Question about Player/Missile graphics and International Karate

[Rybags]

There's a wall of China one that looks pretty good.   I get the feeling there's even more out there (not forgetting there were plenty of other computers covered such as Amstrad that could provide assets).

Agreed though, it would be good to see some original productions, even if it does mean just massaging and converting photos.

[Heaven/TQA]

9 hours ago, pseudografx said:

Sorry, as the end of the year was a bit busy, it took me a while to finally reply. Here are the backgrounds I made. Not sure if all of them would convert well in RC, but I tried some and they were quite fine. I can do a bit more retouching / color reduction if necessary.

 

nice... but honestly. can not be that hard to integrate new backgrounds into IK? Except of SF i like them all and they look doable except maybe with less rasters for sky gradients.... due to samples.

But... that is display list of Sidney from IK enhanced:

  6268:      mode E @ B000
  626B: x62  mode E
  62A9: x2   mode.i E
  62AB: x8   mode E
  62B3: x2   mode.i E
  62B5: x12  mode E
  62C1: x2   mode.i E
  62C3: x6   mode E
  62C9: x2   mode.i E
  62CB:      mode E
  62CC:      mode 4 @ 1800
 

does have more DLIs? are those used for sample playback, too?

ok. messed around with the debugger...

 

I wasn't aware of that Archer used PM underlays so heavily... even for backgrounds?

 

i just switched off PM DMA in debugger with "eb d01b 00"

 

or with just missles DMA on:

 

Kudos to Archer... as the PM over/underlays are not just "quadruples blocks" but defined PMs fitting into the scene.

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by Heaven/TQA

[Rybags]

Good point - having an RC kernal would utterly destroy the sample playback quality.

So, periodic DLI would probably be the best method.  Alternatively the samples could be worked into RC pics but there'd be some work involved there.

[+Philsan]

16 hours ago, pseudografx said:

(...)

I don't like big quotings but your beautiful images deserve to be quoted...

[Heaven/TQA]

Question... do we knew how Archer encoded those backgrounds? as they have individual DLIs and PM overlays? so... is there a "file format"?

[Steril707]

On 1/2/2023 at 1:12 AM, pseudografx said:

Sorry, as the end of the year was a bit busy, it took me a while to finally reply. Here are the backgrounds I made. Not sure if all of them would convert well in RC, but I tried some and they were quite fine. I can do a bit more retouching / color reduction if necessary.

I think these look really amazing. Great job.

If I had one little criticism, it'd be that these would even greater if they were not that centered and a bit symmetric looking, composition wise.

Other than that, amazing use of color and extremely fine pixeling.

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Steril707

[Mclaneinc]

The screens are amazing, is there a technical reason why they only extend halfway down the screen?

 

I only say this because the artwork is so good, I'd loved to have seen more of it.

[Rybags]

Softsprites are done without overlapping the backdrop.  There'd be real potential for colour clash otherwise.

And PMs also used in player sprites ?

[Heaven/TQA]

2 hours ago, Rybags said:

Softsprites are done without overlapping the backdrop.  There'd be real potential for colour clash otherwise.

And PMs also used in player sprites ?

Yes. All PM.

[TracMan]

For IK and IK+, the blocky oversized underlays for the player sprites are being used as broad brush stroke colour as opposed to being used for graphic detail, and hence, by design of the game, they are restricted to the bottom of the screen, because, at the top in the background graphics where you need more colour and detail, you allocate the PMG shapes per line to exploit using them for finer colour detail (hence up to a possible 5 extra colours on top of the background four colours).  So the two techniques are incompatible and there is the reason for the screen division.

 

Even though I know how this works and could probably easily code it myself, I still find it tricky to visualise exactly what the best method to draw Atari sprites is, that is where I guess G2F comes in really useful as you can trial it out.  By underlay, think of a regular patterned house carpet and literally putting say a red coloured underlay underneath it which sits over the top of your solid coloured black floor.  Once you start cutting out template shapes from your house carpet, even if your carpet itself contains only two colours, you will get the red colour red through the shape holes and also, if the red underlay was made of regional shapes cut out as well, like the Atari PMG, you could also still get the black floor colour showing, although two limitations being are that you can't get the black floor showing in detail if the underlay itself is blocky and you have to sacrifice the one foreground colour.  

 

Also, want to say that I thought Rawel's team IK+ conversion was outstanding at the time and enjoyed the technical discussion on the webpage, the genius of Archer was apparent in pioneering the technique, but he likely had to rush IK to get it done and the Polish developers worked out that IK+ wasn't graphically beyond the Atari 8 either.  Shame it wasn't completed.