Updating Graphic Adventure Creator aka Grac

[saimon69]

They should put a warning: "GRAC games gives addiction"

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Cammy

I wonder if HAMLab would be useful for working on SPAC images, it allows the use of sliced images with a number of adjustable colours per line and has really good remapping abilities.

http://aminet.net/package/gfx/edit/hamlab208d

Hi Cammy, when did you come back ? Did I miss this ? Did you never stop posting and getting confused with Amiga.org ?

[Predseda]

I am now deeply experiencing buggy GRAC 2 work and I would really appreciate v2.5 with some bugs fixed. Especially in Variables department.

[Samurai_Crow]

Quoting from Furtum Sacrem thread:

Med support in AMOS it's a little buggy and eat lot of memory.

It's true that MED is buggy in AMOS but the NoiseTracker support in the Amos Music Extension isn't much better. AMCAF has much better Protracker support but still requires the blocks to be loaded into Chip RAM along with the rest of the Module.

[kikems]

Sorry for delay, last year was too difficult for us because our main jobs.

The actual status is this:

- Grac 2.5 is ready and finish, we need do some tutorials and make a small game as tutorial guide.
- Grac 3 is finish for ECS/OCS but we want add AGA support. We want use all our development in Grac 3 for make a new game. Only after release our game we release GRAC3.

Our main problem now is obtain the necessary time out of our main work.

Here a small demo running GRAC3 with graphic inventory working and lot of optimizations and new things coded by Birra.

[ Show youtube player ]

[kikems]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Quoting from Furtum Sacrem thread:

It's true that MED is buggy in AMOS but the NoiseTracker support in the Amos Music Extension isn't much better. AMCAF has much better Protracker support but still requires the blocks to be loaded into Chip RAM along with the rest of the Module.

Birra try a small AMOS extension from asm version of P61 but obtain inconsistent result inside AMOS, when try mix sound effects and music with P61 AMOS crash. We are looking for other options but GRAC source it's too complex.

[kikems]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Quoting from Furtum Sacrem thread:

It's true that MED is buggy in AMOS but the NoiseTracker support in the Amos Music Extension isn't much better. AMCAF has much better Protracker support but still requires the blocks to be loaded into Chip RAM along with the rest of the Module.

AMOS GRAC open a lot of amiga screens at the same time to work with texts, character, background, layered objects, interface, etc... and eat a lot of chip mem, it's critical when you use music in OCS Amigas with only 512 Kb chip ram.
Birra free 2 screens maybe now he can try the AMCAF extension. As you say music player from GRAC is Noisetracker compatible, not Protracker it results that you can't use some Protracker commands and finetune not works.
Actually Grac use Music Craft extension, it allow mix mod and fx samples at the same time, use low memory but eat a lot of CPU.

[kikems]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Makes sense. If only would be possible to get source code for Epsilon 9, load it to your new GRAC, put a music to it and save enhanced... but I doubt the source prevails, even if the author could be contacted.

When we have some spare time it's possible that load all available old Grac games and update them with free bugs and add some music or something, but first I'm prefer contact with the original author of the games.

[kikems]

Until we release Grac2.5, if someone need solve grac2 bugs can use original Grac2 editor and send us the finished game to adapt to our Grac2.5 player. Maybe this help us to found and fix more bugs before release.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by kikems

As you say music player from GRAC is Noisetracker compatible, not Protracker it results that you can't use some Protracker commands and finetune not works.

That is straight from AMOS, remember abk got same problem

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by saimon69

That is straight from AMOS, remember abk got same problem

Technically, all of the sound commands come from the Amos Music Extension whose assembly source comes with AmosPro. AMCAF's sound commands bypass that extension completely. There are some AMCAF related quirks such as using

Imploder Load "file",-3

to load a compressed Protracker mod packed with File Imploder. The negative 3 means it loads into bank 3 but forces it into Chip RAM. The Amos Music Extension uses a dedicated Track Load command in its version.

[khph_re]

Blast fetching :-)

[kikems]

We are evaluating try ptplayer and translate asm code into AMOS extension.

In a possible AGA version we not have any problem with chip mem, but for ECS/OCS our main goal it's optimize for 512 Kb chip. AMCAF eat too chip men for us.

[Cammy]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

Hi Cammy, when did you come back ? Did I miss this ? Did you never stop posting and getting confused with Amiga.org ?

I went through a rocky few years but I'm living in a much more stable situation now so I'm able to commit myself more to the Amiga community than I have been lately.



Today I am announcing AmiGameJam 2021, which is a game-making competition I have run for several years now. I'd like to promote game-making software like GRAC, and with any luck we'll have more entrants this year than ever before so I imagine some of them will want to use a tool like this for porting a PC adventure game to the Amiga.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Cammy

I went through a rocky few years but I'm living in a much more stable situation now so I'm able to commit myself more to the Amiga community than I have been lately.







Today I am announcing AmiGameJam 2021, which is a game-making competition I have run for several years now. I'd like to promote game-making software like GRAC, and with any luck we'll have more entrants this year than ever before so I imagine some of them will want to use a tool like this for porting a PC adventure game to the Amiga.

Welcome back!

[DaveInFL]

Originally Posted by kikems

Sorry for delay, last year was too difficult for us because our main jobs.

The actual status is this:

- Grac 2.5 is ready and finish, we need do some tutorials and make a small game as tutorial guide.
- Grac 3 is finish for ECS/OCS but we want add AGA support. We want use all our development in Grac 3 for make a new game. Only after release our game we release GRAC3.

Our main problem now is obtain the necessary time out of our main work.

Here a small demo running GRAC3 with graphic inventory working and lot of optimizations and new things coded by Birra.

[ Show youtube player ]

Got to say, that's looking pretty nice. Plus, I've learnt a couple of new Spanish words. When 2.5 is released maybe I'll play the game in Spanish

[Samurai_Crow]

@kikems

What needs doing on GRAC 2.5 now? If it's just a music player in Assembly, Phx has already done that and it already dynamically allocates voices for sound effects independently of the voice number or the module. Does it just need to be wrapped in an extension and whipped into shape for AmosPro?

[kikems]

Sorry for delay, we are out of free time this year. Maybe in one month we continue our work with GRAC 2.5 and 3.

@Samurai_Crow I'd take your help with the music extension, we try some options but not find a good solution yet.

Our last step was try some things about AGA for Grac3. More or less Grac3 is ready for OCS, but try to include AGA need made some changes in the actual source code and our actual table formats, I'm suppose we need update object, project , image load/save format and add some variables to made an AGA/OCS version.

[xboxown]

Originally Posted by kikems

Sorry for delay, we are out of free time this year. Maybe in one month we continue our work with GRAC 2.5 and 3.

@Samurai_Crow I'd take your help with the music extension, we try some options but not find a good solution yet.

Our last step was try some things about AGA for Grac3. More or less Grac3 is ready for OCS, but try to include AGA need made some changes in the actual source code and our actual table formats, I'm suppose we need update object, project , image load/save format and add some variables to made an AGA/OCS version.

Please don't worry about chip RAM. We have V4 that have 12 MB CHIP RAM and 512 MB Fast RAM. Continue the way it is...and based on the system the user uses he or she can determine what to put in and take out based on the CHIP RAM available.

This way, certain games made by GRAC that exploit the 12 MB CHIP RAM in V4 will be run only in that system which open a large horizone of graphics intensive, high quality games, instead of sacrificing quality games targeting low end configurations.

I am not saying to remove ECS/OCS/AGA 2 MB CHIP RAM from the equation. I am saying allow the option to exploit the new hardware of 12 MB CHIP RAM which opens more audio, include speech audio, high end quality graphics by-passing 64 colors limitation, larger map sizes, allow more sprites, etc. Not ALL games are equal, some games with better eye candy of everything and better gameplay demand more powerful system. That feature should be in GRAC 3.0 and not GRAC 2.5, but GRAC 3.0. It should target highend systems such as: v4, FireBird, or even WinUAE with 2 GB CHIP RAM. GRAC should never be restrictive..it should detect what hardware it is run on and optimize the available resources at maximum capacity.

What you may do is code a check in hardware spec inside GRAC. If Chip RAM exceed 2 MB then use these codes that exploit it and open large gap of doors.

[xboxown]

Can you at least release GRAC 2.5 first so we can make games until you resolve GRAC 3.0 ? I have some great game ideas I want to implment in GRAC.