Wyvern Tales 2

[phoboz]

5 hours ago, Gemintronic said:

@NinjabbaWhat's your strategy for animating background tiles?  Trying to work up the gumption to make a scrolling engine for RPGs myself.

A tilemap usually refers to some kind of tile database (each entry in the database points to a small image). As the screen is automatically refreshed each frame, animating a tile is only about changing the content in the tile database (e.g. the poniter to the bitmap). Even if the whole screen is filled with an animated tile, you only need to chagne one pointer in the database.

 

If you have many different tiles in the tile database, it will require some processing power to go trough all the entries in the database (to see which ones are animated). So usually I only animate a few tiles on fixed locations in the tile database. For example in Kings if Edom, there was only one animated tile type on each level.

 

PS. Note that the Jaguar does not have hardware tilemap support, like Nintendo, SEGA and NEC consoles. So you have to implement the function that refresh the tilemap on the screen yourself. We had to make that run on the GPU, as it would take 70% of the refresh cycle to run it on the 68000. For the GPU it takes less than 10% of the refresh cycle.

Edited December 23, 2022 by phoboz

[+CyranoJ]

8 hours ago, Gemintronic said:

@NinjabbaWhat's your strategy for animating background tiles?  Trying to work up the gumption to make a scrolling engine for RPGs myself.

 

RAPTOR has built in Tilemap functions that can handle fullscreen, partial screen, and multi-split screen scrolling.

[PFG 9000]

18 hours ago, Ninjabba said:

 

Holy crap you guys.  That's looking absolutely great.  The pixel art especially is top-notch.  WT2 is really coming together.

[Ninjabba]

14 hours ago, phoboz said:

A tilemap usually refers to some kind of tile database (each entry in the database points to a small image). As the screen is automatically refreshed each frame, animating a tile is only about changing the content in the tile database (e.g. the poniter to the bitmap). Even if the whole screen is filled with an animated tile, you only need to chagne one pointer in the database.

@Gemintronic I can confirm I use the same strategy on the Atari Lynx for Wyvern Tales 1.

[agradeneu]

On 12/23/2022 at 9:07 PM, phoboz said:

 

 

 

 

PS. Note that the Jaguar does not have hardware tilemap support, like Nintendo, SEGA and NEC consoles. So you have to implement the function that refresh the tilemap on the screen yourself. We had to make that run on the GPU, as it would take 70% of the refresh cycle to run it on the 68000. For the GPU it takes less than 10% of the refresh cycle.

You can kindly ask the OP to draw and scroll tilemaps pretty nicely. 

[phoboz]

55 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

You can kindly ask the OP to draw and scroll tilemaps pretty nicely. 

The OP does the actual drawing,  but you need something else to read the tilemap data and to determine which tiles to draw in the viewport window. This is a memory access intense operation, so having the 68000 locking up, and waiting for the bus is not a good idea (it works, but you will not have many cycles left for the game logic)

 

Smaller tilesizes will make this more obvious. For 32x32 tiles need 70 memory lookups, for 16x16 tiles you need 260 memory lookups (per frame). Provided that the viewport is 320x208 pixels.

 

PS. This is also why I am a little bit sceptical against those who push the boundaries of the Jaguar with a visual demo. Once you add collision detection, and some convincing game logic you may not be able to have a game that looks like the visual demo did.

Edited January 5, 2023 by phoboz

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, phoboz said:

The OP does the actual drawing,  but you need something else to read the tilemap data and to determine which tiles to draw in the viewport window. This is a memory access intense operation, so having the 68000 locking up, and waiting for the bus is not a good idea (it works, but you will not have many cycles left for the game logic)

 

 

Using the 68K for gfx actually means you have some room for improvement, possibly

Edited January 5, 2023 by agradeneu

[phoboz]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Using the 68K for gfx actually means you have some room for improvement, possibly

That's exactly what I said was not good, you have to load the tilemap into the internal SRAM on the gpu to avoid buss stalls.

It doesn't have to do with the slowness of the 68k (it'sactually quite fast), it has to do with the 68k's role as the manager which blocks the buss (and sometimes it has to wait for the buss). This will not happen with the gpu if it uses the internal SRAM as it is not located on the shared buss.

 

So it's not only about moving from 68000 assembly to RISC assembly, you have to understand how to arrange thigs efficiently.

(It's all described in the developer documentation)

Edited January 5, 2023 by phoboz

[agradeneu]

The performance improves the more efficiently you are using the hardware. Why is that an issue?

We have seen what can be done if the tilemap routine uses the hardware to its advantages and speed.

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by agradeneu

[+CyranoJ]

4 hours ago, phoboz said:

That's exactly what I said was not good, you have to load the tilemap into the internal SRAM on the gpu to avoid buss stalls.

 

RAPTOR doesn't work at all like that, and yet, oddly, Jumping at Shadows looks just fine at 60fps with multiple layers

 

There's more than one way to skin code a cat.

[phoboz]

9 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

 

RAPTOR doesn't work at all like that, and yet, oddly, Jumping at Shadows looks just fine at 60fps with multiple layers

 

There's more than one way to skin code a cat.

Yes, of course there can be a number of different ways to make it nice.

Keep up the good work, we all improve

😀

[checkeredslag]

I basically bought a jaguar for this game and asteroite. Any updates are always appreciated. 

[Ninjabba]

4 hours ago, checkeredslag said:

I basically bought a jaguar for this game and asteroite. Any updates are always appreciated. 

It's been a while since our last update, but we're building a lot! I'll share something more visual soon but I can give some insights:

- the maps for the first region are almost finished

- we are working a lot on the event engine needed for certain story elements

- we have a new member on the team, a pixel artist who will focus on the boss designs

 

Stay tuned 😎

[agradeneu]

This is the kind of RPG the Jag library sorely lacked, I liked the Lynx game, and there is not much else that could be more exciting for a homebrew project!

[RollOut]

I definitely agree. I am really excited to see how this title turns out. Thanks for the update.

Edited April 16, 2023 by RollOut
Typo

[ColecoGamer]

Don’t forget to include hard-hitting sound effects during the combat sequence. I realize the game is still in development and things will eventually change, but the combat sound effects come off as weak. 
 

Look at Albert Odyssey for the Sega Saturn to see what I mean.

 

See 1:44:13 in the video’s timeline.

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by ColecoGamer

[Ninjabba]

I'm happy to share with you the progress made on the battle screen, showcasing our first two heroes and the first Wyvern boss, design by Molly, animated by @Eternal-Krauser!

 

No worries, I will not spoil the other 20 bosses, you'll have to see for yourself when the time arrives 😎

We have Molly Heady-Carroll joining our team for some pixel art and I couldn't be more happy with her input. She works in the game industry and this is her first time working on a homebrew project.

 

Thank you for your attention!

 

EDIT: Re-uploaded the animation, I screwed up some of the animation frames when creating the composition. The original animation is much smoother! 

 

 

[Ninjabba]

A tiny snippet of gameplay was part of this huge homebrew showcase.

We'll create some more elaborate videos ourselves when we reach a milestone, but there are a few new details shown here:
 

 

[Ninjabba]

Here's a recording of the WIP that we showed at eJagFest 2023! A few more enemies were designed over the weekend that didn't make it into the showcase but are recorded in this clip.

 

 

[+madman]

That looks and sounds great!

[PFG 9000]

Man, this looks so awesome.  I can't say enough how much I adore the pixel art.  And the music is sounding really good too! 

 

I avoided RPGs my whole life.  I just had no interest in them for a number of reasons.  The original Wyvern Tales was hugely instrumental in getting me into the genre.  Now I have around ten jRPGs under my belt, and I can genuinely say I enjoy them.  I'm really looking forward to playing this, and Wyvern Tales Gaiden as well!

[+CyranoJ]

Looks fun and nice.

 

Not a huge fan of all the paletted art fading in and out and leaving the 16 bit objects hanging around like stamps. I guess this is a failback from the Asteroite code.

[alucardX]

I think it looks pretty nice and it is trying to pull off a certain aesthetic. It would be great to see it doing something that is unique to the Jag hardware.

[+cubanismo]

Looks awesome!

[+grips03]

Looks good, but music is rough.