I have been working on a Boulder Dash like game for some time now and decided to publish a beta version. OS4 version needs MiniGL (and Warp3D). I forgot to mention in the readme that VSYNC option is not functional for OS4 (SDL doesn't support it).

Diamonds and Dust 0.1 is available on my homepage at http://capehill.kapsi.fi/ .

@Mr_Capehill
Hi,
I would like to invite you to upload your stuff also here. Windows, osx and amiga ports are welcome : )


www.indiego-gaming.com/marketplace

A bit info can be found here. A detailed how to will follow.
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8506&forum=4&post_id=87280#forumpost87280

_________________
AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

@Mr_Capehill

decent stuff but something is "off", controller lag perhaps?

good framerate, but tbh i am kinda sick of boulderdash as emerald mines have been released on just about every format out there and ofcourse i keep buying/playing them :D

_________________
See my blog and collection website! . https://www.blog.amigaguru.com

@Toaks

Thanks for testing. Do you use keyboard or joystick?

Personally I have been playing DD for too long, I have almost become "blind" to it. And sick :) Got diamonds and dust coming out of my ears as we speak.

But I still love Boulder Dash! And it's the 30th anniversary and new BD coming from original authors as well!

Long live Rockford!

@Mr_Capehill

I'm gonna try this when I come back to my Miggy late this evening..

A screenshot of the game anyone? Meanwhile the wait.. would be nice ...

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FEu2 on Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM
C128, A500+, A1200, A1200/40, AmigaForever 2008+09+16, 5 x86/x64 boxes
Still waiting (or dreaming) for the Amiga revolution...
m4rko.com/AMIGA

@Mr_Capehill

i have used both and both ways play the same.

_________________
See my blog and collection website! . https://www.blog.amigaguru.com

Is't supposed to eat all available cpu cycles? i get 100% cpu usage on my Peg2 and only 3.4 fps. I can't see anything strange in the log file.

@Toaks

Input is handled 60 times per second and it should directly affect the player so I'm not sure where the lag comes. Of course if player is moving to one direction, animation must consume all "ticks" before new direction is possible as movement is tile-based.

@smf

DD eats all cycles, if VSYNC is not active or there is no frame cap. You can set frame cap with command-line parameter max_fps=60 but I'm not sure will it help in your case.

Which graphics card you have? Do you use Warp3D or Wazp3D?

I can get 60 FPS with Sam440 (fullscreen). In window mode it's usually below.

@Mr_Capehill

I was running in window mode when i got 3.4 fps. Now i'm running in fullscreen mode and get very good framerates. the max_fps option didn't give me any better performance in window mode.
I use Warp3d on my Radeon9000pro.

@Mr_Capehill

Hi, I just got time to install and test this!

Unfortunately it doesn't run that well on my system :S

Here's "error report":
I only get about 1.2-1.3 FPS and the current "highlighted" menu item is invisible so you don't see which item is selected. But pressing the arrow keys the menu seems working so I could figure out how to get to Options and then Video Setting and then when hit space bar at the Fullscreen option nothing happens, neither of the arrow keys works anymore, only thing that seems working is the Esc key and pressing it then the game quits.

Ok, so restarting the game... Start a game works, but only in 0.8 FPS on my system and switching to fullscreen (like above) didn't work.

But however all graphics (pretty nice BTW) and the game-play seems working as it should except the above quirks :S

My system is:
AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6
Sam440ep-flex, 800MHz, 1GB RAM

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FEu2 on Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM
C128, A500+, A1200, A1200/40, AmigaForever 2008+09+16, 5 x86/x64 boxes
Still waiting (or dreaming) for the Amiga revolution...
m4rko.com/AMIGA

@marko

Quite puzzled by these low FPS reports. I have also Sam440ep and even though it's not super-fast, it gives a decent amount FPS all time. On my mac I get hundreds of FPS and on PC thousands...but I will check my screenmode etc settings later.

Meanwhile, you can hack fullscreen mode to settings.txt, or give "full_screen=1" command-line parameter. Hope it works better.

Random things to try: try 16-bit screenmode, or try disabling compositing.

@Mr_Capehill

I noticed previously huge speed boost depending on VRAM amount free.

It was something like...
On SAM440ep-mini with onboard M9 I got ~100% more FPS when using some 1440x900 or lower resolution. 1920x1080 in 16b or 32b were slow.

But in some case when the VRAM became exhausted, also 1920x1080 sped up... silly phenomenom-
THE ABOVE line is incorrect, see below.

(tried to find the thread... it was the santa shootout fps test discussion last year)

FOUND it, my sum up from santa shootout test:

I got 82...86 FPS on SAM440ep-mini in windowed mode on 32bit screen.
I got 105FPS in windowed mode on 1920x1080x16b screen when compositing is off...
I got 220FPS in own 325x256x32b screen ...
And below 1FPS in own 1920x1080x32b screen (full screen & out of VRAM???).

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6612&start=0

Also I remember some other test where there was radicall improvement in 1440x900 vs 1980x1024 performance. And that other test sometimes failed to detect compositing/HW acceleration correctly.
(got very good result even when the test reported no HW acceleration)

So there might be some AOS4 bug somewhere when setting up HW acceleration on low end SAM. ?

REMINDED ME that:
-we need boot selector for gaming on low end HW, like with original Amigas

Last edited by KimmoK on 07-Mar-2014 at 06:45 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 07-Mar-2014 at 06:44 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 07-Mar-2014 at 06:41 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Mr_Capehill

Thankyou for for working on the BoulderDash like game for the Amiga :)

In my appreciation, and was spending a few moments playing around with some Sprites designs. Happy to offer creating more polished sprites for this Amiga release (always enjoyed playing these games).

... good ole days :)

@KimmoK

Quote:

Also I remember some other test where there was radicall improvement in 1440x900 vs 1980x1024 performance. And that other test sometimes failed to detect compositing/HW acceleration correctly. (got very good result even when the test reported no HW acceleration) So there might be some AOS4 bug somewhere when setting up HW acceleration on low end SAM. ?

Definetly no "bug" there. It depends on the driver/hardware, if hardware accelleration is supported or not. Some HW doesn´t support certain bitmap formats (for source and/or destination), so there´s the software fallback (which is quite good, as you already mentioned). Check for the BitMap format you used (maybe used unintentionally).

Speed depends on the usage (or waste) of VRAM, too. This is where SDL is a rather bad decision. But as I understand it, D&D is meant for several platforms, so there´s not much alternative.

Using CompositeTags(), I did some tests, too. For games like D&D, CompositeTags() is absolutely sufficient and a bad a** speedwise, if there´s HW support. If you´re able to use VRAM in an efficient way (so that the P96 pager doesn´t kick in), there are rather big games possible even if you use FullHD resolution.

First thing to do is: CloseWorkbench(), so that there is no other FullHD bitmap and its friends in VRAM (on SAM440ep, this WILL make the P96 pager kick in!). Second thing is, try to hold in VRAM only bitmaps actually needed. If there is some bitmap swap needed, do it yourself. Avoid the P96 pager as much as possible!

I know, sometimes it´s problematic to do CoseWorkbench() and ensure, that it worked. That´s where the developer documentation needs to be much more clear, so that other programs don´t block Workbench more than needed. But there´s always the good ol´ requester, begging the user to close other windows/programs to make the Workbench close possible.

Btw., making the game gfx "FullHD" isn´t always a good decision. Games like Boulder Dash will loose atmosphere, if the gfx is polished too much. Instead, use the scaling feature of Compositing and scale the gfx up to display dimensions (or down). Looks very good (as Battle Squadron showed, it´s possible to do things like scanline emulation. Looks even better!) and limits VRAM usage to a reasonable level.

@KimmoK

Yep, probably problem is the VRAM amount. I did some testing here.

* WITHOUT compositing:

WB 1280*960*32. Free VRAM 50 MB. (Tip: use Workbench prefs to make free VRAM amount visible)

DD 800*600*32 window mode. Menu FPS 90, Game FPS 60.
DD 1280*960*32 window mode. Menu FPS 50. ame FPS 20+.

* WITH compositing:

WB 1280*960*32 window mode. Free VRAM 36 MB.

DD 800*600*32 window. Low FPS.
DD 1280*960*32 window. Low FPS.
DD fullscreen. High FPS.

Change WB mode to 16-bit, free VRAM 49 MB.

DD 800*600*32 window mode. High FPS.

So if you have FPS problems, use DD fullscreen mode, or try to free VRAM somehow.

@invent

Looking good. I have to find a way to somehow get your graphics into the game. In it's current state it's not very moddable :) To avoid extra dependencies, I have an external converter that takes a PNG file and converts it into an OpenGL texture. Then DD can just read that file without further format conversions.

Currently I use 32*32 tiles. It would have been very challenging to draw bigger tiles and animate them.

@whose

SDL doesn't matter here because SDL surface is only used for OpenGL context and application icon. I have three 32-bit textures (title, font and sprites) so those consumes some video memory.

@Mr_Capehill

my silly results are here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=36878&forum=32&start=20&viewmode=flat&order=0#689807
(in some cases FPS become higher if VRAM is exhausted ? and "Funny, if I start IB before the 2D test, I get 300% better results.")

Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Mar-2014 at 06:43 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?