Metro Siege: new arcade quality a500 brawler!

[Tsak]

Criticism is fine, feel free

The general proportions tap to each character's style. F.e. the female character is short and the hidden one tall and wide. There is an enemy in level 1 which is quite wide (being the 'fat enemy' stereotype) and so is level 1 boss.

Other than that and in regards to character size, while we were working on the benchmarking phase, we tested many sizes to make sure the enemies and players look big enough, but also we can have enough of them without slowdowns.

In regards to the joints, yes most parts are seperated for the modular animation. However being able to tell which is which is more of a polish issue. Ideally you shouldn't be able to notice and the way to do it is by adjusting the animation and the parts themselves for each frame to look seamless.
Not an easy task, so often compromises have to be made.

[roondar]

Oh no, honestly I think it looks great. It certainly looks amazing when compared to many already existing Amiga beat em ups. In fact, I think that the overall high level of polish is why I noted the "join" to begin with. A bit like how you notice a bit of noisiness in an otherwise clean music track more on a CD than on an FM radio.

Yeah, number of enemies on screen can be a challenge. I guess that's a part of why I was wondering as the Blitter tends to do better with short & wide objects over tall & thin ones. Still, I loved the fat enemy - he seems interesting in his move set. And the player having the option of high-risk/high-reward moves is also a good thing.

Looking forward to more updates

[Ian]

Do carry on.

Tsak, if you feel it's ever drifted too far please PM one of the team or use the report post function and we can split the discussion off into another thread. No need to stifle discussion just because it's drifted off topic slightly. We are all "guilty" of it in forum land, it's what happens

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by roondar

I freely admit I can be mistaken here, but I'd still like to share the reason I feel that some kind of partial animation is in use on Arcade and console games. It's simply one of storage space.

On the SNES, Street Fighter 2 takes up 2,6MB of cartridge space. On the Amiga 500, even though the fighters miss out a ton of animation frames compared to the SNES, the game takes up 4,3MB of disk space. Similarly, Final Fight on the Amiga takes 1,7MB and only 1MB on the SNES. Of course, it's possible there are other reasons here but it very often seems to be the case that despite usually having more animation frames and/or bigger objects the consoles needed a lot less cartridge space.

Anyway, I think it's best if I drop the subject - this thread is about your work. Not about this kind of stuff. And the animation system in Metro Siege is great stuff, so please don't misunderstand me there

The problem is that the hardware on SNES build the sprites on the fly, the amiga not !

Look : Final Fight X68000 is very near from the arcade since they used the arcade source code of the japanese revision 900613 running on CPS1 to make the X68000 executable. It takes only 2mb of ram.

Why ? because the X68000 is streaming the sprites tiles to build them on the fly and animate. So of course, it takes less space.

[alpine9000]

Amiga Bill will be playing the start of level 2 on his stream this week 30/8/2020 2pm EDT.

I’m excited to see people what people think about level 2 as it’s quite different from the first level.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Amiga Bill will be playing the start of level 2 on his stream this week 30/8/2020 2pm EDT.

I’m excited to see people what people think about level 2 as it’s quite different from the first level.

Champion, I'll have a watch for sure.

[Bren McGuire]

Watching this CRX stream, looking great!
Some comments: all characters look like they are dragging their feet. Like the way they walk is absolutely unnatural. Will this be modified?

Also do you have any kind of timeframe on this game? Last year you showed this game on Amigabill's stream, and a year later there's one more level. It seems we're here for the long run (or in for a short game).

Thank you for making this game.

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

Watching this CRX stream, looking great!
Some comments: all characters look like they are dragging their feet. Like the way they walk is absolutely unnatural. Will this be modified?

Also do you have any kind of timeframe on this game? Last year you showed this game on Amigabill's stream, and a year later there's one more level. It seems we're here for the long run (or in for a short game).

Thank you for making this game.

It's crazy that it's been a year since the last stream, however there is lots of new work since then, and lots of the stuff we are still keeping to ourselves.

Since the last Amiga Bill stream we have added:

• Menu system
• Level 1 boss (almost complete)
• Lots of new moves/AI updates for level 1
• "Cinematic" sequence for boss intro
• Level 2 (this is almost like a new game from a technical perspective, both gfx and sound)
• Level 2 enemies have completely different AI to level 1
• Level 3 is a work in progress and again, totally different technically
• Major updates to the music of level 1 and a brand new track for level 2
• Network play
• Support for various other "modern" platforms
• Support for multiple floppy disks on the trackloader version (this will be the first of my games that needs more than one disk).

The good thing about lots of the work we have done, is that the remaining levels should now be able to re-use most of the tech, which will hopefully speed up the development of the remaining levels.

[Bren McGuire]

Hey alpine great work on the game and don't get me wrong, but I just feel like, usually, content making will take a long time especially at this super high quality, and at this rate, I don't see the game released for a long time unless the game is set to be really short, or there won't be enough work put on the levels to make them really fun.

Originally Posted by alpine9000

The good thing about lots of the work we have done, is that the remaining levels should now be able to re-use most of the tech, which will hopefully speed up the development of the remaining levels.

[viddi]

Really looking forward to playing this game. Will buy the boxed copy ASAP!! Keep up the awesome work....well, and hurry up!

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

Hey alpine great work on the game and don't get me wrong, but I just feel like, usually, content making will take a long time especially at this super high quality, and at this rate, I don't see the game released for a long time unless the game is set to be really short, or there won't be enough work put on the levels to make them really fun.

Hopefully that won't be the case, meaning the game won't be that sort, neither it will take a whole year for each level to be made. The thing is that a game like Metro Siege has a ton of systems and parts (that overlap each other) and these need to be completed and sorted out before we can make any real advancement towards the end goal post.

The team has set a target to finalise a vertical slice containing 3 levels first. Once this step is done, most parts will be in place so we'll have an easier time to add extra content.

[Tigerskunk]

Amazing. Looking forward seeing new footage...

[samo79]

Interesting the part about the support for "modern platform" .. may he refers to AmigaOS4/MorphOS ?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by samo79

Interesting the part about the support for "modern platform" .. may he refers to AmigaOS4/MorphOS ?

Unfortunately no, I haven’t looked at AOS4/MOS as I don’t own any hardware

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Unfortunately no, I haven’t looked at AOS4/MOS as I don’t own any hardware

I own one of each and have GCC on each of them. Is assistance welcome?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

I own one of each and have GCC on each of them. Is assistance welcome?

I’m a bit selfish when it comes to Amiga projects, I have to work solo on the code. Because it’s a hobby, I want to be in 100% absolute control of every aspect, otherwise it becomes more like my day job and that would kill my motivation.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

I’m a bit selfish when it comes to Amiga projects, I have to work solo on the code. Because it’s a hobby, I want to be in 100% absolute control of every aspect, otherwise it becomes more like my day job and that would kill my motivation.

I understand completely! If that's what it takes to stay motivated, then by all means be lord over the micro-universe on your desk!

[Predseda]

alpine9000 - will you be there in Sunday Bill's stream?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Predseda

alpine9000 - will you be there in Sunday Bill's stream?

Yep, should be in the chat if I wake up in time, I think it's 4am my time.

[nikosidis]

The interest in modern, NG Amiga platforms are very low. What is the point when you can run this game on those platforms under emulation. Even doing a game for AGA only can be risky as it also limited regarding sales.
What could be done, and done before is some extra stuff for Amigas with more RAM and more colors for AGA machines, but the colors here look enough and perfect. As you added network play to the list, will this also work with the Amiga version?