Damizean

There you go. The GM examples you wanted. The first shows the simple maths behind finding the ratio of the paralalx piece. The second is just a nicer water, using the same principle, but stripped into various pieces to make the water flow and give a more real perspective feel. You'll have to use Eclipse to convert them to GM6 though, if you're still using that. 3DParallaxTest.zip

I don't use GTalk much, I just use the account for MSN, so I guess it'd be better with MSN.

3D Studio MAX is a reliable lightmapper, but if you can't get access to it, why not try with Gile? It's free and can generate global illumination lightmaps. Anyway, Minon, do you have AIM or MSN?

I think it looks awesome, if we take in count the general art style of the kirby games, I think it's how it should be intended to look. Anyway, Minon, if anything, you should generate a lightmap for it for it to look way better.

How about "device"?

Yes and no. You could write an application wich could parse the assembly code in question and output the C equivalent. For example, mov r0, $33F into Register[0] = *((unsigned char*) 0x33F); Even though you would still require insight knowledge of the 68k architecture and the Sonic engine. Your best bet would be trying to give a go to this once it's for public usage, as it's a WIP C port of the original engine (and being able to cross platform to the Genesis too).

Oh wait, wait. I didn't read the certain sound part. It's probably a software related issue, yes. Did you try reinstalling the drivers and see if there's any change? If not, and you have a spare HD, make a clean install and test it. That way you'll know if it's a software issue or hardware.

Cut the cable and solder a new one. From moving the cable and being pressed by other objects, they eventually get internally cut. It happened a lot to me, specially to my headphones (had to solder them twice already).

Nope, but in most cases you don't need that much precision to make the water parallax look good (as this is the way I've used for Nexus). Anyway, since you're all so interested I'll explain the method (and my apologies beforehand, I suck at explaining): Let's say you have, for the water plane/horizon, a parallax piece whose size is 384 x 160, with the center set at (0,0). The piece works as any normal parallax piece, it's set at a relative position to the camera, etc.However, there's a small difference with the other pieces. Since it's a water horizon, you'd want it do a perspective-sort of effect when the camera moves to adjust to the water level. In short, you want to fill the gap between the water horizon and the water level seen by the camera. That's done via manipulating the Y scale ratio of the parallax piece. Since the Y scale ratio determines how many times the height would be stretched over the Y axis (being 1 the normal size, 0.5 half, 2 the double, etc), you need to find a scale relation between the piece's position and the water level position. The formula to find this it is a very simple one: YScale = Difference/HorizonHeight where Difference equals to: Difference = WaterLevel-HorizonY Example: Let's say the water horizon is positioned at Y 140. The water level is at Y 400. Taking in count the horizon piece height is of 160 pixels, the Y Scale ratio is: Difference = 400-140 = 260 YScale = 260/160 = 1,625 times the height This value will make sure the horizon piece keeps up with the position of the water level, giving the illusion of a 3D height perspective. For any further example, just take a look to the MFA I've attached. The next step after knowing how to calculate the scale ratio would be stripping the horizon active into smaller ones, so you can scroll them over X independently and give the effect of running water. I'll make a better example later in case anyone still has any problem understanding this. WaterPerspectiveExample.mfa

Just to clarify terminology, that's called a constant :3 Anyway, RC already knows about them, so need to worry. Anyway, as for using different objects for the chacters, I really feel like that's an overkill. The characters difference (just a few actions) are way to small to even bother making them separate objects and copy all the code over again. Just my opinion, though.

The one with the water parallax (Pristine Palisade) is made in MMF2. You don't need to use the overlay, as it's just an active scaled over the Y axys, on relation to the camera position. It's been explained in a lot of threads already, you may want to use the search.

Computer specs?

Not exactly, the previous engines had code to perform depending upon wich action was being executed, but all the codes with all the checks were performed secuentally (meaning, execute code for Idle, execute code for Jumping, etc) each step. That translates in cases where code of one action may overlap another, and even not properly manage the transition from an action to another. Using States Machines is different, because the code for each action is contained and executed separately, and once. And more importantly, each state of the machine control how and when to change to another state, if a certain criteria mets up. This prevents from action code overlapping and random problems once you get to do complex stuff. And, about the diference between the Xmas engine and the examples one, is the fact it's a completely new engine, meaning I coded stuff with a diferent focus, after seeing the drawbacks I could find with the PoS engine. It ended up being cleaner, better programmed (more optimizated, even) and modular oriented, meaning it being more friendly for the programmer.

_________________________ UPDATE! ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Please, refer to first post. ZFG, try again with this version, it should work perfectly fine.

The Sonic Dash engine (Xmas Engine revision) is by far the most superior, in terms of engine design and code. It's (IMHO) the most robust of them all, with most features (specially if you use the Xmas Gift one) and the easiest to work with, once you get used to the framework, as it's completely States Machine based. States Machines are helpful to have a clean, robust code, and makes easier to spot any glitch or problem you could have while performing an action (as the actions code don't overlap).

Mind sending me the file so I could check what's going on? Anyway, remember it's better to save the input files with Truecolor (24 bits) components, so the colors won't get distorted.

_________________________ Information ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The Batch Image Deformer is a small tool for Microsoft Windows, MacOS and x86 Linux (under GTK+2.x), useful for manipulating images and displace them accordingly a "displacement map" or shape. This tool, as you should've guessed, is useful for generating slopes in similar fashion to those used in the Sonic the Hedgehog series (well, specifically, the Megadrive instances). You simply select a source image (or folder with multiple sources), a folder containing the displacement shapes you want to use, and it'll distort the grass to adapt the shape. You can use any size for both the input and shape. If the shape width exceeds the input's, it'll be tiled until the size matches. Creating shapes is easy, you only need a black and white image to generate them. Basically, the white colors are identified as the desired surface positions, so if you want to distort a certain X column to a position, place the white color at that height. Example: You can use the following formats: BMP, PNG, JPG and GIF. The output format is a 24bpp BMP. _________________________ Changelog ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Version 1.1 - 27 / 12 / 2008 - Fixed problem with colors getting distorted on certain input files. - Modified the algorithm to tile the input image across the width of the shape, so now size isn't a limitation. - Added support for multiple source files. Version 1.0 - Initial release - Added support for batch operations within an input file. _________________________ License ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The tool has been released under zlib license: This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1) The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product itself as a splash screen is required. 2) Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3) This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution _________________________ Downloads ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ All downloads contain the binaries for all the platforms (Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Linux): Download

Completely wrong. GM7 is awesome if you're a semi-decent programmer, and doesn't require the thousands of shitty workarounds you have to do with MMF2.

It took me an hour to beat Eggman Land, and near 15 lives (most of them due werehog shit mechanics) :S

If you were to manually use the multiply blending, it'd be terribly slow. Your best bet would be finding an extension, or use the substract blending, but you'd have to play with layers. Hard shit in MMF, in GM it's way easier to do this.

Personally, I like to keep the source of my engines for public usage (mostly the source, sometimes the actual resources) under a zlib-esque license (simple and clear for nearly everything, you don't need much more in these kind of applications). Analyzing open source code was the way I got to learn & acquire the logic, and all the knowledge I hold right now. There's also the interesting side of seeing how other people unleash their creativity throught it, by using approaches you would've never thought of. It kinda helps you to think of improvements for future codes (kinda like a feedback chain) =D

I do, even though I don't know if I can make personal FTP accounts, I'll tell ya later.

Yeah, I would've preferred this concept instead.

Nope, and that's what makes MMF so horrible. At least we followed the philosophy of using states machines in order to, at least, be able to implement new stuff without much harm...

That's the philosophy SEGA's using, and you can see how it's going for them...