ST homebrew's

[walter_J64bit]

Ok I'm be cheating you all with an other forum but anyway! Check this out Pole Position.

http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/index.php?topic=3529.0

Edited March 26, 2014 by walter_J64bit

[+Charlie Cat]

Hi guys,

 

WOW...That's nice! Thanks for posting it!

 

 

Anthony...

[Rybags]

Looks good but seems he still has a lot of work to do.

 

I'm uncertain that doing scaling of the cars dynamically will be a good idea - somehow I don't see his frame rate improving as such.

It's a game that sure shows some ST weaknesses - the 8-bit does the road movement with a bit of calculation, dynamically changing LMS and a kernal that handles the HSCROL and few other register changes along the way.

 

It'd be interesting to see the reverse-engineering work of the arcade source. Hopefully he'll release that as well.

[GroovyBee]

This is the original Pole Position thread over on atari-forum :-

 

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=245996

 

Thats the best place to check for the project's progress.

[oky2000]

I agree, with 512k you should use precalculated graphics IMO not to waste CPU cycles. Also why no faded colours in the sky like Windows port?

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I agree, with 512k you should use precalculated graphics IMO not to waste CPU cycles. Also why no faded colours in the sky like Windows port?

There is no enough RAM in 512K machines to store all precalculated graphic. With 1-2MB can use it. But programmer maybe wants that it will be less RAM hungry.

I'm not sure that there is reverse-engineering work of the arcade source used.

This reminds me on Battle Zone. Atari ST version differs pretty much from original. There is more color, but framerate is lower. Controls are changed too - in bad direction. However, it uses for sure some kind of 6502 CPU code interpreter - don't know how much running speed suffering from that, but it is done for game control - to be same as by original.

Arcade originals had good framerates, graphic even with slow CPUs thanks to many special chips in that purpose. BZ had some math coprocessor for 3D calcs. Scaling was done with custom chips, logic in many cases.

[Rybags]

Why worry about 512K? Aren't most active ST users in possession of a system with at least 1 Meg?

[Ayreon]

From what I understand it is a personal challange he set to see what can be done on 512kb as in back in the day when 512kb was "the standard".

[oky2000]

Lotus II/III fits each race course in RAM so I don't see why it wouldn't fit each track of Pole Position too.

[Rybags]

On the 8-bit at least, the PolPos track is a succession of length + direction/strength of curvature settings. I doubt it uses much memory.

 

Lotus II/III - entirely possible it might be algorithmically generated as you go along, or compressed.

 

Personal challenge, fair enough - but judging by the quality so far I'd prefer something that optimised for speed/gameplay rather than squashing it into a small footprint and sacrificing the things that could make it a good game.

[oky2000]

I've got the graphics from Lotus II ripped for some levels and I can see all the scaling is pre-calc'd on ST and Amiga

 

I am hoping one day to change the Lotus cars to Dodge Charger and Challenger options along with a Camero even if it means dumped memory freezes for each level into a hard drive image.

[chicane]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm the author of this ST Pole Position conversion. I though you might be interested to know that I've just posted up a video on YouTube (http://youtu.be/KLKrqcY88aU) showing the latest build. There's been some rather drastic work on performance lately so this might well be of interest to those who liked the idea but not the frame rate.

 

Feedback and comments most welcome!