Vamiga: Alien Breed: Cannot see the main character

[Alessandro1970]

The main character is invisible.

ABreed1.adf.zip
ABreed2.adf.zip

[Alessandro1970]

With v3 the games hangs and does not load after inserting disk2; instead if you put disk2 in df1 the game now crashes:

CRASH.TXT

[dirkwhoffmann]

CRASH.TXT

Assertion failed: (!hasDisk()), function insertDisk, file Drive.cpp, line 486.

🤭 My new code is pushing two disks in a single drive. Good that it's not real hardware.

[dirkwhoffmann]

I can reproduce the invisibility of the main character.

We should try to find out if the main character is drawn as a sprite (maybe in another emulator with sprite drawing disabled if such an options exists).

vAmiga's DMA debugger shows that there is no sprite DMA going on. Of course, there is also the possibility that the main character is drawn by the Blitter.

[dirkwhoffmann]

The game has a strange Copper list. E.g., it uses masked Waits which don't make sense for me here:

It also writes to sprite registers manually, but no sprites are visible in vAmiga. This is surprising, because I was pretty confident that the current sprite implementation is correct.

[dirkwhoffmann]

In SAE, the game doesn't seem to work at all.

I also tried to run the game on the MMSE: It didn't work, because the it does not recognise when the Gotek changes disks.

I think this game could be really cool, but it's pretty hard to play without the main character 😕. All enemies are visible though (which makes it worse).

[mithrendal]

I have played the game once in iAmiga. It was quite nice. The best thing was the simultanously multiplayer which I implemented in iAmiga with apples multi peer connectivity framework. Me and a friend played AlienBreed on our iPhones. Should definitly work then in WinUAE.

[dirkwhoffmann]

Having a main character now makes this game one of my favourites 😎.

[dirkwhoffmann]

The best thing was the simultanously multiplayer which I implemented in iAmiga

👍👍👍

It is my understanding that iAmiga is an UAE clone for the iPhone. Is this true? 🤔

But how is the AppStore problem solved? Does Apple allow emulators (i.e. those that come without Roms by default)?

[dirkwhoffmann]

Any suggestions 😬?

[mithrendal]

It is my understanding that iAmiga is an UAE clone for the iPhone. Is this true? 🤔

Yes it is a clone of a very early UAE version made for a game console do not remember which. Some guys made it runnable on iPhone.
But it was missing

• hires modes, because the target game console could only handle 320x200. So I fixed that.
  Wanted to see a full hires glory workbench on my retina iPhone.😍
• sprite collision detection. I ported it over from newer UAE releases.
• a proper automatic scaling mechanism. I invented an Automatic Adaptive Vertical Stretch Strategy. AAVSS (TM) 😎 To ensure that there are no unused borders on the tiny phones display. I waited effectively for the first and last drawn line in the emulation and when that will be stable for at least 20 or so frames drawn(i.e. stable condition) then I scaled the iPhone screenbuffer to that first and last line.
• multi control input via Apples MPC mesh framework. One iOS Device is the master and displays emulation. other ios devices could connect to it as joystick 1 and 2. Master device also could receive local master input, so effectivly you could play alien breed with a friend but you had to look on the friends phone. Or you asked a third iphone/ipad person to serve as a master.

That was fun.

But how is the AppStore problem solved? Does Apple allow emulators (i.e. those that come without Roms by default)?

No I think they do not allow it. For me and my friends it was meant only for side loading. You could back(2016?) then sideload with a free provisioning cert with a duration of 3 months. But somewhere in the past (2017?) apple changed it to 7 days. When I today deploy to iPhone it will only last 7 days until it gets broken. That honestly destroyed all the fun we put into it. So by now the iAmiga project is fairly abandoned. 💀 But if you like you can deploy it on your iPhone just for the fact to see workbench on it and to let it speak "I am an amiga". 😜

I think iAmiga was initialy created by stuart carnie, who also published sucessfully an C64 emulator in the app store for 5€ (I don't remember exactly) and that one came with a handful of selected titles which had the permission of the original creators of being distributed that way. You couldn't upload your own c64 titles though. You could unlock c64 titles per inapp puchase. I did so with Uridium.🤓✌️ But they are all no more, because of the 32 Bit Armageddon which was brought to us by iOS11.

Any suggestions 😬?

real fun begins when a friend plays simultanously and will rescues you out of a hopeless situation like this.😱

[dirkwhoffmann]

I ❤️ AAVSS technology (TM)

That honestly destroyed all the fun we put into it.

I understand that. Apple is so strict about their AppStore policies that I will most likely never develop an iPhone app. They can ruin your work by pulling the plug any time.

and will rescues you out of a hopeless situation like this

Too late, nobody came 😢. In total desperation I tried to escape by disabling sprite drawing in the debug menu. This made me invisible, but the game does not use collision checking. At least I was completely digested after a few seconds and didn't have to suffer long. So sad 🤧.