"Flimbo" anyone...

[TMR]

btw... do you have the source code? or where do you have the labels?

 

No, i wrote that off the top of my head just now and can't remember exactly how the Boys Without Brains did it in Hawkeye (i did prod around with a monitor, but it was years or possibly decades ago now). Those labels were just there to describe what they were reading from and writing to to make things easier to read, i think the only source code that anyone has access to is Hawkeye 2 right now?

 

i wouldn't have thought that would really make things easier in this particular situation because the background layer moves independently so it's less time consuming to just brute force shift both than have to scout through the existing display, remove all the background layer characters and then draw in a replacement?

 

not sure what is more time consuming... well the LMS approach would not help... as painting is needed anyway...

 

The LMS approach would probably work out a little less efficient in the long run i'd have thought, even a single LMS system like i'm currently using (which has about half the memory overhead for the visible screen to the two screen wide approach) would need a clear and redraw pass every time the background needed changing - the two could possibly be combined to save a few cycles (possibly more, thinking about it) but i can't see it being more efficient in the long run and i suspect would end up being more complex as a piece of code too.

[PeteD]

Of course if you're using tiles, some of them may have no gaps, others may have gaps in places you know about A few different draw routines and you can save a fair amount of time...

 

I'd imagine the biggest problem for a more complex background like Flimbo's is the A8 having 1/2 as many chars to mess with. Probably end up having to "zone" different background objects.

[José Pereira]

Hi, now I am here and also there... at AtariOnline (today I am with so many Energy )!...

 

Probably someone here could be interested:

Flimbo's at AtariOnline.pl

 

José Pereira.

[Tezz]

I've had my head down coding and drawing the past few days but did take a look at this in between things, it's a nice demonstration. I read Alexander's explanation of his font use in the AOL forum. Does anyone know if Alexander is intending to take this further or if this and runner are proof of concept demos?

[Jacques]

(today I am with so many Energy )!...

 

So can we expect a finished game? Flimbo's Quest would be great, but The Last Ninja would still be good enough

Edited October 18, 2010 by Jacques

[pps]

Runner seems to be a preview of a game that should be ready for this year ABBUC Software contest. Some issues caused that it was not ready till the deadline - that´s what Alexander writes at ABBUC forum (link above).

 

So there might be a chance that it´ll be released some times in (near ?) future.

[José Pereira]

Runner seems to be a preview of a game that should be ready for this year ABBUC Software contest. Some issues caused that it was not ready till the deadline - that´s what Alexander writes at ABBUC forum (link above).

 

So there might be a chance that it´ll be released some times in (near ?) future.

 

 

Alexander, that's it.

I know the Name was familiar to me...

It's the "Running man" Guy.

 

I't seems a very nice Guy, he answer me in AtariOnline in a so helpfull way...

And also very good at Coding.

 

 

Great if we stay doing A8 things.

He promises a lot from what we are seeing from him.

 

 

 

 

José Pereira.

[popmilo]

First of all: Great example of parallax scrolling! Thumbs up Alexander!!!

 

Is it just me or is this to complicated:

 

 

Explanation from Alexander:

"There are 2(3) Areas. One with and 2 without parallax scrolling. I put both areas without parallax scrolling into one font (103 chars). The parallax area is split into 4 fonts:

font 1: front chars & background chars for lines 6,10,14 (background 0,4, => 117 chars

font 2: front chars & background chars for lines 7,11,15 (background 1,5,9) => 113 chars

font 3: front chars & background chars for lines 8,12 (background 2,6) => 106 chars

font 4: front chars & background chars for lines 9,13 (background 3,7) => 93 chars"

 

But Alexander is a good guy, and is not denying that

"Yes, very stupid for next steps of programming (for instance soft-sprites and so on) but o.k for this flimbo demo."

 

So, good for demo but could be simpler...

128 chars is a limit, but same as flimbo on c64 could be used...

Even if you split charset in two and use 64 chars for front layer, and 64 for back layer it would give enough details...

 

Im not sure people know how flimbo and rest of parallax games work on c64 ...

 

Its simple character screen scroll + back layer "ploted" in the gaps of front layer - its only needed in 1 out of 8 positions (if scroll is 1 multicolor point) to change back layer characters - to scroll them one char in oposite direction of scroll.

In each position you change character set based on (x and 7) - something like: Charsetpointer = base + ((x and 7)/2)

 

And you can also have repeating characters for back layer... So those 64 chars can be divided on more horizontal "details".

For example:

 

FFF.....EFG.....FFFF

FF................FF

FFF....ABCD.......FF

FF.....ABCD........F

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

 

Where F are front layer chars, "." is one of back layer chars (sky) and ABCD is a 3x1 chars detail, and EFG is 2x1 chars detail - that extra character is for scrolling.

So 64 chars can give roughly ten or more 'details' - something can be done with that Im sure...

 

If you already knew this - sorry for this rant

 

p.s. I was obsessed with Flimbo when it came out until I understood how it works ...

[PeteD]

Well, well done for Alexander doing it on the A8, but well done to Mario (for Hawkeye) and Laurens (for Flimbo) for coming up with a trick way to do it in the 1st place

 

btw.. Hawkeye Amiga

 

And the description is wrong, it does have parallax. It is pretty bad though, same as the C64, no real "game" there and a shitty rush port, without source.

 

 

Pete