We've been flooded with new game updates over the last few weeks, with games being mentioned such as Galaxian 500, Zedex Tanks, Savage Princess and even our personal favourite Tenebra 2. Well it's time for the Amiga to get a news update, as thanks to Saberman contacting us earlier today, he has told us to check out this rather impressive looking demo of 'Hamulet' by remi "Remi Veilleux" for the Amiga. A demo in which people given very positive feedback such as "I thought HAM was only good for still pictures. This is insane" and "Awesome music. Now THIS is Amiga".
Here is what is described about the tech demo "Hello everyone! I have assembled an ADF image on my little game/tech-demo I have been working on for the past few months. This is my first C/ASM Amiga game, so it took a fairly long time and was very challenging and fun to work on. I would be extremely grateful to have your input, comments, suggestions about it. Should it be useful to others, I could put the whole project and source code on GitHub, but otherwise I would be happy to answer any questions too. As I mentioned, this being my first serious game project on an Amiga, it is certain that a lot of things could be done better, safer, more compatible, more efficient, etc".
The technical specs:
- - Detects PAL and NTSC, so it should work on both systems
- - Runs at full frame rate (50Hz or 60Hz), scrolling in 8 directions
- - Uses lowres HAM 6-bitplane mode
- - Dynamic sprite management system: it groups sprites by pair, and recycles sprites across the screen vertically: the system can display a maximum of 104 sprites.
- - On an example screen like the one in the screenshot, there is about 80 visible moving sprites, some are animating
- - Sprites are being recolored by the copper: 12 colors per scanline to be precise. This means a theoretical limit of 2880 colors could be displayed just for the sprites. With the current sprite sheet I used, the sprites are using 265 colors.
- - The background tiles are in HAM, which means up to the full palette of 4096 colors, and arranged in such a way show fringeless horizontally scrolling
- - The tiles are shaded at runtime according to light sources (i.e., torches) with a scanline-dithering technique to allow approximately 30 level of darkening
- - There is a single bitmap buffer (i.e.: no double buffering), so everything is rendered with carefully timed 'racing-the-beam' blits.
- - The copper list is also a single list, so all real-time modification of the copper list is done with careful timing
- - joystick control (port 2) and keyboard are supported
- - I tried to make it as system friendly as I could: the game can be directly booted from floppy or installed on RAM: or hard drive or anything else and should work correctly.
- - It works on kickstart 1.2 and anything above. However, on Amiga 1000 with a kickstart older than that, my startup-sequence is doing run <NIL: >NIL: RemGame.exe >NIL: which is not supported so it fails to start; but removing that and it works fine (tested in WinUAE)
- - So far, I've only tested it on WinUAE: my only attempt to run it on hardware was on my Vampire V4, and it crashed horribly. I cannot fully trust that the V4 implementation is 100% compliant with a real Amiga, so for now I do not know how well my game would fare on real hardware.
- - Technically it should boot and work on a real CDTV and Amiga CD32, but I've only tested on WinUAE for now.
- - It runs on OCS, and requires only a 512KB chip ram Amiga, so normally any plain Amiga 500/2000, or Amiga 1000 with 512KB should work
Looks so good! It has really modern look, I would believe if somebody told me thats some indie PC game. Fantastic work!
ReplyDeleteIt looks great!
ReplyDeleteWhat an impressive achievement this is!
ReplyDeleteAmazing! Runs perfectly on NTSC A1200 with TF1260 and NTSC A1000 with Rejuvenator+ParceiroII+68010.
ReplyDeleteThis looks really solid! Going to have to try it out!
ReplyDeleteWhy is it I saw "Hamulet" and immediately assumed it was yet another Commodore game starring a pig?
ReplyDeleteLooks great! Kudos for the hard work!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! Nice colors chosen! Compared to some Amiga games, which really use awful colors, this looks very beautiful. You have done a very good job so far. Keep enjoying your coding experience. Good luck
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately an ADF-version is missing.
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing, well done !!!
ReplyDeleteJust to avoid confusion. The ADF version in the download link is an older version with zero gameplay mechanics and no title screen or intro. If you click on mirror you will get the lha version which you can copy to an Aimiga "HDD" and run. This contains what you can see in the video above and has a lot more to it gameplay-wise. Maybe they will also make an ADF of this version?
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if the game would be finished. It plays fantastic on native hardware.
ReplyDeleteI played this a bunch now on an A1000 (NTSC, 1MB chip, 8MB fast thanks to Rejuvenator + Parceiro II) with CRT and I have to say this is probably the most impressive Amiga game I have played. The "chasing the beam" copper/blitter 4096 HAM colors are one thing. How smooth and fast it runs on 7Mhz OCS hardware is another level. The lighting effects are so nice. The torch mechanic how the light fades in with the dithering effects is beautiful. The game being fun and challenging is just a bonus. You have to inch forward with the torch and then one of those blobs (or like 20 of them) suddenly appears. Can't wait for more!
ReplyDeleteEs un.jurgazo gracias desde espaƱa
ReplyDeleteWow, that looks great
ReplyDeleteFINALLY!!!!!! I was about to scream if I was to see another shoot up game!!
ReplyDeleteLove It! Installed fine with WHDLoad on an A1200 with Workbench13.Slave and NoCache set. Quitkey woks after exiting game. Thank You.
ReplyDeleteWOW! This is looking great, if it plays as well as it looks then Amiga is in for treat.
ReplyDeleteab so lutely the awesomest thing made on and for on the miggy since ages! (probably maybe ever?:) even with all those amazing stuff we've gotten in the past years plus all the incredible developments still to come this made me sit up, then sit down,then to play it for more than an hour straight. the gameplay/mechanics are fantastic, as wellas the art styleand quality, but if that wouldnt be enuff its a bloody technical marvel what could be a winner in a democompo. i mean.... are you japanese?:)
ReplyDelete(i seriously think the only thing that could impress and exite me more than this digital coverdisk demo,
if someone would release a full street fighter 2 port for the a1000/500, but even that should be at least on par with the md/pce ports:)
Very very nice!!! :-)
ReplyDeleteThis game is witchery, still can't believe my eyes. Eagerly waiting for the final version.
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with Amiga graphic, can you explain me, how is this game special? TY
ReplyDeleteAmiga 500 games have up to 16 colors on OCS, or 32 colors on ECS version of graphics chipset. This one uses entire 4096 colors on screen, through a special mode noone thought possible to use for games due to limitations, until now.
ReplyDeleteOCS can display 16, 32 or 64 colours (Halfbright: 32 pure colours, 32 half the brightness of the first 32). It also has a 4096 colour HAM mode (Hold and modify -hardware compressed mode, generally slow with graphic artefacts) - not great for games.
DeleteThe Amiga has a 'copper chip' for changing colours on the fly.
The more colours the Amiga displays , the slower the game, generally.
This is special, as it runs in HAM, and uses the copper to add more colours, there are no HAM artefacts, and it runs at a good speed.