Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

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CunningFellow
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Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by CunningFellow »

The talk of "La Abadía del Crimen" in the other thread made me think about isometric games.

Someone else also brought up jhhowards excellent ray-caster.

This then got me thinking about other games and ideas I have had. And this in turn made me think about how slack I am and terrible at finishing games. T2K is still being worked on half a decade later.

I realise what I really like is doing the impossible video mode and technical stuff and after that I lose interest a bit.

So I had an idea. Does anyone want to do a collab? We come up with a game idea that no one thinks the 8 bit uzebox should be capable of. I will do something magical with just an ADD, a BRNE and a NOP. I will then take a back seat until some kind of optimizing is needed.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by D3thAdd3r »

I'd always thought this one was beyond the realm of practical, and I still do. The tops of the columns can overlap any sort of other column, not to mention the characters. I actually think a simple first person shooter is more possible than this. Any thoughts?
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CunningFellow
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by CunningFellow »

Graphically I don't think that is 100% impossible.

I do think an RTS in general would be hard though. There is so much state in an RPG that need to be kept track of and only so much RAM.

If I took 2.8K of RAM for doing a video mode, do you think you could do the game state in what was left out the 4K total?

The isometric games I think are easier to do the backend include

Knightlore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_l1gagPjV8
Head over Heals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaUuXsxyTDE
Batman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4teEpK37tAg
La Abadía del Crimenhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBDAVxwIxo&t=492s

Or for a more arcade feel
Spindizzy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS4QiOwdg28
Marble Madness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jazxSQz0yL4

But I am not 100% set on doing isometric. There are lots of other genres that would be a fun challenge as well.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by D3thAdd3r »

CunningFellow wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 10:35 pm If I took 2.8K of RAM for doing a video mode, do you think you could do the game state in what was left out the 4K total?
Maybe not a full battle system with many characters. I do think the SPI ram sequential mode lends itself well to gameplay structs though. Read what is needed into a temp buffer, do all character logic, put the updated information back. It would be nice to have a "killer app" for the SPI ram, and specifically RPGs are probably the weakest genre on Uzebox.
CunningFellow
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by CunningFellow »

Ah yeah - Bombuzal and Zaxxon are excellent isometric candidates. The other iso game that I enjoyed was syndicate https://youtu.be/L0PP9Q7i94g?t=1492 but it also has the "too much state memory" to really be easy.

Any other genre people think would be amazing?

Raycaster could be attempted again. So Wolf3D or similar.

Maybe the RLE mode or something similar for this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbY69bbgpvY or even this https://youtu.be/g6JC-HCNcio?t=48 or this https://youtu.be/q7w_0yP5RwU?t=2220

Or other car racing games like https://youtu.be/J7tZFW4WedI?t=13

Or maybe even this if you are thinking big sprites the next uzebox challenge https://youtu.be/_QsVxRa9rfo?t=73

D3thAdd3r, Do some estimates on how much memory you think an RTS would need for states, and how long you think it would take for a game "turn" using the SPI RAM which is not random access and has a 18ish clock cycle access time.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by D3thAdd3r »

So for a turn based game like Tactics Ogre(screen shot I showed), it seems like speed is almost no issue at all. There are only a few units, so that could be done in 644 ram leaving SPI for video. Except of course the speed required for video to draw properly each frame, speed requirements are easy. The actual logic time required for gameplay ticks is miniscule compared to human input delays. That said, once logic was calculated, decorative animations would have to be smoothish I guess. I think turn based RPGs are an amazing fit for SPI ram.

Real Time Strategy could be thought of as a large scale very rapid turn based game. It is too big for 644 ram, and multiplexing SPI ram for a video mode and game logic(which could run well past frame time) seems impractical. I think an RTS must use 644 ram for video, and SPI for units/logic. I could see a high resolution monochrome video mode being good for this. The 1bpp would help keep the graphics small, and also sort of fast to blit. Just calculating in my head, I sort of feel a compelling RTS is not possible on Uzebox; would love to be wrong!


Keep in mind I am biased as hell towards using SPI ram for everything possible. Drunk off the 128k of power, the semi unwieldy SPI ram hammer makes everything look like a nail to me :lol:
CunningFellow
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by CunningFellow »

I would think SPI RAM would only be good for VRAM not RAMTiles.

That being said - if you made the graphics of your RTS ROMTiles only - then you could have almost all the 4K for the game.

This would of course be at the cost of graphical complexity. But It should be able to do at least a better job than some text mode based RTS games from 4.77mhz IBM PC days.

Imagine your whole map for the game is rom tiles only. You could have your whole map for the game in SPI RAM. You could then scroll around the map in 8 bit chunky scrolling just by changing the start X/Y position on the map.

Sounds like you could have a pretty complex game.

Doesn't help me with looking for ideas that a HARD to do the video mode of though :)
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by D3thAdd3r »

I bet you could actually make some sort of RTS with tiles only. Sort of like a grid based turn based game, where the turns happen really fast. Interesting for sure, if anyone else was on board.

If complex video mode is the prime directive, which is as valid a goal as any really, I can think of some random features and maybe they stick together :lol:

Interlaced display, using ijmp to 1 of 16 paths to do a lookup value from a "Hold And Modify" pixel scheme utilizing 644 ram as 3 bits per pixel modifier(r,g,b) and SPI ram as 1 bit sign/direction. Also a configurable normal tile row mode...or something. Also utilizing DDRD for pseudo pallet shifts...yeah that's it!

Cunning did you ever see that HAM mode from the Amiga? I think it's origin is interesting and it certainly is peculiar at least. No idea what it's good for besides static pictures. Blitting to such a surface must be complex.
CunningFellow
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Re: Anyone up for a collaboration to do something amazeballs?

Post by CunningFellow »

I am familiar with Amiga HAM and EHB modes. HAM did actually have games for it. The one I remember was this one where you went around spraying bugs in a garden or something.

On for some other crazy ideas.

Uzebox could do better than this https://youtu.be/Cs2WmQtt1eQ?t=25

You could probably do a Uzebox version of N++ https://youtu.be/eg8BI-NaDt8?t=22

I have discussed with two people away from the forum about doing a demake of this https://youtu.be/hsUUn6mV6qQ?t=9

Or this one could be totally doable in the RLE mode https://youtu.be/2Kw3peJwZzI?t=40. The RLE mode just leaves SO much free CPU and free RAM for doing other things.
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