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[Hungry Horace]

in order to give this "system" a little trial run, and knowing that only AMOS Factory users will be able to download it, i've decided to let you guys have access to this.

Its an IK+ / Bruce Lee / Explodng Fist / Hungry Horace inspired fighter and platform game.... 

Horace Boxing!


maybe you can just tell me how bad my code is, why it slows down, anything... hell, if you want to pick it up and keep working on it... knock yerselves out!  as long as it is left Open-Source on this board (so that i can continue it when i have the chance) i see no reason not to let it be used.

*hopefully* it will work with AMOS Pro, AMCAF and Ercole extensions.... all you should need to do is assign "HB:"  the the HB/ folder within the zip file.

two codes are included, where i compiled respective versions for PSPUAE and AmigaOnline usage - although they should be identical except a few settings (maybe one has AI switched on, or less players - i forget)

concept / graphics / code by Hungry Horace
except those graphics that are borrowed

CPU A.I. routines by Skateblind

[skateblind]

I forgot how good it looked  . You did a great job with the graphics Horace, it would be awesome if someone picks it up and manages to get it running a bit quicker. I remember it only being slow online, which is a shame, because that is where it is in its element, but it still kicks arse offline, even though the AI is not that intelligent, my bad 

[Hungry Horace]

HDF for anyone who wants to try it


http://www.djcresswell.com/HB2.zip

menu:

fire joy 1 = 1 player
fire joy 0= 2 player

ingame:

joystick for control
fire joy 0 / left mouse - spawn CPU
[ + ]  alter the gamespeed / frameskip

certain winuae settings casue the game to slow massively when doing the collision checks. sadly this affect winuae-kailllera a lot

best to run it on a fast setup tho

[rednova]

Dear Amigan:

I liked your game. It seems like a good arcade in the style of the old ones. There is only one thing I did not like..and that is the 'horace' in the name. Why not give it a better...more suitable name?
Like super boxing, etc.
cheers!!!!

rednova

[Hungry Horace]

what's in a name?


it's a bit of a joke thing.... as its a "sequel" to the other wonderful Horace games on the ZX Spectrum, so really -has- to have it in the name!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_series

he is the hero after all -  so i cant see how the name is unsuitable!

i'd feel it would be a bit disrespectful to the original author William Tang if i did not carry on his tradition. After all, he also coded Way of the Exploding Fist on the ZX Spectrum, another one of the many games this pays homage to


there has also been a joke working title of "Boris Lee" - as a play upon the "Bruce Lee" game which the adventure mode is based on, but since i have been developing this game since the beginning of 2006 with the name of Horace Boxing / HB+  , i've grown rather attached to it myself!

[Lonewolf10]

Cool, I have Way Of The Exploding Fist!

Not tried your game yet, will download it in a mo. Yes, WinUAE can be a pain, but I have found that if you change a few settings:


 - under Hardware, click on chipset. Then under options (far right) uncheck "cycle-exact CPU & Blitter" and check "Immediate Blitter" (which becomes available once you uncheck the previous option). This speeds things up by about x2 (depending on the program/s running).

 - under Host, click on Sound. Put sound emulation to "Emulated", as opposed to "Emulated, 100% accurate"

 - If you really need speed (I'm sure you have this licked already) then under Hardware, change CPU from 68000 to 68040. Some software may not work with this CPU, so choose the highest one (lowest listed) that it runs happily with


Those should give you a decent speed boost. I run WinUAE (1.4.1) on my laptop with a 1Ghz Pentium IIIm.


Regards,
Lonewolf10

[Lonewolf10]

Well I have it (HB) a whirl. Shame I was fighting myself (1P & 2P), lol.

Got as far as the 3rd level (Sphynx). I love the backgrounds so far, but yeah the game is far too slow. The A.I. routines (or perhaps the whole main loop?) definately needs rewriting (not that I looked at the actual code yet) as the responce time is far too slow even when it's just me (1P) versus me (2P)!!!


Regards,
Lonewolf10

[Hungry Horace]

remeber this is intended for real Amigas, so cracking up the CPU & imm. blitters to speed things up is a bit of a cheat method


the arena mode i find i can run at the desired speed on my 030 a1200 - even with the CPU as the opponent. (i have no trouble with respoinsiveness here) - its mainly the Adventure mode which is a bit slow, particualrly when you have muliple bobs on screen .... my suspiciion is that its the method im using to detect the background interaction.


remember that [ and ]  can be used to increase the internal game frameskip

[skateblind]

Well, I agree with the AI needing rewriting, but I've already rewritten twice! You have been playing the 3rd version and I reckon its bloody good, although a bit(HA) flawed. AI is really hard to write, especially when it needs to run around a level with ladders, steps, holes and other things. There is also the matter of figuring out where the player is in relation to it and how to get to him or her in a speedy manner without taking unnecessary and timely routes.


It was pretty complicated and had a lot of 'catch 22' moments, but overall was great fun coding and I now have a great appreciation for the work AI coders do in today's 3D games.

If horace ever continues the development of HB then I will gladly try and fix the AI, if he lets me get anywhere near his code, again

[Hungry Horace]

I had one quick look at the code at could instantly see where the beginning of your speed problem lies.

Dim(n,n) WRONG!!!!!

Too many dimensions in your arrays

Retrieving data from arrays with more than one dimension is painfully slow.

You should rethink and try to keep critical arrays 1 dimension in size.

yes you are right.
since coding that i've read this many times;

http://www.amigacoding.com/index.php/Main_Page

and it's told me of many things which are slow in AMOS, but lead to nice tidy code. At least having writen HB 'badly' (i.e. so i can read it, even if its not fast) i can go back and optimise it...

I didnt look any further but i bet you have no lookup tables for complex calculations.

Lookup tables would speed this up no end.

i'll be honest, i dont remember. But i can tell you the main area of 'precalcualted data' is the maps, where are accessed on  2d arrays. I cant think without looking at the code what I could pre-calculate.

BTW if you dont know what a lookup table is its a list of precalculated data

try not to be too patronising mate!