Hamulet test - Large HAM bobs

[remz]

Hello coders,

While still working on Hamulet, I was experimenting with the possibility of drawing HAM bobs and wondering if this has been attempted before:
I captured a short video snippet at 50 fps to show a sort of proof-of-concept, running on Amiga 500 OCS (1MB chip) here.

One of main concern of HAM bobs is the large amount of chip memory they require, but also how to manage fringing. You can see in my video that the fringing is barely noticeable. However, my 'bobs' are not moving: they are stationary. In this state, their usage in a game would be mostly for animated stationary objects, or other innovative ideas.

Also, I've set one of the HAM index colors to show a copper gradient which scrolls at a lower speed to create a parallax effect. I do not know if this has been attempted on a HAM screen before.

I wanted to try using the blitter to draw a sort of 'parallax layer' using a mask but the runtime cost seemed to be high compared to the potential gameplay benefit.



[ Show youtube player ]

[lionagony]

That's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, wow!

[vulture]

This is truly one of those "only Amiga makes it possible" moments!

That's fantastic!

[DisasterIncarna]

looks nothing short of amazing, imagine something like this back in the day paired with a cartridge system to fast load/dump ham-bobs from memory during play if disk load was too slow to keep up.

Amazing alone to see this screen scroll around, would look just as amazing on single screen puzzlers or flip screen games.

[Predseda]

That is totally incredible!

[earok]

Hi Remz,

That's looking so cool. Scrolling copper bars for vertical parallax is an awesome idea, I can't remember seeing it in a game before.

I assume the status bar on the left is a sprite that hides the HAM fringes when scrolling?

[TCD]

Impressive

[no9]

Wow. Please proceed further with this.

[Team_Hoi]

Wow, very impressive. If you don't have a developer name yet, I'd call myself Factor 10 if I had achieved this.

[AestheticDebris]

Looks absolutely amazing. Have often wondered about the possibilities of HAM mode and it is great to see people now starting to push the boundaries. Would love to read a technical explanation of the issues and how you resolved them.

[Karlos]

That looks amazing. I can only imagine how my tiny teenage mind would have melted seeing that on an A500 back in the day.

[ross]

One word: awesome!

Originally Posted by remz

I've set one of the HAM index colors to show a copper gradient which scrolls at a lower speed to create a parallax effect. I do not know if this has been attempted on a HAM screen before.

Not that I remember (of course the same technique was used in normal modes).

Originally Posted by remz

I was experimenting with the possibility of drawing HAM bobs and wondering if this has been attempted before..

Yes, but certainly very few times, see for example "The Pioneer Plague" or "Knights of the Crystallion" (there is also something attempted with HAM8...).

But what's in your video is on a whole other level, absolutely visually stunning

[Team_Hoi]

There are only a few games I can remember featuring HAM mode: Mind Walker and E-Motion, and they weren't half as impressive as this HAM BOBs game, although I loved Mind Walker's atmosphere and music.

[alexh]

Fantastic work. Looking forward to seeing it progress.

Originally Posted by ross

Yes, but certainly very few times, see for example "The Pioneer Plague" or "Knights of the Crystallion" (there is also something attempted with HAM8...).

Possibly "OloFight"? (HAM8 BOBs)

[remz]

Originally Posted by earok

Hi Remz,

That's looking so cool. Scrolling copper bars for vertical parallax is an awesome idea, I can't remember seeing it in a game before.

I assume the status bar on the left is a sprite that hides the HAM fringes when scrolling?

Yes, that's correct! The real bitmap display starts underneath this sprite, which leaves up to 16 pixels for the HAM color to 'stabilize'. However, during horizontal scrolling, since I didn't want to lose sprite 6-7 while keeping a full 320 resolution, we can see a very tiny bit of fringing.

[malko]

Originally Posted by remz

[...]


[ Show youtube player ]

Hamulet demo was already awesome, but what you show us here is simply S P E C T A C U L A R !
Even if it goes nowhere further as this, thank you for proving what many of us thought the Amiga was able of BitD .

[ross]

Originally Posted by alexh

Possibly "OloFight"? (HAM8 BOBs)

If I'm not wrong, OloFight use HAM8 only for background, moving objects are (64bit) sprites.
For 'bobs' in AGA/HAM8 I was thinking of some rpg/fps, but in fact they are more 'rendered' (or similar..) rather than 'drawn', so in fact it's not the same thing.

Probably on HAM8, with its 64 base colors, the fringing problems would be much lower, but a very heavy mode for the blitter.

But let's focus on this impressive HAM6

[remz]

Originally Posted by ross

If I'm not wrong, OloFight use HAM8 only for background, moving objects are (64bit) sprites.
For 'bobs' in AGA/HAM8 I was thinking of some rpg/fps, but in fact they are more 'rendered' (or similar..) rather than 'drawn', so in fact it's not the same thing.

Probably on HAM8, with its 64 base colors, the fringing problems would be much lower, but a very heavy mode for the blitter.
But let's focus on the HAM6

Speaking about that, my original idea with this was to go with HAM8 + 2MB chip (base A1200 and CD32). The reasoning was that 2MB chip would allow a lot of flexibility for audio and graphics, and the AGA 64-bit fetch would make HAM8 actually faster than HAM6: two extra bitplanes but divide display DMA slots by four. That, combined with larger sprites, would be really good for a puzzle-platformer game. Also, 262144 colors instead of 4096 for the low price of two extra bitplanes sounds like a good investment.

Maybe AGA/HAM8 will be the next step I'll try; but I need to focus on completing Hamulet and then exploring this new HAM-bob idea a bit.

[malko]

^ I am almost sure that not (so only HAM6) but I can't remember if pushing the A500 & A2000 to 2MB Chip permitted the HAM8 mode :
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/megachip2000-500.php

[ross]

Originally Posted by remz

Speaking about that, my original idea with this was to go with HAM8 + 2MB chip (base A1200 and CD32). The reasoning was that 2MB chip would allow a lot of flexibility for audio and graphics, and the AGA 64-bit fetch would make HAM8 actually faster than HAM6: two extra bitplanes but divide display DMA slots by four. That, combined with larger sprites, would be really good for a puzzle-platformer game. Also, 262144 colors instead of 4096 for the low price of two extra bitplanes sounds like a good investment.

Yep, there is a lot to try for HAM8, I'm sure that together with the 64bit fetches for bitplanes and sprites it will allow nice things.

Originally Posted by malko

^ I am almost sure that not (so only HAM6) but I can't remember if pushing the A500 & A2000 to 2MB Chip permitted the HAM8 mode :

Unfortunately for the HAM8 the AGA is mandatory, it does not depend on the amount of addressable chip memory