Copy and paste of Galahad's post on EAB.Where Time Stood Still Amiga Release - 6PM GMT 29th July 2014
when it dissapears from the EAB Zone, you shall find it here: New Amiga game: Where Time Stood Still ported by Galahad. Enjoy!
http://hol.abime.net/6052 Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ze6q287rivdchw6/Where.Time.Stood.Still_Amigav1.0.ADFhol.abime.net
hol.abime.net
So the time has arrived........ Where Time Stood Still Amiga version was released on EAB at 6pm GMT, 29th July 2014.
There was a plan to do something with it, unfortunately deadlines are deadlines and it couldn't happen, tough break but now the game gets released sooner.
Before I go on, i'd like to thank some guys who have helped make this happen. For sure it would have happened in any case, but at least its not a 100% ST port, it has at least a sniff of Amiga specific about it.
Greyfox
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Volunteered to do some graphics, and then decided to submit some pretty great stuff in so few colours. When I asked for the comic strip graphics, Greyfox was on it, and without his able pixel ability, WTSS on Amiga wouldn't look quite so sparkly.
ADRDesign
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What can I say? Awesome work on the music, if I had more room, I would have put more in, not only was your 1:1 ST version copy great, you then decided to knock out a stellar remix that really does show how much nicer the Amiga can sound.
Codetapper
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Chief Beta Tester and boy did he find bugs.... bastard!
Found a bug in the Joystick routine, and just about everywhere else, but the game is better for it. Codetapper will handle the WHDLoad version as usual.
Photon
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For stellar work on the cracktro (as always) and for playtesting on real A500
PHX & Stingray
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Awesome work on the replay routine, it plays everything thrown at it flawlessly. Stingray went through the code and made it all relocatable and able to assemble in Devpac which was a massive help.
Leathered, Lord of Chaos, Demon Hellraiser
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All did small parts, but without them, the end result would be less because of it.
Hoffman
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Use of his Ocean Loader tune was a no-brainer, and as I still had most of Hoffmans stuff on harddrive from when he first wrote them, its inclusion was obvious right from the start. Adds to the release, and gives it a welcome nostalgia hit.
What about the game itself?
Well, we've all been busy, and this game should run on any iteration of Amiga you throw at it. Its been tested on A500 512kchip/512kslow, A1200 030 with loads of ram.
It will run in WinUAE and I even remapped keys so it will work 100% correctly in Androids UAE4DROID!
Why is it 1meg when the ST original is only 512k?
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Atari ST music file = 6k in size
Amiga Protracker module music file = 100k in size
2x 16 colour Amiga screens (for double buffering)
1x Amiga Copperlist
16k of specific Amiga code to drive the game
With that little lot going on, there was now no room in 512K to be able to fit the main graphics file, so this had to be relocated to extra mem so the Amiga specific stuff could be fitted in.
All references to this file were now pointed to extra ram so that nothing had to be loaded from floppy disk whilst playing.
Does this conversion work on 68000 A500s?
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Yes, and I specifically tackled the conversion in such a way that if I couldn't do it justice on A500, I didn't want to do it.
How does the process work?
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Without having the actual game source code, doing a conversion like this is best tackled in one particular way.
The Atari ST is a simple machine, and this game does nothing other than rely on the CPU to drive everything in the game, which makes doing a conversion surprisingly quick.
However, it has its downsides as well.
The way this conversion has been tackled is to let the Atari ST version of WTSS run in Amiga memory, and patch the routines in the game that tell the ST to display a picture. By intercepting those routines, we can divert it to a specific routine that will convert the Atari ST image into something the Amiga can understand on the fly as fast as possible.
The great thing about doing it this way is you don't have to worry about coding collision detection, or map clipping, or redrawing objects on screen, as the Atari ST code has already done all of that, you're simply diverting the ST screen to be converted, which means that in most cases, the game running on the Amiga screen is 100% going to be the same as that on the Atari ST, no extra bugs added, no problems introduced.
However, the downside I mentioned before. This screen conversion routine has to run constantly so as to capture any changes on the Atari ST screen, if we don't, then there is the possibility of flickering or objects not moving correctly, or horrible scrolling.
This of course slows the game down quite a bit. The Amiga is having to run the native Atari ST game code, and then convert the screen in realtime.
On the 68000 it slows the game down a touch.
On 68020+ however, because its all pure CPU code with no hardware banging on the Atari ST side, the Amiga can surge through the code VERY fast.
Have any compromises been made?
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Other than larger memory requirements and slightly slower on A500, not really. The ST version had support for mouse movement, but it was horrendous, and was not included in the Amiga version. Similarly, the ingame music/sfx options don't work as the Amiga version gets specifc options on the function keys.
Amiga configuration screen
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When the WTSS Title screen appears (where it comes up with a language choice), you can press F8 at any time to bring up the Amiga configuration screen.
F3 - Screen Redraw type
Type 1 = CPU redraw
Type 2 = Blitter redraw
This basically selects between pure CPU redraw conversion of the ST to Amiga screen or the use of blitter. Anything 020+ should use type 1, anything less should use type 2
F4 - Music
Self explanatory. Unlike the other options, changing the music can only be done when this Amiga Configuration screen is onscreen, because of the loading and depacking to memory, the other options are instant and can be accessed without the Amiga Configuration screen being visible.
F5 - Spectrum Mode
Its called me being a %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!! The Spectrum version didn't look quite that bad, but its not far off it
F6 - Speed Throttle
Basically press to select whatever works best for you. The faster the processor you have, the higher Speed throttle rating you should be using to scale the speed down, otherwise health and strength meters will dwindle very quickly!
M - Toggle music on or off
Space Bar - Toggle Character/object menu
F1 on title screen - Toggles German or English text. Default is English.
More will be added leading upto the release of the game tomorrow
Of course, spreading the word of its release date to other sites would probably be greatly appreciated
