Codetapper's Amiga Site

Barbarian

Thanks must go to Peter for ripping these graphics from the 1987 Psygnosis game Barbarian!

Graphics

00_tiles.png 01_icons.png 02_icons.png 03_enemies.png 04_enemies.png 05_enemies.png 06_enemies.png

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Comments

  • Gravatar for Peter Parker

    @troudki : your sega-megadrive version ROCKs big time..

    Peter Parker 23/10/2024 11:26am (29 days ago)

  • Gravatar for Peter Parker

    Hi Mindvoid!
    You are right: the game was developed on Atari ST.
    The Graphics were stored as 1byte arrays with different heights and separated by an 8 byte header..
    So, if your graphic is 24x16 pix, the graphic is separated in 3 columns a 8 pixel and each 8 pixels are stored as interleaved bytes with 5 bitplanes. Additionally the 8 byte header (+ optional padding for even addresses..) in front stores the width in bytes, the height and a 00 05 (may be bitplane numbers).

    Looking into the graphics I found some oddities:
    - the graphics do not use a mask, so I assume the blitter was not used for copying the images to screen
    - the graphics are flipped and mirrored on the fly (also an indication that the CPU is copying the files)
    - some tiles were never used in the game
    - the game does not implement a tile based engine, but I assume the rooms were constructed from placing elements on any arbitrary coordinates.
    - the characters are usually split into 2 or more parts to move and animate them more flexible
    - the palette was hidden in the game: the copperlist is only creating the lower half Control Icon colors. I assume the CPU writes after every VBlank Interrupt the colors into the registers without copperlist. First
    I found the palette by using the UAE debugger and dump the custom register, later I could find the palette inside the image at a very low offset(vaired always..) using a hexeditor.

    If you have more infos how the screens were drawn I am happy to hear it!

    Peter Parker 12/04/2024 1:46pm (7 months ago)

  • Gravatar for Mindvoid

    Thanks for rips, great job! I was just looking at the memory for gfx and haven't put much effort in to rip, but been more looking at why the game is so slow. Many reasons. 5 bitplanes to start and gfx format and CPU massaging in chip ram then final simple blit with no shift as shift was done by CPU. It's pretty bad code for amiga. It's like an ST port or multi-platform generic code. It works but it's terrible inefficient.......

    Mindvoid 06/11/2023 6:33am (13 months ago)

  • Gravatar for Sverre

    Would love a closer look at Psygnosis' pixels!

    Sverre 16/01/2023 6:45pm (22 months ago)

  • Gravatar for troudki

    Thx Peter for ripping the graphics, I spent many evenings redoing the sprites and animations from screen shots for our megadrive version https://z-team.itch.io/barbarian-sega-megadrive

    troudki 29/01/2022 7:56am (3 years ago)

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