Bomb Jack remake

TotO · 15:40, 30 July 23

The arcade use the same soundchip and CPU. May be something like a register replay?
If the VGM RIP can help: https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/bomb-jack-arcade

Anthony Flack · 16:07, 30 July 23

The same sound chip, only they used three of them... I don't think it will be too difficult to reproduce the music by ear; I played it on the guitar easily enough. What will be interesting is trying to see how much I can get away with cramming sound effects into the same channels.

TotO · 16:11, 30 July 23

Great!

May be I'm wrong, but I think the music use one chip and the sfx the others.
You may allow to have music only, sfx only, and both together. (mixed or using sound expansion)

Jean-Marie · 18:40, 30 July 23

Arcade perfect ! Full marks.

abalore · 01:14, 31 July 23

Great work

Anthony Flack · 02:06, 31 July 23

Quote from: TotO on 16:11, 30 July 23Great!

May be I'm wrong, but I think the music use one chip and the sfx the others.
You may allow to have music only, sfx only, and both together. (mixed or using sound expansion)

I think so too. The music sounds like it can be reproduced in three channels, although they might be using extra channels in some places to make it sound more full.

Indeed I was thinking the same thing with regards to giving people the option to have either or both.

Anthony Flack · 02:34, 31 July 23

Quote from: Prodatron on 15:34, 30 July 23Fantastic! Great to see, that you nearly finished it!
Do you already have any idea how to implement the music and the sound fx?
Maybe using available tools like Arkos Tracker II or build it from scratch?

So far, I've not even made a single beep. But I look forward to figuring it out. I want to build something from scratch so I can understand it.

norecess464 · 13:58, 31 July 23

I love what you are doing

Good luck with the audio part -- doing this from scratch (cf. with no external tracker / existing audio player etc) won't be easy.

kawickboy · 22:24, 14 August 23

Maybe a playcity support could be considered. This hardware is perfect for such arcade port (Alcon2020...).

XeNoMoRPH · 10:50, 11 November 23

gameplay : https://files.fm/u/w3d6af9bf5#/view/xqgbzjaxv4

Gryzor · 11:15, 11 November 23

Oooh nice!

Prodatron · 12:42, 11 November 23

Looks fantastic!

lmimmfn · 13:38, 11 November 23

That looks absolutely amazing, one of the best looking mode 1 gfx for an arcade conversions, love the use of the extra colours in the panels at the top/bottom

HAL6128 · 14:40, 11 November 23

Nice graphics and crazy cool sound and effects.

poulette73 · 17:10, 11 November 23

Increbible ! Very nice ! 👍

trocoloco · 12:16, 12 November 23

Bravo, masterful conversion, what a wonderful use of mode 1 and rasters

Maniac · 10:47, 13 November 23

Amazing work! Really great use of Mode 1 and associated screen tricks. Love it and can't wait to play!

OneVision · 10:00, 15 November 23

The gameplay looks perfect, so do the graphics. And it seems to be at 50 Hz which is very rare on CPC and feels so arcade-ish.
A brilliant conversion I wish to play real soon !

sigh · 23:34, 15 November 23

WOW! You absolutely smashed it! Brilliant work and the pixel art is lovely.

SerErris · 15:12, 17 November 23

Awesome really great. Are we there yet?

BSC · 22:52, 17 November 23

Unbelievable! It looks almost like the arcade version. How the did you manage to make it look so good? The music and sound effects are also top-notch. Really well done!

Anthony Flack · 05:57, 18 November 23

Quote from: BSC on 22:52, 17 November 23How the did you manage to make it look so good?

That's a broad question, but there's quite a few interesting little touches in there I could talk about. Problems that I found fun ways to solve.

There are more than 4 colours per line in quite a few places (vertical colour splits). In several places I'm also using dithered colours but inverting the dither pattern at 50hz which disguises the dither. For example the rainbow colours at the top of the screen, and the entire background of the bonus screen. The flashing GAME OVER letters do this too.

The title page is quite complicated and ruptured in a couple of places; the top part of the screen is double-buffered, the bottom part of the screen is single buffered, and the title part itself is a six-buffered animation (animated in hardware). The colours on the title are interlaced, and the interlacing pattern also alternates at 50hz so you get the impression of more than 4 colours per line. I was quite curious as to how this was going to look and it turned out to be one of the more successful special effects I think.

For speed, I use two screen buffers and a third "clean" buffer to clear the sprites away. Many of the sprites are "compiled", ie hard-coded, and some like the P ball use self-modifying code on a hard-coded sprite to get all the different colours. Updates to the score panel are buffered and prioritised, so it doesn't try to update your score and increase your power meter on the same frame as you collect a bomb for instance, but does them one after another. It helps.

One effect which I was quite pleased with which is fairly subtle is the effect on the player when you are powered up; the arcade game cycles the player's colour palette and I can't do that so I wasn't sure what to do. In the end the player's sprite is ORed against an animated mask pattern and that did the trick nicely.

dodogildo · 07:30, 18 November 23

Excellent job. Thanks for describing it in details. Would sure help and encourage emerging authors/creators as well. A+++++

FruityFrank · 08:04, 18 November 23

Pure magic! can't wait to play. Many thanks for the hard work and many hours you invested here!!

BSC · 11:44, 18 November 23

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 05:57, 18 November 23That's a broad question, but there's quite a few interesting little touches in there I could talk about. Problems that I
found fun ways to solve.

Thanks for the insights, now you made me even more curious ..

Sounds like all your tricks and solutions would convert nicely into a series of explanatory videos on YouTube

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Bomb Jack remake