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Author Topic: Demo THE CURE (Was: Dot-matrix engine for AGA)  (Read 10517 times)

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Offline saimoTopic starter

Demo THE CURE (Was: Dot-matrix engine for AGA)
« on: April 14, 2019, 02:00:49 PM »
In the past months I've been thinking of some new game concept that would finally put my dot-matrix engine for AGA Amigas to good use. Admittedly, I haven't come up with anything worthy yet, but I've been doing some technical experiments. I thought you might fancy having a look at the latest experiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8FyrxEhnQ

Details:
  • the parallax is not obtained by means of pre-rendered separate lines, but by applying perspective to a rectangular texture; this means that the texture can be easily modified/animated on the fly, and also that it doesn't have a size limit;
  • the shadow is not made of a number of precalculated frames, but it's a single bitmap that gets cast in perspective (exploiting the parallax effect) and also with a pseudo-antialias effect;
  • the scrolling is not obtained by changing bitplane pointers, but by redrawing the whole screen: while this steals quite some bandwidth, it allows for a single raster (thus making rendering operations really easy) and eliminates the need to keep/restore dirty regions;
  • the character is not a bitmap, but it's made of 1200 separate dots (which is what allows it to transform into any other shape made of the same 1200 dots);
  • an unexpanded A1200 runs this at full speed (i.e. 50 Hz); it would do so even if there were a second 1200 dots character, although there wouldn't be time to do much more - to gain extra time for an actual game, characters should be plain bitmaps and, if needed, the parallax area could be made a little shorter.
Note that I'm NOT going to make a beat'em up. Again, this is just an experiment.

(The graphics have been derived from assets which are the property of Capcom Co., Ltd.)

Previous video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB6wgJbj0Gg
« Last Edit: March 13, 2021, 02:37:04 PM by saimo »
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Offline klx300r

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Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #1 on: April 14, 2019, 08:24:07 PM »
looks crazy freakish cool 8) ;D
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Offline golem

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Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #2 on: April 14, 2019, 09:28:31 PM »
Looks really good. My mind boggles at the maths that must be behind that.
                                                             
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2019, 11:08:35 PM »
@F1Lupo

Thank you :)


@golem

Looks really good.

Thanks!

Quote
My mind boggles at the maths that must be behind that.

Nothing particularly special, to be honest.
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2019, 12:06:13 PM »
This video shows a stock Amiga 1200 running various visual effects using the dot-matrix engine. The effects are obtained by means of a system that allows every single pixel to be located anywhere in memory (regardless of the RAM type). Lately, I've started thinking again of a game that makes use of the dot-matrix engine, and I came up with this new system. I finally have a somewhat interesting game concept (not shown here), but I'm still thinking of better alternatives.
Technical note: while the dot-matrix engine doesn't require any CPU operation, this new system is entirely CPU-driven, so each screen update takes more or less 1.3 frames on a stock A1200; therefore, if the game eventually uses the system, it will run at most at 25 fps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSvJmn0-KoE
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Offline kolla

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2019, 01:05:25 PM »
Would be cool as a native video format too - movie.dmv, dot-matrix video :)
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2019, 06:25:33 PM »
Would be cool as a native video format too - movie.dmv, dot-matrix video :)

Well, conceptually, the only difference with any existing format is that the depth is just 2 bits. Anyway, boooring ;D
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #7 on: December 27, 2019, 12:44:32 PM »
« Last Edit: February 10, 2020, 01:33:48 PM by saimo »
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2020, 01:34:05 PM »
Reprise of the spaceship-travelling-through-tunnel idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be94FYcr1Oc

The tunnel renders in about:
 * 1.1 frames on a stock Amiga 1200 (I must say I'm quite disappointed I just can't make it take less than 1 frame);
 * 0.28  frames on an Amiga 1200 + Blizzard 1230-IV with 60 ns RAM (the machine used to record the video).

Previous videos:
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB6wgJbj0Gg
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8FyrxEhnQ
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSvJmn0-KoE
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH20N0D5kKw
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #9 on: February 11, 2020, 12:39:39 PM »
I managed to get the effect to run in less than one frame also on a stock Amiga 1200. I was trying to be too smart, so I thought I'd try to dumb the code down... and it worked! The time needed to render the tunnel went from ~1.1 frames (~22 ms) to ~0.937 frames (~18.74 ms). On the other hand, unsurprisingly, the simplified code performs worse on expanded machines: on an Amiga 1200 with Blizzard 1230-IV with 60 ns RAM, it went from ~0.28 frames (~5.6 ms) to ~0.48 frames (~9.52 ms).

This video shows the effect running on a stock Amiga 1200. The second part shows visually the rendering time: the blue blackground represents the part of a frame (the whole screen + vertical blanking area) taken by the the tunnel rendering; in other words, the non-blue blackground represents the unused time of a frame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCvqD-35_zE

Previous videos:
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be94FYcr1Oc
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB6wgJbj0Gg
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8FyrxEhnQ
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSvJmn0-KoE
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH20N0D5kKw
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Offline klx300r

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Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #10 on: February 12, 2020, 09:41:39 PM »
crazy crazy psychedelic cool stuff Simone ! 8) ;D
____________________________________________________________________
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! My Master Miggies-Amiga 1000 & AmigaOne X1000 !
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Demo THE CURE
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2020, 11:06:34 PM »
Eventually I used the engine to make a demo. It got released at the Solskogen 2020 demoparty about 1 hour ago. Feel free to watch/download it from https://www.retream.com/THE_CURE (running it on a real Amiga is mandatory to really appreciate it, as a video, due to technical reasons, just doesn't cut it) ;)
The demo comes with a README that explains all the details, including why I dropped the idea of a making game and went for a demo, instead.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2020, 09:01:46 PM by saimo »
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Offline lionstorm

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #12 on: July 12, 2020, 07:15:19 PM »
well done and congrats for winning the 1st place ! I watch it the demo over the net and will downlaod and try the demo on my A1200.
 
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #13 on: July 12, 2020, 08:39:15 PM »
Thanks, lionstorm!
You'll definitely enjoy it more on your machine, as the visuals of the demo are unsuitable for videos.
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Offline Matt_H

Re: Dot-matrix engine for AGA
« Reply #14 on: July 13, 2020, 02:37:42 AM »
Really lovely demo--looks like a marvelous technical achievement and the messaging is on point. Congrats!

I think there still must be a game somewhere in that engine... even if you haven't found it yet. Give yourself a well-deserved break and maybe the idea will come to you when you least expect it.
 
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