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Last Ninja - the making


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Oh my... Where were we on February 28th 1987 ? ;)

 

The Last Ninja -> ATARI 800/130XE available 28th February 1987

 

Is this real or just "Photoshopping" ?

But, even if such game exists, it may look similar to some other games of this time....

 

jinxter.png

 

food_fight.png

 

 

 

EMKAY: All of you know by now that I AM TOTALLY CRAZY ABOUT "LAST NINJA". Will I ever put a joke, or a lie with this tittle.

It's a real picture. But You can go to this SITE and see for yourself!... Or you can try to buy the magazine on Ebay, it's your money!...

 

By the way, all that conversation of "PSs and WIIs"... What this have to do with "my" Last Ninja?

You are "topic-jacking" my post!... (just kidding)

 

 

José Pereira.

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my 2 cents... I am working in games biz since for 9 years and everybody who is working in knows why Nintendo broaded towards new target groups outside the "core gamers" and has left the "cold war" of technology... GB was inferior and got extended life by Pokemon. NDS recapted the watch games with the dual screen plus touch while Wii was a big suprise even for the EA's, Ubisoft's and Activision's around...

now publishers get used to it how to adress the new "toy" and voila. people jumped on it... but for me... I prefer my NDS, 360, SNES... ;)

 

Unfortunatly platform gets overcrowded with "non-games" and it reminds me like when 2600 went down... too much DS games on the market with mediocre quality. Even approved by Nintendo.

 

But to make a long story short... Nintendo does not target anymore the hardcore gamers but still some games arrise (New Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario & Luigi, Wii ware classic games) for "us".

 

 

 

 

So now you need testosterone to play computer games well and a lack of it not only causes you to suck at them and buy the wrong system but also causes homosexuality?

 

OK - time to leave this thread.

 

No, stop trying to badly paraphrase my comments!

 

Playing Brain Training or Nintendogs is the same as playing Super Stardust PSP or Colin McReas rally? Doing excercises on Wii-Fit is the same as playing Wipeout HD? These are not even games Nintendo are pushing on their systems! And to top it off the price is almost the same as a PS3 at this rate with Wii+ remotes x2 AND the graphics are seriously PS2 level at best.

 

And this is good for the gaming market how? Yeah it's great for girls or mums who want to lose a bit of flab whilst having fun.....it's not quite the same as playing Killzone II on a 15 projected screen though is it. Imagine if one day ALL movie production companies decided to make chick flicks or kids movies ONLY and all you could buy were these films because they decided sales of action/sci-fi/complex plot-twist films were only selling 1/3 as much. Sure for some people Bridget Jones is great but not all, and certainly I would not like to be in a market where New World pictures dropped their latest classy sci-fi horror movie to do a parody of Bridget Jones so they don't go bankrupt. This is exactly the message being sent out by Microsoft and Sony with their Natal/3D controller concepts.

 

I feel sorry that real gaming is dying and being replaced with the equivalent of 99 cents PC game type 'fun' rubbish that offends nobody and yet no real gamer would actually want.

 

I made no comment about these pathetic Nintendo consoles affecting peoples sexuality or their choice of actual gender through potential future surgery. To tout a flawed 'revolutionary' controller that is barely an improvement on the 'Le Stick' as sold in 1984 or that the graphics are 'acceptable' or 'not a problem' really is the comments of a person who is definitely not going to have an IQ of 138 (same as me) though I reckon ;)

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Hi Jose!

 

I really admire your effort on this conversion but I'm affraid that you will realize very soon that things are much more complicated.

 

1) G2F looks like a very good tool for creating gfx on A8 but nice static pictures have nothing to do with a real game using moving objects. G2F uses advantages of Antic 4 mode and handling (big) SW sprites in text modes is very complicated.

 

2) Last Ninja is a pretty complex game and I think it's impossible to create A8 port without (very) experienced coder. If you don't have one, please don't waste your energy because your project is already dead at this moment.

 

F.

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Personally, I'd not bother with monochrome + PMGs - looks like a cheap Spectrum port.

 

Even Antic 4 + PMG underlays would be somewhat constrictive.

 

Another avenue might be CIN (interleaved GTIA Colour with Mode E providing luma) - 64 colours for the backgrounds, but a bit of a CPU penalty. But, should leave all the PMGs free to do whatever required.

Since the active part of the screen isn't excessively large, the CPU cost would be partially returned by not needing software sprites (or at least, not too many of them).

 

post-7804-1247582249_thumb.png

 

Actual pic from emulator. The source was rushed... used Photoshop to resize down to 160x96.

Edited by Rybags
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Hmm,

afaik CIN uses Gr. 15 + Gr. 11, thats a resolution of 160x192 (or 160x200 in Lepix-CIN) with up to 64 colors.

The picture you are showing Rybags (with a resolution of 160x96) looks more like TIP which is Gr. 9 + Gr. 10 + Gr. 11.

On the other hand, I am not sure if CIN or TIP uses more CPU... or if any of these two gfx modes is usable for games at all.

 

Besides I have high doubts that creating a game works by a) creating the "pictures" and then b) let someone code the game. In my A8 collection I have lots of pictures/picture-shows for games that in the end were never programmed - and I guess the same will happen to the (G2F) "Last Ninja" pictures, no matter how good they are. But, if you contact some programmer Jose and co-op (team-up) with him, maybe you end up with something more than a nice picture show, at least I would hope so...

 

Any programmer out there, motivated enough to code Last Ninja...?!?

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

P.S.: This post is not meant to de-motivate you Jose, I would really like to play Last Ninja on the A8, but pics alone will not make it happen...

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The pic I posted is actually my CIN+ mode, so I kinda cheated... 96 available colours with limitations, interleaved Antic Colour mode with Antic 4.

Extra 2 luma combos with PMs and the PF3 colour from Mode 4.

 

Another poss... put the weapon/status stuff on the left. Use a mix of hires and multicolour for that part, then switch GTIA mode for the main window (CIN mode).

 

The other thing with CIN (and the other mixed GTIA modes), you can do it in perceived higher vertical resolution by toggling the colour/luma lines per frame. Use the same colour data, have luma for each line. Cost is about 12K for a bitmap pic.

 

Problem is of course, the mixed GTIA modes to get more colour aren't NTSC friendly.

Edited by Rybags
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Just checked what happened in that "bad grey lines" on the bottom.

 

G2F screen is O.K. I save it also in .xex. In Atari800winplus I get this lines.

I went back to G2F to see what's happening.

Went to CHECK option. No errors but a warning on that lines. Why?

I think I know. In that line were the weapons, I erase all with the black colour, but not all. I have there the "Nunchacus" weapon. Then, I create a Player with priority0. But, something, wasn't the way I like. And I simply went to Zoom mode and change Player pixels with the correspondant PFs.

Because Black colour it's above this player you don't see the player brownish cell under it. So I have an invisible player. I think it's this.

 

 

QUESTION 1:

And this come me to another question: Like in this case, if I simply want to erase completely a PM on G2F, what I have to do?

This is because, change it with PFs., as I now learn, don't ends the promblem...

 

QUESTION 2:

I have now all the pictures of LN1 and 2 changed to 40 characters horizontal wide. But I take this one from another folder, and when I remember, it was to late. I went to a part of G2F where I can move, paste... Give the X,Y coordenates and so on. I want to move this picture 2 characters to the right, that are not visible on T.V. Is this possible in G2F? It's in this place I said. And in this case what values and what to do?

 

 

 

I know I post you so many questions, but you are the only ones that can help me. If you sometimes don't understand my English, then, simply say something.

I need you. Not only to learn more, but, in this case, to do the screens, as most, as possible, in a way, that it's possible to use in a real game.

If I never get someone to code, the screens were created. Probably omeone later can take them.

And, doing this as free time job, with A8 things, gives me many, many pleasure.

 

If we probably had G2F on PC, in that time, even, without internet, things could have been different.

(C64 could have their "G2F alike" and friend to friend could change BMP files)

 

Think of this.

José Pereira.

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:lolblue: You need to stop for a moment and read the replies you've had so far José. I've never written a game by designing the screens first. Its never going to work that way for complex games. If you need an engine that is different for every screen in the game thats a big task. You really should start with something that requires considerably less skill to code. That way you can make a start on it and get some achievement in completing it. Then over time move on to bigger and better things.
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:lolblue: You need to stop for a moment and read the replies you've had so far José. I've never written a game by designing the screens first. Its never going to work that way for complex games. If you need an engine that is different for every screen in the game thats a big task. You really should start with something that requires considerably less skill to code. That way you can make a start on it and get some achievement in completing it. Then over time move on to bigger and better things.

 

 

 

GroovyBee, I stop many times to see the posts. But sometimes I get that my topic is dead, with no replys. How many questions I made, and no answers.

I know that probably I'm alone on this project.

 

 

What I'm trying to do it's create the screens in a way that the engine will be the same for all screen games. And it's why I post and ask you all so many times. If I first try find someone to the code, I would not go anywhere... I will just seat on my hands (where we read this on an A8 game: Husak's game Jonnhie's Problem).

 

In this last months I get knowledge to know what can or not can be done. What I'm trying is the achivments to do the screens and someone simply get them and create something. I could start learn G2F many time ago. I can design all that games screens from C64 you see in this and other thread. But that screens are like we all do in the Loading screens. I probably never get someone to code the game. But, probably, I would have done my best, and do things like "1+1 it's two", no other way possible... If someone wants to be with me, fine. If not, I say again: "IT IS JUST FOR THE FUN OF AN A8 LOVER".

 

I feel myself, like a child, with a new toy. All this new things, G2F and what I learned so far this last months, make me so happy, and with the dream that I can do all (O.K., not all, something) that A8 users deserve, and never had.

And in this LAST NINJA HAS MY PRIORITY.

 

Other ones:

R-Type &/or Armalyte

Double Dragon (Renegade or others of this kind)

Ghost'n'Goblins/Ghouls'n'Ghosts

Out Run/power Drift

 

And, this is for STEVE, If think that way of doing SHADOW OF THE BEAST, in the Amiga way, it was real good. It will put C64 version to shame. I think it is the best example of the A8 colours, DLIs and machine technics I ever see. I said this here some time ago. Is there anyone here, that can look to the YouTube video and code this one? Why any of you see this game. Many work to do, O.K. But the main code is there. The ideas is there. Probably here, you have to do something like me on LN. Do screen and sprite graphics. Something more, probably... Many more, certain... But not all.. Think of this!...

 

Yours sincerely.

(Ilearn this on school)

José Pereira.

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Someone else is working on The Last Ninja:

http://atarionline.pl/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=85

 

Josè, perhaps no one will use your work but I appreciate it.

Moreover, you are learning many things and enjoying Atari computers.

 

I too have a Wii; my favourite game is Atari emulator!

Edited by Philsan
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That project was dead for some time.

If think no one post there anything in the last days.

It's good to hear that someone is trying to do it.

I post something there.

 

Perhaps, no one will use my work. Perhaps no, but I can do something. I ask the author, there, if he wants to change some ideas.

The important thing: Having LAST NINJA on A8 in the best way we can.

 

I will continue to do some screens on my own.

 

I expect that the author of LN you see in atarionline.pl contacts. And, most important, just to give me good news of his work.

 

José Pereira.

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Someone else is working on The Last Ninja:

http://atarionline.pl/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=85

 

Josè, perhaps no one will use your work but I appreciate it.

Moreover, you are learning many things and enjoying Atari computers.

 

I too have a Wii; my favourite game is Atari emulator!

 

Actually, THIS guy is doing it wrong. Just putting around some movement on a blank screen has even less in common with a game than José's work. José is doing it right and I hope he will find some good programmer sharing his ideas.

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José... When I was twelve years old, I was so outraged that the Atari 8-bit line was getting less and less game releases, I started to port graphics from the C64 to the A8 just by looking at magazines... all done in basic with plot and drawto (or graphics 0 with redefined characters).

 

Anyway, I tacked screens from Top Gun, Knight Rider (both by Ocean), Starglider (Rainbird) but this was just static stuff except for a few Joystick motions that would bring you to the next screen (...).

 

(And most of it was lame anyway... Atarifrog has seen that stuff... I'm sure he'll agree).

 

My point is start with a game engine first, there's a lot of resource online to look at.

 

It's great that you're tackling the graphics because that forces you to comprehend the environment, the parameters you'll have to satisfy once you get to the final stages of programming but, without game engine, you'll have a hard time play anything at the end of the day.

 

Good Luck !

 

PA.

Edited by pierreandre
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I have to agree in many things you said here. But I want to put you a question:

 

What you prefer, someone that knows how to programm ("Lda, Sta,...) and don't do nothing. Simply talks about others.

 

I give a medal to someone who has more information, maps, sprites, walktroughts, different versions. And that saw thousand of times the videos. Know where you have Ninja under or above, etç,...

 

Ninja and enemy sprites direct port from C64 don't work. Hi-resol. to middle resol. you get double size player... A fat one... And in the playing area it takes almost all the way. It seems hozizontal wide and less in vertical. The Ninja/Enemy shapes must be more vertical than horizontal widest. The author of that on Last Ninja, simply port the Ninja shape to A8. It gets double on horizontal resolution. If he is read this, I'm not trying to say it's work it's bad. But you simply can see, in G2F, that when you Load a picture with any of the Ninja/Enemy shapes, the horizontal wide is the same, it only chande to middle resol. So, the solution it's sprites with 10/11 on top of body and 12 on legs widest horizontal resol. on A8 160 display.

 

Also, I don't understand the diference between my screns and others. I never create screens like you all do in G2F. If you see Green Beret game screen images on G2F, you understand what I mean. Good looking, but not possible in a real game.

What I am trying to do it's totally the other thing. This is why I ask you so many times. I want to have knowledge to have 100% certain that my screens would result in a game.

 

I don't want to do all things myself. I want to ear ideas and real solutions. Sometimes what I get and many more people here: simply, some words, that say that I cannot do, or something could be as insignificant as 1pixel up or down.

 

I sometimes feel that you (some of you), don't want to see new things comminng on A8.

 

Please do me a favour, answer my questions, even you don't think I can do this. If the answers are not to this, they're probably be to other one, or just, to my A8 knowning.

 

 

Don't be angry with myself, or what I said here today.

 

I think, we all want the best of ours A8.

 

Best regards (like always).

José Pereira.

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I don't want to do all things myself. I want to hear ideas and real solutions. Sometimes what I get and many more people here: simply, some words, that say that I cannot do, or something could be as insignificant as 1pixel up or down.

 

I sometimes feel that you (some of you), don't want to see new things coming on A8.

Judge that against the experience of the group of people hinting that either 1) such an engine is almost (but not entirely) impossible on the A8 or 2) the approach you are taking is the wrong one.

 

Also, for such a complex thing, don't expect a < 1/2 day turn-around with responses to say 'yes, technically that will work' - getting upset that people aren't responding the way you'd like will, IMO, discourage people from responding.

 

I would respect that the programmer's on this board generally know their stuff and, as such, if their response was short and sweet then it would be up to me to challenge that with better proof. I see this is what you are attempting to do and concede are free to continue doing.

 

I can see you love this game, I too like titles like 'Paradroid' and 'Impossible Mission'. Losses over hi-rez C64 sprites to A8 are livable with but require either 1) good graphic artist to convert them or 2) pinch them from another machine's port of the game. These can work and still not interfere so much with gameplay but certainly can't please everyone - there will alway be compromise.

 

My opinion would be for you to hold off on this title for now and attempt something challenging but not so ambitious - my recommendation would be Rock'n'Bolt. What is not clear to me though is are you volunteering to do coding yourself and learn on-the-job, perhaps under the guidance of an A8 programmer?

 

Regards,

Mark

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I sometimes feel that you (some of you), don't want to see new things comminng on A8.

 

i think the answer to that is "is anything new actually going to come out of this" and at the moment the answer is looking pretty much like a "no" because there's nothing behind these G2F screens to actually drive a game or even any back-of-a-napkin calculations to say it's even possible considering the CPU overheads; i'm not even sure how many of these screens are going to be possible within a single load or if it needs expansion RAM, how much we're talking about (remember, they're compressed on the C64, have you taken that into consideration?) so there could be other issues like large disk accesses that may cripple the playability of the overall game to consider.

 

Personally, i want to see new games released for the A8 and indeed every 8-bit.

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Laserdisc and Betamax failed for different reasons. Betamax tapes were limited to 60mins at first and very few films could be rented in non VHS format. Ditto for the Phillips V2000. Laserdisc however was impossible to record on and film releases were still not as plentiful as for the VHS systems and again not possible to record so a playback only device.

 

Unfortunately Laserdisc did not fail because you could not record to it - otherwise Vinyl and DVD would also have failed, it failed because there was no compelling consumer promise. I have around 200 LD's, I liked the format, doesn't stop the fact that big fragile discs, that are expensive and have a slight picture quality increase over VHS is not something people felt was compelling...

 

The Wii is for retards, girls and homos, the fact it has PS2 graphics is neither here nor there, the people who bought a Wii probably wouldn't play on a proper games console like the 360 or PS3 simple fact....

 

Not only is that deeply offensive, sexist and downright STUPID, but it's also wrong - I have all 3 current generation consoles nestled under my TV - I play them all, for the different, interesting and good quality software available on each platform...

 

Graphics do not equal gameplay...

 

Never have and never will...

 

Now take your hate and leave this messageboard!

 

sTeVE

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The Wii is for retards, girls and homos, the fact it has PS2 graphics is neither here nor there, the people who bought a Wii probably wouldn't play on a proper games console like the 360 or PS3 simple fact....i

Because of this statement, I have given you a one week suspension from AtariAge. Please read the board Guidelines, as the next outburst of this manner will result in a permanent ban:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?act=boardrules

 

In particular,

 

Personal Attacks

 

While we understand some discussions can become heated, we will not tolerate members insulting each other in the public forums. Likewise, any racial, ethnic, gender-based insults or other personal discriminations are not permitted. The strength of your arguments goes out the window once you resort to personal attacks. If you find that you often get angry when discussing a certain topic, we suggest you refrain from involving yourself in such discussions."

..Al

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Having read through this thread, because it's another game I'd like to see ported to A8 because I think it can be, here are my thoughts (that's if anyone is interested lol)

 

First thing someone needs to do is write a level editor. Take a look at the c64 version, put it on an emulator (maybe output a video) and watch it draw the screen. What is needed are all those objects as separate entities. The rocks, the trees, the whatever else. This not only saves ram (you only need 1 copy of each object in ram and a map for them) but also allows you to mess around with them in the editor. I can see it working quite easily by using that method of putting player sprites under the screen to get more colours and also splits on select lines to get even more colour from the normal 4/5. Once again the editor can be used to do clever stuff like set a flag for each object being drawn to the screen to say if its 2bpp pixels need to be changed in any way. That means you can have an object with its normal bit patterns of 00,01,10,11 and say switch the middle two (it will probably be necessary that this can happen depending on how the colours are currently being used in that area of the map). Also these objects, whilst being built onto the screen create the mask map for any kind of spriting to be done, either software or hardware. Depending on ram you can either go the bpp or nibble per pixel (I don't think there are more than 16 depths of objects) equaling about 16k for a mask, eek! or a more complex method which is kind of too hard for me to explain here but is based on building a character map of strips of the screen and that character map is either, nothing there, whole 4x8 masked or "other" which would be an index to a proper 4x8 mask for that area of screen. The actual drawing/masking of 2 software sprites of the size needed (and any other things like when that dragon or whatever it is pops out the cave) should be easily doable with the A8's cpu.

 

All in all I see it as being very possible to do but the grunt work is going to be in writing an editor to make the screens the same way the c64 does (and allow for that extra trickery to get more colours). There really is no use taking screengrabs of the c64 version, running them through some app that does god knows what and spits out a pretty screen ;)

 

Anyone experienced in writing "tools" and is interested, drop me a PM and I'll try to explain better. Unfortunately I'm rubbish with windows coding but if I have time I might try to knock something up, just don't hold your breath. I just hope my thoughts are useful to someone.

 

 

Pete

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