Wonderboy

[acidbottle]

Playable (alpha) demo now available!

https://acidbottle.itch.io/amiga-wonderboy

There are quite a few bugs I am aware of but feel free to list any you find on this thread.

It does, at this time, require at least a stock 1200 at present, though it is not AGA exclusive.

[spoUP]

Very nice! Is it possible to move the character more to the left as in the original?

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Playable (alpha) demo now available!

https://acidbottle.itch.io/amiga-wonderboy

There are quite a few bugs I am aware of but feel free to list any you find on this thread.

It does, at this time, require at least a stock 1200 at present, though it is not AGA exclusive.

Great job, mate...

[nikosidis]

Tried the game on my A1200/030

The game run smooth but should it not run a little faster?
Maybe the original arcade is NTSC 60hz?

Keep on the great work.

[acidbottle]

Nice one guys, thanks for trying it out. Still plenty to work on but have to start somewhere right!

Yes, I can shift Tom to the left and this is now done. Pretty sure Mixel mentioned this before and had, I thought, corrected it but seems it had been overlooked.

The sega system 1 did indeed run at 60hz, is a bit snappier for sure.

Corrected a bug that was preventing game over upon losing all lives. It would revert back to last checkpoint and the energy bar would continue to drop.

Icicles on Round 3 were killing skateboard Tom instantly, now fixed.

Will patch up 1 or 2 more issues and release a second alpha by the weekend

[nikosidis]

acidbottle: why not make the game NTSC?

All A1200, A600 users can switch to NTSC and if you have PAL A500 the game will just run a little slower. Just like Marble Madness did.

[earok]

Scorpion Engine doesn't (yet) have great support for NTSC, in theory games will run in NTSC mode but there may be issues with layout, timing, copper and such. But anyway -


NTSC Amiga is 200 pixels tall and Wonderboy Amiga is about 256 pixels tall. Even if the screen was re-arranged to fit in the arcade's 224 pixel tall layout, it'd still be too tall, so you'd need to cut the screen down to have a smaller display than the arcade. I'd personally vote for sticking with PAL only.

[acidbottle]

Thanks for clearing that up earok, it is indeed not possible for true NTSC as this moment but that could change in the future of course.

The arcade display does seem to stretch itself, ultrawide, which simply isn't possible here. I believe the play area for the Amiga version works well though.

Still wish I could get my head around a routine for smoother scrolling on the taller map areas (slope on level 1 for example), as per the original.

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by earok

NTSC Amiga is 200 pixels tall

What about overscan?

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

It does, at this time, require at least a stock 1200 at present, though it is not AGA exclusive.

So It's for any Amiga with at least 020 and 2MB (chip, or any?), not A1200. You should know that in past such descriptions of requirements caused big disinformation. Best example is Dungeon Master II, where many people thought that's AGA game, but it's not. Of course there are more such games.

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by earok

Scorpion Engine doesn't (yet) have great support for NTSC

I think more useful would be add more AGA support. NTSC is fine with ~20% more frames, but at cost of ~20% less screen size (in pixels).

[acidbottle]

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

So It's for any Amiga with at least 020 and 2MB (chip, or any?), not A1200. You should know that in past such descriptions of requirements caused big disinformation. Best example is Dungeon Master II, where many people thought that's AGA game, but it's not. Of course there are more such games.

Hi and thanks for these comments, you do raise a valid question.

My original intention was to create a game that ran on all systems, including OCS and ECS. At no stage did I want to create a 1200 exclusive AGA game, partially because I knew it was possible to easily replicate the arcade gfx in 32 colours, perhaps with some effort even reduce to 16!

However, despite some optimisation (still plenty to do here) I felt the game ran too slow in certain areas on OCS and ECS, even with some fast ram. My only benchmark here was using WinUAE and various configs. I do not own an actual A500 any longer, let alone one that is 020 accelerated. I tried to match an OCS 020 with fast ram via UAE and it still didnt feel right. The settings on a stock 1200 seem to run it okay, I am usure why, my terrible code optimisations I would expect

If anyone has such a machine and can verify how it performs I will revisit my descriptions. My own personal machine is a heavily accelerated 1200 and it does of course run perfectly okay.

I decided to announce, with the alpha version, it is for 1200 but not AGA exclusive so anyone with an Amiga can try it out and let me know if it runs like a brick or runs fine.

Therefore, as it stands, a 1200 is best for the time being, based on my own testing. It is still alpha though and is never (unless M$ offer me 50 billion, might think about it then haha) going commercial, unlike Dungeon Master II, whos marketing team should have done better research before finalising that particular release!

[DanyPPC]

I tested the game on my A1200 BlizzardIV 64Mb ram and it works, but the playability doesn't match the arcade. There is a sort of bug which does not make the character run even if I hold down the first button sometimes.

So I disabled the Blizzard and loaded the game without accellerator, speed is same but there is a drop frame at certain times.
Regarding the playability on a simple A500 you can trust of A500 config in WinUAE, it's accurate.

I know this is an alpha, and improvements are expected.
So I wish you all the best.

[saimon69]

According to the Per-Ola Ericcson youtube video it seems the music drop the third channel occasionally - not sure if is a music player issue or i did something wrong in the mod; will check

[acidbottle]

Thanks DanyPPC, just the sort of feedback needed.

Have finally patched up some issues using the latest SE builds and am hopeful there will be performance improvements as a consequence. If nothing else it helped me fix some small issues thanks to the compile debugger!

[nikosidis]

The port is fantastic. Just tried beta 0.2

This video I'm using the open source 68000/14 accelerator with my homemade joystick.
I think it is wrong to call it a A1200 game. It is a OCS game that require A1200 CPU specs. or better.

Sorry about crap video quality.

[ Show youtube player ]

[jotd]

excellent video. This game really looks good. The fact that it runs on slightly faster A500 is very good.

And not even using asm, "just" Scorpion. That is unbelievable.

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by jotd

excellent video. This game really looks good. The fact that it runs on slightly faster A500 is very good.

And not even using asm, "just" Scorpion. That is unbelievable.

Thanks JOTD.

I'm also very impressed with the Scorpion engine.
I think that since people do stuff for standard A1200 CPU spes. you are still within original Amiga hardware requirements.
With OCS gfx and a cheap accelerator card like this you can run most stuff with great speed.

The developers on this game did a great job so this will be great advertising for the Scorpion engine and games to come.

[gimbal]

Nice video. Seeing this Wonderboy port makes me wish for a Wonderboy in Monsterland version where the walk rampup and jump is as speedy as it is in this game.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

Hi and thanks for these comments, you do raise a valid question.

My original intention was to create a game that ran on all systems, including OCS and ECS. At no stage did I want to create a 1200 exclusive AGA game, partially because I knew it was possible to easily replicate the arcade gfx in 32 colours, perhaps with some effort even reduce to 16!

You might need to create what is called a 'superpalette' - using a tool like debabelizer or ADpro to calculate all graphics tiles in all levels and choose/remap 16 unique colors for it - the player can be a sprite and use another 16 color set