In the past months I've been thinking of some new game concept that would finally put my dot-matrix engine for AGA Amigas to good use. Admittedly, I haven't come up with anything worthy yet, but I've been doing some technical experiments. I thought you might fancy having a look at the latest experiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8FyrxEhnQ

Details:
* the parallax is not obtained by means of pre-rendered separate lines, but by applying perspective to a rectangular texture; this means that the texture can be easily modified/animated on the fly, and also that it doesn't have a size limit;
* the shadow is not made of a number of precalculated frames, but it's a single bitmap that gets cast in perspective (exploiting the parallax effect) and also with a pseudo-antialias effect;
* the scrolling is not obtained by changing bitplane pointers, but by redrawing the whole screen: while this steals quite some bandwidth, it allows for a single raster (thus making rendering operations really easy) and eliminates the need to keep/restore dirty regions;
* the character is not a bitmap, but it's made of 1200 separate dots (which is what allows it to transform into any other shape made of the same 1200 dots);
* an unexpanded A1200 runs this at full speed (i.e. 50 Hz); it would do so even if there were a second 1200 dots character, although there wouldn't be time to do much more - to gain extra time for an actual game, characters should be plain bitmaps and, if needed, the parallax area could be made a little shorter.

Note that I'm NOT going to make a beat'em up. Again, this is just an experiment.

(The graphics have been derived from assets which are the property of Capcom Co., Ltd.)

Previous video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB6wgJbj0Gg

Last edited by saimo on 13-Jul-2020 at 08:56 PM.
Last edited by saimo on 14-Apr-2019 at 02:52 PM.

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

Looks great Saimo, very curious to see what you come up with :) keep on experimenting.

Thanks! I'm curious, too

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

This reminds me of the dot matrix displays found on modern pinball machines such as this one: Pinball Dot Matrix

or this one:

Sega Pinball Dot Matrix

@ferrels

Oh, but that's exactly where the inspiration came from
When, as a teenager, I saw Pinball Fantasies, I was totally blown away and dot-matrix displays became a sort of fixation. Then, years later, Slam Tilt blew me away even more and gave me the idea of making whole games based on dot-matrix machines - that's why I made Huenison and now I'm working on this.

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@saimo

Looks really cool. Time for a compilation of all the DMD mini games

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@_Steve_

Thanks!
I didn't even know that there was such a definition ("DMD mini games")

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@saimo

freaky cool saimo

btw, so looking forward to buying SkillGrid..any idea when it'll be released ?

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@klx300r

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klx300r wrote: @saimo freaky cool saimo

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btw, so looking forward to buying SkillGrid..any idea when it'll be released ?

Hopefully, RGCD is going to receive the CDs tomorrow. The floppies have been made or will be made shortly. The rest of the materials have arrived. It should be matter of days.

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

This video shows a stock Amiga 1200 running various visual effects using the dot-matrix engine. The effects are obtained by means of a system that allows every single pixel to be located anywhere in memory (regardless of the RAM type). Lately, I've started thinking again of a game that makes use of the dot-matrix engine, and I came up with this new system. I finally have a somewhat interesting game concept (not shown here), but I'm still thinking of better alternatives.
Technical note: while the dot-matrix engine doesn't require any CPU operation, this new system is entirely CPU-driven, so each screen update takes more or less 1.3 frames on a stock A1200; therefore, if the game eventually uses the system, it will run at most at 25 fps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSvJmn0-KoE

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

Those effects look pretty cool.
To me it looks like you've made a texture mapping engine.
This could/would be useful for a 3D engine with an accelerator...

Last edited by Lou on 20-Dec-2019 at 04:47 PM.

@Lou

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Those effects look pretty cool.

Thanks.

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To me it looks like you've made a texture mapping engine.

In a broad sense, yes.

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]This could/would be useful for a 3D engine with an accelerator...

It can be used for 3D stuff, but there are limitations.

By the way, just to clarify, the game concept I have is not 3D (but it isn't final and indeed I've been thinking of 3D-based games); anyway, whatever I'll do with the engine, it will target the stock A1200.

Last edited by saimo on 20-Dec-2019 at 05:56 PM.

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

Looks amazing! For a game it should be stock A1200 else it will sell bad.

What about a game like Vector

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0LIwsiMdIA

@nikosidis

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Looks amazing!

Thanks!

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For a game it should be stock A1200 else it will sell bad.

I don't know what kind of game I'm going to do yet, so it's a bit too early to think about selling it
Anyway, as I said, I'm targeting the stock A1200 - that's where the fun is.

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What about a game like Vector https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0LIwsiMdIA

I don't know the game and - please don't be offended - I'm not going to check out the video: I want to make something new.

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@saimo

I hope the demo scene can start to think about that too. So few prods. for stock A1200.

Original is always the best :D Looking forward to follow this.

@nikosidis

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I hope the demo scene can start to think about that too. So few prods. for stock A1200. Original is always the best :D

Apart from the second half of the 90s, when I did watch demos regularly, I never really followed the demo scene (although I have the utmost respect for what sceners achieve), so I'm surprised to hear that only expanded A1200s are being used. I'm curious now: I'm going to search Pouet for the most recent production for standard A1200!

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Looking forward to follow this.

I'll try to give updates whenever I have something relevant, so just stay tuned

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

Yes, pouet.net is a good source. You can not search for Amiga requirements there though but just as you assumed. Demo prods. for stock A1200 are before 2000. It is a lot for stock A500 though. That is what most scene prods. are make for last years. Only this month it is 3 Amiga 500 productions released :)

Two more experiments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH20N0D5kKw

For convenience, these are the previous videos:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB6wgJbj0Gg
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8FyrxEhnQ
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSvJmn0-KoE

Last edited by saimo on 10-Feb-2020 at 01:21 PM.
Last edited by saimo on 27-Dec-2019 at 12:43 PM.

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

so cool & I think you already have alot of great bits to put out a great demo !!!

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c64-2sids, A1000, A1200T-060@50(finally working!),A4000-CSMKIII
! My Master Miggies- Amiga 1000 & AmigaOne X1000 !
mancave-ramblings
X1000 I BELIEVE

@klx300r

Thanks!
(But I'm not going to make a demo )

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RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC