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Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!


rensoup

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They means that in your case you can set the holes in prince character in every place where the skin will appear. Then you can use only one sprite with 4x width, which will has the color of the skin, and such sprite should cover full the prince character. The sprite should has priority set to appear behind other colors, so it will be visible only in places you set holes in the prince character. That way you will achieve desired effect.

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9 hours ago, rensoup said:

 

Ok but I still don't see how that helps me with the player skin ? ?

 

In the 4 color mode, you get 3 colors that filter the resolution of a Player. 

Normally , the Playfield is just the Background that has the lowest priority. 

If you chose a color that fills up the most part of the Playfield, at exchange it with the background, you were able to filter the resolution of the PMg. 

So everywhere you use the "color" of the background and set a player behind it, you get a colored range.

 

People mostly don't like that way of using the "inversion" , as the Border turns from black to a brighter color.

In theory you get a 4 times better color density without any CPU use  , by that absolutely no go of a colored border ;)

 

Really, They prefer a 4 color game screen with a black border in prior to a 9 color screen with a colored border. 

 

 

 

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Things could get even more interesting if scrolling games take use of that.

Imagine Mode 4 , GPRIOR 0.

2 Registers filter the Player 3 and 4. Two other registers add colors using Player 3 and 4 as overlay. 

This allowed to have a huge range of attack waves with separate colored "enemies".

While Player 0 and 1 could give additional colors to smaller objects , like the player's protagonist .

The key always was to have a fluent software sprite engine that allows the overlay.

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3 hours ago, Mq. said:

They means that in your case you can set the holes in prince character in every place where the skin will appear. Then you can use only one sprite with 4x width, which will has the color of the skin, and such sprite should cover full the prince character. The sprite should has priority set to appear behind other colors, so it will be visible only in places you set holes in the prince character. That way you will achieve desired effect.

I understand plugging holes into playfield colors and having sprites underneath, I don't think it works here.

 

3 hours ago, emkay said:

People mostly don't like that way of using the "inversion" , as the Border turns from black to a brighter color.

In theory you get a 4 times better color density without any CPU use  , by that absolutely no go of a colored border ;)

 

I understand the inversion process but all 4 colors are used everywhere on the screen. There's always going to be COLBK pixels where the 2x or 4x sprite will show trough, no matter what COLBK is (white black, blue,...)

 

If you still think that works, I'd like to see an example in G2F, where the player is behind a pillar with a 4x PMG for the skin

 

The only way to use 2x width (not 4x) that I can see is to have a 1 pixel outline (different from COLBK) around the player. While that would look good, it would require 50% extra storage (20KB?)

 

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1 hour ago, emkay said:

Could you post a 4 color image where the prince is behind a pillar, running?

I would have to grab it from Altirra just like you...

 

Here's a simpler example

charframe.png.300cee0eeda0a5ec91f1b2119f2a8002.png

 

You can see that the skin color touches every other color: black, white, medium blue, dark blue. So whatever color you choose for COLBK it might show through (white as COLBK might not be too bad for this frame but there are hundreds of them)

 

Then you add front pillars, gates,... on top of the problem

 

it also rules out PRIOR0 which I was hoping to use for the vest (maybe)

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1 hour ago, rensoup said:

I would have to grab it from Altirra just like you...

 

Here's a simpler example

charframe.png.300cee0eeda0a5ec91f1b2119f2a8002.png

 

You can see that the skin color touches every other color: black, white, medium blue, dark blue. So whatever color you choose for COLBK it might show through (white as COLBK might not be too bad for this frame but there are hundreds of them)

 

Then you add front pillars, gates,... on top of the problem

 

it also rules out PRIOR0 which I was hoping to use for the vest (maybe)

 

I see. 

You want to have 5 color software sprites on a 4 color map. Seems quite a challenge ;)

In that case you sacrifice any chance of having a "balanced" colorization. 

 

 

 

 

 

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First of all I would like to thank you very much for doing this. This has been a very long lasting dream ever since we saw the excellent C64 port. As far as the graphical style goes I find it perfect. Even the turban fits in nicely, altough I got used to the Atari St prince without one. Do not change anything and concetrate finishing the project would be my advice :).

If you need playtesting with real hardware just let me know. I already played the game with 130 XE and SIO2SD and it works ok. If the prince dies the game tends to be stuck after a moment, tough. I've also got a 800 XL and 65XE for playtesting if needed.

 

Next project: Bubble Bobble anyone? :)

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9 hours ago, Wilheim said:

I just noticed a small issue: the loading process crashes on Altirra when you activate a Happy Drive emulation. I didn't test it on real hardware yet, but I think it could crash on it.

Anyone else's seen this?

 

I've tried with happy drive 810& 1050 (1050 with/without accurate sector timing) using altirra 3.90.20. Seems ok

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 12/12/2019 at 8:02 PM, Wilheim said:

Wow! Great demo! I do really enjoy it!

 

I just noticed a small issue: the loading process crashes on Altirra when you activate a Happy Drive emulation. I didn't test it on real hardware yet, but I think it could crash on it.

 

Regards!

Though I haven't tried it, that sounds only normal even for real hardware; there are plenty of original disks and ATR's (written to floppy) that will not load on a Happy drive unless it is put into standard, non-Happy mode.

Edited by Gunstar
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12 hours ago, Jacques said:

While keeping fingers crossed for this great project, can't wait for next playable demo ;)

Well it's taking longer than expected ?

 

PMG overlays can be a challenge and in PoP it gets a lot worse!

 

6 hours ago, Gunstar said:

Though I haven't tried it, that sounds only normal even for real hardware; there are plenty of original disks and ATR's (written to floppy) that will not load on a Happy drive unless it is put into standard, non-Happy mode.

I'd never heard of that but I've never owned one myself

 

(although I used to know some people who did and it seemed trouble free but perhaps I'm just delusional)

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1 hour ago, rensoup said:

Well it's taking longer than expected ?

 

PMG overlays can be a challenge and in PoP it gets a lot worse!

 

 

 

Hmmm...

 

This could mean two things:

 

1) You didn't read my posts

2) You ignored my posts

 

A colorful PoP with up to 12 colors per scanline could be possible. But single moving objects were restricted to 3 colors, if you want to have a balanced colorization. 

 

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3 hours ago, Jacques said:

For me it loads without any problem from SIO2SD under QMEG OS 4.04, the only minor trouble/feature is, it keeps disabling 3xSIO (UltraSpeed) and always loads in around 55 seconds in 1x SIO?

hmm... I don't know anything about that... that'd be for xxl...

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2 hours ago, emkay said:

A colorful PoP with up to 12 colors per scanline could be possible. But single moving objects were restricted to 3 colors, if you want to have a balanced colorization. 

You need to follow your own advice and make your own version then we can compare.

 

In the meantime I'll just keep going my way.

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1. Emkay seldomly codes, but tells others how to code, is not necessarily a problem, as

2. he does seem to have extensive knowledge of atari 8-bit hardware, but

3. lacks the communication skills to bring it accross, without

4. constantly ending up in name calling from both "sides".

 

How do we solve this for the bettering of the Atari 8-bit community?

 

1. Everybody should stop name calling,

2. keep to hard/software related issues, and

3. if at first somebody still "doesn't get it", try again!

4. Even Linus (of Linux fame) improved his communication skills recently :D

 

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20 minutes ago, ivop said:

1. Emkay seldomly codes, but tells others how to code, is not necessarily a problem, as

2. he does seem to have extensive knowledge of atari 8-bit hardware, but

3. lacks the communication skills to bring it accross, without

4. constantly ending up in name calling from both "sides".

 

How do we solve this for the bettering of the Atari 8-bit community?

 

1. Everybody should stop name calling,

2. keep to hard/software related issues, and

3. if at first somebody still "doesn't get it", try again!

4. Even Linus (of Linux fame) improved his communication skills recently :D

 

Or maybe he can just stop telling people what is and isn't possible since he is usually always wrong.

 

Another example of why he is so frustrating.  On a recent youtube showing parallax and a large running man sprite.  He criticized the example 3 times and on his FOURTH post, said "after watching this I came to the conclusion it looks nice" or some such rubbish (paraphrasing because I can't be arsed to look it up).  What the hell kind of logic is that?

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2 hours ago, adam1977 said:

That's the best post you've ever made and great advice for everyone here on AA :grin:

On this forum there is a great option to ignore specific user. emkay is on my ignore list for a few years now and I strongly hope he will also disappear from replies of the others.

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1 hour ago, Stephen said:

Or maybe he can just stop telling people what is and isn't possible since he is usually always wrong.

 

Another example of why he is so frustrating.  On a recent youtube showing parallax and a large running man sprite.  He criticized the example 3 times and on his FOURTH post, said "after watching this I came to the conclusion it looks nice" or some such rubbish (paraphrasing because I can't be arsed to look it up).  What the hell kind of logic is that?

 

Your perception is really limited. I didn't write such. And I wonder why you get it that way?

 

Btw: How much do you pay to be an allowed Jester in this forums?

 

To the other: In that YT Video , I wrote that the Engine won't end up in a game as it is aimed. 

After being informed that the coder did something clever to use the Atari's hardware, I stated that it COULD become a game that reminds of Bionic Commando. But that implemented to use much smaller sprites. 

People only cannot understand the difference, if they don't know the Atari. 

 

 

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