Final Assault - new game by GMG

[+Stephen]

27 minutes ago, goldy/gmg aka lopez453 said:

 

me.... just curious how the world could look if the color depth and resolution are the only limit.

 

Wow - it's amazing just how much information our brains can fill in.  It's an amazing form of noise reduction.

[Beeblebrox]

1 minute ago, Stephen said:

Wow - it's amazing just how much information our brains can fill in.  It's an amazing form of noise reduction.

And it so happens to be exactly what I see without my glasses heh heh! ?

[goldy/gmg aka lopez453]

5 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

And it so happens to be exactly what I see without my glasses heh heh! ?

nooo, probably sth. like this:

 

 

 

actually I tried to downscale the video in the converter and it looked like screenshot above,

 

so to provide actual 8bit experience, I had to leave it at fullHD quality and use 24x pointilize effect so 24x24 pixels are joined into one huge square, making the virtual 80 pixel wide resolution.

Edited November 5, 2021 by goldy/gmg aka lopez453

[+Stephen]

3 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

And it so happens to be exactly what I see without my glasses heh heh! ?

Pixels are too sharp.  Without my glasses, it's like looking through wax paper.

[goldy/gmg aka lopez453]

 

And I promise the last one, but more accurate representation.

25fps, 16 color and some "comic book" & Gaussian blur filters to smooth out the grass to avoid "texture noise"...

Includes original footage at the end for comparison.

 

My whole point is that trying to match the real world does not always produce better results.

And sometimes "reduced"/optimised game world design can make the game more fun and playable, even if not visually matching reality (considering GFX limitations of HW).

 

And Yes, I looked very suspicious and strange while shooting that footage ?

 

[+Stephen]

Fantastic!

 

I'm not asking for a VBXE version of your raycaster.  Wouldn't want to do that, but just sayin' - there's this cool VBXE that gives us 160*240, 320*240 at 256 colours from a 21-bit RGB palette, and 640*240 at 16 colours.  Hint, hint

 

I'm sure that wouldn't be feasbile - 32kB or 64kB per screen.

[Beeblebrox]

24 minutes ago, goldy/gmg aka lopez453 said:

 

And I promise the last one, but more accurate representation.

25fps, 16 color and some "comic book" & Gaussian blur filters to smooth out the grass to avoid "texture noise"...

Includes original footage at the end for comparison.

 

My whole point is that trying to match the real world does not always produce better results.

And sometimes "reduced"/optimised game world design can make the game more fun and playable, even if not visually matching reality (considering GFX limitations of HW).

 

And Yes, I looked very suspicious and strange while shooting that footage ?

 

@goldy/gmg aka lopez453 interesting, and you say that is running on an Atari ST?!! ??

 

Seriously though I totally get your point. I think what the ideal here for this engine on an A8's gr9 resolution is just to maximise as much a comfortable visual experience as is feasible. I think some of the proposed tweaks, poss new textures and the like could help to accomplish that. 

 

I remember being a big fan of the heavily pixelated classic game Blood in the late 90s. (Absolutely loved every aspect of it). Then it's sequel came out which wasn't bitmapped anymore but polygons based. It was technically better visually and I stopped playing it after a few levels. Wasn't a patch on the original technically inferior prequel. 

 

I also recall in the late 90s a lot of fmv and sequenced games which touted themselves a photo realistic. But they lacked something in trying to be too realistic. 

 

Yeah,  you must have had some interesting looks filming that. ??

 

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[Beeblebrox]

BTW whilst searching for all things wolf3d and the like I came across this modern day gem. Might try it out sometime. I love the simple but effective decaying city backdrop minimal colour/sillouette. Some interesting visual as well as gameplay elements in this game. ?

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[globe]

12 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

One thing I guess you could do if space was freed up somehow or you were running the engine in 128k for possible future revisions, is to have a configuration menu. That way players could simply choose to have dithered or non dithered flooring, and maybe it's entirely possible that the light levels could be adjustable. Then people could fine tune them.

Noted.

12 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

BTW I know I jested earlier re the parquet flooring heh heh... however I am curious to know - is the floor dither pattern something else you tried different effects with during development? For example would a diagonal floor dither pattern yield better results visually, if it were of course feasible? I know by the very nature of the engine, Hscrol, and graphics mode it has to run in horizontal gradients. However the dither itself could presumably run in a diagonal direction, rather than the "castle turret/tooth" type pattern? Just throwing it out there. I am sure you had thought of all of this during development.

Floor and ceiling pattern limit is 1 byte width = 2 pixels, meaning floor is made from 40 identical vertical stripes defined by the tables I mentioned earlier.

I attached a cheat table you can load into ALTIRA so you can play with the patterns yourself:

 

1. Get in game first !!! don't load the table in intro or main menu or it will overwrite something it shouldn't and things will break !!!

 

2. In ALTIRRA menu select Cheat -> Cheater and in the small window that appears press [Load] button in lower left and pick the cheat table included in this post.

    It should look like this if everything was done correctly:

 

3. Top address $91E8 = closest to the player, bottom address $91F7 = farthest from the player

You can change the values for each line either through double clicking or [Edit] button under the table.

As for values, $FF = brightest white, $00 = black, everything in between are shades of grey.

If you wanted to make a chessboard pattern for example (looks awful btw.) you can enter $F0, $0F, $F0, $0F ... till the end.

 

4. Last but not least, the changes won't appear immediately as you press [OK], you have to shoot RPG or bfg to trigger the full floor update (if you shoot first 3 weapons only few lines closest to player, not whole floor column will be updated).

 

Have fun.

floor adjustment cheat table for ALTIRRA.atcheats

[globe]

9 hours ago, Stephen said:

I'm not asking for a VBXE version of your raycaster.  Wouldn't want to do that, but just sayin' - there's this cool VBXE that gives us 160*240, 320*240 at 256 colours from a 21-bit RGB palette, and 640*240 at 16 colours.  Hint, hint

I think it would likely run in SPF not in FPS at those resolutions but there's still Rapidus I guess.

[popmilo]

12 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Anyway having just watched a bit of the blake stone gameplay video what is interesting is that some of the wall textures are tied in with either horizontal or vertical patterns running through them.

That's a great point. Would make the game world easier to comprehend and know where you are in it.

[Beeblebrox]

24 minutes ago, popmilo said:

That's a great point. Would make the game world easier to comprehend and know where you are in it.

I also realised there was a typo in what I intended to say. I meant to say horizontal And vertical patterns rather than horizontal OR vertical patterns. I ran out of time to edit my original post. There are already some horizontal ones running through the game engine but I figured having both in a texture wall would help.

 

Quite enjoyed watching the Blake Stone vid but also the 8 bit killer video, although modern, is retro in it's design and is also great to watch with some elements that could be of interest to either this engine or possible future A8 engines I am guessing. 

[Beeblebrox]

1 hour ago, globe said:

  14 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

One thing I guess you could do if space was freed up somehow or you were running the engine in 128k for possible future revisions, is to have a configuration menu. That way players could simply choose to have dithered or non dithered flooring, and maybe it's entirely possible that the light levels could be adjustable. Then people could fine tune them.

Noted.

@globe  great, thanks

 

1 hour ago, globe said:

 

1. Get in game first !!! don't load the table in intro or main menu or it will overwrite something it shouldn't and things will break !!!

 

2. In ALTIRRA menu select Cheat -> Cheater and in the small window that appears press [Load] button in lower left and pick the cheat table included in this post.

    It should look like this if everything was done correctly:

 

3. Top address $91E8 = closest to the player, bottom address $91F7 = farthest from the player

You can change the values for each line either through double clicking or [Edit] button under the table.

As for values, $FF = brightest white, $00 = black, everything in between are shades of grey.

If you wanted to make a chessboard pattern for example (looks awful btw.) you can enter $F0, $0F, $F0, $0F ... till the end.

 

4. Last but not least, the changes won't appear immediately as you press [OK], you have to shoot RPG or bfg to trigger the full floor update (if you shoot first 3 weapons only few lines closest to player, not whole floor column will be updated).

 

Have fun.

floor adjustment cheat table for ALTIRRA.atcheats 433 B · 1 download

@globe wow, you are amazing!! Thanks for the floor cheat table. I'll have a go this morning and post some screen shots. ?

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[Beeblebrox]

@globe  ok, after about 2 hrs playing around trying to work values out, I think I've found a floor dither combo that IMHO for my eyes at least, works really well - for me anyway! 

 

It combines the dither with checkerboard and the darker values and IMHO I find it much easier to distinguish the floor and walls now and it gives a nicer depth to it. (This is especially noticable in the grey coloured levels (see below)).

 

Thanks so much for creating the floor tweak cheat and sharing it.  As an end user being able to tweak these things is fantastic. It's amazing the difference it makes (to me anyway), when you can set the floor up like this.

 

So attached is the tweaked floor cheat file for others to try. I'm sure it's worth trying one level darker than this also. (I really wanted to go one level darker, but I wasn't sure how to as the last value I could enter which I knew in the sequence was $01 on the 14 line furthest from the front):

 

 

I tried finding a list of the register codes on the internet and also AA as a reference but got rather confused.

 

It's certainly cemented my view that the game is so much better where the floor doesn't match the sky. It also gives the impression that the A8 is handling more. 

 

Here is an indication of the values I chose, where you can see they alternate and get darker the further away from you. (They are in alternating double line pairs to acheive the checkered gradient effect whilst avoiding a flat chessboard effect which really doesn't work visually, depth etc):

 

 

Here are a few screen shots of in-game play with it implemented:

 

 

 

 

Here is a comparrison between the still excellent Test 2 half dithered version (left image) with it's castle turret/tooth style dithering, and my new tweaked cheat floor dithered checkered gradient one, (right):

 

 

 

 

 

@globe So as mentioned earlier I really think my version could go one level darker. I just don't know how given I don't know the next values down.

 

This combined with the new potential WIP wall textures you have showed us would look amazing.... now I'd like to see that! 

 

I think in a future revision of this game or the engine, having a config menu which allows the player to cycle through a preset series of floor effects and also choose the level of lighting would be amazing. (I know you have noted the request for a configuration option in a early reply). I really like Prince of Persia's config menu which allows the speed of play, a choice of soundbanks and some colour choices for the main character.

 

It's also got me thinking - did you ever look at the ceiling effect and wonder if it could generate a gradient tile effect?  (I am just thinking of the large Ballblazer checkered squares but with gradients lighter to darker like the sky currently is). Not sure if it's even possible. It may make the screen look too busy I guess.

 

So as in Blake Stone, the ceiling tile effect:

 

 

Also got me thinking whether future revisions of the engine could even generate an outside area skyline by simply having a sillouetted skyline as in the video I posted earlier of the 8 bit killer game, replacing the gradient horizontal skyline? It would scroll horizontally as the player moved, with the walls moving over the top as it were. (I am probably going too far here heh heh)

 

One thing is for sure with my eyes, I find the blue and grey areas much easier to navigate than the red, orange or green areas. (I think there are purple and browny/gold levels also from recollection, which if I recall I also struggled with a quite a bit). The red one is really hard on my eyes. Perhaps that is by design?!

 

Mannnn I love this engine! I wanna superimpose the Duke Nukem soundtrack over it!!!

 

 

Oh and finally before I forget - in the map screen an arrow somewhere showing you which direction you are facing in game relative to the map would be amazing.

 

******

Be really interested to hear any thoughts.

 

 

 

floor adjustment cheat table for ALTIRRA2DARKER_BeebleBrox.atcheats

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beeblebrox
typos

[Beeblebrox]

@globe  I forgot to say - I am sure I speak for many others on this forum, but I am sure if you popped a donate button on your official Final Assault website  people would be happy to donate to show appreciation and to help you/your team in future A8 developments, or future revisions of this game/engine.

 

Bocianu did this for the amazing Flob game on his website.

 

If you did I'd happily donate. 

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[Beeblebrox]

@globeManaged to go the one level darker in the end. It just meant the last 3 x lines blur into one slightly because you can't get any darker.

 

So on the left is my slightly lighter first attempt earlier, and on the right is the darkest I can get it with the latest version of the floor cheat (also attached called "Floor adjustment cheat table for Altirra 3 Darker still_BeebleBrox":

 

 

So the values now start at one level darker than my first attempt:

 

Where I kept lines 12 and 14 the same new darker value of $01 as each other, separating them by making line 13 a value of $10 as it didn't look right otherwise:

 

Now looking at it ironically I think I prefer the slighly lighter version, (my first attempt), on the left when you are playing full screen, especially for the furthest darker lines.

 

Will continue to experiment. I want to see if I can create some gradiented dithered floor patterns other than checkerboard and the original castle turret/tooth style.

floor adjustment cheat table for ALTIRRA 3 DARKER still_BeebleBrox.atcheats

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[Peruchi]

Since I'm myopic, I'm playing this game without my glasses, and from a small distance to the screen. Works perfectly! 

[goldy/gmg aka lopez453]

Yeah we tried the checkerboard before, but it looked "weird" beacause of optical illusion/human brain confusion illustrated below. (the circles have same real brightness but are percieved diffrently)

 

If you don't like castle turret, you can try to alternate one 2 line high stripe of full color and one 2 line stripe of checkerboard

 

65 56 - checkerboard

55 55 - fullcolor

54 45 - checkerboard

44 44 - fullcolor

etc.

 

or

 

65 56 - checkerboard

55  - fullcolor

44 - fullcolor

43 34 - checkerboard

33 

22

21 12

11

00

 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by goldy/gmg aka lopez453

[Beeblebrox]

30 minutes ago, goldy/gmg aka lopez453 said:

Yeah we tried the checkerboard before, but it looked "weird".

 

If you don't like castle turret, you can try to alternate one 2 line high stripe of full color and one 2 line stripe of checkerboard

 

65 56 - checkerboard

55 55 - fullcolor

54 45 - checkerboard

44 44 - fullcolor

etc.

 

or

 

65 56 - checkerboard

55  - fullcolor

44 - fullcolor

43 34 - checkerboard

33 

22

21 12

11

00

 

 

@goldy/gmg aka lopez453  Interesting.  Depends on the player I guess. I would agree that a checkerboard doesn't work so well when changing every line, but having the gradient the same for two lines at a time works for me. I think that's why I prefer the dithered checkerboard with gradient when compared with the castle turret/tooth dithered one, as illustrated in my post #164:

 

 

and the darker version in post #166 (although I now think the lighter version above works a little better):

 

Many thanks for new value tips, I'll try those a little later.

 

I think probably this illustrates that having the ability for players to chose from preset floor patterns increasingly looks like a great way of catering for all types IMHO, should it be a feature incorporated into this game and/or the engine in future. 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[ivop]

44 minutes ago, goldy/gmg aka lopez453 said:

Yeah we tried the checkerboard before, but it looked "weird" beacause of optical illusion/human brain confusion illustrated below. (the circles have same real brightness but are percieved diffrently)

Yep, this one is so cool. Even though I knew it, I had to check in The GIMP, and both circles are indeed #949494. It's so weird

[Beeblebrox]

If you cover one dot with your hand and then the other you can see they are the same colour. But together the right dot looks so much darker. Amazing illusion. ?

[goldy/gmg aka lopez453]

20 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

If you cover one dot with your hand and then the other you can see they are the same colour. But together the right dot looks so much darker. Amazing illusion. ?

that was my point that the futher the floor, the darker it should be, not only mathematically but visually.

The checkerboard pattern even if mathematically correct, visually some pixels just looks brighter in a similar way like in the illusion above.

 

"Blake Stone's ceiling tile effect" is currently not possible as Globe already said. The table is just what to draw, when there is no wall.

 

Currently the floor and the ceiling are not rotating. And not using any texture/tiles for floor/ceiling hides this fact.

Adding just textures would look strange as they will always lead in same direction and only the walls will be turning - a show stopper.

 

Doing rotable floor, ceiling, city skyline needs a lot of additional coding and would eat more CPU causing lower FPS.

 

 

 

 

[globe]

6 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

It's also got me thinking - did you ever look at the ceiling effect and wonder if it could generate a gradient tile effect?

Would be a lot more blocky, don't think it would be pretty.

6 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Also got me thinking whether future revisions of the engine could even generate an outside area skyline by simply having a sillouetted skyline as in the video I posted earlier of the 8 bit killer game, replacing the gradient horizontal skyline? It would scroll horizontally as the player moved, with the walls moving over the top as it were. (I am probably going too far here heh heh)

Actually having a left-right scrolling skyline, mountains or something similar for outside areas is relatively simple and computationally cheap.

All you need is a mountain graphics that wraps around, that gets drawn in instead of the ceiling and a bit above.

For coarse (2 pixels at a time) scrolling you need one picture, for smooth scrolling you'd need 2, one of them pre-shifted by half the byte.

Or you could do a bit of a hybrid drawing and use hardware scrolling for part of the mountain that doesn't overlap with top of the walls.

 

BTW. it was done in ZX-Spectrum DOOM

 

6 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

The red one is really hard on my eyes. Perhaps that is by design?!

If you mean the map segment with label 'High security area' with 4 keycard terminals than probably yes, honestly I don't remember, might have been that I just wanted to use all the colors we have.

6 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

in the map screen an arrow somewhere showing you which direction you are facing in game relative to the map would be amazing.

Yes.

23 minutes ago, goldy/gmg aka lopez453 said:

Doing rotable floor, ceiling, city skyline needs a lot of additional coding and would eat more CPU causing lower FPS.

Rotating floor + ceiling absolutely, skyline would just eat up more RAM for the graphics.

[globe]

Forgot to say:

Thanks for all the floor testing / fixing attempts.

In v1.1 floor will be definitely darker and I'll wait a bit more for people to decide on dithering etc...

[Beeblebrox]

25 minutes ago, globe said:

Forgot to say:

Thanks for all the floor testing / fixing attempts.

In v1.1 floor will be definitely darker and I'll wait a bit more for people to decide on dithering etc...

@globe ah no worries. I am out at the mo but will hv a look at all your replies a bit later. Thanks again for an amazing engine/game, and for taking on board player suggestions. 

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beeblebrox