Wanted: New Graphics for Double Dragon (128k version)

[ivarf]

The good version with digitized graphics ported from the Amiga. Plays well, but looks like shit in my humble opinion. Has the graphics been redone by anyone? Would anyone like to give it a try? I have no clue how much work it would be.
Enlighten me


I found a great interview about it here: Double Dragon Dojo: Nick Speakman interview on Double Dragon
A very good read about what went wrong, the rewrites and the chaos and how the Amstrad 128k version showed the 16-bit coders how it was supposed to be done

[sigh]

Half finished mock up I had done a while ago.

I'm too deeply involved with my own beat em up, so it's not something I intend to do anytime soon. Has been put in the sock draw along with Rodland for now

P.S. The Spectrum remake is looking absolutely fantastic. That version looks like it will be the best version hands down surpassing all the other 8 bit and 16 bit home computer versions. A definite "must" download for me!

[arnoldemu]

The good version with digitized graphics ported from the Amiga. Plays well, but looks like shit in my humble opinion. Has the graphics been redone by anyone? Would anyone like to give it a try? I have no clue how much work it would be.
Enlighten me

I thought they were ported from the st, or perhaps ported from the arcade board?

128k version by Richard Aplin I believe, coder of Flyspy. The same code is used in Final Fight I think, but coded by somebody else.

The sprites may be in some kind of compressed form. I don't know to be sure.

The tiles I am assuming would be uncompressed.

Would be interesting to see a dissassembly and see how it was all done, it does move well and play well.

[sigh]

I thought they were ported from the st, or perhaps ported from the arcade board?

Double Dragon sprites were from the ST and Double Dragon II sprites were ripped from the arcade.
I reckon that if coded where the multi directional scrolling could be smoother in the same vain as Dynamite Dux and Skate Crazy, the music from the Spectrum remake and the sound effects of Renegade - it would be super awesome!

The sprites may be in some kind of compressed form. I don't know to be sure.

..and they can still move that fast in compressed form?!?!? Wow!

[TotO]

Better to redone the full arcade game, because both versions are poor.

[sigh]

Better to redone the full arcade game.

Agreed. This is exactly what I would do.

[MacDeath]

DD2 had quite better 16bit versions, very more faithfull graphically to the Arcade so DD2 on CPC is also a port from the 16bit homeversions I guess.
DD1 (the good one) can be a port from the poor 16bit versions but strangely, to pass the graphics into semi automatic Mode0 converter gave a result actually closer to the Arcade than the 16 bit versions.


Yes it seems some games used some automatic converters.
The result is somewhat half good alf bad... mostly we have very strange colour choices but on overall the result is not that bad looking.
Defender of the Crown devs told us they used some same device to roughly port the Atari ST graphics into CPC, then they edited them betterly...


DD1 clearly shows the ported graphics are not redone a lot which is sad.


Final Fight gains from the fact the sprites are a lot bigger so the result is better looking while still being rough.

Concerning DD1, just some work on re-inking would be enough IMO. the pixels are here, they are just screwed up but poor ink choices.


Would an engine like Alienstorm or Golden Axe be good for such game ?

[TotO]

The main problem is the Mode 0 here, because wide pixels don't match with "stringy" players and NPC sprites style.
An alternative was found on Master System by making "eXtra Deformed" like sprites, and the Spectrum remake look to do the same.

Double Dragon is one of my favorite game ever. (got the PCB)
The sound and sfx part of the game are very important to keep the arcade spirit.

But, before all, it need to be dynamic.

[sigh]

Concerning DD1, just some work on re-inking would be enough IMO. the pixels are here, they are just screwed up but poor ink choices.

It needs a lot more than just re-inking. The hair grab move for instance needs to look like a proper hair grab move along with the judo throw which aren't animated that well. When they pick up a box/barrel, their legs don't animate making them slide around. The music - Double Dragon has a piece of dedicated music track per stage (Mission 2 being my favourite.) The sound effects are also very meaty. There's a lot that can be improved and I for one would not at all find it acceptable if it were just "re inked" without sorting out all these other issues. It's important that it "feels" like Double Dragon.

The main problem is the Mode 0 here, because wide pixels don't match with "stringy" players and NPC sprites style.

I don't think the mode 0 is a problem at all with this or any game. (I was never a fan of the super deformed look of DD.)
For me - I would prefer if the game looked like the original as much as possible regardless if the pixels are wide or single.

I think I might finish that mock up.....

[TotO]

I don't think the mode 0 is a problem at all with this or any game. [...] I would prefer if the game looked like the original as much as possible regardless if the pixels are wide or single.

In this case, I though that you will be confronted to the same problem as the original CPC port, except if you got a great pixel skill to do miracle. Good luck!

[sigh]

Well, I'm hoping that the mock up I did does have a Double Dragon feel to it despite the wide pixel from and looking at them side by side, (arcade - mock up) I think it's closer to the original than the other 2 CPC versions. Though trying to get the sprites to resemble Jimmy and Billy took quite sometime, but I think it works....?




(...or maybe it doesn't? )

[TotO]

Sure, it's better.

[MacDeath]

The hair grab move for instance needs to look like a proper hair grab move along with the judo throw which aren't animated that well. When they pick up a box/barrel, their legs don't animate making them slide around.

That's perhaps another limitation of the engine.


More animated frames for the sprites = more RAM used to store them... and perhaps even more address.


Often you got a 256 tile limitation due to them being addressed in 1byte.
So it could be like 256 tiles for sprites and 256 tiles for background...


to add extra sets or bigger address capability means... it all get a lot heavier too.


DD game may encounter the following problems :
=no hardware support to flip sprites... gotta double them (no CPU but Extra RAM) pre-shifted (left-right flip)
=no easy palette swaps for sprites : an Arcade machine could re-use the same sprite with easy hardware palette  swaps, not on CPC or else you need extra RAM to pre-swap, or "attribute like" soft effect (CPU intensive I guess).
=and so on...


DoubleDragon has to manage a 2player option, or else it sucks, the background are quite complex and nice looking.
And the fighters have to deal with a lot of movements /fighting techniques.
Also to have those weapons well managed can be a big deal to get it good looking on the screen... (extra sprites sets ?)


Double Dragon was an 8bit arcade game... stretched to the limit... it used to lag badly because it was a very heavy game.


To do it "well" on a CPC it could really need like 256-512k RAM and even though...




Barbarian on CPC per exemple, (no scrolling, animation limited to a pair of sprites and a few elements ) used a method to get some palette swap.
The sprites are actually stored as Mode1 datas... 2bpp (4 colours) this matches the C64 version, use twice less RAM space... but you then can't have nice sprites in 15 colours. Still it fits 64K limitation.
And to colourswap means some CPU work.

[sigh]

To do it "well" on a CPC it could really need like 256-512k RAM and even though...

I reckon, after seeing the Speccy 128kb remake version in the works, you could still do well with 128kb.
Think Target renegade, with the throw, barrel throwing, headbutt and elbow:)

[TotO]

I reckon, after seeing the Speccy 128kb remake version in the works, you could still do well with 128kb.

The Spectrum got a faster display, and only hard scroll or more RAM to preshift sprites and/or tiles can help to do the same... It's why, I though, MacDeath speak about more memory.

[SyX]

I like a lot ... the gameboy b&w version 

I know is a very different game, but i played to death it (and Robocop too), amazing music (and Robocop too)

[sigh]

The Spectrum got a faster display, and only hard scroll or more RAM to preshift sprites and/or tiles can help to do the same... It's why, I though, MacDeath speak about more memory.

Ahhh - I had no idea that the speccy has a faster display.

[SyX]

Yes, speccy is only 6 KBs of video + 768 bytes for colour attributes (2 colours in each block of 8x8 pixels).

The usual CPC screen size (320x200 mode 1) takes 16 KBs (2,66 times more ram) and even when we reduce the screen size using a speccy screen size in CPC (256x192 mode 1) takes 12 KBs.

That means that in CPC for getting a similar speed, we need to work hard and use every trick in the hat (scroll hardware, double buffers, precompiled sprites, ...) but that is part of the charm of our machine

[MacDeath]

Exactly...
When I say 256-512K game... I mean it can of course use many multiloads between each levels (here the disk Drive is helping a lot more than Tapes...) and to be faire, an arcade/action game with like 178K Datas (a whole 3" disk side) is already more than enough to have a kool looking game...
After all CPU can only address 64K and many greatest hits were in less than that.


But still, 16K of "VRAM", doublebuffered (so 32K easily)... get all those sprites prebuffered/flipped/processed... add in for extra cinematics, effects, sounds, and so on... 128k is really a minium for a "super production", despite a lot being "wasted" in fancy fullscreen pages.


Good examples are R-Type 128 (swweeeeet intro) and Orion Prime (the intro is something like a whole 3" disk side... if I recall well...)


But yeah, it is just extra content and don't make an engine run smoothly during actual game.


To be fair, ZxSpectrum is sweet when dealing with 1bpp animation, sadly it remains 1bpp (= 1 colour... sort of). Also the lightweight Video make up for better AY sound handling (also the AY is clocked a bit faster)...




But you got to know that the CPC can generate a 192x256x16 fullscreen too (no attributes, but easier if static, not fully animated...)).
Which weights like 4x the Speccy screen (without counting attributes).

[ivarf]

I thought they were ported from the st, or perhaps ported from the arcade board?

128k version by Richard Aplin I believe, coder of Flyspy. The same code is used in Final Fight I think, but coded by somebody else.

From the interview linked to in my first post:
"Glad to hear that.  So what was the deal with the two Amstrad ports?

Nick: "In version 1 (the poor CPC 464 game) Ben (Jackson) did the original Spectrum graphics and Jez (Nelson) colored them up a bit.  The second set of graphics (in the good CPC 6128 game) were "ported" from the excellent Amiga version... which  is why they look better but have strange color combinations.""

[TotO]

Double Dragon, an excellent Amiga version?
This poor lazy port... Sure, it's a joke! 

It's the perfect exemple of a 512K game that you load only one time...


EDIT: And format...

[Gryzor]

Hahaha that was a good one

[SyX]

And is based in real events 

[ivarf]

Contradicting things is being said in the interview
"But finally, Nick gives a proper reason for the two Amstrad CPC ports.  Richard Aplin, who (almost) saved the Amiga and ST ports showed the new guys who had ruined DD with their Amstrad port, how it was done with his excellent version. "


I don't know, read the interview yourself and see if it has any new interesting information for you. I enjoyed it a lot, it gave a lot of information about the chaotic times. Some version only got 14 days of coding
Double Dragon Dojo: Nick Speakman interview on Double Dragon

[sigh]

I just played the Richard Aplin version again and I'm even more convinced that a remake would just be stupendously awesome! The actual scrolling seems to be moving at 4 mode 0 pixels horizontally(16 single pixels) and 4 "single" pixels vertically It's not as smooth as Dynamite Dux or Skate Crazy, but as the playing area is quite large, it doesn't feel too choppy. The actual sprites moving around the scrolling are also moving at around 4 wide pixels (16 single pixels) when moving from left to right. 4 "single" pixels when moving up and down. You can move the screen back and forth (while with Dynamite Dux you can only move forward.)

I'm guessing that as the frame rate is constant - it helps with the game feeling somewhat smooth despite the huge pixel movements.

There's no flickering or slowdown with 6 characters on screen including the giant Abobo. Almost all the moves are present apart from the stun animation frame that actually pauses, the full nelson hold, spin kick and the uppercut. The jumping back kick isn't airborne like in the arcade and when landing a punch; only the right hand on the punches connect.