[Flash]

Hi,

Sorry, I am new to this forum (why I never thought of this before I will never know?), and have joined thanks to Sokurah's visit to my website.

I just wanted to let you know about a remake myself and a friend (HeadKaze) have been working on for about a month.
The game in question is a remake/revisioning of a game I helped write in 1986 for the C64 called Warhawk, and have decided to tackle the task of learning Arm Assembly and the workings of the DS to code a shmup in 100% asm What joy!

The project is coming along nicely and at the moment I am just playing with bullet methods and attack waves. The underlying code is pretty much complete, but I have no idea how long till full completion.

The graphics have been mostly culled from the original and do need a fair but of work to bring them up to the standard needed, especially the level graphics, so please don't judge - I am not a pixel artist!

Any feedback would be great. The game works fine under No$gba (personal emu of choice) and in hardware. I also post the full source from time to time for people to play with.





The development can be found here (registration is needed for download - sorry )
www.retrobytesportal.com

Not sure about the rules on posting code here but am happy to post updates here rather than links

[betpet]

That looks noice!!!! 

[RobF]

Ace, I'll have to root my DS out for this later.

You're welcome to bung attachments here if you like or whatever you fancy.

[smila]

that looks sweet

[Flash]

Thanks for the kind words,

Any help or criticism would be great, there is still quite a long road ahead, but we are really happy with what we have so far.

I gave up coding in 1996 after some productive work on the Psion3a/5 and it is nice to be back coding again after so many years. Mind you, getting to grips with ASM on the DS has been, how shall we say?, a challenge

[Sokurah]

Hi Flash,

Nice to see you here and since you are working on a remake it's a good place to be - not only to get some more feedback on the game but perhaps also to drive a little extra traffic to your own site.
...and hopefully you can find someone here that can help you out with the graphics.

I think it's a great idea to supply the sourcecode - not many people do that, and combined with the development log on your site it could be a very good ressource to people who want to develop games for the DS.

I know I would like to develop something for the DS (but I'd need a DS first...although it isn't necessary to get started) and I'd much rather learn Arm Assembly than C++ so RetroBytes will be a stop on my way if I ever head down the ARM road.

[GeeKay]

OOO nice one, this looks like another essential to keep on the DS with the other homebrews.

[Flash]

...and hopefully you can find someone here that can help you out with the graphics.

That is a great idea regarding the graphics,

If there is anyone here who wishes to help on the graphic construction, please post or pm me!

Even if someone would like to have a play with a single levels graphics that would be really great. The entire level is a png that is automatically split into tiles by grit at compile, so it is pretty much a case of just painting using the set palette and trying to keep things within 8x8 areas so to keep the tile count under 1024.

So, I would love someone to have a go, even just to have a play (I can only offer credits though - sorry )

[Ian]

It looks nice as it is

And tits in games always go down well here, even if they are only text based!

[Flash]

It looks nice as it is

And tits in games always go down well here, even if they are only text based!

Well, I have not got as far as a full game over, so I thought a bit of profanity would not go amiss

I am leaving the dying part to the end, next job is the remaining attack waves and the other shot types..

There is a lot that can be done to the levels to "tech" them up a bit though

[Lobo]

Looks great but please, attach the download next time or put it somewhere where no registration is needed, you'll get more feedback and ppl will bother downloading.

That said, PM me the link or attach that PNG so I can do some gfx for the level 1 first and if it goes well I'll gladly help you out with the rest of the graphics (now that I'm almost done with Sokurah's piggys).

As my dentist would say...'This won't take too long..'

[RobF]

As my dentist would say...'This won't take too long..'

[Flash]

This is great to hear from you Lobo, I have seen your work and am very impressed with your striking style

I will attach a png of the first level here and would love you to have a play with it when you get time. The level layout is roughly as I wished as I want to keep as close to the original as possible, but it would be nice to "theme" the levels a little bit more. At the moment the levels are working with 16 colours (I will attach a photoshop CLUT file to help with keeping the palette). At the moment the levels palett is a subset of the 256 colour "planet" background. The 16 colours are 15 from the c64 and (255,0,255) for the transparency.

I am working on some bits to the code and will post it here when done. I would still like any interested parties to also visit my website though as this contains all the source and modification and a lot of stuff about the development - and I am always happy to help fellow coders in ASM.

Ok, here is the level1 png. (thanks)

PS. Dont worry about the base at the end - not entirely sure what I will do there regarding the end of level bosses?

[Lobo]

Cool, I got it. Will check it out tonight and let you know how it goes and all that.
Oh, and thanx for the 'striking style', makes me smile like this~

[Sokurah]

What a striking smile that is.

[Flash]

Cool, I got it. Will check it out tonight and let you know how it goes and all that.
Oh, and thanx for the 'striking style', makes me smile like this~

Somehow, I do have the feeling that is gonna give me nightmares tonight

[Happymonster]

There was an atari version as well of course, which perhaps while being worse graphically did have nice atari colour gradients. Have you thought about perhaps adding that kind of thing to the C64 gfx you already have?

[Flash]

Sadly, there is a nasty taste left between me, BadToad, and Andrew Betts. Andrew Betts was the sole coder on the inferior XL version and I am not sure that I would want to get too involved in taking anything from that version. I did like it though and am not being snobish in prefering the C64 version because I was not involved in the XL or the ST/CPC versions. It is just that something happened when Andrew decided to go ahead and get the contract signed up in his name for the c64 version, and perhaps (without being slanderous) you can work out the outcome? The chap at the time (1985) could not even work out how to code a score routine in ASM
But this is "mostly" water under the bridge and something I wish to leave behind. I will hand it to Mr. Betts, he did some great work on Warhawk and the 6-7 months we spent on it was a happy experience, but....

I do agree that there is a lot that can be done with the DS version though and really do respect your input (sorry for the slight tirade), I am by no means a graphic artist as can be seen by some of my other games (Tanium is a prime example) and am totally open to ALL suggestions. Honest
The XL had a huge strong point when it came to colours available - a wonderful machine that was easy to code on. The DS also has it's strong points and perhaps as you (quite rightly) point out, there is a lot that can be done to enhance the game graphically. Even in the day, there was a lot of moaning about some of the graphics on the C64 Warhawk. Gary Penn in Zzzapp for one Good 'ol Gary!

As I say, I am open to suggestions how to improve the game in ALL ways - and I DO love a challenge

[Flash]

Cool, I got it. Will check it out tonight and let you know how it goes and all that.

Yes...... you have me all excited, bet you never knew you held such power

[Sokurah]

Yes...... you have me all excited, bet you never knew you held such power

You should...Lobo's a pixel magician. He's doing the graphics for my game btw,
Psycho Pigs UXB (where my avatar is from), and he's really fast too. Perfect. :-D

[Flash]

I know, I looked at the pigs and was REALLY impressed with the precise work!

PS, I remember Psycho Pigs UXB on the c64! That was a great, and panic ridden game.

Just been adding the mine fields to Warhawk, and they work a treat, BUT... (and there always is one), having problems converting a 32 bit random number to a number from 0-383 in asm. I am sure it is just tiredness, but... I am sure I will work it out. Will get the binary calc out tomorrow and break it down.

EDIT: or 32bit to 0-351

[Lobo]

HeyHeyHey! Easy on all that nice words, get me blushing there here, not Ok! have to go grab some red meat to get macho back, grrr.

I've started adding (much needed ) details and keeping palette as it is. I love C64 palette anyways so it's all good to me. However, in case you decide to change it and go wild with different, spicy colors and all that (modernized version, eh), let me know and I can go on with that, regardless 16 colors or more.

[headkaze]

Hi guys, I'm the "headkaze" mentioned in the first post and have been working with Flash on this new game. I'm new to arm asm but have picked it up quite readily. I recommend people look at arm asm if they're interested in learning assembly. It really is a lovely processor and really easy to pick up. We have some nice introductory tutes on our forums to get you started as well (and I have ported many of the "C" headers to asm friendly versions already).

So a big "hello" to everyone and thanks to Sokurah for pointing out this great site. I'm sure I'll be hanging around on a more regular basis

As for the graphics, I have written a program called PalEdit which were using to help us manage the colors (I will make a post about this program in your tools section in a moment). And I was thinking a large portion of the 256 color palette is being used up by the star background (StarBack.png). And I just think we should dedicate more of those colors to the foreground tiles since they are the graphics seen most by the player. I think it might look better with more colors but I guess that's debatable (should we go for a retro look or just a retro style). Either way I'm sure Lobo will impress us. I just hope Sokurah doesn't have ill feelings towards us for "borrowing" his graphics artist! They seem to be a rare breed these pixel artists.

Anyway nice to be here

[Lobo]

Hello!
Welcome, this place is horrible Super!!

Also, more nice words, quick~the red meat!!

As for the game, I agree about the colors. The planets and stuff in bkg should be nice enough with 16 colors (I haven't seen the actual png just the in game so can't tell exactly how many colors it uses).

The rest can be transferred to the tiles. Even though, as I'm typing this, I did some redecorating and it doesn't look bad really with 16 /C64 pretty but then again, I'm biased . I'll probably send the image tomorrow to Flash (Flash, check PM from time to time for that) so you people can decide which way, 16-256...7 million...

[Sokurah]

I just hope Sokurah doesn't have ill feelings towards us for "borrowing" his graphics artist! They seem to be a rare breed these pixel artists.

Everything can be arranged for a price... ;-)
...do you have a sister?