A couple of experiments done while brainstorming about a new game made with ALS. The first effect is obtained basically at no processing cost, while the second one requires only the minimal cost of blitting a 2 bit mask. A stock Amiga 1200 can handle this without breaking a sweat.
To be honest, I'm at a loss regarding which game to make. It all started with the itch of remaking the second game I ever made (and never publicly released), but while fiddling with ALS these effects came to mind - and they don't happen to be very suitable for that game. So, I tried to think of alternatives, and the best idea I came up is a game where: there are two parallel worlds, a real (dangerous/dark) one and an illusory (pleasant/nice) one; the screen mostly shows the illusory world, but the character controlled by the player is inside a bubble around it that shows the real world or there's some mechanism that allows the player to somehow reveal the real world - e.g. with a sort of torch light. The problem with this idea is designing the game and producing the content (double graphics work!) - it's something I can't undertake now. Also, a sports game is sorely missing from my catalogue, but so far I couldn't think of anything interesting.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
This is what it includes: * quickstart guide * intro * manual * full zones 1 and 4 * placeholders for zones 2 and 3 * crippled zone 5 * placeholder for outro
This is what it does not include: * full zone 5 * outro
This is what is still to be done: * making zones 2 and 3; * exploiting the remaining 512 bytes VIC-II bank space for zones 4 and 5; * writing outro music.
The changelog below provides the detailed list of changes since the previous preview; highlights: * completed zone 1; * added 8 new baddies; * added saving of game progress; * made many bugfixes and optimizations.
* Added 8 new baddies (they are 16 in all now).
* Re-added stopping of food/drinks generation after Zampo starves (found a way to do it basically at no cost).
* Saved 234 to 244 bytes (depending on the zone) by reorganizing a bit the memory map once again.
* Saved 257 to 266 bytes (depending on the zone) by moving the zone-complete transition from the zone program to a separate program.
* Saved a sprite page by reworking the graphics and the logic of the baddies explosion.
* Made a few optimizations.
* Made various other minor improvements.
* Fixed a rare endless wait (due to lack of CPU cycles).
* Fixed the portals graphics update and a CPU load peak (which might even cause a frame skip) in the FUN PARK zone (a routine used the wrong condition code in a branch, so the portals graphics update was triggered also when it should not have been).
* Fixed the handling of collisions against baddies when Zampo is being relocated (if Zampo had been in PIG-OF-STEEL mode, collisions were detected and baddies were killed).
* Fixed the handling of collisions against baddies when the GOLD mode is starting (due to the initial flashing of Zampo's skin, collisions could be detected).
* Fixed the handling of collisions against baddies when the distance from the checkpoint is very large (the quick relocation of Zampo to the checkpoint would cause the immediate disappearance of the baddie, so collisions would not longer be detected until the same or another baddie re-appeared on the screen, thus leaving the collision flag set and causing repeated collision detections).
* Fixed the handling of collisions against slides in the FUN PARK zone (Zampo could get stuck due to a tile index constant being off by one and another tile index constant indicating the opposite tile).
* Fixed the teleporting of Zampo from the left border of the bottommost portal of the FUN PARK zone (he was taken to another portal's destination due to a coordinate constant being off by one).
* Fixed the turbofart flame at the end of the zone-complete transition (it was shown for 2 frames instead of 1).
* Fixed the lighting property of a FUN PARK zone tile.
* Worked on the FUN PARK zone map: made it 64 pixels taller (now it is 2048x912 pixels); completed the layout; added gameplay features; improved the graphics; moved the exit point to a better (and recognizeable) place; fixed some tiles.
* Worked on the CLIFFS zone map: made it 16 pixels taller (now it is 2048x944 pixels); extended the underground part.
* Worked on the FORTRESS zone map: made it 16 pixels taller (now it is 2048x896 pixels); extended the underground part; touched it up in a few places.
* Worked on the frontend: restricted the selectable zones to the first one and any other reached previously; made the outro item activate only upon game completion (so, when the game has not been completed, it cannot be selected and only its silhouette is visible); added auto-selection of the joystick item when [UP] or [DOWN] is pressed; added zones numbers in front of the zones names; made it smaller.
* Worked on the preamble: made it smaller.
* Worked on the documentation: extended/improved/fixed quickstart guide and manual.
* Worked on EasyFlash features: embedded and used EasyAPI to save the game progress permanently and thus have the frontend enable the zones/outro accordingly; ensured the LED is on/off when the cartridge is / is not in use; added cartridge name.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
For those who are curious about how the game came into being and how it evolved, here's a video that shows some phases of its development and the full backstory.
Back in 1994, my 17-years-old self started making his third game, inspired by Empire Software's game DreamWeb (whose demo he had deeply enjoyed) and by Kim Stanley Robinson's novel A Short, Sharp Shock (whose Italian translation was titled Anello intorno al Mondo, which Ring around the World is the literal translation of). Like the previous two games (one of which has been remade from scratch and released in 2021 with the name Follix), it was made with AMOS Professional. It remained unfinished: it was just too big and beyond my capabilities. The graphics looked ugly, the code was even worse, there were only a couple of horrible sound effects, only one map was (kind of) complete and two other maps were basically placeholders. However, that game always held a special place in my heart.
Fast-forward to the fall of 2022 and one evening, while talking about books, I mentioned the novel and then the game to a friend (a former Amigan). The next day, a gust of nostalgia prompted me to fire up the game and wander around the playable - and terribly sparse - map. Immediately, the memory of a shameful graphical bug returned: after a few steps, I performed the action that would bring it up. Through the years, such scene repeated quite a number of times, but I never got around to fix the issue because it was caused by the conceptually wrong graphical system, so a solution required a major rework - not something an unfinished game was worth. Actually, in 2000, I did start a remake, but I stopped quite soon before completing the new scrolling routines because, when compiled, the game would crash - the AMOS Professional Compiler did not get along with the custom equates I had defined for the game. Disappointed (to put it mildly), I refused to remove the equates making the code less efficient and I simply abandoned the project. This time around, I could no longer suppress the urge to fix the defect for good, so... Fighting the disgust, I waded through the entangled code, figuring out how it worked, reimplemented the graphical system and finally got rid of the bug. But I did not stop there: I fixed also other issues and refactored, optimized, cleaned up and made error-proof the code - and even standardized the naming conventions and removed the pieces of Italian scattered here and there. I could well have been happy with that, but the ball was rolling and I could not stop it. I pushed things further and replaced the scrolling engine several times until I settled for one that moves the world view by tiles and substituted the quasi-real-time mouse-driven movement with automatic destination targeting - given that the protagonist's movement was locked to tiles by design since the beginning, the original 2-pixel per update scrolling was just a drag. Also, I redesigned entirely the interface - promising myself I would not touch the other graphics. Once again I could (and should) have stopped, but there was still a major issue: the graphics were in 32 totally wasted colors! There were two blacks (one for the border color and another one for the non-transparent black pixels of bobs), a color was reserved for the main bob, a color was unused and many colors were very close to one another. That annoyed me so much that I broke the promise and decided to reduce the colors to 16. I carefully defined a palette of handpicked colors, redrew the interface (multiple times) and recolored the rest of the graphics by means of an automated process. The recoloring results were worse than expected - and that started one more iteration of the remake. I had to repixel the graphics: I knew it would be a lot of work, but it could not be avoided. While at it, I changed the screen layout entirely by making the inventory vertical and moving it to the right side of the screen, so that the world view could be bigger and square - previously, in fact, moving vertically was uncomfortable due to the limited height of the view. Countless improvements and additions followed, until the game reached the current state - and became suitable for public release, which had not been even contemplated when the work started.
In the end, nothing remained of the original material and the last challenge was to answer the question: where to stop? The remake was not planned, stole time from other (and way more important!) projects and, to become a sufficiently large game, would have required months (or even years) of further development. Therefore, I decided to make it a mini-game restricted to the (questionable) map of the original work, keeping its spirit intact.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
Three days ago, a friend who was playing Ring around the World (without me even knowing), asked me: "I noticed that the palette changes and I'm pretty sure it's because of the elapsing of time!". He was right - the game simulates the elapsing of time and handles several events related to it.
A constant and very important effect is that the protagonist becomes (more) thirsty, hungry and sleepy as time goes by. Another constant and noticeable effect is that the environmental lighting changes according to the hour of the day. Other events happen when a certain time is reached. 1 in-game hour corresponds to 10 real-world minutes, but some actions might cause time to elapse more quickly. The duration of a day is 24 hours. The game starts at 12:00.
Before releasing the game, I had made a video to show, at an accelerated pace, some effects of time, but I had kept it private. To answer my friend, I showed the video to him, but now I thought I'd share it with everybody.
New version of ArtPazz released. It benefits from the recent improvements to ALS and to the AMOS executables optimizer originally developed for Ring around the World.
v1.7 (18.03.2023) * Fixed 'I' and ']' of big font. * Removed involuntary dependency on AMCAF (the cleanup code included an Open Workbench command). * Saved some memory by tweaking the AMOS Professional Interpreter configuration. * Recompiled against ALS v2.4 (which eliminates the dependency on mathtrans.library). * Reprocessed executable with improved optimizer tool that optimizes also Exit If ... and While ... Wend. * Embedded version string in executable.
v1.6 (02.03.2023) * Fixed 24 bytes memory leak due to the AMOS function Dir First$() by replacing it (and Dir Next$()) with direct calls to dos.library. * Fixed 24 bytes memory leak due to the new font handling code.
v1.5 (28.02.2023) * Changed font handling so that diskfont.library is no longer needed. * Made minimal changes to the startup and cleanup code.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
New version of Follix released. It benefits from the recent improvements to ALS and to the AMOS executables optimizer originally developed for Ring around the World.
v1.5 (18.03.2023) * Made minimal changes to the startup and cleanup code. * Removed involuntary dependency on AMCAF (the cleanup code included an Open Workbench command). * Saved some memory by tweaking the AMOS Professional Interpreter configuration. * Recompiled against ALS v2.4 (which eliminates the dependency on mathtrans.library). * Reprocessed executable with improved optimizer tool that optimizes also Exit If ... and While ... Wend. * Embedded version string in executable.
v1.4 (22.02.2023) * Lowered the task priority from 5 to 0 to play nice to the OS upon cleanup, just before saving the data to disk.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
v1.100 & v2.4 (18.3.2023) * Removed dependency on mathtrans.library by replacing CN=2^LD with CN=1 : Rol.l LD,CN.
v1.99 & v2.3 (20.2.2023) * Changed the conditions of many If, Until and While statements to have the AMOS Professional Compiler produce shorter and faster code. * Touched up manual.
v1.98 & v2.2 (19.2.2023) Added CPU caches clearing after machine code routines generation in ALS_INITIALIZE_SYSTEM[].
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
There is no update option - updating a previously installed copy consists simply in deleting the latter and installing the new version. Due to the bugs and the changes, v1.0 snapshots are no longer supported - using them will cause unpredictable results, so do not use them.
Despite the v1.0 had been released after having been played from start to finish many times on multiple machines, some bugs managed to slip in The first one was found without looking at the game or at the code: it presented itself out of the blue during the sleepless night following the release of the game. The second one was spotted while watching somebody else play the game and the third one was reported by him after I revealed the other bug. Then, quite a few other bugs were found and fixed after the revision of the code started. I seized the chance to include also some improvements.
The detailed list of changes goes as follows...
v1.1 (17/03/2023) * Fixed the cave entrances (they could be entered from above; also, they brought the protagonist to the place from where he last exited the cave, which might be different). * Fixed the protagonist escape from the cave when he needs to sleep and the closest exit is the north one, but the access to it is blocked by the chasm (he would virtually take that exit anyway). * Fixed the handling of the protagonist's sleep when requested by the player (multiple tiles replacements where generated whereas none were needed; when sleeping just because of the physical need, the protagonist would sleep while standing on his feet). * Fixed the drinking balance handling (a check was done too late, which could cause the thirst to seem quenced when, instead, it was quite strong). * Fixed the palette of the game over screen (was slightly off). * Fixed the initialization (did not handle errors relatively to a certain group of operations). * Fixed the triggering of the earthquake (it could happen because of the loading of a snapshot if saving had been done in the upper part of the cave). * Fixed the protagonist bob image upon loading of a snapshot (its index was calculated, but that did not work when he was standing on the raft). * Fixed a boundary check in a tile replacement procedure (was using a wrong upper boundary). * Fixed the replacements of several tiles (multiple instances of the internal data were used for each tile; in most cases it was actually just an ill-advised choice). * Added a workaround to OS memory fragmentation, which could cause out-of-memory errors when switching location on 1 MB RAM machines. * Refined the location loading so that, upon failure, a second attempt is made after freeing the memory occupied by cached chat data. * Removed the current snapshot preservation upon snapshot loading (obsolete since quite a while). * Saved some memory by reducing the variables buffer and tweaking the AMOS Professional Interpreter configuration. * Modified the double buffering system to allow limiting the graphics refresh rate arbitrarily. * Limited the graphics refresh rate to 25 fps when the protagonist moves or animates (expanded machines executed at 50 fps, which looked worse). * Replaced AMCAF's Raster Wait and Y Raster() with more reliable assembly routines (which include also the loops that made use of them). * Changed the effect the non-player characters phrases are printed with (this one looks better and avoids that partially updated graphics show on underpowered machines). * Improved the synchronization of some graphics/palette updates. * Made palette changes faster. * Made the movement of the pointer smoother when exploring the world area (it was assigned the image on every graphical refresh with Change Mouse and that caused it to stutter). * Made the protagonist turn towards the destination tile also when his movement is initiated by the program control (i.e. not by the player). * Made the protagonist turn towards the right direction in a situation where he did not. * Simplified the time-based events code. * Added a time-based event that removes the imprints/pits from the sand after some in-game hours. * Touched up the metal plate graphics. * Fixed 'I' and ']' of the non-player character texts font. * Added a sound effect. * Made other minor changes/optimizations. * Reprocessed the executable with an improved optimizer tool which optimizes also Colour, Colour(), Exit If ... and While ... Wend. * Made a few minor changes/additions to the manual.
After months of intense work, a game (almost) nobody knew about is finally out! All I'll say here is that it's a point'n'click adventure - as for the rest, just feel free to check it out ;)
Like all the RETREAM games, also this one is 100% free, but, if you like it, please offer some support to somebody who is a victim of any kind of violence.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
A quick heads-up to let you know that since the last post I released a couple of little updates.
v1.3 (21.02.2023) * Fixed endless floppy drive motor spinning. * Fixed graphical glitch that could happen in the transition between the game and information screens. * Made disappearance of game area when passing to the pause screen happen in a single frame instead of two. * Added clearing of CPU caches after the loading of the data file (as that contains also a couple of machine code routines). * Changed the conditions of many If, Until and While statements and turned For ... Next loops into Repeat ... Until loops to have the AMOS Professional Compiler produce shorter and faster code. * Sharpened the top/bottom sides of the menu buttons. * Recompiled against ALS v2.3. * Optimized executable with custom tool. * Touched up manual.
v1.2 (06.08.2021) * Speed-optimized raster beam Y reading routine.
A quick heads-up to let you know that I released a couple of littles updates.
v1.4 (20.02.2023) * Changed the conditions of many If, Until and While statements and turned For ... Next loops into Repeat ... Until loops to have the AMOS Professional Compiler produce shorter and faster code. * Recompiled against ALS v2.3.
v1.3 (19.02.2023) * Fixed endless floppy drive motor spinning * Recompiled against ALS v2.2. * Optimized executable with custom tool. * Touched up manual.
* Made the game over trigger as soon as the belly meter becomes zero (before
there was a grace period of about 5 seconds, but the fact that the game
continued while the belly meter was zero looked plainly wrong).
* Changed the main color of Zampo's dark skin.
* Added 4 more baddies.
* Added a zone-complete transition.
* Made the portals sides graphics unique to each zone.
* Made many speed and memory optimizations.
* Touched up some music instruments.
* Started adding the logic to limit the zones selectable in the frontend to
those already reached.
* Fixed an off-by-one bug in the cartridge driver that caused an additional page
to be copied from ROM to RAM when the section size was an exact multiple of
256.
* Fixed an off-by-one bug in the sprites multiplexer, which caused multiplexing
to be done one line too early, thus corrupting the bottom line of sprites in
some cases.
* Fixed/optimized the collision detection of Zampo against food/drinks (a change
made just before releasing the previous preview could cause the collisions to
be missed when the objects were flickering before disappearing).
* Fixed the collision detection when Zampo is incorporeal (Zampo could collide
against food/drinks/baddies as a consequence of the system for handling
Zampo's skin introduced by the previous preview).
* Fixed the permanent flashing of Zampo when he caught a spinach can while he
was already in STEEL mode and the mode was about to expire.
* Fixed the portals graphics update and a CPU load peak in the FUN PARK zone (a
routine was missing a closing jmp, so the portals graphics update was
triggered also when it should have not been).
* Fixed the abort function (it did not work properly when Zampo was not in
normal mode and did not zero the belly meter).
* Wrote the FUN PARK and FORTRESS zones music.
* Worked on the FUN PARK zone map:
* expanded it;
* improved/extended the graphics.
* Worked on the CLIFFS zone map:
* made it 80 pixels taller (now it is 2048x928 pixels);
* extended a lot the underground part;
* added a portal connected to a new location;
* added a puzzle related to the new portal (the portal is broken and Zampo
must repair it after finding the missing piece);
* changed the design in some places;
* improved the graphics.
* Worked on the FORTRESS zone map:
* made it 32 pixels taller (now it is 2048x880 pixels);
* extended the underground part;
* touched it up in a few places.
* Worked on the frontend:
* changed logo design slightly;
* improved vertical spacing of elements.
* Worked on the documentation:
* extended/improved the manual;
* changed slightly the color scheme of quickstart guide and manual.
* Worked on the intro: fixed a couple of things in the text.
* Worked on the zone introduction screen: fixed the initial colors of the
letters (they were all black).
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
Lately work has been done in parallel on all the RETREAM games. It began with the objective of aligning the technically similar ones for PC so that they would handle data saving the same way, but it soon went out of control and brought uniformity and improvements to the installers, the documentation, the web pages and even to code and internal files - and, just as importantly, it brought new features as well!
After Blastaway, Huenison and KOG, BOH got updated as well.
CHANGELOG * Re-added joypad thumbsticks support, as at times Windows treats D-pads as thumbsticks. * Added internal graphics screenshot function (assigned to [F1]; the visible graphics are now captured with [F2] and themes are cycled with [F3]). * Reworked assignments of the kind *p++ = ... *p ... (as they are miscompiled by some versions of gcc). * Worked on (registration for) records submission to the online standings: fixed server side issues and added SITE.PORT configuration option for future use; improved information/instructions for the registration procedure; disabled registration procedure when SDL_net is not initialized. * Optimized static strings definitions. * Simplified data files access code. * Moved configuration and missions directory to the program's. * Replaced version string with an AmigaOS-style one. * Updated/improved user's manual, developer's manual and soundtrack booklet. * Made various other minor changes. * Made installers preserve the submission status of records, so that those that had already been submitted will not be submitted again after a re-installation/update. * Added to Windows installers code to clean up leftovers. * Added portable version for Windows. * Dropped support for Linux and MacOS (maintaining those version can no longer be afforded; moreover, MacOS dropped 32-bit applications support a long time ago; anyway, the Windows version of BOH, since the very beginning, has always been working perfectly under Wine, and now it is even easier to run BOH thanks to the portable version).
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
Lately work has been done in parallel on all the RETREAM games. It began with the objective of aligning the technically similar ones for PC so that they would handle data saving the same way, but it soon went out of control and brought uniformity and improvements to the installers, the documentation, the web pages and even to code and internal files - and, just as importantly, it brought new features as well!
CHANGELOG * Added field dark columns: the background is darkened, in an alternate columns fashion, by 50% in the first set of levels, by 25% in the second set of levels, by 0% in the third set of levels and by 75% in the last level (given that the columns match the virtual columns bricks descend along, they make for a precious visual aid to aim at the bricks). * Added 20 points bonus for when CRUSH brick lands on the ground. * Added function to use the RESTORE bonus to joypad (it had been forgotten!). * Added internal graphics screenshot function (assigned to [F1]; the visible graphics are now captured with [F2]). * Changed string requester so that entering an empty string means also "abort"/"reject" (depending on the context). * Considered also D-pad input for "press any key/button" requests. * Worked on online hiscores: improved/updated information texts; added possibility to retry up to 10 times if sending fails (in particular, when the email address registration has just been done, this makes it much easier to send the hiscores immediately thereafter). * Slightly changed level names. * Simplified data files access code. * Made a few little optimizations. * Replaced version string with an AmigaOS-style one. * Added to Windows installer code to import previous savedata and clean up leftovers. * Added Windows portable version. * Updated manual.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
To be precise, I didn't fix anything: I just added a workaround to the fact that sometimes SDL reports D-pads as thumbsticks (the workaround being the addition of support for thumbsticks, which are treated as if they were digital). On Windows, the issue is often (maybe always?) Window's own fault: I have here a cheap SNES controller replica that Windows keeps on seeing as an analog device. On AmigaOS... well, I don't know.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
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