Hi there!
Earlier this year I released Saboteur 2 mod for ZX Spectrum and now I'm working on porting it to Amstrad CPC.
It is already playable but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Changes:
-Bugfixes
-Performance optimizations and adjustable game speed
-Double buffering with vsync (with limitations)
-Added some visual elements from 2019 remake
-Added new sound effects
-Added game pause
-Improved game balance
-And more...
Fixed bugs:
-Android or puma receives damage when ninja hits the flame of his flamethrower
-Ninja receives damage when flame covers a projectile(even one shot\thrown by enemy)
-The lift bug
-Slow climbing up \ lifting up
-The fall damage bug
-No 'bike arrived' message when using teleport
-The flame clipping bug
-The Infinite tape pieces bug - now this stash has 2 pieces of tape
-The walking underwater bug
-The throwing objects trough the wall bug
-The glitchy android bug - now he looks different and is stronger
-Fence terminal no longer controls lifts in missions without the fence
-Single fire key press on the terminal could cause several activations
-Throwing projectile at electric fence could kill ninja
-Puma on the left side of the screen could damage ninja at the right side of the screen.
-Lift position now resets when starting new game
-Enemy status \ position now resets when starting new game
-'Health' is now properly stored for each enemy and is not reset when the ninja leaves the room
-The androids misalignment bug
-The android remote attack bug
-Redundant screen updates when the flame is clipped
-Flame rendering bug caused by android being on layer #2
Game balance changes:
-Ninja's kicks and throwables deal more damage:
Throwables and kick make 2 damage points, flying kick - 2-3
-Remaining HPs are now properly stored for each enemy. Also enemy 'health' now slowly regenerates.
-Reduced bat damage by 1 damage point
-Ninja takes less damage when falling from a small height:
no damage if height is less than 15 tiles, half damage if less than 2 floors (36 tiles)
-Android sits longer after shooting the ninja
Look at that sprite run!
Impressive. What has changed because of the mod?
@HAL6128 Whad do you mean? Changelist is under the spoiler.
Oh man, thanks. :picard:
I was so impressed by the demo that I didn't realize it. :D
Great work, I'm looking forward to play it. Is the countdown timer speed related to the selected game speed or it is real-time?
Time unit = 20 game frames. The faster the game - the faster the time. And it's fine.
Quote from: thealfest on 17:08, 21 October 24Hi there!
Earlier this year I released Saboteur 2 mod for ZX Spectrum and now I'm working on porting it to Amstrad CPC.
It is already playable but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Changes:
-Bugfixes
-Performance optimizations and adjustable game speed
-Double buffering with vsync (with limitations)
-Added some visual elements from 2019 remake
-Added new sound effects
-Added game pause
-Improved game balance
-And more...
Fixed bugs:
-Android or puma receives damage when ninja hits the flame of his flamethrower
-Ninja receives damage when flame covers a projectile(even one shot\thrown by enemy)
-The lift bug
-Slow climbing up \ lifting up
-The fall damage bug
-No 'bike arrived' message when using teleport
-The flame clipping bug
-The Infinite tape pieces bug - now this stash has 2 pieces of tape
-The walking underwater bug
-The throwing objects trough the wall bug
-The glitchy android bug - now he looks different and is stronger
-Fence terminal no longer controls lifts in missions without the fence
-Single fire key press on the terminal could cause several activations
-Throwing projectile at electric fence could kill ninja
-Puma on the left side of the screen could damage ninja at the right side of the screen.
-Lift position now resets when starting new game
-Enemy status \ position now resets when starting new game
-'Health' is now properly stored for each enemy and is not reset when the ninja leaves the room
-The androids misalignment bug
-The android remote attack bug
-Redundant screen updates when the flame is clipped
-Flame rendering bug caused by android being on layer #2
Game balance changes:
-Ninja's kicks and throwables deal more damage:
Throwables and kick make 2 damage points, flying kick - 2-3
-Remaining HPs are now properly stored for each enemy. Also enemy 'health' now slowly regenerates.
-Reduced bat damage by 1 damage point
-Ninja takes less damage when falling from a small height:
no damage if height is less than 15 tiles, half damage if less than 2 floors (36 tiles)
-Android sits longer after shooting the ninja
Really cool, but maybe IS a little bit too fast?
Game speed is adjustable.
Wow amazing !! :o 8)
And the changelog list with new features and bugfixes is impressive !
Great work... ;)
Looking forward to discovering a playable version. 8)
Amazing. Hope the controls are now more responsive, less laggy.
@dodogildo i don't see any problems with the controls in the original, just a general slowness.
Quote from: thealfest on 18:23, 22 October 24@dodogildo i don't see any problems with the controls in the original, just a general slowness.
the slowness results in missing keys (keyDown+keyUp between 2 keyboard scans). It's ... ...clearly a bug from a user point of view
Quote from: roudoudou on 19:04, 22 October 24Quote from: thealfest on 18:23, 22 October 24@dodogildo i don't see any problems with the controls in the original, just a general slowness.
the slowness results in missing keys (keyDown+keyUp between 2 keyboard scans). It's ... ...clearly a bug from a user point of view
I prefer this way over input buffering.
Added palette swapping, fixed some bugs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemc_s-z_MY
Extremely cool!
A high-speed walkthrough in real-time and might be also a high programming and analysing effort behind.
Does anyone know if Clive Townsend is aware of this effort to improve Saboteur II? I'm sure he would approve of it. :)
@Nich When I announced my mod for the Spectrum in March, Clive got in touch with me.
If this had been available to me in 1988-1992 when I was 8-12 and playing the original, I would have shifted my pants.
Holy Moly, the girl runs like forking Flash!
Indeed, I would rename the game Flash Girl Mutant Ninja Avenger (heroine in a hand gilder).
This is so cool.
This looks great, honestly I dismissed the game back in the day as I considered it a crappy speccy port and awfully slow(no offense to fans it was just my kid impression), bit this is lovely and fast, great work.
Added double buffering, made some minor changes.
Currently the mod runs ~3.9 times faster than the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6whTPmV1eY
Noob question... Could these results have been achieved somehow back in the day?
@cwpab I think so, if the developers spent enough time optimizing the code.
Fixed speed control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_moViHk7Fj0
speed 6 is my favorite :D
And if one thing this remake proves, is how the huge amount of direct porting games from a vastly inferior machine like spectrum, RUINED the TRUE potential of cpc, resulting in large underestimation by hiding the fact of how MUCH more powerful 8bit machine , Amstrad cpc REALLY was...
if we only knew, back at the days... ::)
Quote from: ikonsgr on 00:40, 30 October 24speed 6 is my favorite :D
And if one thing this remake proves, is how direct porting games from a vastly inferior machine like spectrum, RUINED the TRUE potential of cpc, resulting in large underestimation by hiding the fact of how MUCH more powerful 8bit machine , Amstrad cpc REALLY was...
if we only knew, back at the days... ::)
In fairness, the Spectrum version also runs quite a lot slower than it could have.
Quote from: andycadley on 00:43, 30 October 24In fairness, the Spectrum version also runs quite a lot slower than it could have.
This does not negate the fact that Amstrad CPC had vastly superior Hardware and potential than spectrum!
Due to cpc clever design, the 27 vivid color palette, the use of the decent AY sound chip and 6845 CRT controller, combined with proper programming , Amstrad CPC could offer MUCH better games in any aspect (graphics, speed, scrolling, sound, music) than spectrum's versions, no matter how optimized these games would be on spectrum! I would dare to say that difference between games exploiting Amstrad cpc potential and spectrum, would be more obvious than comparing games between amiga and atari st!
The many excellent games produced for cpc in later years, finally freed from the... "spectrum portitis" disease, proves it undeniably! ;)
@ikonsgr In fact, most of the slowness of saboteur 2 comes from the original Speccy version, all the Amstrad specific code is much better optimized, Maz Spork did a great job porting the game. Also, more complex hardware does not make the Amstrad a better gaming machine than the Spectrum. Both systems have their advantages and limitations, and which one is better is a matter of personal preference. Please do not start holy wars here and do not write toxic posts.
Quote from: thealfest on 17:16, 30 October 24Please do not start holy wars here and do not write toxic posts.
Be reassured. 8)
John is an old member, passionate, very serious and courteous, and well known on the forum. He is also the designer of several successful interfaces for the Amstrad CPC sold by the hundreds. :)
He has rendered many services to hundreds of members, and has never been in any kind of conflict with anyone on the forum.
His comparison with Spectrum was simply made as constructive arguments, never with the idea of starting a conflict. ;)
@poulette73 Personal opinion is not a fact or constructive argument. And it is offtopic.
BTW the original Amstrad port is about 20% slower than the Spectrum version. And currently the Amstrad version of my mod is almost 2x slower than the Spectrum one, simply because the tile size is 16 bytes instead of 9, and the cpu is slower.
So these are my predictions of what we'll see on future updates based on what we've seen so far:
November the 5th: Mode 0 option added
November the 10th: Random Map Generation option added
November the 15th: 2 player co-op mode added
November the 20th: Evil Mode added where you control the bad guys
:o
@cwpab :) Mode 0 might work for saboteur 2, but it means all graphics need to be redrawn and renderer rewritten. It also takes ~5k RAM (too much) and the game speed will decrease. Not my cup of tea.
And I don't plan to add any new features beyond those present in the original Amstrad port and my mod for Speccy.
Actually, most of the work is already done, now I'm fixing bugs and refactoring.
Quote from: thealfest on 17:16, 30 October 24@ikonsgr In fact, most of the slowness of saboteur 2 comes from the original Speccy version, all the Amstrad specific code is much better optimized, Maz Spork did a great job porting the game. Also, more complex hardware does not make the Amstrad a better gaming machine than the Spectrum. Both systems have their advantages and limitations, and which one is better is a matter of personal preference. Please do not start holy wars here and do not write toxic posts.
My friend, rest assured that i have GREAT respect for Sinclair Spectrums, in fact i'm a proud owner of a Spectrum +3 with Divide :-)
Sinclair Spectrum was the machine that showed to the world, what "home computer" is, it was introduced 2 years before Amstrad CPC, and sold many millions, much more than Amstrad CPC!
BUT,
the fact that Amstrad CPC was a far better Computer than Sinclair Spectrum is an UNDENIABLY AND OBJECTIVE TRUTH! Hardware speaks for it self my friend, the 6845 CRT controller (with many capabilities like hardware scrolling, also used on the 1st ibm pc too) , the 27 color palette and the AY sound chip of CPC, compared to the primitive ULA (with the notorious attribute clash problem), the limited 15 color palette (which actually were 7 colors+7 half bright + black) and the sound beeper of spectrum, are offering VAST superior sound+graphics potential and capabilities, and this is NOT a "matter of personal preference"!
Games like R-Type 128, Super edge grinder, Star sabre, Sub hunter, Relentless, The abduction of oscar Z, simply CANT be done on a Sinclair spectrum, at least not having comparable graphics/colors, sound/music, scrolling, game speed etc!
Quote from: ikonsgr on 19:53, 30 October 24Quote from: thealfest on 17:16, 30 October 24@ikonsgr In fact, most of the slowness of saboteur 2 comes from the original Speccy version, all the Amstrad specific code is much better optimized, Maz Spork did a great job porting the game. Also, more complex hardware does not make the Amstrad a better gaming machine than the Spectrum. Both systems have their advantages and limitations, and which one is better is a matter of personal preference. Please do not start holy wars here and do not write toxic posts.
My friend, rest assured that i have GREAT respect for Sinclair Spectrums, in fact i'm a proud owner of a Spectrum +3 with Divide :-)
Sinclair Spectrum was the machine that showed to the world, what "home computer" is, it was introduced 2 years before Amstrad CPC, and sold many millions, much more than Amstrad CPC!
BUT, the fact that Amstrad CPC was a far better Computer than Sinclair Spectrum is an UNDENIABLY AND OBJECTIVE TRUTH!
Hardware speaks for it self my friend, the 6845 CRT controller (with many capabilities like hardware scrolling, also used on the 1st ibm pc too) , the 27 color palette and the AY sound chip of CPC, compared to the primitive ULA (with the notorious attribute clash problem), the limited 15 color palette (which actually were 7 colors+7 half bright + black) and the sound beeper of spectrum, are offering VAST superior sound+graphics potential and capabilities, and this is NOT a "matter of personal preference"!
Games like R-Type 128, Super edge grinder, Star sabre, Sub hunter, Relentless, The abduction of oscar Z, simply CANT be done on a Sinclair spectrum, at least not having comparable graphics/colors, sound/music, scrolling, game speed etc!
Why did you write this here? Please delete your post and stop writing offtopic.
Actually,
@ikonsgr was pretty much on topic when he mentioned what he did mention. You're the one turning this into a debate, so you can drop it.
@Gryzor The topic is - "saboteur 2 mod" not "amstrad cpc is better than spectrum"
Ok, if
@thealfest feels offended by my comments, i don't have a problem to delete it from here.
Still, i can't see the reason for that, as the only thing i did, was, on the occasion of the remake, to quote a simple objective fact about Spectrum and CPC, no obsession, no "holy wars", no toxic posts, about any of our beloved 8bit micros... ::)
Quote from: thealfest on 20:23, 30 October 24@Gryzor The topic is - "saboteur 2 mod" not "amstrad cpc is better than spectrum"
If you can't see how he linked the two, that's on you. Sorry, not in the mood to discuss it anymore, at least not in this thread.
Quote from: thealfest on 17:43, 30 October 24@poulette73 Personal opinion is not a fact or constructive argument. And it is offtopic.
BTW the original Amstrad port is about 20% slower than the Spectrum version. And currently the Amstrad version of my mod is almost 2x slower than the Spectrum one, simply because the tile size is 16 bytes instead of 9, and the cpu is slower.
Sadly in Speccy you can't swap video buffers in hardware, so the memory block copying spoils the speed advantage of having smaller video buffer. Many games don't require double buffering, many others do, so it's a relative advantage. Greatly depends on the game requirements.
Quote from: abalore on 23:09, 30 October 24Quote from: thealfest on 17:43, 30 October 24@poulette73 Personal opinion is not a fact or constructive argument. And it is offtopic.
BTW the original Amstrad port is about 20% slower than the Spectrum version. And currently the Amstrad version of my mod is almost 2x slower than the Spectrum one, simply because the tile size is 16 bytes instead of 9, and the cpu is slower.
Sadly in Speccy you can't swap video buffers in hardware, so the memory block copying spoils the speed advantage of having smaller video buffer. Many games don't require double buffering, many others do, so it's a relative advantage. Greatly depends on the game requirements.
You
can double buffer on a 464, but that requires sacrificing half the available RAM and that's rarely a practical option when you have to fit the whole game in memory too. So swings and roundabouts and all that.
Since ikonsgr and Gryzor refused to delete off topic, I'm leaving this forum.
Bye, then. On one hand, too bad. On the other, we don't really take kindly to sour people, nor do we allow their self promotion.
Oh, and you probably missed the offer to delete the relevant post, but anyhow.
Guy had every right to ask not to have his conversation stampeded over by the same old pointless argument, and also to walk away when the people involved instead decided to double down. That doesn't mean they're a "sour person".
This is the sort of thing people point to when they say a community isn't welcoming. :(
Quote from: pelrun on 11:09, 31 October 24Guy had every right to ask not to have his conversation stampeded over by the same old pointless argument, and also to walk away when the people involved instead decided to double down. That doesn't mean they're a "sour person".
This is the sort of thing people point to when they say a community isn't welcoming. :(
You've been here long enough to know our discussions occasionally (actually, more often than not) take turns and make twists. That's what makes the community welcoming. (And heck, even your own post could be considered OT 😁}
The thread didn't get "stampeded over", ikonsgr made a point starting from this excellent mod, and OP saw it fit to reply to it thus fueling it. Ikonsgr even offered to remove the comment. Nobody doubled down.
OP even made a rather entitled (I found) report for the offending post instead of asking to just split the thread or just simply police it in a nice way, as has been done countless times before.
And of course it's their right to up and leave, but I find the approach of "I'm going to another beach and taking my toys with me" to be the definition of sour.
A totally childish, frustrated reaction of a spoiled child ! :picard: :picard:
Faced with this kind of behavior, we have lost nothing in the change.
This is not the spirit, here, of the CPC community and of sharing !
It's a shame, this mod for Saboteur 2 had a lot of interest... BUT, it doesn't matter, life goes on !
The CPC will continue to live, with beautiful productions to come. ;D
Remember that 10 days ago, this topic didn't even exist, and we would never have been aware of it... in short... for me it's not going to change anything...
Fair wind ! :P
I had to read that twice to actually find what the problem could be.
Quote from: eto on 15:25, 31 October 24I had to read that twice to actually find what the problem could be.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
if that escalated quickly over the nonsense over CPC or ZX stuff... imagine fixing real problems like the wars in middle east... :picard2:
Shame they've gone, I was curious to understand why the Mode 0 stuff would take more memory and run slower... any thoughts anyone?
I can see why "I've been working on improving the speed of Saboteur on the Spectrum and thought I'd bring those improvements over to the CPC version" being met with "The Speccy is rubbish and here is proof" might be frustrating. Does every mention of another platform have to be another playground debate? Do people really not see how it might reduce the desire to bring cool stuff to the CPC?
Quote from: shaymanjohn on 17:04, 31 October 24Shame they've gone, I was curious to understand why the Mode 0 stuff would take more memory and run slower... any thoughts anyone?
At a guess, it stores the images as 1bpp images and converts to colour on the fly. Storing them as actual CPC format graphics (at least for the background) will likely increase memory usage (regardless of which mode you choose) - although I'd expect you could render it faster due to a lot less transcoding.
While the OP was probably "right" technically, I think we can all agree that he started acting like a mod... without being a mod. Not a good communication technique IMHO.
I love what this guy did to the ninjette, astronauts and panthers in Saboteur 2, though. It was my favorite game as a kid even with the slownwess. One of my most "precise" memories from when I was 8 years old is leaving Saboteur 2 music running in my room while going to the kitchen to have dinner. What a waste of resources! Sorry, mum.
Back to the drama, I think it's the most exaggerated reaction I've ever seen to a semi-offtopic (not that the offtopic creator was talking about the fantastic sci-fi series Severance and Silo, which I take the opportunity to recommend!).
But here's the good part: if this mod is never released, we can fake it by increasing the speed in Winape. 8)
(Unless some additional graphical changes were being added... I seemed to spot some different colors and backgrounds here and there?)
Severance is great. Silo, well, it's nice and we watch it because we loved the books* but it's rather wanting, I think.
Oh, wait, we were saying?
*The books, btw, were very uneven, with one being a money grab not worth the paper it was printed on. Also, the beginning of the saga was like a xerox copy of one of Dick's books (Penultimate Truth I think?)
Quote from: pelrun on 11:09, 31 October 24Guy had every right to ask not to have his conversation stampeded over by the same old pointless argument, and also to walk away when the people involved instead decided to double down. That doesn't mean they're a "sour person".
This is the sort of thing people point to when they say a community isn't welcoming. :(
I made an innocent question about the game timer on first page and got a sour response. So, he is a sour person. د
"And it's fine" = I don't accept any kind of opinion
Really, i'm feeling bad that i somehow become the reason for this very nice thread about a mod of a classic game, to be F@ucked up...
But, on 2nd thought, i don't know if it's really me or
@Gryzor to put the blame for it, or it's a case of a liiiitle "sour" person as Gryzor put it... If someone read the posts, it would be pretty obvious, that there were no "aggressive" or "holy war" attitude by me, but rather an excessive passion for spectrum that obviously arised from thealfest responses. ::)
As i'm an old member and the creator of quite a few threads in the forum, i would say that
it's not uncommon for the discussion to "derailed" from the original subject. And if all of us, every time this happened, would respond like our friend @thealfest, then i'm afraid the forum would be out of members in no time! :)
Apart from infection of various retro-virueses, the MAIN reason we got in here is to forget about the daily routine and relax with Amstrad nostalgia! And pardon me if i say that, but if you are REALLY in that mood, the retro-spirit mood, you would NEVER respond like thealfest...
Quote from: andycadley on 17:20, 31 October 24"The Speccy is rubbish and here is proof" might be frustrating.
You completely lost the point my friend.
And
the point i was referring to, is NOT that "Speccy is rubbish", but rather how CPC games were F@CKED up by spectrum porting! Sorry if you don't see or understand the difference between these two...
Quote from: abalore on 19:26, 31 October 24I made an innocent question about the game timer on first page and got a sour response. So, he is a sour person. د
"And it's fine" = I don't accept any kind of opinion
Hey, i didn't noticed that...
Well, i'm afraid this is typical of a... "God" person with the addition of the dogma: "Spectrum is the best home computer of all times, and anyone denies that.... DIE!" :picard:
Quote from: ikonsgr on 20:23, 31 October 24Quote from: abalore on 19:26, 31 October 24I made an innocent question about the game timer on first page and got a sour response. So, he is a sour person. د
"And it's fine" = I don't accept any kind of opinion
Hey, i didn't noticed that...
Well, i'm afraid this is typical of a... "God" person with the addition of the dogma: "Spectrum is the best home computer of all times, and anyone denies that.... DIE!" :picard:
To disassemble a game and replace some routines doesn't make you a god. Specially when you are using tools and knowledge not available by the time the game was created. But yes, it seems like the typical guy that keeps the old scene mentality of boasting and entering flame wars. Needs to be updated ;)
hopefully the lad carries on working on the project and doesn't just abandon it over what happened here tho. He's doing a great job, it is very promising and many people were where looking forward to having it completed
Quote from: trocoloco on 20:53, 31 October 24hopefully the lad carries on working on the project and doesn't just abandon it over what happened here tho. He's doing a great job, it is very promising and many people were where looking forward to having it completed
Agreed, totally.
https://thealfest.itch.io/amstrad-cpc-saboteur-2-mod de
Did you guys notice the additional graphics?
Some tables now have a computer and a flower pot.
Other tables have what it looks like a telephone and some books/folders (same graphic from the existing cabinets that appear in very few rooms).
And finally, there's a cute little world map in one of the walls where all the countries are RED... except for Australia, North and Center America! (I suspect the creator is trying to tell us something here).
Also, the text screen before each mission has multi colored text.
I personally think they're cool... Except for a couple of details: 1) The colors make them stand out too much and 2) The flower looks like a crosshair, I initially thought it was a bug.
Version 1.0.2 released
Added game map (shift+m ingame) for 128k models.
Nice. Thanks to this game map, and M4's snapshot functionality, I may finally try finishing the game. Decades later.. :D
Nice job. Are some other releases/improvements planned ?
QuoteVersion 1.0.3 released
12% performance improvement
I will try to say this with as much respect for the author as possible, even if he probably stopped checking this site after the (strange) controversy.
The graphical changes introduced, like the bricks at 0:17, feel a bit like the CGI George Lucas added to the remastered Star Wars movies.
"You want an improved version of this? Well, take these aesthetical changes nobody asked for too!".
;)
Quote from: cwpab on 11:31, 03 March 25The graphical changes introduced, like the bricks at 0:17,
As someone who never played Saboteur 2 before I would not have recognized anything unpleasing. I checked the old version and I think that the new tiles look better than the old tiles which imho have aesthetics that remind me of typical character based BASIC type-ins.
Quote from: cwpab on 11:31, 03 March 25"You want an improved version of this? Well, take these aesthetical changes nobody asked for too!".
I prefer to see it from this standpoint: He's doing what he likes doing. And if he likes the other graphics more, it's his decision to include them into his personal version. It's just incredibly kind to share that with the whole community. If someone doesn't like his work, they are probably free to make their own improved version and keep all the graphics.
@eto Thanks, btw most of the additional graphics are from the official remake for modern platforms by Clive Townsend.
(https://maps.speccy.cz/maps/Saboteur2_2.png)
This is beautiful.