24 replies to this topic

[GadgetUK]

Does anyone know if this was ever completed?

I have a ROM that says complete but after that logon screen you get what looks like a preview rather than a game?

[MrBland]

From what I can tell it was never completed. I have the same "preview" ROM someone put on a cart, I looked around and couldn't find the full game.

[108 Stars]

That's Karri's demo, he's on this forum. And no, to this day no game has been made out ofit.

[GadgetUK]

108 Stars, on Wed Aug 8, 2012 4:40 PM, said:

That's Karri's demo, he's on this forum. And no, to this day no game has been made out ofit.

Its a shame because an Elite clone on the Lynx would have been 'the' best lynx game ever lol

I wonder if we could port the C64 version?  It was nearly all 6502 ASM, just IO routines would need editing, and address changes.

[karri]

I have a full C-version of Elite hanging around. But it is a copyright violation to use that.

Stardreamer started as an Elite clone but it soon grew out to have a storyline in addition to commerce and pirating.

The reason why it stopped was that the 3D engine was doing something funny all the time and it just was not playable.

The engine is very fast, using Lynx hardware math and was written by Thomas Harte.

I have probably misunderstood how to use it and therefore had problems.
--
Karri

[MrBland]

Too bad about the hangup, it looks like it would have been a really fun game.

[karri]

MrBland, on Thu Aug 16, 2012 6:35 PM, said:

Too bad about the hangup, it looks like it would have been a really fun game.

I have not given it up. It is just that after interesting discussions with Wookie I would like to extend Stardeamer into a steaming game. The idea is to stream in new content on the fly instead of loading in a new level.

This is no rocket science. Most games today use similar techniques. But the Lynx is much simpler to code for as the hardware is not very complex.

There will be some basic game modes like trading, flying, docking, fighting. But in addition to this I would like to have a live BSS-galaxy news feed that advances in real time. Things happen in real time and the gamer can choose to participate or not.

Of course the whole game will not take very long to play as the memory is quite limited.The idea is to play a few scenarios as a noob and later in the game as a pro when you have geared up.

I hope to have interesting graphics and sounds. There will also be a small numbers of spacecrafts with different PID controllers. So you can have fast but vulnerable crafts or heavy but slow crafts.

[GadgetUK]

Well, dont give up, I would buy it =)

I also have the Elite BBC reversed source in archive, and the 68K based Frontier source - mostly ASM if I remember correctly.

I might dig that BBC code out to see how easy it would be to port.  Sure he doesnt want the code circulating for obvious reasons, but a 20+ year old platform where its free of charge I cant see an issue personally.

Ive got to get used to programming on the Lynx before I do anything yet, but now ive got my own flashcart with zif socket I can start to test out code outside of Handy.

[108 Stars]

You could even make it a Star Trek game.
The owners of the Star Trek franchise are very open to fan-pojects, there is tons of fan-movies on Star Trek, some even with original actors and some were even sold on DVD and that was all permitted.

So if you do like Star Trek that may be a good setting.

[MrBland]

108 Stars, on Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:42 AM, said:

You could even make it a Star Trek game.
The owners of the Star Trek franchise are very open to fan-pojects, there is tons of fan-movies on Star Trek, some even with original actors and some were even sold on DVD and that was all permitted.

So if you do like Star Trek that may be a good setting.

I second the Star Trek idea, the whole concept of a real time mini MMOG on the Lynx sounds really awesome, though I admit I'm having trouble picturing how it would work. Have the Lynx hooked to the computer while you play? Would that be through the comlink or would there be a plug in the cart somehow... I guess through the comlink is what makes sense.

Re-reading I see I maybe confused, will there or can there be player interaction?

Edited by MrBland, Sun Aug 19, 2012 8:01 AM.

[Emehr]

The idea for this game sounds great. I would avoid the Star Trek license, though. If anything, make it Star Trek-like where you have captain, science officer, etc. Make up new aliens instead of giving Klingons and Romulans different names. Kinda like Starflight. That game had a plant-like species, a robotic race, a blob species, etc. The game had a Trek vibe but it had its own universe and personality.

Anyway, if the game resembles Elite with polygon graphics I would be all over this. This and Distant Lands are the two Lynx homebrews I could get excited about.

[Thorsten Günther]

As I have registered the domain name "dilgar.de", I can't refrain suggesting the Babylon 5 universe.

[karri]

I _love_ Babylon 5. I have seen all episodes at least twice

Perhaps the theme could be the first encounter between Earth and the Centauri?

[karri]

The Stardreamer was intended to be a single player game. Interacting in 3D in real time is too demanding. The BSS-stuff come from non-player characters.

The other game I am working on "Hero Quest" is a multiplayer game. But it is turn based so there is no point in making it ComLynxed. You can as well pass the Lynx around.

[MrBland]

karri, on Fri Aug 24, 2012 11:10 AM, said:

The Stardreamer was intended to be a single player game. Interacting in 3D in real time is too demanding. The BSS-stuff come from non-player characters.

The other game I am working on "Hero Quest" is a multiplayer game. But it is turn based so there is no point in making it ComLynxed. You can as well pass the Lynx around.

Sounds great, can't wait to see the finished products

[108 Stars]

Don'

GadgetUK, on Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:33 AM, said:

I also have the Elite BBC reversed source in archive, and the 68K based Frontier source - mostly ASM if I remember correctly.

I might dig that BBC code out to see how easy it would be to port.  Sure he doesnt want the code circulating for obvious reasons, but a 20+ year old platform where its free of charge I cant see an issue personally.

Bumping this.

Maybe the BBC Micro code would really be a good help, and it is posted for download on Ian Bell's own Elite website. I can't imagine using that source being an issue, if the original coder offers a download. Granted, Braben may have a different opinion...

Anyway, what really makes me more interested in Stardreamer than ever is having played Elite on the NES. Also a 6502 based system, not as strong as the Lynx, and also limited to two buttons, Start and Select... yet it pretty much blows all 8-bit Elites out of the water. It's fast, it's good to control... seriously, if the NES can pull off the best 8-bit Elite the Lynx should be able to do the same and then some.

[GadgetUK]

Probably easier to disassemble the NES version and port it tbh.  Since the NES has only 8Kb of RAM, and very basic graphics and sound, and its also 6502 based and has no onboard ROM like the BBC did.  The problem as always is the screen resolution.  All the vector graphics routines will have been written to handle a screen size of ~ 320 x 256 ish, which is why its never easy to port 6502 based code to the Lynx without a lot of work.

EDIT: That said, if I was better at understanding complex ASM I would have a crack at it, I just know I would spend weeks or months trying to find the relevant code to change and then you need to write ASM in order to replace / fix the routines.  ASM is not one of my strong points these days - long time since I played with 6502 opcodes.

Edited by GadgetUK, Sat Mar 16, 2013 11:08 AM.

[Gregory DG]

Hmmm... Yeah, Stardreamer... was looking forward to that one. Hope you get back to it Karri!

Wondering... Is 3D necessary for it? Something like Star Raiders or Carl Forhan's Remnant might be fine for the battle sequences.

Also, a classic Star Trek game would be cool... Like Stellar Track for the 2600, only with battle sequences like Star Trek: SOS.

[108 Stars]

GadgetUK, on Sat Mar 16, 2013 11:05 AM, said:

All the vector graphics routines will have been written to handle a screen size of ~ 320 x 256 ish, which is why its never easy to port 6502 based code to the Lynx without a lot of work.

Thee you see again that I have no clue of programming. I would have thought that vector graphics would be especially easy to display in any resolution, seeing as sprites have to be redrawn and vectors just use coordinates relative to each other as I understand...

Anyway, my core suggestion is that if the NES can have such a great version of Elite, both graphically and gameplaywise (seeing that the computer versions required numerous different keyboard schemes for different modes)the Lynx should be able to pull it off as well in theory, probably better.

scaled sprites might be an option too of course, if that would be easier to implement. Maybe it would be even better, not sure how well the vector graphics would translate to ultra-low Lynx res.

Edited by 108 Stars, Sun Mar 17, 2013 5:49 AM.

[GadgetUK]

108 Stars, on Sun Mar 17, 2013 5:48 AM, said:

Thee you see again that I have no clue of programming. I would have thought that vector graphics would be especially easy to display in any resolution, seeing as sprites have to be redrawn and vectors just use coordinates relative to each other as I understand...

Anyway, my core suggestion is that if the NES can have such a great version of Elite, both graphically and gameplaywise (seeing that the computer versions required numerous different keyboard schemes for different modes)the Lynx should be able to pull it off as well in theory, probably better.

scaled sprites might be an option too of course, if that would be easier to implement. Maybe it would be even better, not sure how well the vector graphics would translate to ultra-low Lynx res.

You make a good point about vector graphics, it depends how the code has been written to start with.  In an ideal world the engine would be configurable and so changing the screen resolution variables could mean it handles most of the changes itself, but it's more likely that there would be many many places in code whereby it's written to work with NES graphics handling.  For example the NES uses tiles in order to display everything, so at a guess the programmer probably wrote some code that draws pixels into tile locations in memory, but then there are automatic hardware routines that then display tiles at the correct place etc.  Bottom line is it would be a lot of work to translate ASM from one platform to another.  This is pretty much why no one has done it before on any other platform.  The nearest example I can think of is HLE for the N64 where they pretty much mapped hardware calls for graphics onto modern PC graphics cards, but that was a mammoth task and it wasn't perfect, and at least the hardware they applied it to was pretty well aligned.

[GroovyBee]

GadgetUK, on Sun Mar 17, 2013 6:09 AM, said:

Bottom line is it would be a lot of work to translate ASM from one platform to another.  This is pretty much why no one has done it before on any other platform.

Plenty of people on here do machine to machine game translations. There are BBC to A8, BBC to C64, C16 to A8, BBC to 7800, Oric to A8, 2600 to A8, C64 to A8, Apple II to A8 and so on.

[Zeptari1]

Wow, this is an old one. I did some of the interface graphics for this way back in the late 90's. I was hoping the game got finished.
If I remember correctly some  of the things you could trade were apples and Lynx games.

[GadgetUK]

GroovyBee, on Sun Mar 17, 2013 7:53 AM, said:

Plenty of people on here do machine to machine game translations. There are BBC to A8, BBC to C64, C16 to A8, BBC to 7800, Oric to A8, 2600 to A8, C64 to A8, Apple II to A8 and so on.

Are these rewrites of have they taken the code, dissassembled and alterered for another system?  Its often easier to rewrite than to port machine code.   Its also far easier to port code between some other retro systems due to similar hardware.  In this case the 6502 is common to the BBC and NES, but the graphics hardware is the sticking point, as are memory maps.

Anyway, I am not saying it's impossible (see threads on dev forum regards recompilers), but it would be very difficult due to screensize.

[GroovyBee]

GadgetUK, on Sun Mar 17, 2013 10:22 AM, said:

Are these rewrites of have they taken the code, dissassembled and alterered for another system?

The latter in all cases. In my own case I ported Tempest from the BBC to the 7800 and it doesn't even have a built in video frame buffer but I created one (in cart RAM) to make the port work.

[GadgetUK]

I still think the Lynx makes it techically difficult, mainly due to screen size (although scaling could be used it wouldn't look pretty), amount of RAM available, and the fact that it doesnt run code from ROM directly, and the encryption doesn't help either for me.

I still fancy having a go at trying to port a NES game one day as the NES only has 2Kb of RAM, so if you start with say a 20Kb ROM, and scale all the sprites down, and manage to squeeze replacement routines for palette, sound, input, and sprite handling then its possible.  I expect it would be far easier on other systems because of screen size simularities.