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Rasters in CPC

Started by sigh, 17:15, 18 April 11

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sigh

Quote from: roudoudou on 07:37, 31 January 20
i notice (that's not the first time, i saw the other thread with fighters) you like to push MANY pixels, you should consider a ROM game (for Dandanator, XMEM or Playcity) if it's not against your religion
As far as i know, existing ROM hardware offer up to 512K of code/data and let software run on all CPC (dealing with 64K+double buffering is a lot easier with many ROMs)
You are correct! I do try and create the animation as smooth a possible which can sometimes result in large sheets, then I have to start cutting back. The beat em up and the Football game are all designed for a 128kb machine, where I have had to be very meticulous in ensuring that the sprites are optimized as much as possible. This game however only has around 10 animations for the main sprite following:

IdleJumpSomersaultLand on Wall
flying through the air.HitBeing HitKO
Celebration
I will optimize so they don't, won't take much sprite space. The Idle - I may split this into body parts and animate a 5 frame cycle which will save lots of space, instead of displaying full frame.
Quote from: Axelay on 09:21, 31 January 20
...though the dither masks themselves don't appear to be required at those sizes, they look to be repeating patterns of 4x4 pixels, just 4 bytes per pattern, so wouldn't take much space at all in that case.
What size would you recommend? Your right in that they are just a repeating pattern. I will follow your advice and use the dither masks.

Quote from: Axelay on 09:21, 31 January 20
A full default sized CPC screen is 16kb in any mode, so those 4 sprite sheets would come to 64kb.  But if multiload works for your design, it might work in 64kb.
Cool. I'm going to fit everything into 2 sprite sheets as I don't think multiloading would work. I intend to optimize animations and effects to the best I can.
Quote from: Axelay on 09:21, 31 January 20
Storing the background as tiles and double buffering depends on how the coder might handle your requirements, you'd need to specify what you're trying to achieve so they could work out an approach - simultaneous sprite count & their size, frame rate you'd like to aim for & how stable that is, things like that.  The higher the requirements, the more likely double buffering may be necessary.
Thankfully the game will only have that 1 background and no other (like Way Of The Exploding Fist/IK +). I'm going to post a gameplay animation.



sigh

Quote from: roudoudou on 06:29, 30 January 20
I realise i Can move up Again the screen by one char. Doing this the Small loss will become 0.5% so do not modify the screen yet. Will do this tonight
Did you manage to get round to doing this? I'm thinking that it maybe easier to just stick with the 4 colours.

roudoudou

Quote from: sigh on 00:44, 02 February 20
Did you manage to get round to doing this? I'm thinking that it maybe easier to just stick with the 4 colours.
Sure, there was "nothing" to do as i said
https://rasmlive.amstrad.info/edit/eXZwEZmaPf8BqyKzZ

My pronouns are RASM and ACE

sigh


sigh

After some more testing with the special effects and rasters, it seems better if the raster is only used (in this case the deep yellow) in the sky so that the white dither special effect stands out. I did try dithering the sky with the pale yellow, but the white didn't show up well enough. So now the background is only 2 colours in each part, with the characters primary colours being the black and white so they stand out clear enough from the background during the action.




andycadley

Good choice. It's amazing how often a cool sounding idea, that is technically feasible and seems to work well in static screenshots just sort of falls apart once you start doing real movement

sigh

Quote from: andycadley on 23:38, 04 February 20
Good choice. It's amazing how often a cool sounding idea, that is technically feasible and seems to work well in static screenshots just sort of falls apart once you start doing real movement
Thanks.
Yes - the sprites were getting lost in the detail of the background. I'm going to make the raster part of the sky either light blue or light green.

sigh

I will go for the green...




...and then do something like this by deleting some of the green to form clouds.



I will do this properly tomorrow and that should be the background finished.

sigh

Here is the final background, but the cloud patterns have complicated the rasters as it has now affected the sprites.

Due to the cloud patterns, I have had to account for colour clash for where the green clouds will be as it is the only way to pixel the clouds blending smoothly into the sky. The characters white detail will change into the pale yellow around the clouds.What I think needs to happen are that the ink arrangements at this point, needs to have a natural colour clash to appear on the white parts of the character. But that natural clash needs to be yellow and not green.

If the cloud patterns are making things too complicated then they will have to be removed. Here are example with the existing four colours:
     


The white clouds are to harsh on the eyes.The black clouds could be a little distracting.The orange clouds could work if I change some of the dithering. Otherwise I will just remove the clouds altogether and leave the sky plain.








TotO

Nice new animated-gif "project". What about the football and beat them up games started in April 2012?
"You make one mistake in your life and the internet will never let you live it down" (Keith Goodyer)

sigh

Quote from: TotO on 17:38, 06 February 20
Nice new animated-gif "project". What about the football and beat them up games started in April 2012?
Football is done (all sprites animated) but needs a programmer. There isn't much else I can do for that apart from the menu screen.

The beat em up is still going and I was working on level 3 backgrounds early January. I find that it helps to have 2 game projects running side by side as I can get burn out if I just focus on one.However this time, I'm not making the same mistake with the football project - that project was very intense with the amount of animation going on. This project is tiny compared to those and only needs 2 or 3 more drawings for the main sprite and that is all the character art done. Then; I just need to animate the special effects and grab some fonts.

TotO

I'm really amazed that no programmer was involved since years for those amazing projects.
"You make one mistake in your life and the internet will never let you live it down" (Keith Goodyer)

sigh

Quote from: TotO on 19:18, 06 February 20
I'm really amazed that no programmer was involved since years for those amazing projects.


Arnoldemu is working on the beat em up project.  :)
The backgrounds and level designs is the real brain cruncher for me. The first 4 screens of any of these levels are extremely challenging as I am constantly having to optimize the tiles - only to have "re-optimize them again" in order that they can be used elsewhere. Altering just 1 pixel can really make a difference whether that tile can be re-used or not to save space while being interesting enough to give variety to the level. Animating the characters was a much easier task.


The football game is a nightmare for a programmer due to ball physics, AI for team awareness of 22 players on field, goal keeper AI to balance how good they are and also the scrolling; so finding a programmer for this will be difficult. There are also a lot of animations.


This game however, has none of the above :D . This is a very small project and it's also the first mode 1 game that I have designed. There is no level design, no scrolling, no hud, no joystick control as it is only the fire button that is used and there are only a handful of animations.
Just 3 more poses to do (will do that on sunday as tomorrow I am sketching out the rest of level 3 for the beat em up), then next week I will do the special effects. I will post a full gameplay demo soon in the "games" section. Hopefully a programmer will be interested to take this one on.

luckpro

Quote from: sigh on 01:33, 07 February 20
The football game is a nightmare for a programmer due to ball physics, AI for team awareness of 22 players on field, goal keeper AI to balance how good they are and also the scrolling; so finding a programmer for this will be difficult. There are also a lot of animations.


I totally agree with this :laugh:

TotO

Quote from: sigh on 01:33, 07 February 20
Arnoldemu is working on the beat em up project.  :)
The backgrounds and level designs is the real brain cruncher for me. The first 4 screens of any of these levels are extremely challenging as I am constantly having to optimize the tiles - only to have "re-optimize them again" in order that they can be used elsewhere. Altering just 1 pixel can really make a difference whether that tile can be re-used or not to save space while being interesting enough to give variety to the level. Animating the characters was a much easier task.
128K floppy game? Why not a ROM game?
"You make one mistake in your life and the internet will never let you live it down" (Keith Goodyer)

sigh

Quote from: TotO on 11:32, 07 February 20
128K floppy game? Why not a ROM game?


To be honest, I do need to learn how to be more resourceful and not go overboard with my ideas, so I think that at this stage, I should learn to work within a set limitation before creating a rom game.


However - nothing is set in stone until we get the first level playable, so that could all change depending on what Arnoldemu is able to do, or if he needs me to cutdown/change things.

sigh

On the CPC WIKI, I noticed that it mentioned a "Mode 5" which makes "which makes heavy use of Rasters and Split Rasters in order to enable far more colours in the normal Mode1."
Where can I find examples of this?

roudoudou

There is no spoon mode.  ;D


Try to Keep 4 colors max Every 16 pixels


Do color change every 64 pixels on the same ink ( or more pixels by 16 step)


Thats all folks


Will be easy if there is less than 6 color changes per line
My pronouns are RASM and ACE

sigh

Ah okay. So not a mode; because I was about to  ask what happened to "mode 4" ;D
Thanks!

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