Star Raiders hack wanted...

[kiwilove]

I think there is not a Star Raiders hacked to the following:

 

That for shields up, battle mode - I'd prefer a clear black starfield backdrop - perhaps the text window below could change from blue to green to show shields are engaged.

 

I always think that to have any other colour - apart from black - destroys the feeling that you are travelling in deep space.

 

I don't understand why someone has not hacked Star Raiders to the above - or that players have not requested it?

 

Because any Star Wars/Star Trek fan etc would have appreciated the feeling that you are travelling amongst the stars - playing Star Raiders in a darkened room.

 

Of course, you can simply play Star Raiders with shields off - but I cannot last long playing it like this.

 

 

It is not strange that sometimes the most obvious is simply not done.

 

eg. the text you are reading here - should have been white text against a black background - as a default. Apple and Microsoft should have supported this long ago, and saved our eyesight to last longer, and shielded us from headaches. But do they even care?

Wbile there may be a preferences to change this - there is no standard there, in which everything works fine. You're usually not fine when you go to different webpages or applications there is no standard by which everything is as good as the standard black against white. ie. some colours do not remap correctly as to contrast, highlight, etc.

 

Harvey

[Tinman]

Yeah I always wanted a black background when shields were up too. Although I did think the Phaser Patrol effect for raising and lowering shields was the coolest.

[SoundGammon]

Someone did that for me a couple of years ago, both the 8-bit and the 5200 version.

 

Got to do some digging...

 

Does look better!

[Keatah]

This hack was already done. But not without some minor issues.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/181833-star-raiders-hack-wanted/

 

IDK.. I've played Star Raiders so much and so hard when I was a kid I find it rather confusing to not have the shields be indicated by the light-blue color. The original way. The traditional way. Maybe a newcomer to the game will find it useful.

 

ADDED: What I prefer doing is to take the original "shields-on" color and just tone it down a little bit. YMMV depending on your display and personal preferences. Now when the shields are on the color change is very subtle. Keeps the out-in-space look. And you can see the contrast difference where the panel meets the window to help you remember shields are on or off.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Keatah

[Rybags]

A Star Raiders workover would be a worthwhile project. Since it's an 8K game using 8K Ram there's plenty of room to move.

 

Just simple things like a more fitting text font would enhance the feel of the game.

 

I was also thinking about a "poor man's HD" version - just use interleaved Gr. 15 and blank lines although that would mean the HUD wouldn't appear solid.

[kiwilove]

It's actually "realistic" in real life - that a green screen would be present for protection. But since this is a videogame it'll look more of a visual feast to have the black starfield background present.

 

If someone wanted to mod the original game in it's gameplay - having different craft present - with different behavioural characteristics would be nice touches to add, same with having different weapons firing possible too. Same with having different objects present? Mines? And more interaction possible with those rocks/asteroids.

 

It would be a ton of work though - but a temptation to do for any programmer able to work on it.

 

Harvey

[Keatah]

The correct shield color is a slightly foggy blueish tint.

[oracle_jedi]

Another take on the no-color change for shields on.

 

Extracted from a Rob C menu disk, this requires a Translator to use on an XL.

 

 

 

Star Raiders color hack OS1.atr

Edited August 31, 2015 by oracle_jedi

[ClausB]

Nooooooooooooo! I love the font as is.

 

Star Raiders HD. What a great idea!

 

I agree the shields are too foggy. Maybe blue luma zero would look good. BTW I did play without shields (Novice Level, I call it Star Raiders Guts) yesterday at VCFMW and won once with Ace Class 4. Sloopy can vouch for that.

 

[ZylonBane]

eg. the text you are reading here - should have been white text against a black background - as a default. Apple and Microsoft should have supported this long ago, and saved our eyesight to last longer, and shielded us from headaches.

 

White on black text most certainly should not be a default for anything. That would be hideous. If you're getting headaches from white backgrounds, your monitor brightness is too high and/or the refresh rate is too low.

[Grevle]

Theres another hack that makes lesser slowdown after hitting the Zylon attackers, the explosion has less pixels but still its nice to have a lesser slowdown after a Zylon explosion.

Maybe a combination of the two hacks wold be awesome, Lesser slowdowns And the shield color hack as well..?

[Rybags]

IMO a better representation of shields would be to have a coloured border that indicates as such or maybe even some graphical representation.

 

Rather than speeding up rendering by having less detail I think the better method would be to enhance the programming to run faster. Again it comes down to memory constraints of the original which almost always means tighter coding that uses more cycles.

[ZylonBane]

Doug Neubauer has always been very up-front in interviews about how bad his math routines are in Star Raiders:

 

Were the 3-D routines difficult to write? How did you come up with them?

I had to invent them, not having read Newman-Sproull yet. The 3-D transformation k = k*x/z was simple enough, but deciding the coordinate system (i.e. where is 0,0,0) took a little thinking. Also, I had to figure out the cordic-rotation algorithms, there not being any yet. I remember having trouble with the explosions. I wanted an explosion that looked real, not an animated cartoon explosion like everyone else did. However, my signed divide algorithms were terrible, and that's why the game would slow down whenever there was an explosion.

 

http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/NEUBAUER.HTM

 

If someone good with 6502 math could take a look at that part of the code, perhaps some significant speedup could be achieved without any size increase.

[billkendrick]

Doug Neubauer has always been very up-front in interviews about how bad his math routines are in Star Raiders:

 

 

http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/NEUBAUER.HTM

 

If someone good with 6502 math could take a look at that part of the code, perhaps some significant speedup could be achieved without any size increase.

 

Apparently you've not been listening to the Player/Missile Podcast.

http://playermissile.com/tech/starraiders/index.html#starraiders