Heaven/TQA Posted April 14, 2002 Share Posted April 14, 2002 it will be tough... but shaddy kicks...so i have to test my skills in arcade conversion as well... and my decision felt on http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj.../timepilot.html you find there the turbobasic programm to convert snapshots from mame (press f4 to get into the charset (page up, down to skip...) press f12 and then convert the snapshot into 4 color bmp... don't forget to set the "Hx:" harddrives in atari 800win correct... the turbobasic program is just for loading...please ignore the saving routine because it was written for 7800 senso... i will post here progresses...(and on the website...) the gfx could be transfered 100% correct to atari...unfortunatly i dont know yet what kind of gfx mode i will use... in worst case i use antic mode e.... papa, hve ps. have a nice weekstart... it is just another manic monday... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted April 14, 2002 Share Posted April 14, 2002 well, just from looking at the gfx conversion to mode 15, I can say that I think the color scheme is a lot easier on the eyes, but then I've always hated the 4 color "hercules" IBM style graphics with the god-awful purple and blue combinations... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted April 15, 2002 Share Posted April 15, 2002 Excellent - I've not played a really good home version of Timepilot - the MSX one had AWFUL scrolling!!! Gunstar - Timepilot did not look like the RAW graphics dump on TQA - whilst the sprites/bitmaps may have been 4 color (each item) the palettes for the game were nothing like CGA I hope TQA gets his palette sorted too - it looks inverse to me - white shadows and green highlights Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 15, 2002 Author Share Posted April 15, 2002 well...timepilot should be more suitable to atari 7800 where you have different palettes not 1 palette overall... so the planes, clouds, parachutes could have there own... but i 1st try atari 8bit... jet boot... when do you start to code again? hve ps. taquart (TQA) is our group... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted April 15, 2002 Share Posted April 15, 2002 Yes, this is great! This was a fun game, and you have a realistic chance of actually finishing it... Looks like you figured how to get some of the mame ROM stuff. Cool. (to get much more would need the people who wrote the mame driver or the original developers of the coin-op). Excellent that Vector is shaping up too. I'd love to take up your offer of a HIP format Space Harrier title screen (if it's really not too much trouble). You have it working with colour now? Jet Boot, Heaven has laid down the gauntlet! You must feed us some morsels... Have fun and Good Luck Chris [ 04-15-2002: Message edited by: Sheddy ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 16, 2002 Author Share Posted April 16, 2002 well... it will be tough hard... the gfx engine can not use any of the atari custom chips to speed up... it will be the same like shaddy. i use antic mode d (gr.7) with 160x96x4 but compared to 256x224 of the arcade...a good compromise... i have to use double buffering to avoid massive flickering...the screen ram will be organised in 96x256 bytes so the sprite engine can handle the stuff faster... all gfx of the arcade must be doubled because of the konami board seems to use the "H" & "V" flip of the hardware like gameboy or 2600... another good compromise could be to use charmode like in dropzone. as in timepilot you have just 1 plane-gfx attacking you (planes, stuckas, jets, ufos, etc...) you can handle that maybe with the 128 definable chars... the clouds could be done in player missle gfx and the player itself will be copied each frame to the center...a good advantage could be that you can use in charmode the 5th color and the player missles could have different colorsr as well so not an CGA mode... what do you think could be faster and more looking good? this decisison has to be done very quick because the gfx has then to be copied in a certain way... (it is really good that i have started to code on a7800 so the organzizing of the hardware & gfx can help...) heaven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted April 16, 2002 Share Posted April 16, 2002 Heaven, I mailed you some mockup screens - using correct color depth and sprites etc. I tried and failed to be able to post 'em here Let me know what u think... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 17, 2002 Author Share Posted April 17, 2002 steve, thanx i recieved them... with your hints it will be much more tough...an antic e fullscreen with tons of action... but... we will see... when i am at work i will try to post your pictures here...maybe i have more luck... (and i will put them on the website www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/timepilot.html) more to come later... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted April 17, 2002 Share Posted April 17, 2002 Steve's had a lot of experience doing different things, so I hope he's come up with some good stuff for how to do this game. What you are thinking seems reasonable enough for doing with character mode. But just a few thoughts spring to mind...just speculation, only to think about.... Seem to be a lot of clouds for just PM graphics (although maybe if chunky and single colour...). Suppose you don't really want to try multiplex them vertically, if you still want to keep a parallax effect. Maybe in character mode, big clouds as characters and playfield scrolls around? Yes, too many enemy planes for PM graphics. But, what about PM graphics for parachutists and Boss planes?? Chris PS Nice trick with the 96*256 to speed the sprite routine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 17, 2002 Author Share Posted April 17, 2002 here are the piccies: steve, great job! helps a lot... what photoshop can do... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 17, 2002 Author Share Posted April 17, 2002 btw... if we all can do this on atari8bit...i guess we had the best 8bit conversion??? (ok...except the nes version maybe) unfortunatly the screenshots made by steve are not in the correct aspect ratio like it will be on tv screen... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 17, 2002 Author Share Posted April 17, 2002 another quick note: target machine is an atari 800xl with 64kb $c000 screen ram seems really tough (192x256) but would really help things to speed up... i dont know if 192x128 bytes will really help either except 2 screens would fit into this video-buffer... but the sprites have to be stored in ram as well... maybe not all of them...just the ones which are needed for the level... the sprites will be pre-shifted for each pixel position... aaarg...another bottle neck is the clear-screen routine... i planned to have it unrolled... but this would take 7680x3 bytes (sta, lo, hi)... well...the basic layout of the ram have to be thought... guys, it is up to you... btw. i will go for screenshot2...it looks more colorful. the extra colors will be done with steve's trick...overlaying Player/missles for the bombers & the player plane... hve ps. seems to be tricky... but challenging... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted April 17, 2002 Share Posted April 17, 2002 Heaven, I thought about horizontayl stretching the mockup images - but really just wanted the pixel counts to be real - those images are 160X192 - it would just look fatter on the XL I applied a simple color reduction method, so both screens were reduced in the same way - I kept the color mapping the same for each sprite (light/dark/color)... If ya want any more input or grafix doing let me know - I'm more than happy to lend a hand (but I know you are MORE than able to do it all yourself) - I'm just keen to see the BEST grafix possible I think the only overlays of PMG should be one on the player ship (the blue) and the color of the main part of the big enemy craft (the green on the blimp and transport aircraft - it would also work on the parachutists too) since there are not many on screen of these vehicles... I seem to remeber (I haven't booted up MAME or an MSX emu yet) that in each wave there is only the clouds/rocks, one type of enemy craft, explosions, one BIG aircraft type and parachutist (both of which don't rotate ever) - so the number of "sprites" per level is pretty small... sTeVE [ 04-17-2002: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 17, 2002 Author Share Posted April 17, 2002 here it is what do you think? or should i include the original??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted April 17, 2002 Share Posted April 17, 2002 In the spirit of Tempest 2000 I say do a cool modern version I'd suggest a modern titlepage, with whizzy fx all over it sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 18, 2002 Author Share Posted April 18, 2002 steve, you are right... but without you my gfx would be not so good as with your input... make it fast will be the real challenge and the damned thing has to fit into 64k... one of our female gfx girlies made a pretty cool timepilot logo because i hate the old one... i will post it when i am at home (because of the ftp...) cheers, hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 19, 2002 Author Share Posted April 19, 2002 well... konami released a best of for GBA incl. timepilot... hmmm... hmmm...japanese companies may be very restrict... but anyway...the only what we are using is the gfx... btw. the gfx resolution should be 160x120 128x95 these are the same aspect ratios like the original 256x192 (224-3 statuslines a 8 pixel hight) $7800 (120x256) framebuffer seems managable...including vram, sprite block, etc... organising in 256 byte length is quite handy...seems like all game consoles do it in that way, f.e. sony ps1 as well... (well...256,512,1024 or whatever nice cpu friendly length) i check it out on weekend...maybe 1st code... shaddy: did you used MASKs for your sprite engine? how have you done the coping of the sprites & the overlaying? just EOR for setting software sprites seems not professional... hve ps. that's the real tough part of game design... 1st think of it before you start to implement the code... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted April 19, 2002 Share Posted April 19, 2002 Heaven, no big deal on the masks. just an "or" then an "and" with the mask. slower than eor of course though... the mask should have bits set when there is a seethrough pixel in the data though, otherwise the mask bits should be the same as the data, for the most straightfoward "seethrough" effect. some eg using 2 bit pixel, data ends up on top: screen pixel=00, data pixel=01, mask=01 01 or 00 = 01. 01 and 01 = 01. screen pixel=10, data pixel=01, mask=01 01 or 10 = 11 11 and 01 = 01 screen pixel=10, data pixel=00, mask=11 00 or 10= 10 10 and 11= 10 If anyone knows a better way, now would be a good time to share! Of course you want to avoid masking at all if you can...you could draw the big clouds with no masking, then underlay the enemies, using the same method. PS I don't think having a wider, shorter normal "landscape" screen would affect the gameplay much - Unless you're going for arcade exactness, or for speed/memory reasons. Regards Chris [ 04-19-2002: Message edited by: Sheddy ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 21, 2002 Author Share Posted April 21, 2002 site updated... 1st code running...but don't expect too much...just a little sprite demo... http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj.../timepilot.html more interesting stuff in the programming section... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 21, 2002 Author Share Posted April 21, 2002 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted April 23, 2002 Share Posted April 23, 2002 Cool... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 29, 2002 Author Share Posted April 29, 2002 just a short update... http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj.../timepilot.html the zip-archive is updated. there is a new ASX, ATR & sprites.raw file in the zip. why? the demo now shows a full 180 degree turn of the player sprite. the sprite data is now arranged like in the programming forum discussed and explained. the video ram is now standard $1e00 bytes long in antic mode e. the core sprite copy engine is mainly the same as in ZR but just written for the player sprite... but in structure the same as written in the programming forum... "have you programmed Atari today?" heaven ps. it took me few hours to rearrange things in the code... but this concept works now for 1 sprite...why not for all??? we will see...unfortunatly the progress was not much...sorry...(my plan was to have the full sprite engine working this weekend ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 29, 2002 Author Share Posted April 29, 2002 well... time pilot (space pilot) on c64 sux... any real conversion avaible? c64.com does not show anything... hve ps. posted in the wrong forum before... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ndary Posted April 29, 2002 Share Posted April 29, 2002 i found a nice java version http://www.freearcade.com/Time.jav/Time.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted May 3, 2002 Author Share Posted May 3, 2002 new update of the archive... now DLIs work in the kernel routine... (well...i switch for speed reasons the complete ROM OS off...so thats why i had to modify the kernel routine for DLIs as well... thanx Fox for help!!! ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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