PeteD

Sorry been afk a bit today because I've got a trapped ulnar nerve and the more i sit here typing on forums and coding the less I can feel my fingers One thing that I've figured out as a rule on this (at least the screen with the pool, arch, tower etc which is the most complex, and I imagine it holds true for all of them) is you can't use PMGs in the players AND the background. You also can't use the ORing method to add colours to the background. The only thing that is 100% safe as far as reaaaaly wild clashes goes is to use 5 colours for the guys, reuse them in the background and use underlaid PMGs to add colour. If you try to use enderlaid PMGs in the guys AND the background then where you have a section of background using this method and the guys cross it, suddenly you end up with the guys underlay sprite showing up in the hole like a big ugly square (or at least a "shape" whose pixels are 4 wide). You can't use the OR technique (except in very rare cases) because as soon as the guys cross that area BLAMMO random colour produced by ORing stuff together. The rare cases are where the 2 colours you want to produce just happen to match the 2 colours that are randomly produced because the ORing just "happens" to set all the bits (like it's very easy to make FF by mistake, not so easy to make 00). I'm sooooooo close now that I'm down to just working out moving the missiles round on a char line basis and changing colours. Apart from that It's all sorted, is pretty close to the original (have to chop the side of the pool off where it goes under the arch), there probably will be some clash due to the 5 colour aspect but that can be minimised by ordering the colours cleverly and also maybe (especially in the player only area) utilising some PMGs as masks (yeah, more complex code but not much more). There may be a couple of subtle colours missing from the C64 one but I may even be able to fix that once I start working on the missile stuff. More news when I can feel my arm again although I fear a trip to the doctors is called for. Pete

Yeah, I'm certainly not looking to change colours on every scanline just obvious places like the mountains/sky. There will probably be a couple of places which either need editing slightly or a few scanline changes but not many. Pete

hehe yeah it's a biatch to work out but all the colours in the players are also in the background so then it's a case of using the pmgs to add as many extra colours as possible, and colour splits etc as well. I've got it like 90% worked out but have been messing around with some other stuff today. Pete

I'm sure I read somewhere that they did think of suing System 3. Also this was posted in an article on C64.com "However, System 3 then faced a lengthy court battle with arcade publishers Data East, who claimed System 3 had ripped off their game Karate Champ. After a year of counter battles, the American court granted the victory to System 3, which had implications for arcade publishers as a whole. The argument was that karate is karate and no game publisher could copyright that for themselves. System 3 also had to fight off suggestions from Melbourne House that International Karate had also ripped off Way of the Exploding Fist, but again this proved in System 3's favour." Pete

I've thought of all kinds of methods other than the ones I've talked about here and the problem with them all is they compromise in some way. I want to make it as close as possible to the c64 one, if that just means more hard work for me I'm fine with that I'm pretty sure when the layout of colours is sorted out (I've barely scratched the surface of what the A8 can do in my reasonings yet) then the actual softsprite routines etc are no more difficult than any other game. If I can't do it, give me a smack and tell me to listen up next time Pete

Hey José, Yeah I sent them to you As I said STE'86 (who joined the forum recently) ripped them from the c64 version and put them together onto bitmaps for running through a grabber later, so everyone thank him for his hard work (presuming you care about an A8 Fist that is). As for asking for the sprites and the joystick moves, well dude, you've got to start understanding there aren't a lot of people who have the knowledge to do stuff like that in fact as you don't seem able, currently I'm the only one who can do it and code up a demo/game. If you can't do the code for it then I'd be careful taking up too much time on working on the background in G2F because I for one won't use anything that doesn't adhere to the way I'm writing my code or has changes that I don't think are necessary. Don't take what I say the wrong way, I'm not saying "don't do anything you're wasting your time", it's good to see people willing to do what they can to help but unless you're going to liaise with whoever is going to write the code before going off and coming up with your own methods you're likely to find your time HAS been wasted. If you're producing something that works as well as you think, fantastic it will certainly save other people a lot of time and effort. Pete

Don't worry, it's all under control. Read the boring bits of the thread too Lots of solutions to the different backgrounds. Coding has begun (although quite slowly atm while I work on some other stuff at the same time). Pete

Who where what? lol Sorry, there isn't an A8 version of it yet, hence this thread. The screenshots are from the C64 version and are standard fare on that machine. Pete

I've sent you some of the sprite frames STE'86 just ripped from the C64 version for me. Say thanks to him cuz it was a lot of work Pete

Stunning retort. Gotta have the last word eh?

I've got a perfect right to be "Mr Thread Police" as does anyone else on a public forum and so should they when people start spoiling in other peoples threads. It goes on a lot on this forum like some people have nothing better to do. As I said of course you can have an opinion but I never said you MUST keep it to yourself (that's just you taking what I said in the worst possible way so you feel justified in having a go back), I said sometimes it's just better to. I might be of the opinion that you're as ugly as my neighbours dog but I'd have the decency not to pipe up and tell you if I saw you in the street. I don't have a problem with Carmel, if you do then that's your problem. Pete

Not sure what you're asking me to do but if it's anything to do with graphics I can't help. I HATE graphics apps with a passion and only ever just write my own to do things I need. If you're looking for all the animation frames of the sprites? I'm trying to get those from someone now and I'll pass them on when I do. Pete

Please make it on G2F for me The screen you were looking at with the Buddha is pretty simple compared to the one I've been working on so will just drop into place once I've got this stuff worked out but I still don't think that one will be easy using the red/white players. Anyway I have 0 experience with G2F and don't know as much about A8 capabilities as the rest of you guys and I can't take the time to learn yet another graphics app/editor atm. I'd rather code a quick one of my own that does things how I want then I don't have to get frustrated with it.. Pete *edit* Speaking of last ninja, that's even easier than this damned Fist background to work out as you can do the ninjas as players easily because they're so small. The masking isn't a problem, the colours only need changing a bit by moving some background around slightly. Simple but the overall game engine/editor/etc is a lot more complex.

This (as a week old user on this forum) is the type of unnecessary stuff I've seen since I joined that goes off in every thread. If people who weren't interested in a thread kept their noses out of it everyone would be happy but instead people have to have a quick snipe at something they aren't interested in. The interested people defend themselves, the sniper gets all shirty and off kicks another argument. I'm not saying people can't have an opinion but in some cases it's just better to keep it to yourself Now I shall duck and wait for the flying stuff to go overhead Pete

Not wanting to cause a fuss but , it's a public forum, people are replying to the question. Kind of means it's not so useless to at least some people. If you don't want to reply don't but why ask why someone is asking perfectly reasonable questions. Pete

If I reduce the PMG usage in the lower background I'd have nowhere near enough colours. I think something along the lines of my last method explanation would work better. Also, yeah if anyone else want's to take this on and use different I'd love to play it Fist was the reason I bought my C64. Me personally I want to do it as close to the C64 one as I can, just to prove it IS possible After that (if I still have the will to live lol) I'll use the code for software sprites, collision detection, game logic etc and try to do a 4 player version, just then it wont be able to cross the guys into the background are. But hey, thats what IK+ does Pete

I just thought of a problem with the method I've come up with so far. Most if not all of the PMGs will be used beneath the playfield to add large areas of colour. This will become a problem when the guys go over those areas because the big blocks of black beneath them will show over those "transparent but with PMGs" areas and you'll see them as welll big black squares. I'll need to come up with a way of masking them to at least close to the players size. I may need to use the missiles for this which means they cant then be used for extra background detail. It's either that or use all the colours (yellow, black, white, red, pink) yellow as 0 then the others. That then gives me all the PMGs free for messing with the background. I can then use the black as replacement for the dark grey (maybe some stippling in some small areas too). That way I don;t have to worry about the guys at all (apart from some char sized clash) and can use some colour changes and all the PMGs for bacgkround colour changes. It'll get there eventually but this is why I eventually want to write my own editor if I take on any more stuff. I would've included a way to switch stuff around easily between chars and pmgs so I could just say ok, no longer 2 black players, they're now chars. I've had another look at g2f and it's just not for me, not intuitive enough but that's just me, I'm sure it's a great app (and from the gallery it certainly produces results) Pete

Yeah but, if I want to use 2 players max to make the black (else the rest of the screen becomes impossible) then all the black would be 4 pixel wide. yeah? At least without some messing around with the data for the players to get the correct PFs to make the black and that means redrawing them all really. And also like you said I'd likely get black where I don't want it in other instances. I've seen a few people mention this "black for free" thing and also most of them saying hmm it's never really been used. I can see why I can actually think of some uses for it but reaaaaly not for Fist. Basically, if I'm using 2 players to make the black it's way simpler to put them behind the playfield. Pete

On the priority conflict thing that needs players OVER playfield with some bits set in the hardware register which confuses it into not ORing but just producing black? If it does work over the playfield then i;d end up limited to 4 pixel wide black areas. Better to shove it underneath if you've got to use players to do it anyway may as well let the foregrounds higher res be the mask. Pete

That's the problem, I want to use as few tricks as possible. At least ones that I don't know what they'll do where. I'm still juggling ideas anyway. It's close now but like I say, I'm a little worried about the "clash" and some other stuff but when I looked at it again today it only took me 5 mins to come up with this method. What's the possibility of putting 2 quad expanded players right next to each other? they're only going to be solid black so no other changes needed apart from the x pos. They basically need to move in well not 1/2s of the screen but u get what I mean if 2 guys are far apart then the x pos will be where the guys are as they get closer then so do the players. Once they got to touching then they dont need to get any closer cuz the maximum 2 guys widths will be covered and it'll only become a narrower area needed if they get even closer. Is that possible? is there a restriction on the left of the screen due to not enough cycles? Pete

After stopping thinking about it for the night then just starting from fresh I'm very close to a solution for the seemingly most complex screen (the one with the grey arch, red tower, water etc). It's close without doing much more than a couple of colour changes and no horizontal messing around. Now I can start to think about those too and may get it close to perfect. The only problem is going to be the 4/5 colour clashes so I need to look at what I've come up with now and see if there is an alteration that will at least stop that happening when the guys are overlapping but standing still. Some clash with the background when they're moving won't matter so much. The way I see it is this... The only colour used in the sprites and not the background is black. So use the 2 players I was going to make white and red, black instead (maybe use 1 and repeat it if its possible to repeat them close enough together). Now we have playfield colours of white,red,pink,yellow and transparent (so whatever I want to use it for cuz the black is overlaying it). Now without any more hassle we've got the sprites, the floor, the tower, the large area of green (if I use green for background colour), the pink in the trees, the bridge, the yellow in the "background". I've still got 2 players and all the missiles left. So with those I need to make the water, the archway, the browns of the trees and the lighter green + the mountains. 1 quad player should cover the arch area (under the playfield) and use the missiles to draw in at least some of the darker grey parts of it. Left with a player. Use this one again under the palyfield to make the water (might have to edit the background a bit because that pool is too wide), split the colour above the water to get the brown in the trees. I'll stop typing there, as you can see it's quite close without any changing of colours mid line or reusing players per line (unless I can, safely for the guys which would leave 1 more for the background). Hopefully I'll have it all worked out soon Pete

lol I'm sure I read that a couple of days ago too and it just left my mind because my mind didn't want to know Pete

128/256 modes I'm meaning the number of chars in 5 colour vs 4 colour. I think lol Or did I get this wrong? using a 4 colour character mode you have 256 8x8 chars, using the 5 colour mode bit 7 sets it to switch the colours so you have 128/128. Don't worry, it's just how my head works. I'm not used to the A8 lingo yet I don't think Fist will need toooo many software sprites. It's another toss up between speed and space. I've got an editor (if I can find which PC it's hiding on) which will chop those sprites up into a group of, well, whatever sizes you tell it to. eg a 16x16, a couple of 8x16 and some 8x8s That'll take less ram to store and less chars to plot but more cpu to init all the different sprites. I wrote the editor to write what was basically Fist on the GBA using some sprites and backgrounds STE'86 had done years ago on the ST Pete

Yeah, but how Yellow, black, pink, background arghhh I've got to stop thinking about it tonight else I'll be having dreams about fighting multicoloured ninjas who merge chameleon like with the surroundings and kick my ass with their transparent feet Pete

Pretty sure I understand it already I've used it on other systems. What I haven't come up against on other systems is the lack of colours to this degree. It's so frustrating that there are so many nice colours but you can't use them lol 128/256 char modes, I can't decide It adds an extra colour but also (as you say) more complexity to the whole thing. if you're using 4 out of 5 of the colours in an area of the background and Mr White sticks his fat head in there and he's using the 5th it all goes wrong. But does it go wrong just a bit or a lot. There might be some colour clash/glitch but if its for 1 frame would anyone notice? Pete