We now have joystick input working.
Using the input we can set left/right, up/down directions and when combined with a speed variable we can start to move things around the screen.
Additionally the variables allow us to set the correct images for the sprite when facing certain directions.
We are now able to display images on screen and manage its memory allocations.
We have also been setting up the BartmanAbyss C extension for VS Code which is super helpful.
Next we are looking into putting some of our test scripts onto actual hardware. This will involve packaging an ADF and using a Gotek drive first to test and then to copy to a floppy disk for further testing.
This week we mostly discussed the use of pointers and coded a test script to accept joystick input.
We are still playing around with displaying images too.
We have achieved reading from file and printing to the console.
Having saved images as IFF we are now looking into how we read this into memory and draw to the screen.
We also discussed the low level memory management that will be involved and how screen size, no of colors and size of spritesheets all impact how much we can store in the memory available in chip and video RAM.
Every Friday we discuss progress and action points for the week ahead. This week we will be trying to achieve the following:
(1) Write something to disk, can be just text. Read from disk and print to console
(2) Put text file onto Amiga. Read file from disk and print to console
(3) Put image file onto Amiga. Read image file from disk and print bytes to console (not as image, as text)
(4) Put image file onto Amiga. Read image file from disk and display image on screen.
First thing was to set up the compiler which we did with the aid of a tutorial by Wei-ju Wu. Video here.
Then we did some simple tests compiling a hello world script and running it in terminal on the mac, and then on FS-UAE.
Lastly, we have now successfully integrated Amiga libraries and have a simple window running on the Amiga.
We can now move on to testing some technical stuff that will inform how we can use all the power of the Amiga. We will do some copper, halfbrite and blitter tests and see where we get with that.
We are aiming to deliver an arcade quality port of Technos classic beat’em up Double Dragon. The original conversion did not get the love and care it needed, and while the sequel was a decent effort we think we can get even closer with this version.
The project started in C, but we have now moved over to Erik Hogan’s Scorpion Engine, due to the wealth of features and speed optimisations it offers out of the box. The results so far have been very impressive!
Specs
Amiga 500 + 512 Slow Ram expansion
25 Frames Per Second
32 colours
© 2016 Electric Cafe
