Exhumed / Powerslave - Egyptian-themed FPS makes its way on to the Amiga via BSZili with the first public test

Another great heads up for all the Amiga owners out there, well ones that can run it anyway, is the MS-DOS, Sega Saturn and Playstation first person shooter of ' Exhumed/Powerslave ', has been ported over to the Amiga by BSzili as the first public test for you to try. Originally developed by Lobotomy Software back in 1996/7, Exhumed/Powerslave is a 90's Egyptian-themed FPS that is also using the Build engine, as referenced in our previous Shadow Warrior to Amiga port conversion.

Currently this Amiga public build is still in a work in progress state with a number of bugs still to be fixed, and obviously performance still needs to be addressed. But according to the creator of this port, Exhumed/Powerslave requires at least a 68060 processor with FPU, Kickstart 3.0, AGA chipset or RTG card, 16 MB Fast RAM and finally 30 MB disk space (+ more for the CD audio tracks). For further details please see the listed notes below, provided by BSZili via EAB.

Installation:

• The game data can be obtained from this site:
• http://www.jonof.id.au/buildgames/ps.html
• Both Exhumed and Powerslave is supported, but avoid the public betas of the game.
• Copy the following files into the game's drawer:
• - STUFF.DAT
• - DEMO.VCR (attract mode demo, optional)
• - BOOK.MOV (intro movie, optional)
• Do not copy SAVEGAMEA.SAV from the DOS version as it's incompatible, and will cause the game to crash when you try to start a new game or load an existing one.

Performance considerations:

• FFS is quite slow at seeking in large files which can lead to pauses in-game
• when new data has to be loaded from the DAT file. It can be improved by adding
• more buffers, but it's recommended to run the game from a PFS or SFS volume.
• The texture/sound cache is also sensitive to memory fragmentation, so if you
• have 32 MB or less memory, it's best to start the game after a clean reboot.
• To enable the framerate counter open the console with [~], type "showfps 1",
• then press Enter, and close the console by pressing [~] again.

Vampire V2 users:

• Please use the 040 executable, as the 060 one is currently not compatible with
• Vampire V2 cards.

Sound:

• The game defaults to stereo Paula DMA audio, but AHI is also supported for sound card users.
• For AHI, after the first start open PCEXHUMED.CFG in a text editor, and in the
• [Sound Setup] section set FXDevice = 8 and ReverseStereo = 1. The game will
• use the Music Unit for sound playback, make sure it's properly configured in
• the AHI prefs. To switch back to Paula, change both values back to 0.

Music:

• For the CD audio music PCM WAV files are supported. I recommend 22 KHz
• 8-bit mono, which is a good balance between sound quality and size. The music
• is streamed from memory, so it might not fit if you have less than 32 MB RAM.
• Modern releases of the game come with the music tracks in Ogg Vorbis format,
• which can be converted to WAV using various tools like FFmpeg, SoX or Audacity.
• I have also uploaded a converted WAV music pack to my site:
• http://bszili.morphos.me/stuff/exhumed-music.zip

In-game console:

• The original game had very little in the way of settings, so this port mostly relies on console commands for configuration. The console can be opened with the Tilde [~] key by default. You can use the PgUp and PgDn keys on your numeric pad to scroll the text.

Changing resolutions:

• To change resolutions, you can use the "vidmode <xdim> <ydim> <bpp> <fullscreen>" console command. Only 8 bpp modes are supported. Examples:
• - "vidmode 320 240" changes the resolution to 320x240
• - "vidmode 640 480 8 0" switches to 640x480 windowed mode
• - "vidmode 320 200 8 1" switches to 320x200 fullscreen

Keyboard bindings:

• You can use the "bind <key> <function>" and "unbind <key>" console commands to bind keys to various functions. Keep in mind that one function can only have two keys bound to it, so older binds will be overwritten.
• Examples:
• - "bind q jump": makes Q the jump key
• - "unbind q": deletes the bind from the Q key
• - "bind showkeys": list all the key names
• - "bind listsymbols": list all the available functions
• - "bind": list all the current key bindings
• You can also view and change the key bindings in the [KeyDefinitions] section of PCEXHUMED.CFG with a text editor.

Keyboard and mouse controls, controllers:

• The default keyboard mapping is a mix between the PCExhumed and original DOS controls, to facilitate both mouse + WASD and keyboard/controller only play styles.
• To toggle Mouse Aiming, press the [U] key in-game.
• To toggle Auto run mode, press the Caps Lock key.
• The game also supports 7-button CD32-compatible controllers. It's recommended to turn off mouse aiming and auto run when playing with the controller.

Fullscreen:

• The game asks the OS for the best Mode ID for a given resolution, but this
• can lead to unexpected results if there are unused monitor drivers in
• Devs:Monitors. I recommend putting these away into Storage:Monitors, but if
• this is not possible, you can use these tooltypes to force specific modes:
• - FORCEMODE: filters the available modes via the mode name. possible values:
• PAL, NTSC, DBLPAL, DBLNTSC, EURO36, EURO72, SUPER72, MULTISCAN
• - FORCEID: forces a specific mode, the value is a Mode ID in hexadecimal format

Windowed mode:

• You can play the game in window on high color (15-bit) or better RTG screens.
• The game will still render in 8-bit color, the higher color depth is required
• to avoid the expensive color remapping necessary on paletted screens. This is
• not a issue in fullscreen, as the game can freely change the palette of its
• custom screen.
• To release the mouse pointer bring up the in-game console. This is bound to
• the Tilde [~] key by default. To override which public screen the window opens
• on, you can set the "PUBSCREEN" tooltype.

Links :1) Discussion 2) Download