For some time now we've been keeping you up to date about Amiga Dream-Team's awesome looking shooter of 'Hyperborea'. A game that doesn't just feature waves and waves of enemies, but more bullets and lasers than you can handle, as well as pretty decent graphics all running on a stock A1200 or above. Well if you're interested in the latest developments of this upcoming Amiga game which was formerly known as 'Hyperborea'. We've got got some new game play footage which can be viewed right now below.
And here's the dev notes for this latest video! "New WIP video #7 :) Stock A1200, 304x256 PAL, 50Hz, hundreds of bullets. The (hopefully) final dev team has formed"
- gfx: Crome
- audio: Triace
- code: myself
Additional credits & thanks to:
- original ship / explosion gfx: Matt Walkden
- placeholder level music: "te-x-mas 6" by xtd / mystic & the grid, from MOD archive
- music player: Frank Wille
- VSCode dev system: Bartman^Abyss
- Zoey for 2p :)
What's new:
- new WIP stage 1 background graphics
- A preview of Crome's great level 1 artwork!
- new animated player ships
- The original ship asset was bought from Matt and reworked by me to fit the palette restrictions.
- new explosions
- Same for the new explosions which have a lot more animation frames now.
- new spread-shot gfx
- There was rightful criticism that it looked a bit too much like an ice-cream cone, so I threw it away and made a new one.
- new additional animated bonus stars
- IMO the bonus stars were a bit too static, so I added a smaller animated variant.
- bonus star magnetism
- It's just a much more satisfying game experience if you collect lots of bonus stars instead of missing most.
- new sparks on hit
- When you hit an enemy there are procedural "sparks" now, for additional feedback and to make it more vivid.
- animated bullets (not really new but for the first time in a WIP video)
- It's no real bullet hell game without those famous rotating oval bullets ;)
- shadows for all floating enemies / player ships
- I'm a big SWIV fan, so this was kind of mandatory ;)
- fresh set of enemy placeholders
- No more BS :) The current placeholders' originals have either been bought from Matt or lent from a Dezaemon spritesheet before quickly being tweaked for the engine.
- title screen placeholder
- The name "Hyperborea" is no more. And until we found a new one, I asked some AI to generate a title screen for a classic shmup named "Placeholder" using Japanese for the title...
- Well, good enough for now (and better don't try to translate it ;) ).
- player ship / shot coloring configurable in main menu
- Was so quick and easy to add, so why not!
- shadows and sparks can be enabled / disabled in main menu
- In case somebody doesn't like the eye candy.
- further really massive bullet code / memory optimizations
- The more bullets the better, so...
- new bullet patterns
- Still rather simple because it's a WIP demo.
- Apart from that a few bugs got fixed and the dev tools (e.g. map-converter, sprite / bob converter, ) were improved
And that's all we know so far, but as soon as we get more details from the developer we will let you know.
very impressive. howd you get so many things on screen? One thing. not a criticism, just a question. In many amiga shooter the ship design was always too big and it was very detrimental to gameplay. I think in a bullet hell shooter, more so. Will u be making the ship smaller or redesigning it in future?
ReplyDeleteEh, I always liked the big player ships myself. But even in some bullet hell games the player ship is big but the hit box is really small, like it only gets hit if the bullet touches the center of the ship. Maybe this is like that.
DeleteThanks :) There are actually many different techniques / tricks involved to spit out that many objects at 50 Hz. It's a bit too complex to explain here, however the booklet of the final game will contain a section where I describe it in detail ;)
DeleteRegarding ship design / size: no worries, it's all just as it should be, I'm a veteran Danmaku gamer :) Notice the ship's round cockpit area? That's the only vulnerable point. Also, all floating enemies and bullets are drawn on top of the player ship, so you can dodge bullets around your weak spot just like in Dodonpachi or Mushihime.
Cheers,
Daytona675x
technical info on the boooklet? Wow I'm crazy for that (like some Psygnosis games)
DeleteHuge fan of this game style and now on my favorite system, Sign me up!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to play this game! :´(
ReplyDeleteTHAT'S how it's done! I think you should port one of the famous Arcade games of this type.
ReplyDeleteThanks :) I'm not so much into porting anymore. Also, unfortunately the hardware restrictions are too severe to make a decent ((at least what I consider decent) port of a dedicated bullet hell arcade machine, e.g. Dodonpachi. Quality-wise It would be something like a C64 conversion of an Amiga title ;) Of course an accelerated Amiga could do more, but that's no fun for me ;) No, such a game for stock A1200 requires the game to be designed specifically around the hardware.
DeleteCongrats on the developer, Amiga1200 seems like arcade , Neo geo style. Perhaps on the graphics area the colors could be more or used better (how many colors are on screen?) would it make a difference to create the game for more Mb of memory ? impressive thanks
ReplyDeleteThanks :) Don't forget that the gfx are WIP. The physical screen setup is dual-playfield 2x4 bitplanes, so 16+15 colors. Then we got 15 colors for the two player ships and shots, and another 6 colors for the explosions. So all in all, without further tricks, we got 52 colors. But it's actually more because a) the engine supports full palette changes for the background at each tile-row (e.g. when the Dodonpachi tanks scroll in in the video) and b) every floating enemy (or more precise: every enemy animation frame) can have its own palette (happens all the time in the video). However, things break when such enemies overlap vertically, so it has to be designed with care ;) Anyway, I think in the video the peak color-count is around 85 or so.
DeleteThose limits cannot really be worked around by stuffing Fast RAM or a stronger CPU inside. Well, okay, with a strong enough CPU plus FastRAM you'd probably just go the C2P route and effectively don't use the custom chips at all, but that's no coder's porn for me ;) It's all about "what can be squeezed out of a stock A1200".
This is what Amiga gamers need and want more.....
ReplyDeleteRon Klaren for music?! JA!!!
ReplyDeleteWill this amazing game get a physical release for the CD32? Hope so!
Greetings from a Battle Squadron enthousiast!
Ron? No, as stated Triace^Desire is our music man!
DeleteCD32? Yes.
Battle Squadron? Note that this game is nothing like and doesn't have anything to do with BS (apart from being a vertical shmup with a little extra horizontal scrolling).
Yes yes yes!
ReplyDeleteHow great that there is a sequel to the two best Shmups of the Amiga!
Will Ron make legendary music again and will the game also be released physically for the CD32?
Man man man, I'm so excited, I can't believe it!
Thanks :) Note that this game has exactly *nothing* to do with Hybris and BS, neither regarding gameplay nor gfx or anything. Also note that the gfx artist has changed and not even BS placeholder assets remain.
DeleteThe music is done by Triace^Desire.