Robocop Prime

[Carnivius]

Am just wondering if any of the talented CPC coders have some free time coming up and would like to do a basic test prototype thing just to get RoboCop walking along the city road and such?

[TFM]

Can you do a tile set in MODE 0, 16 x 16 pixel? I would take the engine from my Giana Sisters clone.
Which are the dimensions of the Sprite?
I could send you my IDE for grabbing tiles from OCP screens (or any 17 KB screen) and making tile sets. And using these tile set's you could create levels. However, it all runs on the CPCs.

PM me in case you're interested.

[Carnivius]

The tiles are 4x8 (that look 8x8 cos of Mode 0).   The RoboCop object is made up of 4 sprites.  Legs (16x24), Torso (24x16), Head (8x10) and whichever gun he is using (default Auto-9 is 12x24 as it has diagonals and up/down).

Will go more into that in the coming weeks.  When I said 'free time coming up' I meant not right away as I'm still very busy with stuff (the play I'm rehearsing for is this coming week 6th til 8th.  Eep).   

New screenshot.  Finally coding and animating the standard enemy properly.  (looks better in motion, quite smooth).  This shot shows the mostly random head and palette swaps.

Am bit sick of that test backdrop.  Will start tiling a proper level sometime soon.

[TFM]

You did an awesome job till now. Time is always a problem, but keep it going. The result will be great at the end. 


I will try to overwork my engine to use 8x8 pixel tiles and cut it a bit down, so that it will run under Amsdos/Firmware. However this will take a decent amount of time. I let you know as soon as I have something working in my hands.
Maybe somebody else can help you more quick though.

[Carnivius]

Thanks.     Yeah, anybody who wants to pitch in is welcome.  I'm sure everyone's got their own lil tricks regarding speed, scrolling, memory usage, sprite compression and all that other stuff that can get the most out of the CPC.   

[TFM]

And what most of us sadly miss is... time 

[Carnivius]

Quick question for disk users.  How much can a CPC disk contain?   And do games make use of disk swapping for more capacity (sounds like a silly question I know but the Amiga was my first disk based computer so I have no experience of disks for 8-bit formats).

Way I'm thinking now is that the full version may be for 128k disk based CPC's that makes the most out of being on a larger capacity file format where the data can be accessed at any point and in seconds (for what I'm thinking that I'd like to try)  but I'd really like a smaller 'remix' version for my 464 afterwards that's probably closer to the original game in content and gameplay.

[CraigsBar]

Quick question for disk users.  How much can a CPC disk contain?   And do games make use of disk swapping for more capacity (sounds like a silly question I know but the Amiga was my first disk based computer so I have no experience of disks for 8-bit formats).

Way I'm thinking now is that the full version may be for 128k disk based CPC's that makes the most out of being on a larger capacity file format where the data can be accessed at any point and in seconds (for what I'm thinking that I'd like to try)  but I'd really like a smaller 'remix' version for my 464 afterwards that's probably closer to the original game in content and gameplay.

Not as easy as it sounds. The max capacity under amsdos is 178k each side regardless of disc type (3, 3.5 or 5.25) with an extended disk os then the 3 inch discs can be pushed to 203k each side and 3.5 or 5.25 to 796k. Generally games stick to the 178k format for maximum compatibility. But some also release a 3.5 inch double sided version (orion prime for example) in the 178k format disk swapping is becoming increasingly common.

Hope that lot is clear [emoji4]

[Carnivius]

178k per disk seems like enough.  Thank you. 

[TFM]

Hi!

Let me suggest you to use 3.5" Discs. Because:
- Everybody has such a drive in these days, else you can get it cheap
- Discs are cheaper and more easy to get
- The can take up to 700 KB at once (no swapping!)
- Using VaraDOS with Vortex Format reaches IMHO the most people
- You don't need to provide two 3" instead of one 3.5" disc
- If you compress data, then you can put more than 1.5 MB on it!

[opqa]

Also, don't count with data loading during the gameplay. Data loading from disk is a very CPU consuming process in the Amstrad so it should be done only between levels or at puntual moments where no activity (or at least very little) is taking place in the game.

[TFM]

That depends on your disc routines.


Let's say you would need to load 10 KB, then this would take my routines a maximum of 0.5 seconds.    And it works even better from 3.5". 

[opqa]

Mmmm, yes, but you can't trigger this load when you have the screen full of enemies and the main sprite jumping and shooting, or you'll notice the pause, this is what I meant. I know that some games like Orion Prime manage to reproduce music while loading, and even this is a challenge. Am I wrong?

[TFM]

Mmmm, yes, but you can't trigger this load when you have the screen full of enemies and the main sprite jumping and shooting, or you'll notice the pause, this is what I meant.

That's right of course, therefore god gave the CPC6128 128 KB of RAM and TotO gave us X-MEM. 

[Carnivius]

Does anyone else get days like I had yesterday where there's one tiny little annoying thing happening in the game (in this case RoboCop's gun flipping too early for a half second when he was turning) and most people probably wouldn't even notice it and yet you spend hours ripping out a big part of the graphics handling code and redo it from scratch making it work much better, be more efficient, easier to read and you feel really proud of how much 'better' it all is, only for someone to ask what's new and you basically just say "uh.. that half second where the gun looked wrong?  That's fixed now".  And they're like "oh..." having expected something new and amazing...

[ervin]

Oh heck yes. 
I hear ya bro.

I've spent DAYS getting my program to run 1.5% faster... most people wouldn't notice the difference (in fact probably no one would), but I'm really proud of myself because I KNOW that it's more efficient.

[Carnivius]

Yep, I think programming has a lot of 'self-satisfaction' about it.  Where you just have to accept that you're the only person who really gives a crap about some of it.  Unless it's something really fancy it's just not as easy to impress people with the coding like you can with graphics or music which are much less 'invisible' to the player.    They don't often praise you much for the smooth control and glitch free engine... but they'll sure as heck complain you if you get any of it wrong.

[Lazy Dude]

top tip that, dont get anything wrong , people love to have a good old moan!
i think that when you play a game you can tell pretty much straight away when a person/group has invested a lot of time to get the best out of whats possible, its them games that stand the test of time.
anyway so no pressure, just make it really top notch!

[opqa]

Sometimes is even worse, as when your code has grown too much and without much order and it needs some re-arrangement before proceeding to add new features to keep it maintainable. I can spend quite amount of time just cleaning and re-organizing the code with minor changes that take little or no effect in the program, just to make the code look prettier.

[TFM]

Well, IMHO people are watching / playing too much on non-CPC hardware. So they forget how hard it is to get things done.

We probably have to live with the fact that real good work is scarcely appreciated. It may be a bit better in the GFX section compared to the coding section.

I remember that "Technical Achievement" election in the ROM competition. But of course I'm biased in this case. However it may serve as an good example that people probably (more often) only appreciate the obvious.

I think that you guys do it damn right to try to make things as good as possible. If gun slingering or coding - doesn't matter. I appreciate what you do and the time you invest!!! 

[Carnivius]

Sometimes is even worse, as when your code has grown too much and without much order and it needs some re-arrangement before proceeding to add new features to keep it maintainable. I can spend quite amount of time just cleaning and re-organizing the code with minor changes that take little or no effect in the program, just to make the code look prettier.

Yep that was part of why I decided to finally fix that ever so slightly glitchy gun.  That whole part of the code (that decides which sprites to build RoboCop and which way they should be facing) is much cleaner now.  Most of the time when coding my first attempts are a total mess of experimentation trying to figure out what I'm doing and later I come back to it and rewrite much better now I know exactly what I want from it.

I think that you guys do it damn right to try to make things as good as possible. If gun slingering or coding - doesn't matter. I appreciate what you do and the time you invest!!! 

I'm very perfectionist-like about these things.  I want it to be the best I can do it.  And even little tiny bits nobody else would notice are important to me.   

Ok I just got home with some chips on my way back from the first performance of this comedy musical show I was in.  Two more nights to do of it.   

[Carnivius]

Ok I HATE coding even basic enemy AI (that is more than just moving left & right or up & down like you get in all those Manic Miner type of platformers).  It's tedious and it gives me a headache.  I'll get there.  Basically trying to do similar to the original CPC game but with some added features to give the enemies a bit more character and life.   Once it's done that's obviously a huge part of the gameplay finally in place. 

[TFM]

Very true! AI is the most consuming part. If you start caring about that then other things just look trivial. 

[Carnivius]

Mentioned in another friend that I sometimes hook my laptop up to the TV to test out my games and I like the chunky pixels so here's a photo. Some of the colours are too bright but that's just due to the camera taking the photo itself.  The actual TV's display looks correct in person.   For some reason the words at the top get a bit cut off but that just needs a resolution tweak in my monitor settings for the TV there.  That's a new thing by the way.  The name of the current location is at the top of the screen so you know where you are cos it's possible to go back and forth (the gameplay is less linear than the old games).   This meant pushing the gameplay area down by 8 pixels but I like that it now fits more snugly above the status panel.    Short dialogue bits still appear just above the status panel but now overlaid quickly on the bottom row of tiles and disappear after a couple seconds. 
And that keyboard (despite the light being on) isn't for playing the game.  That's connected to my PS3 and yet just because it was in front of the TV I kept pressing the keys on it to play the game forgetting I was meant to use the keys on the laptop and then wondering why the game wasn't responding.  Duh. 

[Carnivius]

RoboCop socialises with the community.