Flying Shark new Amiga port [was: Going to Drop this here :)]

[tomcat666]

"File has been deleted"

Edit: works now.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Getting a bit worried that the same graphics are still in there, is somebody actually doing any updated graphics to make it look like the arcade?

Well, Magnus gave me some of the work files but i have no time, so i can provide the files and its directions to those who want to embark on it

[saimon69]

This post is a placeholder for magnus instructions coming tonight [US Pacific coast time]

[saimon69]

Ok, so below are the instructions from Magnus for the graphics of the game, example files are in the zone, when i get more files will add it.

Check the file Flying_shark_assets.zip in the zone

NOTE - color palette need to preserve player colors in the same spots, and is 16 colors

The tech info: the engine is a 16x16 pixels tile engine with two layers and not as the original port that was 32x32 tile engine.

The second layer of tiles can only use half of the tiles in the file "ks+k0_1.iff" the first 160 tiles(16x16 pixels)

The first layer of tiles can use all tiles on all those 4 iff files.

All bullets on the screen are sprites and can only use 2 colors. and has it's own palette.
I start with these assets and i will send you more later.

[saimon69]

bumping a bit

[saimon69]

Waiting for someone to undertake the conversion, here is a test level 4 footage!
[ Show youtube player ]

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Waiting for someone to undertake the conversion, here is a test level 4 footage!
[ Show youtube player ]

Is there any hopes of seeing an AGA version or something? The X68000 and FM Towns ports really run circles around this one

[ImmortalA1000]

Why only 16 colours?

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Is there any hopes of seeing an AGA version or something? The X68000 and FM Towns ports really run circles around this one

Nope, OCS/ECS is where the tough play tough
well, am the wrong person to ask though BUT original FS is fully in the capabilities of original amiga hardware if you are not looking for 100% accuracy (and you should not IMO) - what i feel rubs you wrong i suppose are the old port assets - did ask for help in porting the arcade ones, if nobody will will try to undertake that on my own; palette changes do miracles between stages btw

The only problem is that, with the lack of time i have right now, might take months if not years -_-

[saimon69]

Well, i started meddling around and i can tell you: will be a LONG journey; first i created a palette that takes some of the colors from the arcade assets so to have a base, then assets will be ported a bit of the time from it with the adapted colors. I did propose a dynamic palette to Marcus so to have some colors change to have better fidelity, however will still be 16 colors AND for now on the old assets but things will improve

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Well, i started meddling around and i can tell you: will be a LONG journey; first i created a palette that takes some of the colors from the arcade assets so to have a base, then assets will be ported a bit of the time from it with the adapted colors. I did propose a dynamic palette to Marcus so to have some colors change to have better fidelity, however will still be 16 colors AND for now on the old assets but things will improve

This sounds like an herculean task for sure, but if there's someone who can do it, it's you two guys!

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

This sounds like an herculean task for sure, but if there's someone who can do it, it's you two guys!

[romanesco]
Se puoi da' na manina te che le mappe so' tutte sbregate sarebbe un bigiu' ^^
[/romanesco]

[ImmortalA1000]

I did these a while ago, they should be 32 colour maps. Didn't exactly spend much time on them at all as I didn't find the arcade sprites per level.

For some reason the IFF files were 'invalid' according to the attachment tool to add to this post.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

I did these a while ago, they should be 32 colour maps. Didn't exactly spend much time on them at all as I didn't find the arcade sprites per level.

For some reason the IFF files were 'invalid' according to the attachment tool to add to this post.

32 colors is a pretty great sweet spot, but I think those maps would be terrible to load if the game came out on floppy disks. It would require at least 1MB and an hard disk

[saimon69]

Bad news: you gotta work with 16 colors OVERALL: 15 for elements, one for background (color 0) - for the first level and the second that would be the water - some colors need to stay the same like the two for the plane -_-
I did compute from all the arcade assets a palette enhancement of the current graphics waiting to have the time to port assets so you can give it a look - assets are the same but now at least water is murky green in stage 1 as it should be.


Let's be honest: aiming for a 100% perfect port is unfeasible, aiming for something that resemble the arcade closely is doable - AND assets WILL need to be retouched by hand, mere color porting is not sufficient to give the right feeling.
(those are not all the blocks, there are four screens for just level 1 - 32x32 size)
I also included the personal paint .col palette file

Did start to port the player plane but i realized that how Marcus prepared the file is different from how i do - he does it vertically while i do it on a horizontal grid so that part need to be redone.






flying_shark_level1_16C_palette.zip

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

I did these a while ago, they should be 32 colour maps. Didn't exactly spend much time on them at all as I didn't find the arcade sprites per level.

For some reason the IFF files were 'invalid' according to the attachment tool to add to this post.

I DID find the arcade sprites in a web site, however they need a good rework and adaptation
In short, the transformation will look gradual, a bit to what the Fedepede04 STE port of Outrun did look while he was porting it

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by saimon69

I DID find the arcade sprites in a web site, however they need a good rework and adaptation
In short, the transformation will look gradual, a bit to what the Fedepede04 STE port of Outrun did look while he was porting it

This is with the x68000 enemy sprites and the entire level 1 map from the arcade rendered down to a single 32 colour palette with no copperlist.

looks good to me and took less time to render with HAMconvert than it took to stop crappy windows 10 from crashing (30 seconds)

[saimon69]

You know the map is in two layers - above objects like plants, roofs, bunker, etc. and below objects like ground, water, etc. - right?
Can you see if you can reduce it to the palette of one of the map files i give you? (dithering is not an issue)
I understood Magnus decided to keep 16 colors for performance reasons - fidelity to the arcade comes as extra, not as main target.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by saimon69

You know the map is in two layers - above objects like plants, roofs, bunker, etc. and below objects like ground, water, etc. - right?
Can you see if you can reduce it to the palette of one of the map files i give you? (dithering is not an issue)
I understood Magnus decided to keep 16 colors for performance reasons - fidelity to the arcade comes as extra, not as main target.

I was just mapping out a palette that might work for everything in straight 5 bitplane bitmap etc. It's really just a quick check with 2 minutes work on Paintshop Pro, a couple of downloaded PNGs and HAMconvert. I don't really have much more spare time with work and the 2 C64 games I am working on, one of which is a massive sandbox western themed game that has become a real nightmare to code without access to a C= printer + fanfold paper.

I am guessing the palette switch would be for doing blits with less bitplanes for various things to optimise performance?

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

I am guessing the palette switch would be for doing blits with less bitplanes for various things to optimise performance?

Palette switch is between levels so we have every level with a different background; the idea is that also similar colors might appear similar BUT different to enhance some elements on each level, is an old trick but pretty KISSy and should help.

Marcus told me in FB is busy with life and will test things starting next week so need to wait to get more assets