Posted By
indi
on 2006-09-30
04:33:48
|  XeO3 Teaser.....
Please place any comments, suggestions, constructive criticism here. Ta.
|
|
Posted By
KiCHY
on 2006-09-30
10:53:35
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Hey,
This demo is damned good!  I'm also thinking about publishing a polished demo of my game project, at least for some self-inspiration
Very good work!
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-09-30
11:00:19
 | Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Aaaaahh! So you have a game project too!
Talk about it, tell us... 
|
|
Posted By
Rachy
on 2006-09-30
12:44:43
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Awesome!
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-09-30
14:29:36
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Top That! (And i've seen it on the bigscreen! Yeah!)
|
|
Posted By
Chris
on 2006-09-30
14:49:29
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Hi guys,
I have just watched this rolling demo on the original machine and using Yape. Its so beautiful, nearly brought a tear to my eye.
Fantastic work guys
Chris
|
|
Posted By
Csabo
on 2006-09-30
18:13:49
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Kudos to the dev team, it's going to be a major release. Looking forward to playing it!
|
|
Posted By
Sidius
on 2006-10-01
02:13:26
 | Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Great thing - I want more!!!
|
|
Posted By
Lacoste
on 2006-10-01
13:59:29
 | Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Hi,
It's great !!!
I think the music is awesome, but the GFX is average !
Maybe more colour will solve that, but I'm not a coder, so I do not know
what is the limit !
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-01
14:59:09
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Fair enough... have a read of this: http://www.javalemmings.com/xeo3/limi1024.htm to understand the limits a bit more.
The backgrounds pretty much finished, but there are vistually NO actual baddies done yet - thats on Luca's to-do list
Can you be a bit more specific about what you think needs tarting up?
And don't worry, we won't take offence... If we agree, theres a good chance it'll get changed, if not then no harm done. All comments welcomed, as long as its constructive!!
|
|
Posted By
Lacoste
on 2006-10-02
14:25:55
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Hi Mike,
I read the FAQ about the limits, and SORRY for my opinion,
but I played some C16/Plus4 games like finders keepers
or fingers malone and they have got lots of colours on the screen.
I think it will be more colorful when you use different colours in different levels.
|
|
Posted By
Lacoste
on 2006-10-02
14:26:25
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Hi Mike,
I read the FAQ about the limits, and SORRY for my opinion,
but I played some C16/Plus4 games like finders keepers
or fingers malone and they have got lots of colours on the screen.
I think it will be more colorful when you use different colours in different levels.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-02
14:37:22
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
That's fine if you want colour over "proper" sprites. The problem with Finders Keepers is that every sprite has a big black box around it. That's okay if you have virtually no collisions and hardly ever see this effect. But when you have baddies flying over the background it looks truly horrible.
Now, if you accept that you need proper sprites and have to mix them together, then you are now faced with what spectrum users affectionately call Colour Clash. 2 colours can occupy the same space, so a sprite then partially changes colour as it moves around which doesn't look good either. This is also why games like Uridium on the Spectrum only use one colour - same reason as us.
Now, we did try both these methods (I'm sure there are a few piccys of them around some where)m and while the colour looked nice when nothing was colliding, it looked horrible when it did. And the same goes for the black boxes... in fact, if I did this method, I would have gotten a lot more sprites on screen!
But we decided we wanted what +4 owners hardly ever get - proper sprites, and to do that, you have to drop colour and the black boxes. This was a conscious decision, so it's not one we're likely to go back on - thanks anyway.
If you want nicer looking....wait until I try a C64 version... that'll probably look better
|
|
Posted By
Gaia
on 2006-10-02
15:17:21
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
While not doubting Mike's arguments I must admit that the "mono-blue" colour scheme is rrather infortunate. Maybe you could opt for a more cheerful colour palette, like green, brown or even better: change the palette on every level...! I think that's feasible. Just look how many of the scene's old game productions have the blue-scheme already: Arak, Beamphobia, Blastones, Boogie Ball, Crackerball etc.
|
|
Posted By
Chicken
on 2006-10-02
16:38:45
 | Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I already stated my point of view about the colors in this thread
Though, I think I should add something.
I don't mind the "monochrome blueish" look at all, even if many games have used it before. I mean, check C64 games and scene logos, when it comes to colors many of them look so much alike. Always the very same color fades etc...
Yes, maybe the blue look is a save harbor because graphicians know those combinations work and yes, I have seen lots of logos on plus/4 that always use the same three colors on black background and not many graphicians have been daring to try something different when limited to four colors.
Still, I prefer this over "ugly" brownish and green (GAIA, this is not against you and your suggestion... just check a Kruss/Kruk-Soft demo and you know what I mean  ) anytime.
Mike, are there any areas in the "playfield" that will never be "touched" by a sprite? I think even a few parts with different colors would make a difference in the look.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-02
17:04:56
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
We do plan to change colour scheme each level - this is a very easy thing to do, so we will. The Blue goes well with the pipes etc. so I guess it'll stay that way, but the later levels will vary.
No, sprites can and do go everywhere - except the panel, which already uses colour extensively.
It all comes back down to what you think is better I guess...if you don't mind colour clash, then colours are fine to add, if you do, then you "could" do the black box thing, but with lots of stuff moving over the background, it doesn't look as nice.
Personallym we prefer the C64 sprite look........are you guys saying you'd rather have colour clash and or black boxes?
|
|
|
|
Posted By
Chicken
on 2006-10-02
17:22:49
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I can just speak for myself. As already said in the other thread, I DO like lots of colors. BUT if it's not possible -because sprites go everywhere- then I rather have less colors and CLEAN Sprites instead.
Recently, I have seen many screenshots of Spectrum games and I always thought "What a pity, it would have looked much better without the colors and thus without the "color clash" (or "colour clash" since it's a British machine ).
I guess Spectrum users just got used to that and somewhat accepted the "color clash" as a fact. Still, it looks buggy to me 
If I recall correctly, one of Mike's intentions was to create a GOOD software sprite routine. Stick to that
I wondered about the other levels... I thought "Well, if they change the colors the player's spaceship will look differently, too". But I think that's explainable, too Just think about how you look in green light
Also, I think we have seen many screenshots (and now the teaser) of the first level. So we knew that it's blue and we were not surprised... but it fits the "scenery" very well.
To sum it up: Proper sprites
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-02
22:54:18
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
One thing i saw in "Creatures" on C64 was to use different colors along the y-axis via Raster-Interrupts. This might add to the XeO3 game aswell, even if the player- and enemy-sprites will be coloured that way too.
Nice Idea?
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-03
02:04:55
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Afraid not, because the C64 has Hardware Sprite this means they aren't affected by these colour changes. However on the +4 if the player (or baddie) wandered into these locations the would change colour as well, I'm afraid that isn't an option either. You can only do that on the plus4 if you don't cross into that region.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-03
03:26:46
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Oh.... and Creatures on the C64 is in Bitmap mode, so they have colours everywhere
|
|
Posted By
Lavina
on 2006-10-03
04:05:21
 | Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I also like the mono-blue for Xeo3 if we have these limitations with colors. Actually, as Mike mentioned, this fits the most to this graphic, it gives a metallic feeling.
The reason I used mono-blue for Beamphobia is simple: I had only monochrome TV available that time for my Plussy. My father taught that computers ruin the TV-s piccytube, so he did not permit me to connect my plussy to the color TV. :D
Actually, I always wanted to do a "remake" of beamphobia, with nicer smooth-sprite cursor, and more colors... And new maps, of course, maybe also new features.
This game is quite enjoyable, I got the concept from Nintendo Game Boy... Moreover, It uses the same engine for graphic as Robomutant.
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-03
05:10:50
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Lavina:a 3rd Beamphobia chapter would be GREAT!
I see that the infamous legend about damaging the cathodic tube of colorTVs caught everwhere, we must say an ultimate definitive word about it, 'coz everybody of us fought this tragic disease in their own families, when younger. Ee should open a ne thread about
|
|
Posted By
ScottC
on 2006-10-05
05:54:42
 | Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Hi,
I usually read this site to see what's happening in the C16/+4 world, and I saw this thread.
I've tried the Xeo3 demo on my GP2X and it looks fantastic!
I was even more impressed when the frame counter said - 100% speed, 25 frames per second.
A couple of questions:
Do you think the game remain at 25 FPS when complete?
Will you release the game a level at a time, or are you going to wait till it's all finished?
Either way it's fantastic work, very well done!
ScottC
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-05
06:03:40
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I think the frame rate is related to the emulation speed, as the emulator really has no way of knowhing how fast the games running..
I don't know, I suspect we'll release it as a whole, since I want to release the source along with it... and if you keep releasing levels, the temptation is to simply keep doing that! I think the current plan is to do 3-4 levels and then release it all - lock stock and barrel. The people can do their own games/levels for it.
Ask Luca, he's having a blast doing level scripting just now!!!
|
|
Posted By
ScottC
on 2006-10-05
06:13:21
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Ok, I assumed that 25 FPS meant the code ran in under a frame, but I'm not a programmer so I'll take your word for it.
Am I right in thinking it uses SID music?
I didn't hear anything from the demo because the GP2X emulator doesn't support SID cards.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-05
07:11:26
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
The game does run at 25fps (which is every 2 frames - PAL TV's run at 50, 60 for NTSC). Theres no way this game could run in 1 frame, I'd have to drop most of the sprites. I think you could get a scrolling game running in 1 which mightbe interesting... but not this one.
Yeah SID music, TED sound effects (which you won't hear coz its not in the demo).
|
|
Posted By
Patrick
on 2006-10-07
10:32:06
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
because my c16 power suply is broken, but will the teaser also run on a real c16?
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-07
10:48:43
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Only if it has a 64k RAM expansion.
I'm also not too sure about what happens when you play SID music, and there's no SID hardware - will cause any problems?
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-07
10:50:16
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Patrick, XeO3 is for real a C16+64K and Plus/4 game, and we hope all the ppl will play it on the real one!
|
|
Posted By
Rachy
on 2006-10-08
03:34:56
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
@MikeD
IMO, in most cases playing the SID song w/o HW won't do any harm. (Most converted music uses the original SID player, just retarget the register area to a different address and read the values directly from there.) Some of the SID players are depending on readable values, provided by the SID, those might broke, but I have never seen such thing. (Beside the vanishing of some effects, like gate bit tricks.)
|
|
Posted By
Patrick
on 2006-10-08
04:09:05
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
offcurse i will play it on a real +4!!! i only asked this because i could not test it on my "good old" c16. i still wait till i can buy a sid-card from chris (www.commodore16.com).
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-08
06:29:50
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Heh...we all are waiting for Chris'SIDcard
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-10
17:49:54
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I think i have a nice idea (probably):
The bullets look quite poor when moving over background graphics. It should be possible to make a second bullet character that has some kind of "background" around it - just something that approximates that there is some graphics underneath it.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-10
18:21:51
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Do you mean "mask" the bullet to the background, or do you mean put "anything" in the space in the bullet?
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-10
20:23:28
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I guess masking would be to CPU consumptive. I just thought of a second bullet-char that has some other color than black as the background color. When the bullet moves in "space" you chose the black-background-version, as long as its on the "dungeon" graphics you chose a light-blue-background-version.
I'm not sure if it's going to look better, but probably it could dampen the "hey-look-it's-not-a-real-sprite" effect.
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-10
20:33:45
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Oh, i forgot: Another try for the 2nd bullet could be "embossing" it into a light-blue background (with that little 3d-effect you see on radiobuttons under windows).
p.s.: One thing that keeps me thinking from time to time is that you were telling you have a cache for prerotated sprites. This sounds like unpredictable execution times when many cache-misses occur, but the Xeo3-teaser never stalls or slows down. How does this cache work?
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-11
02:47:22
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Turrets'bullets is one of our prefer points of debate. Options may be:
- they go everywhere overlapping with everything;
- they collide and stop with the backgrouns (my prefer one);
- they go under the background;
- they make coffee for all of us (a difficult and useless one, but surely a great task in coding).
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-11
03:18:34
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Okay - Bullets first. The problem is that we actually have 4 bullets, each one takes a quarter character while allows the bullet path to be a bit smoother. However, this does mean theres a large space around it. We don't have the characters to spare for duplicates, adn I think you would need a small selection of backgrounds to pick from. I just don't think it would work without actualy making new chars, and we don't really have the CPU power for that. I guess once its released, someone can reduce the number of baddies a bit, and spend a bit more CPU time on surrounding effects. That would be interesting to see.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-11
03:30:49
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Now...Cache....
The cache is really simple - in concept at least. Whenever anyone needs to draw a sprite they pick up the original, rotate it, stick it in memory somewhere, then use that to mask a sprite to the screen.
All the cache does is has lots of "slots" for the "stick it in memory somewhere" phase. This means after the first few frames of a sprite, I never have to do that again - an it's an expensive process.
Although with things like animation I do sometimes need to rotate and drawm it means other sprites can share the answers and don't have to do that work. It's all a balancing act. If the game slows down, I have a few choices on how to speed it up just by changing the script. Circle commands are very slow really, but if all the baddies are the same shape, then chances are I can get away with it becase they don't all have to rotate every frame.
I can also simply drop a baddie from a path; saving drawing a single sprite will save oddles of time.
Anyway.... if I can use work from previous frames, then its always a time saving - as long as the cache is big enough... otherwise it'll thrash and you will end up rotating all the time - but thats still a job that would need doing. I currently have 147 slots in the cache, meaning I can store 147 pre-rotated sprites. This is usually the sum total on a +4 game, and with animations etc. you never really get great visuals. Think about it.... each frame has to be stored in 4 locations (Y is done with a spare 8 bytes at the start, so I don't need to store them), so that means you only have 36 shapes. Currently the pickups+player take around 47 (I think). We have space for 167 sprites, well past +4 games and actually larger than many C64 ones.
Caches are good.....
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-11
04:10:47
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Player's ship+pickups+coins+explosion=57
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-11
04:11:48
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Sorry, being clear:
player's ship+pickups+coins+explosion=58 juicy sprites
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-11
07:50:42
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Thanks for the info. I understand that there is not much space for smoother bullets.
The cache sounds pretty nifty. It's surprising that you don't have any slow-downs just because in real-life (due to the scripting) too many cache misses at once never occur. Wow!
I have to admit that i am pretty curious about sneaking a peak into the code
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-11
08:48:29
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Yeah, its easy to get it to slow down..... all the sprites over the background, and then all of them doing circle commands - that'll slow it down good and proper!
Games are all about restrictions and balance.
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-11
08:54:14
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I have no game-coding experience, but it seems this "restrictions & balancing" happens on a different level as it does in demos. Funny to hear a different view.
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-11
10:14:13
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Yeah, the interactive nature of games means you have to balance more because theres an infinite number of "what if the player does...."
Demos run a set display each time, so its always fixed; you can push it to the last cycle of the display. Games cant, because "what if the player decided to blow up X while Y was on screen"
|
|
Posted By
Litwr
on 2006-10-12
04:04:42
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
very good demo!!! but absence of TED sound...
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-12
04:50:31
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
TED is currently being used for sound effects, an SID for Music.... One of the only games to ever have sound & music playing at the same time! Feels like an arcade machine!!
|
|
Posted By
Litwr
on 2006-10-13
04:25:06
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
It is possibility to use programmable mix of sound channels for users without SID card.The quality will low but it may be better than nothing... I really want to play it with my own 'forever?' emulator!!!
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-13
05:46:50
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I'm not sure. I don't think CPU time would be an issue as the SID player is pretty slow anyway, but memory for the player might be. However, I can't have sample's getting mixed as thats too much, it would have to be normal sounds.
I suspect its not going to happen, personally I'm pretty happy with sound effects only on a basic +4, having to compose/store 2 sets of sounds isn't top of my list.
I'll check with Luca and see if theres a solution, but if its even remotely complicated, then no - won't happen.
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2006-10-13
12:46:59
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
Vladja, we talked about TED music.
At the moment, there are TEDsound FX and SID music, both with their volume adjusting, quite kewl! The best would be a TED FRQ converter that converts in TEDsound the same SID music.
Unfortunately, at the moment we cannot understand if the converter fits in the memory: we saw there would be difficulties in fitting a simple frontend in the memory! We need to complete (and with "complete" I really mean COMPLETE) a whole level, and see what we can save in memory. To be honest, if we will have to choose between frontend and TEDmusic, we would chioose the former, have to be honest...
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2006-10-13
21:23:05
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
I just saw the thing about the bullets in the Xeo3-Blogs and had to chuckle: Seems as if Mike couldn't get a rest until this is solved. :D
I also like the updated sprites, especially the flare from the mid-baddie
Great work guys! I already have my Competition Pro close by and i am pressing F5 in ~12 picosecond-intervals on your webpage...
|
|
Posted By
indi
on 2006-10-14
06:34:23
| Re: XeO3 Teaser.....
hehehehehe..... Yeah... couldn't resist. Its like every problem I have. My mind always thinks about it in the background and then pops up with a solution when I least expect it.
Quite cool really....I never have to really think about things - my subconsious does it all for me! Helps keep me the lazy sod I am :D
We're also trying to see if we can fit in a turbo loader...I'd rather than than TED music so its not too bad playing on the real machine - but like everything, its a wait and see...
|
|
