Silhouette Threat - WIP AGA Action Game - Would love some coding help

[lionagony]

A girl falls into a mysterious world armed with only her raincoat and umbrella while enduring constant attacks by strange, silhouetted creatures. The only way to return to her world is by collecting pieces to eventually assemble the raindrop portal.

For the last few months as a non-coder I've been trying to get to grips with Scorpion Engine. Here is a video of the short test level I've made so far. It's very early and very rough but you have to start somewhere.

[ Show youtube player ]

My soon to be 12 year old daughter designed the main player and some of the other graphics. As a non artist I've tried my best to do the rest.

I love seeing the Amiga pushed to its limits so my ultimate dream would be to have a game using the parallax system that we discussed here in order to do many large, overlapping layers like seen in this modern game called Return [ Show youtube player ]. I envision a 6 layer AGA game where the dual playfield bitplanes are split 2,1,1,2,1,1 instead of 4,4 so without transparency a layer of 3 colors, 1 color, 1 color, 3 colors, 1 color, 1 color plus the magic of the copper to really add some more color to the background like in Return. Imagine something like the chains in the background of my video but with 6 layers of them of different sizes scrolling at different speeds on top of one another. It's something the Amiga has never had before but would likely need to be done in Assembly or C which unfortunately I have no knowledge of. Currently Scorpion Engine limits you in AGA to 3 layers, with 2 having to repeat. The game Agony does the dual playfield bitplane splitting technique already for OCS/ECS with a 3,2,1 split and the source code is available here which might make things easier. If someone is interested in helping code the bitplane splitting part that would be amazing, please reply here or in private message.

What I think might be possible is a tool something similar to the amazing parallax tool that Daniel Stephens has created for Boss Machine here at 17:10 [ Show youtube player ]. He's able to take graphic strips and move them independently at any speed with a slider. It blew my mind when I saw it and made me think that maybe a similar tool could be made where you can just load any image into one of 6 overlapping parallax layers. Maybe it could be done as a plugin for Scorpion Engine or Redpill or just as a standalone tool, if that fascinates any coders again please let me know.

In the meantime I plan to keep developing the game in Scorpion Engine with just the 3 layers. It's my first game so I would welcome any feedback or ideas. Some of the plans I have are instead of bosses a sort of timed jumping trial in various caves where you see the player from afar as a silhouette. I have lots of ideas for other levels with palm trees, bridges, tiki huts, lighthouses, even one to represent Toronto for the first time in an Amiga game with the CN Tower and the Skydome, anything that looks good in silhouette really. I love this community so would be willing to try to implement anything you may have ever wanted to try in a game and didn't get the chance to.

Reading development threads are one of my favourite things about EAB so I plan on updating here every 2 weeks, so on the 17th and 3rd of every month with any progress.

[jotd]

Good start.

this engine is so great! is the background only made with color 0 & copper then game uses dual playfield?

Is triple parallax without blitter possible?

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by jotd

Good start.

Thanks!

this engine is so great! is the background only made with color 0 & copper then game uses dual playfield?

No, actually with Scorpion the AGA parallax layers are done with the 64 pixel wide sprites, it doesn't support dual playfield mode yet. So you have 8 4 colour sprites so you can do 1 layer with 4 and the other with 4. Scorpion allows for a 24 bit gradient in AGA so I spent quite a bit of time doing that although it doesn't look as nice in the video as in real life.

Is triple parallax without blitter possible?

For the 6 layer technique I'm envisioning (even 8 layers is possible with a 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 split) and really anything above 2 layers without using sprites you do have to use the blitter. roondar sums it up well in this post https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=36

[kremiso]

hey thats pretty good!
the background reminds some Psygnosys style

is it running on a default A1200?

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by kremiso

hey thats pretty good!
the background reminds some Psygnosys style

is it running on a default A1200?

Thanks, I love the Psygnosis style so that's cool that it reminded you of that. It does run on a stock A1200 through emulation, unfortunately my actual A1200 doesn't work so I probably won't ever get to test it on real hardware.

[Samurai_Crow]

Relane splits
The way that a playfield is split into 1 bitplane fields plus the original scroll of the playfield is using palette remapping and expensive full-screen blits. Assembly and C won't improve the blitter speed at all. Even though single bitplane blits are cheaper than multi-bitplane ones, I doubt 6 layers plus sprites will be possible due to the slownwess of the AGA blitter.

Edit:
The background playfield split is possible by making multiple palette entries have the same copper shades. This is not possible for the foreground playfield because there is one transparent palette entry. Leaving the foreground palette with fewer than 4 bitplanes will allow more bandwidth for the blitter to use.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Relane splits
The way that a playfield is split into 1 bitplane fields plus the original scroll of the playfield is using palette remapping and expensive full-screen blits. Assembly and C won't improve the blitter speed at all. Even though single bitplane blits are cheaper than multi-bitplane ones, I doubt 6 layers plus sprites will be possible due to the slownwess of the AGA blitter.

We won't know for certain since until it's tried but these posts here and here point to the fact that it would be doable. I also PM'ed with a few other coders on here that agreed. The trick is having each layer scroll at half the rate of the previous one. If sprites wouldn't work out we could always make the main character and the enemies silhouettes and have 3 colours total for the main first layer.

[Samurai_Crow]

2 bitplane bobs are cheap. Using playfields to speed up the tilemap of the foreground image makes sense too. The technique for 1 bitplane masks will only work on the background playfield if they work like I think. Using precomputed mask offsets uses a lot of chip RAM but would be faster than blitting. Personally, I'd leave some bitplanes dormant on the foreground playfield to free up some bandwidth for the blitter and CPU since you're targetting a stock A1200.

[lionagony]

So I've got a new video of what I've been working on the last two weeks. It's the beginning of the Toronto level with a few new enemies and a placeholder mod I liked from Aminet called Hard Feelings by Audiomonster.

[ Show youtube player ]

My daughter has been helping more with the graphics, which is great, so she did the boats, dock, lamp post, bricks and the gecko and slinky enemies. I did the skyline with help from an open source reference pic, the copper gradient, the maple leaf blocks and we both worked on the fish.

My wife had the idea for the girl to be able to duck and use her umbrella as a shield so I implemented that. One of the big things is that I taught myself to use Protracker for the first time which was very interesting. I never knew what all the numbers were and now I understand it a bit. It's funny that I'm a huge hip hop fan and I didn't realize that trackers were so sample based which is the essence of hip hop. It's odd that not many hip hop producers used the Amiga, at least for pre-production, the only one I know of is Kanye West. I know it was used in jungle and drum and bass and dance production but it's just ironic that it wasn't more utilized in the most sample heavy genre. I guess that is partly to do with hip hop not being as big in Europe in the Amiga's heyday. Anyways I put together a basic little sampled track that isn't in the video but I might use as temporary title screen music in the playable demo I plan to put out sometime in the next month. I would love to get some early feedback on the controls by putting out a demo.

Soon I want to make a powerup where she can shoot her umbrella three ways. I also need to work on lots of new enemy ideas and make the level a lot longer. So any feedback would be much appreciated, thanks for watching.

[sokolovic]

I love the idea of making the gfx by your daughter. That's a very nice family project.

[kremiso]

in-house joint venture
good choice that soft/sad tune, perfect for that purple background

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I love the idea of making the gfx by your daughter. That's a very nice family project.

Thanks, she really likes doing high res stuff so will probably see her skills most on the title screen and any cut scenes. I'll have to find out what the max resolution is for Scorpion Engine and try that out for the title screen.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by kremiso

in-house joint venture
good choice that soft/sad tune, perfect for that purple background

Ha, yes, it's the literal definition of in house Thanks, I liked that song although will probably try something peppier in other levels.

[lionagony]

Lots of progress on this the last two weeks. Added the following:

-animated tiles
-3 way shot powerup
-moving and disappearing platforms
-new enemies
-a boss
-new title screen and game over screen

I've attached a picture of the original high res title screen my daughter made before I reduced the colours and resolution. I'm curious to get people's feedback on the game and the controls etc. so I'm planning to put out a WIP playable demo soon, hopefully in the next week.

[lionagony]

I've taken a slight detour, since I haven't heard from anyone yet regarding the bitplane splitting technique I thought of a way to simulate it in Scorpion. Here's a short video of 6 overlapping parallax layers:

[ Show youtube player ]

I animated the background sprites so it would have to be a level where it's always scrolling, since if you go backwards the animation stays going forward. The background is 8 AGA wrapped sprites, one set of 4 (4 color, 64 pixel wide sprites) has 2 layers and the other set of 4 (4 color, 64 pixel wide sprites) has 3 layers and then the normal bobs in the front layer. I had 7 layers earlier but I deleted one from the back because I didn't like the look of it. So with this technique 7.5 layers is the max in Scorpion as I made the vines as the foreground so you can walk behind them which I'll count as half a layer

Now I'll have to design some gameplay for this level. I'm finished the playable demo of the Toronto level but now just deciding whether I should put this new one out first since it captures more the look I was striving for.

[lionagony]

A playable demo of the first level is now available at:

https://lionagony.itch.io/silhouette-threat-aga-amiga

Would love to hear any feedback on the game or the controls, thanks so much, enjoy!

[pixie]

Love the parallax, as for the controls, it is quite hard at first to set the correct jump I recon, but after a while one get used. I would suggest you to add some save points, as returning for the start feels a bit harsh

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by pixie

Love the parallax, as for the controls, it is quite hard at first to set the correct jump I recon, but after a while one get used. I would suggest you to add some save points, as returning for the start feels a bit harsh

Thanks for trying it. There is one checkpoint farther into the level. I was trying to make it sort of challenging since it's not very long of a level but I agree more checkpoints could be a good change.

[VincentGR]

Well done!!!
Nice aesthetics with great sound.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by VincentGR

Well done!!!
Nice aesthetics with great sound.

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. Saberman has been nice enough to upload a video of the game here [ Show youtube player ]