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Author Topic: ALS, a new graphics system - RELEASED!  (Read 16966 times)

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Offline saimoTopic starter

ALS, a new graphics system - RELEASED!
« on: July 16, 2020, 02:59:04 PM »
Recently I've been working on a new graphics engine.

VIDEO PREVIEW #1
VIDEO PREVIEW #2
VIDEO PREVIEW #3
VIDEO PREVIEW #4
DEMOS VIDEO / 1
DEMOS VIDEO / 2
EXPERIMENTS VIDEO / 1
EXPERIMENTS VIDEO / 2


OVERVIEW

"ALS" stands for "AMOS Layers System", as it turns the screens of AMOS Professional into layers that can be laid over one another, with complete control of order, opaqueness and colors, while keeping them renderable as usual.
It is easy, does not require much knowledge of the Amiga graphics hardware, does not need installation, does not depend on third-party extensions and comes as a collection of variables, arrays and procedures written in fully-commented AMOS code - it can be thought of as an AMOS source-level library.

ALS comes in two versions:
 * v1: for OCS/ECS/AGA - bigger and slower (and no longer developed)
 * v2: for AGA only - smaller and faster

https://www.retream.com/ALS


GENERAL FEATURES

· Layers usable as screens and vice versa
· Overlaying of multiple layers
· Overlaying order freely arrangeable
· Per-layer planes height
· Per-layer planes number
· Per-layer double-buffering
· Per-layer vertical positioning
· Per-layer colors
· Per-layer 257-degree opaqueness
· Per-color 257-degree opaqueness
· 24-bit internal colors
· LORES horizontal positioning of layers
· LORES and HIRES display resolutions
· Programmable display window size
· Automatic centering of display window
· Automatic adjustment to chipset (OCS/ECS/AGA)
· Automatic creation of layers from ILBM files
· Display descriptors
· Layer descriptors and snapshots
· Global snapshots
· Palettes management
· Banks management
· Basic file management


ECS/AGA FEATURES

· Selectable video standard (NTSC/PAL) <ECS Agnus / AGA>
· Display border blanking <ECS Denise / AGA>


AGA FEATURES

· Non-EHB 6-plane displays
· 24-bit display colors
· 24-bit palette colors
· SHRES display resolution
· HIRES and SHRES horizontal positioning of layers
· 4x planes fetch mode


RESTRICTIONS DUE TO HARDWARE

· Maximum number of visible planes / 1-plane layers: OCS/ECS, HIRES: 4; OCS/ECS, LORES: 6; AGA: 8
· On OCS/ECS, EHB mandatory for 6-plane displays
· On OCS/ECS, 12-bit display colors
· On OCS/ECS, 12-bit palette colors
· On OCS Agnus, video standard (NTSC/PAL) dictated by the hardware
· Limited horizontal positioning of display window
· Same width for all layers
· Same horizontal positioning for all layers


RESTRICTIONS DUE TO AMOS

· Maximum number of in-use/ready-to-use layers: 8
· Maximum number of planes per layer: 6


RESTRICTIONS DUE TO DESIGN

· Most AMOS display/screen commands not allowed/possible
· Floppy drives not usable when the display is on.


HOW ALS WAS BORN

In 2003 I wrote a Copper-based screen flipping effect for a developer who was making a game with AMOS. Eventually, the effect was not used (and the game was not made at all), but writing it gave birth to a whole bunch of ideas, which little by little transformed into a collection of procedures that constituted a small graphics system called XPF (Cross PlayField).

The development however, having started from an effect and having proceeded spontaneously, lacked the necessary rigour that a proper system requires, so I decided to rewrite everything from scratch and created CSS (Custom Screens System). That one turned out to be a clean, feature-rich system. It worked nicely and I even wrote a few tutorials for it.

But it did not support sprites. While pondering on how to add them, I realized that actually the core design was not good enough and that an alternative one would have allowed sprites and have been more efficient, too. Therefore, I wrote another system: AVS (Advanced Video System). When I was at about 80-90% of the development... I lost the sources. I cannot remember how that happened, but for sure I could not recover them, so I remained only with the sources dating back to some days before, when a lot of important code had not been written yet. The anger, which made me hate the idea of reimplementing what had been lost, coupled with the fact that I was about to move country, killed the project.

The idea of rewriting an old game of mine using CSS - which was good enough for the purpose - kept on lingering in my head through the years. I kind of promised myself I would do that sometime, as a smaller project between bigger ones - provided I could swallow the idea of using a suboptimal system, that is. In fact, in a few occasions, I considered completing AVS first... only to drop the idea immediately: I just could not bother getting acquainted with that old code, maybe discovering that, after all, I would do things differently once again.

Although, in the meanwhile, I dedicated myself to many other projects, the ghosts of those systems kept on haunting me. In 2019 I presented CSS to the world with a video preview: it was an attempt at doing justice to the system (and thus hopefully making peace with it) and at forcing myself to complete the work by exposing publicly the waste it represented. Since then, I made a new game (Blastaway), I continued the work on and released a preview of a game (QUOD INIT EXIT IIo), I released two little updates for another game (MeMO), I almost finished an update for yet another game (SkillGrid), I created two other graphics systems not related to ALS and I made a demo (THE CURE) with one of them. But the ghosts were still there.

Well - as they say - enough is enough and better later than never: the time to get rid of them came and in July 2020 I designed and implemented a new and proper system from the scratch - and so ALS was born.


PERFORMANCE

Whenever a color, an alpha value, or the stack of the layers gets changed, it is necessary to recalculate many or even all the colors starting from those relative to the first bitplane of the first layer affected. That is a CPU-intensive operation that AMOS struggles with, so it must be avoided as much as possible by not using dynamic changes or by precalculating palettes (ALS provides specific procedures for that).

Other than that, the system is quite lightweight.


WHY AMOS SOURCE CODE?

ALS could have been written in assembly and made available as high-performance source code, as a linkable object or as an AmigaOS library, but it has been written as pure AMOS code for AMOS programs, instead. Even within the AMOS world, it could have been written as an extension or at least as embedded machine language procedures, thus resulting more efficient (in particular, the ALS_CALCULATE_PALETTE*[] procedures would have been dramatically faster). Why AMOS source code, then?

First of all, because of how ALS was born; secondly, because returning to AMOS and writing everything in such language - the language I started programming on the Amiga with - after many years was fun; then, because I enjoy the idea of showing that AMOS, which way too often gets exaggeratedly bashed, is actually more capable than it is commonly thought of; finally, because I find it just too amusing to see the surprised reactions from people who can barely believe that what ALS achieves is done by means of the original AMOS alone.
« Last Edit: May 29, 2023, 04:42:36 PM by saimo »
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 
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Offline Gryfon

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2020, 06:55:29 PM »
Amazing work, I look forward to seeing how people use it.
\\"We should take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.\\" Ripley, Aliens
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2020, 08:14:09 PM »
Amazing work, I look forward to seeing how people use it.

Me too... when the thing is available, that is ;D
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline TribbleSmasher

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2020, 08:27:42 PM »
But it has to be an Extension, doesn't it? Sooo, ASM again? ;D
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2020, 08:36:58 PM »
But it has to be an Extension, doesn't it? Sooo, ASM again? ;D

Nope, it's exactly what I wrote it is: a collection of AMOS Procedures written in 100% AMOS ;)
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline Steady

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2020, 01:45:37 AM »
Frankly, that is amazing. Nice work :-)
 
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Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2020, 11:21:52 PM »
VIDEO PREVIEW #2

This second preview shows 3 layers scrolling horizontally and vertically, while the resolution cycles continuously from LORES to HIRES to SHRES. More precisely, the background layer scrolls horizontally only, whereas the middle and foreground layers scroll both horizontally and vertically.

The sharp-eyed viewers will have surely noticed that, vertically, the layers scroll indipendently from one another, but horizontally they scroll together: that's due to an unfortunate limitation of the Amiga hardware.
(Note: the only way to overcome such limitation is to restrict the layers number to just 2, basically obtaining a "super" dual playfield which, in addition to the standard dual playfield, provides alpha values for layers and colors; however, implementing such special case in MLS would complicate code beyond what I find pleasant and recommendable, so I'll leave that for a future project.)

Notes about the layers:
 * background layer: 32 solid colors;
 * middle layer: 3 partially transparent color + 1 transparent color;
 * foreground layer: 1 partially transparent color + 1 transparent color.

P.S. While writing a little game to test MLS, I convinced myself more than ever that sprites, in this system, are just too unpractical, so I decided to put their implementation on hold. At the same time, I decided that, after all, horizontal scrolling should definitely be implemented, despite the aforementioned hardware limitation. I have updated the specifications in the opening post accordingly.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 
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Offline First Ninja

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #7 on: July 22, 2020, 12:03:59 PM »
Amazing work, I look forward to seeing how people use it.

Unfortunately, a few things can already be foreseen - it's not going to be usable with RTG-graphics nor networking cards, and I very much doubt that AHI-powered audio is on the table either. Again, unfortunately.
Karate, Jerry. Karate. It's the lifetime pursuit of balance and harmony.
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: MLS, a new graphics system
« Reply #8 on: July 22, 2020, 02:28:36 PM »
Unfortunately, a few things can already be foreseen - it's not going to be usable with RTG-graphics nor networking cards, and I very much doubt that AHI-powered audio is on the table either. Again, unfortunately.

To write software for RTG/AHI/younameit it is necessary to use the appropriate tools. This is a project to make stuff for the original hardware of classic Amigas using AMOS, nothing else.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2020, 02:29:20 PM by saimo »
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: ALS, a new graphics system
« Reply #9 on: September 08, 2020, 04:45:36 PM »
VIDEO PREVIEW #3

After a long pause forced by a house move, ALS development resumed and it is now nearing completion. Many new features have been added, the existing code has been improved and documentation has been continuously updated and extended.
This preview shows a feature added at the end of August, i.e. NTSC support. The demo program is the same as the one shown in the preview #2, but now it toggles also the video standard. More precisely, these are the screen modes it cycles through at intervals of 5 seconds:
 1. NTSC, LORES;
 2. NTSC, HIRES;
 3. NTSC, SHRES;
 4. PAL, LORES;
 5. PAL, HIRES;
 6. PAL, SHRES.

(Note: the video is recorded with a frame rate of 60 Hz, but PAL modes actually run at 50 Hz, so they will not look exactly like they are supposed to. The demo runs 100% smoothly on real hardware, so any stuttering you might notice is due exclusively to the video playback.)
« Last Edit: September 08, 2020, 04:48:31 PM by saimo »
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: ALS, a new graphics system
« Reply #10 on: September 11, 2020, 10:34:38 AM »
Quick update: implementation finished! Now it's time to do some testing and writing the second tutorial.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: ALS, a new graphics system
« Reply #11 on: September 16, 2020, 03:19:24 PM »
VIDEO PREVIEW #4

The implementation is complete and a new demo program has been written both to test ALS and to provide a practical programming example.

The demo initializes a 2-layer display:
 * background layer: 4 planes, with opaque colors, for fixed graphics;
 * foreground layer: 2 planes, with (partially) transparent colors, for bobs.
Then, it makes some 3-color ghosts bounce around on the foreground layer while changing cyclically their colors and opaqueness.
The effect could be achieved also without ALS by means of the Set Bob and Palette commands, but:
 * all the planes (6) would be double-buffered instead of just the planes for layer 1 (2), thus wasting a lot of memory;
 * rendering the bobs would be slightly more demanding (as the rendering code would have to consider 6 planes instead of 2);
 * it would not be as easy and efficient to handle colors;
 * more in general, it is more comfortable to have separate layers/screens to render to.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: ALS, a new graphics system
« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2020, 11:31:38 AM »
Last week I analyzed the code produced by the AMOS Professional Compiler and changed the ALS code in order to have the compiler output the most efficient code it is capable of. Contextually, I have also added a new little feature (palette segments), updated two demos and improved the documentation constantly.
This week I'm continuing the review of the documentation and constantly improving it. Once done, (hopefully) it will only be a matter of preparing a web page before ALS gets released.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 

Offline Bennymee

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Re: ALS, a new graphics system
« Reply #13 on: September 30, 2020, 11:58:18 AM »
Thank you, looks good!
Amiga 500, 1200, 4000, Amigaone, Morphos, CyberstormPPC, Blizzardppc, OS4.x
 

Offline saimoTopic starter

Re: ALS, a new graphics system
« Reply #14 on: October 15, 2020, 01:13:29 PM »
VIDEO PREVIEW #5

Since last time, I improved/fixed a few things, revised greatly the documentation and updated the programs shown in the video. I also prepared the project web page: https://www.retream.com/ALS (redirects to https://retream.itch.io/als).
Currently I'm continuing to revise the documentation iteratively: when no more corrections are needed, ALS will be released - and I hope to make that happen this week.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
 
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