant, thanks earok!
I actually wasn't sure if it was possible to have 1 giant non repeating pattern scroll underneath, but if so then that is definitely the way to go.

I wonder if you'll get any 18 block seam glitches if its that simple a backdrop.. If you have complex parallax things go a bit flaky every 18 tiles height.. Hmm. A vertical shooter would be difficult to design around those if they still happen?

Is it theoretically possible to load a new palette per level to? Not tried to yet but just wondering.

Yup they're in Maps tab/set override Pal. And you can change the colours individually in codeblocks too.

[hitm4n]

Starforce / Megaforce is pretty much my favourite vertical shooter, its a go-to game for me in MAME. Always used to seek it out when the Fair came (but only found it there a couple of years running, then never again), and would always look out for it in the arcades at the seaside. Sadly, rare to find, but i'd chuck a couple of quid in it at the seaside if i spotted it.

Keep us informed on progress please

[acidbottle]

Its a great and vastly underrated game, not certain I can compete with the original roms haha! Will give it a decent shot tho.

If/when I have something reasonably good and tangible that can progress I will possibly start a WIP thread. Stay tuned!

[Mixel]

Looking forward to it Acidbottle!

OK this is another useful thing to know in regard to sound effects..

Don't try to be clever like i did by reducing the bitrate of individual effects to ridiculously low levels in Audacity to save memory. If you go below 8000hz it seems to get increasingly flaky, but around the 4000hz mark and below some sounds just get hideously unreliable and come out like low growling noises - sometimes, it gets much more common when music is also playing but it still occasionally happens when it isnt..

Now all my sounds are 8000hz it seems cured!

Until today, 70% of the time you punched a trashcan (as you do!) it made a horrible bluuuurgh.. And about 50% of the time when I used my respawn points. - It only does it on real Amigas though, these bugs didn't happen at all in WinUAE..

[domkid]

hello everyone, little progress on my demo with Scorpion, parallax, new animation, new enemies ...
[ Show youtube player ]