Scorpion Engine - Page 16

mcgeezer · 29 February 2020, 10:41

I have to say, this is looking excellent... certainly takes a lot of the pain out of sprite management.

earok · 08 March 2020, 10:33

Cheers @mcgeezer

Posted a new update. The old "ink" scripting component has been entirely replaced by the new visual "code blocks" system. All of the samples have been converted to the new system.

The backbone conversion stuff is currently removed, I'll try to get that going again in the next week or two, along with a few improvements on the sample games. Tsak's been really helpful in finding issues with the conversion process, so that should help with the Chaos Guns and Tales of Gorluth ports.

Project home is on github: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos

mahen · 09 March 2020, 12:07

Hi ! Thanks for your great work. I'm so happy because in the past quite a few people have spent huuuuge amounts of time writing backbone games and that clearly spoiled their work.

(hmm, I have no Windows machine though. I wonder if it'll work under Wine ! :-)

Keep up the great work !

earok · 10 March 2020, 07:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

Hi ! Thanks for your great work. I'm so happy because in the past quite a few people have spent huuuuge amounts of time writing backbone games and that clearly spoiled their work.

(hmm, I have no Windows machine though. I wonder if it'll work under Wine ! :-)

Keep up the great work !

Cheers mate

Would be interested to hear if you can get it to work. It is written with Dot Net, so it might be possible to produce native Mac or Linux builds (though I'm not totally sure if the various dependencies would allow that)

Tigerskunk · 10 March 2020, 08:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by earok

Cheers mate

Would be interested to hear if you can get it to work. It is written with Dot Net, so it might be possible to produce native Mac or Linux builds (though I'm not totally sure if the various dependencies would allow that)

I am on Mac OS, would love to try out if it works with Mono... (when I have some time again, after finishing Inviyya... If that ever happens...

)

saimon69 · 11 March 2020, 16:40

Wonder how does the engine behave if used to create something like JRPGs; beisde the top view, map, etc. how muck work might take to configure all attributes and fight system?

Tsak · 11 March 2020, 18:21

@Saimon69: Depends on the RPG system. Currently it can handle action RPGs. But a turn based system would need a lot of work.

earok · 12 March 2020, 03:09

@Steril707

Heh. You're making amazing progress so hopefully that'll be soon

@Saimon69

Tsak's right in that it's not really designed with turn-based RPGs in mind, so it wouldn't necessarily be easy. But it's certainly possible. You could use the already implemented dialogue features (such as in the Phoenix Wright demo) to simulate a menu for selecting attack, item, retreat etc. There is a "dice roll" function in the script to support random outcomes.

Hmmm.. maybe I should try whipping up a Phantasy Star demo or something for the pack

Tigerskunk · 12 March 2020, 09:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by earok

@Steril707
Heh. You're making amazing progress so hopefully that'll be soon

Actually it's really not that much to do anymore.
Just finishing the end bosses, and that's it.

I'd love to give scorpion engine a workout...

I think this might be one of the best things to happen to the Amiga in a long time.

Now there is no excuse anymore for not creating games for anyone..

earok · 15 March 2020, 01:53

Much too kind Steril707! I hope I can make it live up to your words

[ Show youtube player ]

Weekly update. There's now basic support for importing Backbone platformers into the engine. Nutmeg by Czeslaw Mnich is the one that I used as a test, though there's currently no guarantee that any other platformers will work yet. I'll keep working on that and the other priorities for Scorpion.

earok · 07 April 2020, 13:28

I was trying to do more frequent updates/releases, instead I've spent a fair bit of time fixing some longstanding structural issues with animated tiles, respawning enemies and such. So not a lot tangible to show right now, but the engine is becoming a little more stable.

One problem I've had right from the start of the project is, because the Engine is BlitzBasic and the Editor is C#, there wasn't any shared code between them.

This has been particularly problematic because, for example, if I wanted to add another line of data to the game actors, I'd need to duplicate effort to update both data models xactly the same, despite being in wholly unrelated languages. If I didn't remember, or if I made a mistake, it could be a pain to debug.

So, as part of my build process, I've made a little utility for converting some Blitz into C#. Just the data structures to begin with - to make it easy to load and save the same data in both projects without needing to double up any effort.

Could this process also be used to convert more Blitz Basic to C#, and be used by a Unity or Monogame project? Maybe

but that won't be any time soon.

earok · 15 April 2020, 13:57

New update time.

Alex Kidd demo now has a motorcycle bit. Other than that, it's mostly "under the hood" updates to the engine, editor, importers and demos.

Compiled demos themselves are now contained in an LHA that can be downloaded from the github repo.

https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos

UltraNarwhal · 22 April 2020, 18:15

Finally had time to try out this new version

and had a query.

I set my player to platformer type and all the jump/fall/idle/walk animations work, but I can't figure out how stop the player doing walk animation while stood still and holding the down direction.

Thanks.

earok · 22 April 2020, 21:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by UltraNarwhal

Finally had time to try out this new version

and had a query.

I set my player to platformer type and all the jump/fall/idle/walk animations work, but I can't figure out how stop the player doing walk animation while stood still and holding the down direction.

Thanks.

Great

It sounds like an engine bug, feel free to file it as an issue (and anything else you need) for me to look at.

nikosidis · 22 April 2020, 23:23

I tried the game demos and worked good on my A1200/030. Great job you are doing with this

earok · 23 April 2020, 09:18

Thanks @nikosidis, I appreciate the tests!

--------------

I had a random idea today, but I'm not entirely settled on it. I'm definitely interested to hear opinions.

The Scorpion Editor toolkit could be converted to Unity. And here's the upsides:

- It would theoretically allow for Linux and Mac versions of said editor, provided all of the libraries needed aren't Windows specific.
- Unity does offer a surprisingly powerful 2D UI system for forms, and I'm already very well familiar with it.
- A fair bulk of the C# code already developed for the editor could simply be copied+pasted across. There wouldn't need to be any need to redevelop existing games or demos in it.
- A Unity version of the game engine was always a long term goal, in order to facilitate the ability to target classic Amiga as well as Unity targets like Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS etc etc. Moving the Editor to Unity would also help with the development of the Unity version of the Engine.
- In general, I'm more familiar with Unity development than WPF development.

And the downsides:

- There still would be a fair amount of work involved in bringing it across, in particular to do with converting all of the forms. This would delay the engine in general (though starting now would save time in future).
- There could be other complications I hadn't considered.

spotUP · 23 April 2020, 20:58

Going Unity sounds awesome!

earok · 10 May 2020, 06:00

Time for an update.

Updated Zelda demo to feature enemies, health and combat.
The "logical" center of an object is relative to the center of the collision box, rather than the sprite offset. This doesn't really change anything other than it may make it a little easier to code custom collision logic (such as Mario hitting a box from underneath)
There's now the ability to define a default projectile per actor type. Previously, projectile shooting would need to be handled in scripting, this is no longer the case.
In addition, there's now the ability to define an attack sound per actor, previously this would need to be done in scripting.
Also there's the ability to define an ammo variable per actor. Note that this is primarily designed for player types - you could use it for enemy actors, but all enemies of one type would share the same ammo pool. It's also flexible enough to be connected to any variable in the game, but this could have weird effects (eg, using the level number as your ammo would mean that you went backwards 1 level every time you fired).
Class management has been simplified - "players", "player projectiles" and "actors" (enemies) are no longer manually defined per actor type, rather they're inferred from their usage (eg, a controllable actor is assumed to be a player, and a projectile shot from a player is assumed to be a player's projectile).
The copperlist has been reworked to have a fixed number of operations per line - this is to support things such as sprite multiplexing, sprite backgrounds and copper rainbows in future releases.
Community reported issue: Debug keys were still active in release builds. This has been fixed.
Community reported issue: Pressing down in platformers was inexplicably triggering a walk cycle animation. This has been fixed.
Implemented "push" function (for nudging colliding players/enemies) into code blocks
Reimplemented counter system on UI. This can be seen in the Zelda demo, where both full hearts and half hearts are used to depict the player's health level.

Links:

Release downloads: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos/releases
Demo source and editor binaries: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos
Bug tracker: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos/issues
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/scorpionengine

Clydos · 10 May 2020, 10:48

Very nice, earok, quite massive! I also like how you document the things still to do in the github issues.

BTW, what tool do you use to create the animated gifs? "ScreenToGif" (https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif)?

earok · 10 May 2020, 11:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clydos

Very nice, earok, quite massive! I also like how you document the things still to do in the github issues.

BTW, what tool do you use to create the animated gifs? "ScreenToGif" (https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif)?

Cheers!

Process for making animated gifs:

- Record the original in WinUAE using Lagarith lossless codec (so no compression artifacts)

- Split to individual frames with FFMPEG. Specifically with a command line like this
ffmpeg -i output2.avi -filter:v "crop=512:384:122:33" %%07d.png

The crop setting takes out the overscan area and anything else you don't want on the gif.

- Rejoin the individual frames with ImageMagik
magick.exe -delay 2 *.png input.gif

The delay of 2 forces a framerate of 50FPS, so the gif should play back at the same rate as the PAL input.

10 May 2020, 06:00	#318
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	Time for an update. Updated Zelda demo to feature enemies, health and combat. The "logical" center of an object is relative to the center of the collision box, rather than the sprite offset. This doesn't really change anything other than it may make it a little easier to code custom collision logic (such as Mario hitting a box from underneath) There's now the ability to define a default projectile per actor type. Previously, projectile shooting would need to be handled in scripting, this is no longer the case. In addition, there's now the ability to define an attack sound per actor, previously this would need to be done in scripting. Also there's the ability to define an ammo variable per actor. Note that this is primarily designed for player types - you could use it for enemy actors, but all enemies of one type would share the same ammo pool. It's also flexible enough to be connected to any variable in the game, but this could have weird effects (eg, using the level number as your ammo would mean that you went backwards 1 level every time you fired). Class management has been simplified - "players", "player projectiles" and "actors" (enemies) are no longer manually defined per actor type, rather they're inferred from their usage (eg, a controllable actor is assumed to be a player, and a projectile shot from a player is assumed to be a player's projectile). The copperlist has been reworked to have a fixed number of operations per line - this is to support things such as sprite multiplexing, sprite backgrounds and copper rainbows in future releases. Community reported issue: Debug keys were still active in release builds. This has been fixed. Community reported issue: Pressing down in platformers was inexplicably triggering a walk cycle animation. This has been fixed. Implemented "push" function (for nudging colliding players/enemies) into code blocks Reimplemented counter system on UI. This can be seen in the Zelda demo, where both full hearts and half hearts are used to depict the player's health level. Links: Release downloads: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos/releases Demo source and editor binaries: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos Bug tracker: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos/issues Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/scorpionengine

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29 February 2020, 10:41	#301
mcgeezer Registered User Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: Sunderland, England Posts: 2,702	I have to say, this is looking excellent... certainly takes a lot of the pain out of sprite management.

08 March 2020, 10:33	#302
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	Cheers @mcgeezer Posted a new update. The old "ink" scripting component has been entirely replaced by the new visual "code blocks" system. All of the samples have been converted to the new system. The backbone conversion stuff is currently removed, I'll try to get that going again in the next week or two, along with a few improvements on the sample games. Tsak's been really helpful in finding issues with the conversion process, so that should help with the Chaos Guns and Tales of Gorluth ports. Project home is on github: https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos

09 March 2020, 12:07	#303
mahen Registered User Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: France Age: 41 Posts: 435	Hi ! Thanks for your great work. I'm so happy because in the past quite a few people have spent huuuuge amounts of time writing backbone games and that clearly spoiled their work. (hmm, I have no Windows machine though. I wonder if it'll work under Wine ! :-) Keep up the great work !

11 March 2020, 16:40	#306
saimon69 J.M.D - Bedroom Musician Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: los angeles,ca Posts: 3,543	Wonder how does the engine behave if used to create something like JRPGs; beisde the top view, map, etc. how muck work might take to configure all attributes and fight system?

11 March 2020, 18:21	#307
Tsak Pixelglass/Reimagine Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Athens Posts: 1,039	@Saimon69: Depends on the RPG system. Currently it can handle action RPGs. But a turn based system would need a lot of work.

12 March 2020, 03:09	#308
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	@Steril707 Heh. You're making amazing progress so hopefully that'll be soon @Saimon69 Tsak's right in that it's not really designed with turn-based RPGs in mind, so it wouldn't necessarily be easy. But it's certainly possible. You could use the already implemented dialogue features (such as in the Phoenix Wright demo) to simulate a menu for selecting attack, item, retreat etc. There is a "dice roll" function in the script to support random outcomes. Hmmm.. maybe I should try whipping up a Phantasy Star demo or something for the pack

15 March 2020, 01:53	#310
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	Much too kind Steril707! I hope I can make it live up to your words [ Show youtube player ] Weekly update. There's now basic support for importing Backbone platformers into the engine. Nutmeg by Czeslaw Mnich is the one that I used as a test, though there's currently no guarantee that any other platformers will work yet. I'll keep working on that and the other priorities for Scorpion.

07 April 2020, 13:28	#311
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	I was trying to do more frequent updates/releases, instead I've spent a fair bit of time fixing some longstanding structural issues with animated tiles, respawning enemies and such. So not a lot tangible to show right now, but the engine is becoming a little more stable. One problem I've had right from the start of the project is, because the Engine is BlitzBasic and the Editor is C#, there wasn't any shared code between them. This has been particularly problematic because, for example, if I wanted to add another line of data to the game actors, I'd need to duplicate effort to update both data models xactly the same, despite being in wholly unrelated languages. If I didn't remember, or if I made a mistake, it could be a pain to debug. So, as part of my build process, I've made a little utility for converting some Blitz into C#. Just the data structures to begin with - to make it easy to load and save the same data in both projects without needing to double up any effort. Could this process also be used to convert more Blitz Basic to C#, and be used by a Unity or Monogame project? Maybe but that won't be any time soon.

15 April 2020, 13:57	#312
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	New update time. Alex Kidd demo now has a motorcycle bit. Other than that, it's mostly "under the hood" updates to the engine, editor, importers and demos. Compiled demos themselves are now contained in an LHA that can be downloaded from the github repo. https://github.com/earok/scorpion-editor-demos

22 April 2020, 18:15	#313
UltraNarwhal Registered User Join Date: Apr 2019 Location: UK Posts: 300	Finally had time to try out this new version and had a query. I set my player to platformer type and all the jump/fall/idle/walk animations work, but I can't figure out how stop the player doing walk animation while stood still and holding the down direction. Thanks.

22 April 2020, 23:23	#315
nikosidis Registered User Join Date: Jan 2020 Location: oslo/norway Posts: 1,608	I tried the game demos and worked good on my A1200/030. Great job you are doing with this

23 April 2020, 09:18	#316
earok Registered User Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Auckland Posts: 3,542	Thanks @nikosidis, I appreciate the tests! -------------- I had a random idea today, but I'm not entirely settled on it. I'm definitely interested to hear opinions. The Scorpion Editor toolkit could be converted to Unity. And here's the upsides: - It would theoretically allow for Linux and Mac versions of said editor, provided all of the libraries needed aren't Windows specific. - Unity does offer a surprisingly powerful 2D UI system for forms, and I'm already very well familiar with it. - A fair bulk of the C# code already developed for the editor could simply be copied+pasted across. There wouldn't need to be any need to redevelop existing games or demos in it. - A Unity version of the game engine was always a long term goal, in order to facilitate the ability to target classic Amiga as well as Unity targets like Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS etc etc. Moving the Editor to Unity would also help with the development of the Unity version of the Engine. - In general, I'm more familiar with Unity development than WPF development. And the downsides: - There still would be a fair amount of work involved in bringing it across, in particular to do with converting all of the forms. This would delay the engine in general (though starting now would save time in future). - There could be other complications I hadn't considered.

23 April 2020, 20:58	#317
spotUP Registered User Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: sweden Age: 46 Posts: 430	Going Unity sounds awesome!

10 May 2020, 10:48	#319
Clydos aka (Cpt)JohnArcher Join Date: May 2018 Location: Dresden / Germany Posts: 193	Very nice, earok, quite massive! I also like how you document the things still to do in the github issues. BTW, what tool do you use to create the animated gifs? "ScreenToGif" (https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif)?

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