Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Sonic the hedgehog?  (Read 27285 times)

Description:

0 Members and 5 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« on: January 04, 2012, 11:04:20 PM »
If anyone is still interested in this kind of project, I could lend the Mr Beanbag engine towards it.  In fact if someone could provide me with the graphics and some music mods, I could probably make Mr Beanbag run round a sonic zone in next to no time.  He wouldn't be able to go round loops and stuff unfortunately (that was actually planned for Mr Beanbag in the early stages but I dropped the idea pretty soon as I couldn't think of a neat way to do it.  The Beanbag II engine, if I ever get round to it, will have much better physics which will allow this sort of thing.)
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2012, 06:20:58 PM »
Quote from: Rebel-CD32;674394
Anyway, sorry about rambling, I'd like to whip up some graphics for a Sonic game using the Mr. Beanbag engine. From playing the game it kind of looks like you're using 32x32 tiles, is that right? Is it a limitation of the engine, or could it be used with 16x16 tiles also? Is there a limit to how many tiles are in each level or map? And the character and enemies, are they all sprites and do they have their own palette or use the same one the tiles use? Once I know what I can work with I can hopefully get something together.


Yes indeed the tiles are 32x32, and it is hard-coded for that size of tile although getting it to work with 16x16 tiles wouldn't be too much trouble but I got the impression the Megadrive sonic tiles were 32x32 anyway (could be wrong).  The engine can handle up to 256 tiles (with tile 0 blank), although the level compression algorithm can only handle 128 tiles because the other 128 are used for the run-length encoding.  Again, I could work round that (and was planning to for Beanbag II).  The bad guys are bobs so they use the same palette as the background.  The player character is a 16 colour sprite, however.  The rest of the sprites are used to render the scoreboard.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2012, 08:19:32 PM »
Quote from: amiman99;674512
Here is a Sonic MED file I converted from MIDI to MED, plays fine in OctaMED and EaglePlayer. Took me like 2hrs, lots of clean up.


This is good, could use some better samples in my opinion but the tune is spot on apart from a few unexpected shifts in octave (I guess the minimum wave period gets in the way sometimes, unless it's XMP playing the fool).  I could use this, but.. I'd need it in Protracker mod format to use it in the Mr Beanbag engine.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2012, 09:48:42 PM »
Quote from: amiman99;674540
The samples were from Sound Terrific CD, I would need more time to find better ones or just digitize them myself (probably wont have time to digitize them :elvis:).
I tried to save it in Protracker and it did not saved it very well, I need to see where is the problem :hammer:.
If some one could tell me what instruments I need, then it would be easier to find.


I could make up some samples myself, I sometimes just generate them with little AMOS programs.  I think I have some already that might do nicely though.  If I had the tune as a mod I could try some things.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2012, 11:54:50 AM »
Quote from: Rebel-CD32;674571
I also included a SoundTracker version of that Green Hill Zone mod, along with one from Spring Yard Zone, so maybe someone can take the instruments from the Spring Yard mod and replace them in the Green Hill mod.


There's not much to replace in the Green Hill zone mod, I don't know if it's just me but I only hear the bass and the drums, what happened to the tune?  And it's dreadfully slow!  Is that an automatic conversion of the Med file?  I don't think it's worked properly if it is.

I might just redo it from scratch instead, it would probably be simpler.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2012, 03:46:36 PM »
Ok try this Green Hill Zone mod I just made.  Maybe someone with greater musical skills than mine can jazz it up a little more but there's the basic tune anyway.  I modified some samples from my own collection.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2012, 06:24:01 PM »
Quote from: Speelgoedmannetje;674643
There's a really rather nice game called "Kid Chaos" that is pretty much a Sonic clone. Runs extremely fast and smooth on an 1mb Amiga 500.

That's a game I'd never seen before.  Nice work.  Plenty of parallax, but the graphics suffer a little from the 7-colour limitation, they've done well but to me it has a kind of "dirty" look.  If they made an AGA version it could have been really nice.

Not sure what the fascination was with rave music on Amiga games of that era, I never much got into it, but at least it has a different tune on each level, which is one of the things that disappointed me about Zool, even though they managed to fit 5 or so mods on the disks, you had to pick one at the start and stick with it all the way through - weird.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2012, 02:58:52 PM »
Quote from: Speelgoedmannetje;674668
Maybe it's because it's taken from an emulator? It doesn't look 'dirty' (as I suppose you mean with thatthe transition from one colour to another to be pixely) at all on my real amiga.

I mean the colours are mostly very brownish/greyish.  The only way to get lots of shading with only 7 colours is to "overlap" your ranges by cleverly selecting neutral colours.  After black and white you're left with only 5 colours to work with so you've got to make compromises like using brown for the darker shade of everything.  A friend of mine had a term for it, "stinky graphics" he used to call it.

Soccer Kid did it better, in my opinion.  That's another game with smooth scrolling and parallax.  Good music too.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #8 on: January 07, 2012, 11:40:00 PM »
I've just created a Green Hill Zone tileset for the Mr Beanbag engine.  Now I've got foreground graphics and music, I can put together a demo this week.  It'll be Mr Beanbag running around in it at first, though.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2012, 01:07:11 PM »
Quote from: fishy_fiz;674827
Actually Kid Chaos has about 160 colors for backgrounds, etc. and not just copper gradients. Pretty clever use of a 2bit playfield (yes 2, not a typo :)). There's a few interviews with the author around the net where its spoken about.

It's more the foreground graphics than the background that are the problem, it's more difficult to use copper tricks there.  But I just loaded up a screenshot and counted the colours - after removing the player character and the info panels (which will be sprites) there are 36 unique colours.  Not quite 160.  Still impressive though, for a 2 bit playfield.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #10 on: January 09, 2012, 03:36:04 PM »
Quote from: bloodline;675001
Hmmm, I'd have to say that it does look like 3bit graphics, though it is impressive to get that amount of blitting... Perhaps only possible with a 2bit playfield...

No blitting is required on the background layer.  The copper can be used to scroll each scanline sideways independently.

Speaking of music, there are plenty of examples of good rave/techno/dance music in Amiga games (not to mention demos), it's the over-reliance on this style during the early '90s Amiga scene that got a little tiresome.  Megadrive games of the same period, including Sonic, had different musical styles to suit each level's atmosphere.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #11 on: January 09, 2012, 04:56:22 PM »
Quote from: psxphill;675013
Not when you want a parallax effect without using dual playfield, which limits you to 7 colours on the foreground.
 
You can use 2 bitplanes for the background and 4 for the foreground in EHB and scroll the whole screen with the scroll registers but you have to shift the background the opposite way to compensate. That gives you 4 background colours, 7 foreground colours but also another 7 that are dimmer. You can also use half brite in the foreground layer to dim the background.

This is possible, but did anybody ever do that?  I believe Robocod used a single bitplane for a background parallax layer.  You can also do transparencies this way if you set the palette up right.

It is possible to scroll each bitplane independently vertically.  Mr Beanbag's title screen does that.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #12 on: January 10, 2012, 11:45:22 AM »
Quote from: Cammy;675076
Here's the first half of Green Hill Zone Act 1 recreated in Backbone

Do I need to install Backbone to run this, or is it stand-alone?
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #13 on: January 10, 2012, 07:10:32 PM »
I've got Mr Beanbag running around in Green Hill Zone now.  I've also converted some of the bad guy's sprites so I'll add them in next.  I could do with a few more frames of animation though, I've only been able to get static images of each character from screenshots.

The hardest thing to do is going to be loops.  But... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Signature intentionally left blank
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: Sep 2011
  • Posts: 455
    • Show all replies
Re: Sonic the hedgehog?
« Reply #14 on: January 10, 2012, 09:44:48 PM »
Quote from: Mrs Beanbag;675146
Do I need to install Backbone to run this, or is it stand-alone?

Just played it, it's pretty good, where did you get the sprites?  I somehow managed to fall off the level :roflmao:

His jumping action is pretty weird, he just goes straight up and then comes straight back down again, I guess this is backbone's fault.  He seems to have sideways inertia though.
Signature intentionally left blank