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Hard Drivin’ on the 8 Bits?


EnderDude

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I personally think this is a game that would rack the brains of our bet programmers, the lessons learned attempting to do this could be used to help any racers to come after. I agree hard driving didn't collect the quarters for long at most arcades. It was an achievement and had die hard fans. People want more than a technical sim at most arcade settings. put some guns in the game and blow crap out of your way and then folks are happy!

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Now we're talking. Filled 3D is so 16bit. I'll take wires any time. :-D

Anyway, for driving game I would prefer the tradition raster road. I actually did small proof of concept for PC some time back, and I experimented with how to improve those primitive transformation so it looks better. At the minimum I want the positioning on the road matter, so you can take proper racing lines. Check it out, it's totally not loaded with malware. Hopefully. You control with arrows.

 

PS. yes, it is indeed windows program, don't let the size fool you.

 

post-39663-0-88917900-1539209981.png

Road.zip

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Have you ever realized that the Atari has now "1" racing game that shows a driving lane that really goes up and down? And that games runs faster than the C64 or Speccy version?

Please don't mention Pole Position. It was a nice raster racing game, as many games have been placed in a wrong place ;)

Just as Elektraglide. It was a great experience, somehow a great presentation of nice colors. But the playability reaches the game of this thread.

 

I wonder, if such threads anyhow can get serious inside the "Atari Community" ?

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C64 way is the same... ultimately this should go double buffered to help with the flicker. Possible since extra RAM freed up by using a cart. In theory we could also have an UNO Cart version that gets the cart to handle 3D filled polys (not 'cheating' since the BBC has it 'Tube' versions ;)).

Edited by Wrathchild
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Have you ever realized that the Atari has now "1" racing game that shows a driving lane that really goes up and down? And that games runs faster than the C64 or Speccy version?

 

Hills are just small complication .. not big deal. I see different problem (and haven't solved it yet).

 

Elektra is imho bad game .. but it looks amazing. The effect of speed is top notch. I think driving game must go for high framerates. Ideally 1 frame, possibly 2.

Sure there are slower games and they can be fun, but at least for the road, Atari with dlist and dlis can do better.

 

But the problem is the cars. For super high speeds, they must be done in hardware sprites. But there is too few of them on Atari. Nobody wants 1 color cars. And if you join 2 sprites, you still only have 8 pixels. Some racing cars make it like 12 by using missiles for wheels, but it's still pretty bad.

 

You can make the problem easier 1 step by not drawing player's car .. making it 1st person. That allows for some nice effects, like lowering the horizon during acceleration and rising it during breaking, it would go well with some nice dashboard, and would be appropriate for more 'sim' feel. This view calls for low flat view of the road, and it's likely the other cars will have to be side by side, not one above other vertically .. so you can't use 1 PMG for more cars.

 

Another approach is Mario carts. The cars would be small. I like this idea because raster road has limitation in the road angle, let's say 45 degrees. With small car you can just turn the car after year reach the limit of road rotation. In this view drifting cars also look better (which is well utilizes in Mario carts). This view allows for higher camera, and sharing PMGs across cars seems possible.

 

Also if you look on the old driving games, you almost never have free moving opponents. They are not really simulated, and they are not really racing .. they are just a prop. Sometimes you have several cars at equal spacing .. which ensures they will never overlap.

 

Another idea I had was 'shadow racer' .. do you know Trackmania ? You race against other people, with no collisions .. and you basically see their run as transparent 'ghost' opponent. It's almost like you race at the same time .. but you don't. You can share runs over internet, keep the best runs somewhere, you can make contest on the retro party with many participants.

In this mode you could either only draw one or two opponent car. Either you would select against who you are racing, or the game could draw only the person who is just ahead of you.

 

You can also draw the opponents simplified .. transparent single color, or even just small color flag or color line on the road. It might be even useful so you don't see the exact driving line your opponent took.

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E-Type. I see road with hills, lanes to change, fast, multicolor player car with a lot more than 8-pixels, other multi-color car traffic with more than 8 pixels, decent sense of speed and frame-rate. A port from another computer...if it can be done here, why not a similar game, but with A.I. opponent(s)? This is the best, most advanced car game we have on the 8-bits, and ported from the BBC micro. I think good Atari programmers could do even better designed for the Atari from the ground up. I'm prety sure this game uses mostly soft-sprites too!

 

Edited by Gunstar
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Having played with Stealth recently, I was surprised to learn that the illusion of speed is simply achieved by colour palette rotation, a useful A8 trick.

The game is build on a big illusion, that is subtle done well for the depth projection. The main fighter is simply PLAYFIELD. The depth is build on palette cycling.

But, it's always the avoiding of overlapping the background and moving objects that breaks the possibility of games like "Sam's Journey".

It's particular great for some special games on the Atari, and games could be build on those tricks every time. And also when using "3D" gameplay.

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But the problem is the cars. For super high speeds, they must be done in hardware sprites. But there is too few of them on Atari. Nobody wants 1 color cars. And if you join 2 sprites, you still only have 8 pixels. Some racing cars make it like 12 by using missiles for wheels, but it's still pretty bad.

 

The only chance for a great looking racing game is to create the Road with PM Graphics . Not using the DL scrolling!

Then Softwaresprites can be build either in Antic D or any Character Mode.

The additional trick is to create everything in Byte boundaries (for x movement) , in character mode for y movement.

 

Using ANTIC D brings more simulated speed. Antic 4 brings more details and colors.

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Sure, PMG road is totally an option. Also lot of games rotate the colors faster then actual framerate, that's good point. For cars movement even 4 frames refresh could be fine, if the road palette was scrolled every frame.

But that's the problem .. sooo many variants. It will need lot of testing.

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Make Vroom on A8 and I'm VERY happy.

 

 

I don't understand why this is such an unknown game.....probably because it was European ?

 

The game isn't unkown in the U.S. because it's European, it was released under the name of Formula F1 or something similar, by Domark, IIRC, here in the states. Just the name Vroom! may be unkown to some...

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Make Vroom on A8 and I'm VERY happy.

 

65816 and VBXE only... otherwise you're looking at a stripped-down version that would hardly have much that makes the game fun for you on the ST/Amiga to begin with (including the smooth frame rate).

Edited by MrFish
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Having played with Stealth recently, I was surprised to learn that the illusion of speed is simply achieved by colour palette rotation, a useful A8 trick.

 

Nice trick, only it limits the amount of playfield colors severely.

 

I always loved Stealth, though (I had Landscape BITD). They made the idea work, and brought in plenty of other colors to make up for what lacked in the main playfield graphics.

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Sure, PMG road is totally an option. Also lot of games rotate the colors faster then actual framerate, that's good point. For cars movement even 4 frames refresh could be fine, if the road palette was scrolled every frame.

But that's the problem .. sooo many variants. It will need lot of testing.

But things get easier then, when the real game screen is already visible, while the look of the street is going to be optimized. The graphics would stay there , even if you tried to have the road at 50Hz or even 60Hz ;)

 

 

Btw.: Could anyone imagine "Stealth" using Antic D where the "fighter" moves? just one or two players for the details, and still several enemies could cross the visuals of the fighter? The game would remind of Axelay then ;)

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Just for fun, nothing special and NO! there isn't a port going on ;).

Never talked with Mariuszw about this one but having a direct port of the ZX version is only static PMGs over the panel:

post-6517-0-89129200-1539352340.png

 

Also for fun maybe I'll also convert with G2F and doesn't, at a first look, of a great difficulty to have the 2:1 ratio of the C64 Loading screen:

post-6517-0-46472100-1539352466.gif

And again from the ZX version it would be also simple the PMGs overlay(s) on the letters at the top on the track(s):

post-6517-0-47162700-1539352563.png

And the same for the "Transmition type" screen:

post-6517-0-39771100-1539353823.png

 

:)

:thumbsup:

Edited by José Pereira
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