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Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact

Started by JamesV, December 21, 2015, 01:37:37 PM

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JamesV

After stumbling back on , I decided to do some experimenting myself.

This is only very quickly put together, no sprite clipping or vram flipping, and not optimised at all, but it's enough to show that maybe a full colour version of Alien Breed is possible on the CE...



The sprites are still 8x8, but are now 8bpp (256 colours), and again scaled up x3. Like Mateo's Mario CE, all tiles are fully redrawn each frame instead of "scrolling". If I implement vram flipping and optimise the routines, it will look much better (in fact, it looks much better on the actual calculator than the above gif).

If I went ahead with this method, I can maintain the same code base between the monochrome 83+/84+ calculators and the colour 84+CE :)

c4ooo

Quote from: JamesV on February 03, 2016, 10:38:37 AM
After stumbling back on , I decided to do some experimenting myself.

This is only very quickly put together, no sprite clipping or vram flipping, and not optimised at all, but it's enough to show that maybe a full colour version of Alien Breed is possible on the CE...



The sprites are still 8x8, but are now 8bpp (256 colours), and again scaled up x3. Like Mateo's Mario CE, all tiles are fully redrawn each frame instead of "scrolling". If I implement vram flipping and optimise the routines, it will look much better (in fact, it looks much better on the actual calculator than the above gif).

If I went ahead with this method, I can maintain the same code base between the monochrome 83+/84+ calculators and the colour 84+CE :)
Looks nice; maybe a you can do a mineraft port? :) ( Something i want to do but cant, becouse i dont have a CE  :'( )
Whats up with the weird glitch near the sides of the screen btw?

JamesV

Quote from: c4ooo on February 03, 2016, 11:10:30 PMLooks nice; maybe a you can do a mineraft port? :) ( Something i want to do but cant, becouse i dont have a CE  :'( )
Whats up with the weird glitch near the sides of the screen btw?
Thanks! The glitch is just a result of lazy sprite routines - I wrote them in a rush just to get an idea of how quick the frame rate would be. Once I tidy them up it will be much nicer.

Minecraft would be great to do - I'm not sure I'd be up to the challenge though, but maybe!

Dream of Omnimaga

That looks cool James. I'm glad it runs fast enough. Maybe you could keep the original graphics but just add colors to them. :)

What I usually do is that I take the sprites in their calculator screen colors (the yellow-green-ish stuff), then I change the hue and saturation. That seems to do the job most of the time :P
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dudeman313

This will end up a program, right? Are 3rd-party apps blocked on OS 5.0? Cause if they're not, it could all be a huge app with awesome details and such.
:walrii:
  • Calculators owned: TI-84 PCE
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Android O Phone
Does this qualify as a signature? 
The answer is "Sure."


JamesV

Quote from: Dudeman313 on February 11, 2016, 09:11:50 PM
This will end up a program, right? Are 3rd-party apps blocked on OS 5.0? Cause if they're not, it could all be a huge app with awesome details and such.
:walrii:
Yeah as far as I'm aware, 3rd-party apps are still not an option for us due to the 2048 bit signing key. Thus this will be a program (with chunks of data stored in external app vars).

Dudeman313

Oh, okay. What will the character sprite look like?
  • Calculators owned: TI-84 PCE
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Android O Phone
Does this qualify as a signature? 
The answer is "Sure."


JamesV

Quote from: Dudeman313 on February 14, 2016, 10:07:04 PM
Oh, okay. What will the character sprite look like?
Most likely a cross between the monochrome 8x8 sprite and the original Amiga character sprite (the green guy centre screen). Although I haven't done any work on AB5 for the last week and a half, as I've been messing about with Thunderbirds. But I'll be back on to AB5 sometime later this week or next week :)

Dudeman313

If you tell me the size you need, I could come up some pretty good sprites.  ;)
  • Calculators owned: TI-84 PCE
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JamesV

I decided to try using 16x16 tile sprites (as opposed to 8x8 scaled up x3 in the previous screenshot), which resulted in the below (don't mind the yellow artifacts, they don't actually happen during execution). It certainly looks better quality, but in my opinion it's now a bit too small on screen.



For the sake of maintaining gameplay compatibility between the 83+/84+ monochrome version and the 84+CE version, the play screen needs to show 12x8 tiles, and the tile width/height needs to be a multiple of 8. I'm contemplating next trying 12x12 tile sprites scaled up x2 to make them 24x24, which is a multiple of 8.

Dudeman313

Yeah, I know what you mean. It looks good, but small.  :-\
  • Calculators owned: TI-84 PCE
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Dream of Omnimaga

scaled up 12x12 sprites sounds like a good deal. That said, I would be fine with the 8x8 sprites scaled up with just a small border around the screen too.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Dudeman313

I just thought of something! You could put the health/ammo bars(maybe even a scrolling objective reminder) on the border. Or you could just plaster "Alien Breed by James Vernon" all over it.
  • Calculators owned: TI-84 PCE
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Android O Phone
Does this qualify as a signature? 
The answer is "Sure."


JamesV

Quote from: Dudeman313 on February 24, 2016, 02:27:55 AM
I just thought of something! You could put the health/ammo bars(maybe even a scrolling objective reminder) on the border. Or you could just plaster "Alien Breed by James Vernon" all over it.
I will be putting the HUD at the top/bottom of the screen like the original Amiga version has :)


Dream of Omnimaga

If you want to maximize screen usage, you could definitively do like some old PC8801 games and move the play area to the top/left and fill the rest with an HUD and the title or other game info.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

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