new amiga 500 doom like !

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

But I'd be curious to listen to what upgrades would be most welcome beyond this point.

For me personally, I think the height implementation is way more important then optimizing game for faster machines.

After that.. sure... it would be nice if AGA users could choose bigger res textures, more colors, bigger res, 1x1 px, and so on
(same goes for expanded OCS/ECS systems)

[Mathesar]

Another thing which is more about game design / atmosphere:
In Alien Breed 3D II you have text at the bottom of the screen when you enter certain sections of the map. For example, in the first level there is a comment how the door seems to be have been rigged so it can only be opened from the inside and when you enter a large bay area: "the doors on the right are blast doors" and so on.
I think these elements, maybe also combined with sound triggers (with the super 3D stereo effect!!!!) greatly add to the atmosphere and story of the game. It's probably a lot of work to implement but I guess it does not really need a lot of memory and/or CPU power.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

Another thing which is more about game design / atmosphere:
In Alien Breed 3D II you have text at the bottom of the screen when you enter certain sections of the map. For example, in the first level there is a comment how the door seems to be have been rigged so it can only be opened from the inside and when you enter a large bay area: "the doors on the right are blast doors" and so on.
I think these elements, maybe also combined with sound triggers (with the super 3D stereo effect!!!!) greatly add to the atmosphere and story of the game. It's probably a lot of work to implement but I guess it does not really need a lot of memory and/or CPU power.

Well, you'd be pleased to know that text messages are already implemented (top of the screen)
Currently it's just for pickups but we could easilly use this for other stuff as well I guess.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by Tsak

KK wants to go exotic with this (with wavetable synthesis)

Never one to take the easy road!

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Well, you'd be pleased to know that text messages are already implemented (top of the screen)
Currently it's just for pickups but we could easilly use this for other stuff as well I guess.

Wow! Pretty cool!
I think these kind of things make a huge difference!

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Currently it's just for pickups but we could easilly use this for other stuff as well I guess.

I'd use it to insult the players.
Like:
- You must be very smart to enter a room full of armed soldiers, with just a gun
- Are you color blind, or just plain stupid? This is a Red Door, and you have Blue key
- Now this is really embarrassing. If this was a video game, I'd push reset button.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

I'm trying to hit the deadline of releasing a demo during August, so wish me good luck.

Good luck! Really look forward to that, but if you don't make it in time we know it's in the works.

I'm sure like a lot of people, I don't really care about it getting upgraded for faster systems or whatever, we'll be happy with the finished game.

So long as I can play on my A1200 I will be happy even if I do have an accelerator. If future upgrades came along of course the more the merrier, but right now, the thought of playing the finished game "as is" and it being stable on my system is enough to keep me excited about this project.

Keep up the work KK

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

I seen the video about the fantastic use of stereo sfx, but as option I believe it was talked about mono sfx and music?

We'll see how this one works out, depends on the music player and the track composition really. Stereo sfx might still remain but things will surely become more cramped up.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I'd use it to insult the players.
Like:
- You must be very smart to enter a room full of armed soldiers, with just a gun
- Are you color blind, or just plain stupid? This is a Red Door, and you have Blue key
- Now this is really embarrassing. If this was a video game, I'd push reset button.

Lol

[KK/Altair]

[quote]But thinking about it... An a1200 has more (chip)ram! So maybe things like more sound effects and/or ambient music are easier to realize?[/uqote]
Good thing to consider. Once I get hang of how to load stuff from HD we could make a separate Dread installation with higher quality samples, for starters. And the same goes for the music, but this is still an open topic. Other than that, the only other way I use chip ram is the display buffers and weapon sprites. Everything else would prefer to stay in Fast, if there is one.

In any case, after the demo I'll be moving from the EXE format to a trackloader, so loading extra stuff will have to wait - juggling an extra floppy to get higher sample quality would probably be a bad tradeoff. I would be able to cache floppy data in extra ram, though, which means less loading for A1200 in any case.

We need to see about music cause KK wants to go exotic with this (with wavetable synthesis) so the footprint of each track might not be that large in the end (hense having extra ram won't make much difference).

I want to be able to make as good music as it gets, with as limited space as possible, so you know.
And I have already written a tracker playback routine for SFX, so that seems not as big deal as it seems now.
(yes, I'm four episodes worth of stuff done ahead of video releases)

A600 can also have 2MB chip and from A500 rev. 6 it is also possible with 2MB chip.

Yes, and I fortunately own such extended one as well, so I'll see what use it could be put to.
Still, as far as Dread goes, I'd prefer Fast to that any day, but we get what we get.

I did a simple mod to my rev. 6 to use the 0,5MB slow ram as chip so I now have 1MB chip.

Nice job. I love DIY retro hacks*.
Does it normally detect in the system?
Or more importantly, does it occupy common chipram addresses, so I can detect it myself?
(hoping to win a few extra kBs at one point by trackloading the game from boot sector and managing all the memory space myself)

(* as far as Amiga hacks go, I have both Gotek and FDD in, switchable, or configurable as DF0/DF1 combo for single pass X-Copy transfer - fun stuff)

I seen the video about the fantastic use of stereo sfx, but as option I believe it was talked about mono sfx and music?

That's the plan.
And I hope to be able to implement SFX and MSX over a common voice allocator, so SFX could still reasonably play over 4-channel MSX.
Or a 6-channel MSX, because that feature could also come in handy while writing music.
(been there, done that - played 4ch music using priorities on 2-channel of Atari VCS console and it gave a significant boost)

For me personally, I think the height implementation is way more important then optimizing game for faster machines.

That's why that feature is high on my list.
In fact, I already started prototyping it (the tool already has height-based test software renderer implemented in C++) and it looks like it would be way easier than expected to do.
Still, I have to sort out the FDD map loading first, because implementing heights would require completely different approach to line data loading then before.

After that.. sure... it would be nice if AGA users could choose bigger res textures, more colors, bigger res, 1x1 px, and so on
(same goes for expanded OCS/ECS systems)

1x1 px would be a major performance killer for OCS/ECS.
And bigger resolution textures would probably add too much work for our "art department" at this point.
So let's make the game first, and expand later.

In Alien Breed 3D II you have text at the bottom of the screen when you enter certain sections of the map. For example, in the first level there is a comment how the door seems to be have been rigged so it can only be opened from the inside and when you enter a large bay area: "the doors on the right are blast doors" and so on.
I think these elements, maybe also combined with sound triggers (with the super 3D stereo effect!!!!) greatly add to the atmosphere and story of the game. It's probably a lot of work to implement but I guess it does not really need a lot of memory and/or CPU power.

I'll be definitely adding 1-line text display for such information (128px width on sprites, so stay to the point!), but that's really all the effort needed. Playing sounds upon entering a location is already trivial with the scripts - just add a new invisible item that plays it. The scripts currently lack functions for objects to communicate with each other (e.g. to trigger 3D sound from another location than the trigger's, or to trigger few things in sequence), but I guess they will definitely come at one point.

Well, you'd be pleased to know that text messages are already implemented (top of the screen)
Currently it's just for pickups but we could easilly use this for other stuff as well I guess.

Correction: You have done your job, making font for it and providing mockup art.
But I haven't even started on actually implementing using it yet.

Are you color blind, or just plain stupid? This is a Red Door, and you have Blue key

I have issues with this one:
1. What's wrong with being color blind? I know quite a few persons like this.
2. It would require complete color blindness, which is very uncommon. Usually it's red-green or blue-yellow color blindness, with the other pair still being recognizable (nitpicking, but I find this topic quite interesting).

Stereo sfx might still remain but things will surely become more cramped up.

Stereo SFX will surely remain, even if only as an option that disables music. I can see all the reasons people would prefer disabling the music to get positional cues while playing (especially on headphones).



In any case, I have a small REQUEST FOR HELP.
Another video is coming, so if any of you would like to be a beta-viewer, PM me today.
The first version of the next episode has just rendered, but it needs to be watched a few times, preferably with a fresh eyes, to catch any irritating details that might have gotten by (but no big changes - if it's acceptable, it stays, because "done is better than perfect").


Thanks, and have a nice day!

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

Nice job. I love DIY retro hacks*.
Does it normally detect in the system?
Or more importantly, does it occupy common chipram addresses, so I can detect it myself?

Yes, it will sit at $80000 and gets detected by exec just like in an A500+ (it is just the memory normally sitting at $C00000 being remapped to $80000 for the cpu).

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

I have issues with this one:
What's wrong with being color blind? I know quite a few persons like this.

That's why my sentence clearly says:
Are you color blind, OR just plain stupid?

Common man... you know me... of course, nothing is wrong with color blind people. I have a few friends that are color blind. One of them is actually (believe it, or not) doing digital drawing and painting (concept art and environments) for living. And it's very good in that actually. I love his paintings.

The above sentence was just a joke, and I apologize if anyone is being offended.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

Correction: You have done your job, making font for it and providing mockup art.
But I haven't even started on actually implementing using it yet.

Ups! Well, good to be here to correct me.
Thought this was a done deal already.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Ups! Well, good to be here to correct me.
Thought this was a done deal already.

John, can you show us some new screens on dread ? thanks !

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

John, can you show us some new screens on dread ? thanks !

No need to, new video titled "total graphics replacement" is coming today so stay tuned!

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I'd use it to insult the players.

Looks like you've been able to insult the devs instead - more practice at the shooting range needed? :P:P:P:P

[KK/Altair]

So, the episode is out, covering all the new graphics changes.
Have fun!
[ Show youtube player ]

John, can you show us some new screens on dread ? thanks !

So, everybody is eager to see some new stuff... but when I specifically ask for help (above) in watching the almost final versions of the next video, no one turns up.
I don't quite get it.

Looks like you've been able to insult the devs instead - more practice at the shooting range needed? :P:P:P:P

No insult taken. I just want to stay as far away as possible from offending anyone myself.

[Samurai_Crow]

Excellent!

[saimon69]

The Dread guy reaction make me think of this guy bottom left
[ Show youtube player ]

[roondar]

Very nice video, this is looking extremely good - better ever episode

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

So, everybody is eager to see some new stuff... but when I specifically ask for help (above) in watching the almost final versions of the next video, no one turns up.
I don't quite get it.

Well, the reason why I decided not to, is because I am interested in every single part of creation of the game, therefore I probably wouldn't advice to cut-out anything, and therefore I would be a bad judge on the subject.
I guess some other people felt similar.

Anyway
-------------------------

TERRIFIC VIDEO GUYS!
I think this one is by far the best video so far, and offers so many updates, that you could easily make 3 videos out of it.

One thing I didn't understand, is when the Pixel Glass mentioned BG gradient and cloud layer on top of it. After KK intervention, does that gradient move at same speed as cloud or a little slower? If it's a little slower, then I think it should be way more slow, because parallax is almost invisible now.
Also.. the cloud itself... I like it... but it looks like it's observed from above, not bellow... and also... wouldn't it make more sense if the cloud(s) are in the very top of the image, and horizon gradient bellow, and not the other way around?

@TSAK
Amazing work, both in quality and quantity.
I am speechless how much you achieved in relative short period of time (while being busy with other projects too).

Pixel Shade did also amazing work with the characters.
-----------------

Thanks for dedication guys, I am looking forward in trying the demo (and creation set tools) very soon, hopefully.