Wolfenstrad

[Optimus]

You can download our demo released at Forever. Wolfenstrad by Dirty Minds
I guess all the competitions must have finished by now so I decided to upload (Spectrum guys already uploaded their own demos anyway and it's Sunday now)


It uses the Wolfenstein engine I started more than a year ago and for the curious, from the first rerun of the demo, SPACE enters in manual control mode and O,P rotates the camera while the scrollers/effects still animate.


Next great thing would be to concentrate my efforts in doing a game with this engine. Unless I stick to demos again, doh

[TFM]

Nice work! Good luck for the competition!

[Devilmarkus]

Nice demo...
Added it on my website:

[MaV]

Nice animated walls! Impressive!!

[alex76gr]

Optimus, you rock!

Utterly impressive work!
Way to go!

I am really looking forward to see a game based on this engine.

[fano]

This is really great ! i love the animated texturing !

[Gryzor]

Not the most beautiful demo out there, but definitely impressive. I watched it for quite some time before remembering I had to break for lunch! The tune is really nice, too!


Congrats, man, great, great job!

[ukmarkh]

Impressive as a demo, but way too slow for an actual game... liked the music.

[tastefulmrship]

Lovely little intro! Spain last year, and now this year Greece own the CPC!! I can't wait for the game to come out!

NOTE:
Remember, guys and gals, you can use the same username/password you used to vote for BATMAN FOREVER in this year's People's Choice awards to give a THUMBS-UP to Wolfenstrad on POUET.NET; if not because you love this demo, then definitely to balance-out the stupid argument about file-structures and CATart instigated by Krusty/Benediction. I mean, how petty can you get?

[voXfReaX]

Lovely little intro! Spain last year, and now this year Greece own the CPC!! I can't wait for the game to come out! 

Wow! Thank you very much for the comment; we are all very glad you'd like Wolfenstrad so much! As far as the game is concerned, you'll have to add pressure and, most importantly, motivation to Optimus

...vote for BATMAN FOREVER in this year's People's Choice awards to give a THUMBS-UP to Wolfenstrad on POUET.NET

Yes! Voting for Batman Forever in this year's People Choice awards is something that should be considered seriously by every user roaming around here! Our voice can be heard, so let's do it! Of course your thumb up/down or piggie to Wolfenstrad is more than welcome in order to know whether you liked/ disliked it!

if not because you love this demo, then definitely to balance-out the stupid argument about file-structures and CATart instigated by Krusty/Benediction. I mean, how petty can you get?

Since I know both Krusty and Optimus, I would like to say some words about this 'issue'... I am sure that Krusty didn't intend to sound that strict as he did. I know Krusty is always trying to 'push' someone in order to improve even more, and that was what he tried to do... But, he just sounded a bit harsher than he should, probably because of not using his native language, but English! Anyway, the whole misinterpretation between them regarding the file-stucture (Krusty didn't refer to CATart) is solved now for good...


See you,
voxfreax

[tastefulmrship]

Since I know both Krusty and Optimus, I would like to say some words about this 'issue'... I am sure that Krusty didn't intend to sound that strict as he did. I know Krusty is always trying to 'push' someone in order to improve even more, and that was what he tried to do... But, he just sounded a bit harsher than he should, probably because of not using his native language, but English! Anyway, the whole misinterpretation between them regarding the file-stucture (Krusty didn't refer to CATart) is solved now for good...

I realise there's a slight language problem here; I myself speak English as a second-language (of sorts). Optimus himself misinterpreted the comment; hence the CATart was created, but you guys could've just made those files SYSTEM files and hidden them that way. But on a personal level, I prefer demos released with multiple files. I'm still at the novice-learning level and I so can see where those files are being loaded to, manipulated and then accessed. Having single-file (or two-file) demos loses that and it ends up being confusing to follow for someone like me.

On another note; I think a comment like that was unncessary on POUET.NET infront of the whole demoscene, maybe it should have been mentioned on P'N'P instead. I found it petty because the demo itself is so well polished, if you ignore the fish-eye errors on 90' views. ^_^



Again, simply a brilliant CPC demo for 2012! Let's see what Revision & ReSet#8 can offer us!
Amstrad begins again!

[TFM]

Of course your thumb up/down or piggie to Wolfenstrad is more than welcome in order to know whether you liked/ disliked it!

Thumbs up and down I do understand! But what does "piggie" mean? Do you have another expression for it???

[Optimus]

Thumbs up and down I do understand! But what does "piggie" mean? Do you have another expression for it???

It's just Pouet language for the tick you select to submit an average vote.


I misinterpreted Krusty's comment at the time, not because of english but because it tried to suggest something that is not in the comment. Like "You could have hidden at least the files" suggesting "because there is something awful about them". And the next reason is that I didn't understood there was a suggestion because I thought the awful thing was about the files showing themselves. My mind didn't go to something else because even now I believe that the file structure is not optimal but not awful at the same time. It would be awful if we had 10 very small files. And it would be important if it made the demo 15 minutes or to load or something. Big fuzz for nothing.


p.s. I have just uploaded Grim's version on Pouet. 23kb single file looks much more slick than 60kb multiple files and the loading is slightly faster. I do get how it can improve how things look but I still believe the old version is not awful. Also, sometimes these things, when you are not very familiar with packers and the whole loading/crunching/moving data to other memory blocks, etc are already tedious, I think one must have a very important reason to pack things better (like a bigger demo taking 20-30 minutes to load). It's not worth the effort just to please some rules or show that you are sophisticated when you have already shown signs of hard work and sophistication in the demo itself. Anyway, this is my opinion and some people might have another philosophy on demomaking.

[Hicks]

I agree with Voxfreax. I know Krusty very well, since more than 10 years, and there is no doubt that he don't want to denigrate Optimus demo just for that, but only to point out this little problem.
@tastefulmrship: one more time, your comment sound agressive against Krusty. You already attack Beb, me and Vanity some times ago. What is exactly the aim of this kind of attacks? Everybody know everybody since a long time on the scene, we often meet each other, and theses critics seems displaced to everybody I think. Follow MaV, come to ReSeT, meet us, speak with us, and all will be solved

[tastefulmrship]

It's not worth the effort just to please some rules or show that you are sophisticated when you have already shown signs of hard work and sophistication in the demo itself.

How difficult would it be to show all lines of the raycasting window? Even if it's just doubling the line above, like this example. I think it would be interesting to see this animated and it would give us normals an idea of how an actual Wolfenstein3D game might look on CPC.
(I do realise there's already this production that is also very impressive!)

[Optimus]

How difficult would it be to show all lines of the raycasting window? Even if it's just doubling the line above, like this example. I think it would be interesting to see this animated and it would give us normals an idea of how an actual Wolfenstein3D game might look on CPC.
(I do realise there's already this production that is also very impressive!)

There are some technical restrictions that makes it hard to make easy changes to the rendering configuration. The unroll codes are very fixed to this display and also 64bytes per width (I wanted to make an 96bytes width version and maybe loose 1 more VBL but I abandoned the effort for this demo because time was few). There is SET/RES bits instead of ADD HL,BC to jump to other lines vertically and this jump even happens not regularly from up to down, but in an order that is optimal for the least possible SET/RES bits (and INC H when it's the 8th bit). So, it's very hardwired to this scanline mode at the moment and 64bytes width (because this fact touches only bits 6,7 and 8 ) that one has to change the unroll code generator (it does happen in the demo, it's not generated by PC) and some precalced data about the optimal jumping (this happened on PC code and transfered as data later, because the searching algorithm was not so optimized).


Another issue is the size of unroll codes. They fit almost 16k now but I use the memory configuration 0127 (my code on 7, extra &C000 block in upper 64k) and the unroll codes at &8000 (in 2), videoram on 1 (&4000) or 3(&C000 first 64k block of course) when switching to configuration 0327. So, the unroll codes at &8000 could write directly to videoram at 1 or 3 and the place at 0 was reserved for textures and other stuff. Yes, but what if I wanted to do a more highres version or render both lines? No extra space for the unroll codes. The original memory configuration (with 0x23 where x can be 4,5,6,7 block) could be better with this to have additional unroll codes in 1 and extra blocks switched, but I already have other problem with memory and switched to the more advanced mode. Maybe I'll figure out some other way or smaller unroll codes one day. But it's already tight.


Of course your example doubles the lines. I think I tried this too, but after the first rendering a series of LDI to copy odd lines to even places before showing the frame. At that time I was at 2VBLs and this put me into 3VBLs and looked more blocky so I abandoned it. I have also tried showing odd/even lines at alternate frames and I wasn't sure if I liked what I saw. Or odd/even lines but on a single buffer without erasing the previous stuff, didn't like it either.


I am thinking about a highres version that I will definitely need for my RPG view (but half width in display, true pixel rendering on 64 pixels on X on Mode 0) and also I could remove the floor/ceiling rendering code from the unrolled codes (I won't win much though) and render them later separately. I could also go back to 0x23 mode but.. memory.

[tastefulmrship]

@Optimus;
I would quote and comment about lots from that post (above), which was very informative and interesting! So, personally, thanks for that.

I don't want to divert this thread to a game discussion or speculation, so it may be better to hold-off responding until the RPG and/or FPS game is more developed and a new thread is created (maybe with a quick playable one-level demo! ^_^)

[Optimus]

@Optimus;
I would quote and comment about lots from that post (above), which was very informative and interesting! So, personally, thanks for that.

I don't want to divert this thread to a game discussion or speculation, so it may be better to hold-off responding until the RPG and/or FPS game is more developed and a new thread is created (maybe with a quick playable one-level demo! ^_^)

I'd like to improve the engine, add those features that are missing (sprite rendering, realtime correct raycaster for FPS game, additional stuff I have in mind (doors? transparent textures? Darkening by distance? I will see)) to discover myself what is really possible and show to the community too. Generally I want to avoid releasing more previews but I will think about one showing that some of these additional things are possible, a one level preview demo would be nice idea to show that a game with additional sprites and game logic is not impossible. I am currently on a rest but will catch up with the engine soon and it might take 3 or 6 months or more to develop something that I can show. But I wouldn't like to keep you disappointed in case other things in my life don't permit me to continue with this soon enough, so yes this is a fascinating thing to work on and fascinating for the community to see in reality but I am not promising anything here

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Good lookin' stuff there!


Looking forward to the RPG variant with more detailed rendering, as an RPG you can spend more time rendering (transparent pixels, sprites, etc) to improve image quality whilst still allowing a real-time rendering of action occurring outside the player (none of this turn-by-turn stuff!).