Scorpion Engine

[Havie]

Originally Posted by earok

I was curious, so I had to do a rough and rapid prototype to see if a basketball game is possible.



Yep. You'd need a LOT of custom logic to get it working well, to the point it may still be better to make an engine from scratch for it, but it could work in theory in Scorpion.

21st century Speedball- Doomball!

[nobody]

For sure it does 50 fps on A500 (512k +512k) when i use a static screen and use some sprites (2-3) on a bubble bobble-like game i am experimenting.

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

For sure it does 50 fps on A500 (512k +512k) when i use a static screen and use some sprites (2-3) on a bubble bobble-like game i am experimenting.

That's great to hear

If you run into frameskips with a few enemies, it might be worth looking into using hardware sprites (which are faster than bobs, but with limitations).

- They use palette index 16-31, so you should be able to copy the 16 color palette you've already got into the upper values.
- Once you've done that, you should be able to tick 'auto sprite' in the animation editor. It'll use up the sprite channels if available (up to 4x 16 pixel wide sprites) and then fall back to regular BOBs once it runs out.

Edit: Ahh, I see you've already done that

[nobody]

I use hardware sprites for player and bullets already, colors 16-19. 2 enemies (bobs), player and bullets move without any frame skip (sometimes if i shoot many bullets it does a NES-like sprite flicker).

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

I use hardware sprites for player and bullets already, colors 16-19. 2 enemies (bobs), player and bullets move without any frame skip (sometimes if i shoot many bullets it does a NES-like sprite flicker).

Turn off "only sprite" and it'll never flicker (since it'll always revert to Bobs, but still prefer sprites if it can).

[nobody]

This engine really is bad ass. That import backbone option should be removed immediately lol

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

This engine really is bad ass. That import backbone option should be removed immediately lol

Hahaha. Maybe once the TOG games are ported..



Slightly off topic - it's a long weekend here so I'm going to be attempting a major project for the engine. It's a port of Pitfall 2, the C64 version specifically, but with graphics from the Sega arcade version.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Bit late to the party here, and not tried it yet. But watching the videos on the editor, I have to say , nice job. I can only begin to imagine the effort that has gone into creating this. Well done

[skyzoo73]

Originally Posted by earok

Hahaha. Maybe once the TOG games are ported..



Slightly off topic - it's a long weekend here so I'm going to be attempting a major project for the engine. It's a port of Pitfall 2, the C64 version specifically, but with graphics from the Sega arcade version.

One of my favorite arcades, at the time I finished it!

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by earok

Hahaha. Maybe once the TOG games are ported..



Slightly off topic - it's a long weekend here so I'm going to be attempting a major project for the engine. It's a port of Pitfall 2, the C64 version specifically, but with graphics from the Sega arcade version.

Very nice Scorpion Engine is becoming something very special! I'm sure there will come lot's of good from all the work you put into this.

[AmyMor]

is there at the moment a "finished" video game with the scorpion engine to play? I mean with a complete beginning and end?

[earok]

Originally Posted by AmyMor

is there at the moment a "finished" video game with the scorpion engine to play? I mean with a complete beginning and end?

Super-Go-Down-The-Hole and Amigo the Fox are more or less complete (although short) games, though I need to tidy them up a little more for a more final release.

[nobody]

A small 3 level demo (no title yet) what i created so far. It's a port of a nice ZX Spectrum homebrew i played recently. Music is a placeholder.
I believe it should run just fine on A500, 512k + 512k (my target machine)

https://easyupload.io/8pvw55

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by nobody

A small 3 level demo (no title yet) what i created so far. It's a port of a nice ZX Spectrum homebrew i played recently. Music is a placeholder.
I believe it should run just fine on A500, 512k + 512k (my target machine)

https://easyupload.io/8pvw55

Thats nice game, exactly my genre. And I wanna dance lambada now Please continue in developlment.

[earok]

Originally Posted by nobody

A small 3 level demo (no title yet) what i created so far. It's a port of a nice ZX Spectrum homebrew i played recently. Music is a placeholder.
I believe it should run just fine on A500, 512k + 512k (my target machine)

https://easyupload.io/8pvw55

Whoa, that's really cool. I believe that's the first playable Scorpion demo that I wasn't directly involved in too

How do you change from Red -> Green and back? I assume it has something to do with the charge crystals? Or is it to do with the enemies?

Do you mind if I post about the game on the Scorpion Facebook page?

---

I hit bit of a rut with Pitfall, A500 performance just wasn't acceptable so that lead me down a rabbit hole with fixing a whole lot of things to try and get performance up to scratch.

So I might not have enough time left this weekend to release an alpha of it as planned, but I'm reasonably happy with the performance gains I've made in the engine, which include:

- Automatically trimming bobs to edges (eg, if you've got transparent edges around the PNGs, it'll remove it when compiling)
- Reducing the size of the scroll buffer. Also, it's no longer hard coded to expect a Y resolution of 256, so it won't scroll the area behind UI bars etc.

[nobody]

It changes when you meet a crystal and have zero ammo left. Ammo is only consumed when you stun enemies or destroy balls of your color.

On player pass the crystal block checks your color (0 or 1) then runs a script of code that will change to 1 and player animation change to green and vice versa.

Took me many hours how to implement the basic mechanics, thinking and hit and miss, i thought it was simple but not lol.

Sure, you can post it on your page.

About speed i agree it is slow when using bobs.

[earok]

All done hope this is OK - https://www.facebook.com/scorpioneng...44163507217690

I think the mechanic could work well but it just needs to be explained (that the switch happens when you do a refill). I could see it being used to make mazes where you need to navigate through the balls in the right order.

[saimon69]

Do the engine supports the player changing Weapons often? Think at Super Crate box...

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Do the engine supports the player changing Weapons often? Think at Super Crate box...

Definitely..

[earok]

Absolutely.

In general, you'd define each weapon type as a different "actor" (so you can assign specific animations), and then you can swap between them as needed. Nobody's game is an example of this through green/red character swapping.