New Atari game port WIP: Total Eclipse

[mariuszw]

 

BTW: I appreciate your efforts a lot, but is any of your ports (Bobby Bearing, Fairlight, Great Escape) about to be finalized? Not that I not understand that making huge steps with new ports is more fun than fiddling a lot around to get little effect...

 

Definitely porting new game is more exciting than putting together various bits and pieces for almost finished game. At this moment Great Escape is very close to completion, it has sound effects and music done, I just need to sort remaining problem with title picture and music player on NTSC system (not enough cycles on frame to run both of them).

[mariuszw]

Awesome work guys!

Can this be played till the end ? Would love to do it, as I've never finished C64 version, probably because of 'speed'

 

ps. Any room for double buffering ? Those 'swipes' look strange like multiple horizontal bands filling at the same time. Is it some copy routine or eor-filler of some kind ?

 

I hope it can be played till the end, however I didn't try. If you play it, please let me know.

 

'Swipes' are result of my wrong optimization of my procedure for copying frame buffer into screen. I used something like that:

ldx #0
ldy #0
lda framebuffer,y
sta screen,x
lda framebuffer+$100,y
sta screen+$100,x
lda framebuffer+$200,y
sta screen+$200,x

...

inx
dey
bne loop

I think copying framebuffer to screen line by line should solve swipe effect.

 

Double buffering would be hard to achieve. If you look at routine above, you see that screen pointer is incrementing while framebuffer pointer is decrementing during the loop - actually game uses some weird adressing on frame buffer, so it can not be displayed directly on screen.

[+Philsan]

160X240 pixels, 33 unique colors:

Philsan_TotalEclipse.xex

[bfollett]

That looks awesome. Although if the code could check for PAL vs NTSC and adjust accordingly it would be nice because the colors under NTSC are not so nice for that picture.

 

Bob

160X240 pixels, 33 unique colors:

Philsan_TotalEclipse.png

Philsan_TotalEclipse.xex

[Synthpopalooza]

My new attempt. I had to do two renders, since I haven't been able to figure out the code yet to display all 240 lines of the picture. The first render shows the first 192 lines of the picture, the second render shows the last 192.

 

PCIN mode, 160x192, 35 colors.

 

eclipse2-pcin.asm

eclipse2-pcin.obx

 

eclipse2a-pcin.asm

eclipse2a-pcin.obx

 

Here are the source G2F's, font and screen files, in case anyone wants to try hacking the asm code to display all 240 lines.

 

Eclipse-pcin.zip

[popmilo]

I think copying framebuffer to screen line by line should solve swipe effect.

Yeah would make 'split' at one place on screen instead on dozen.

 

In that case probably not much need for double buffer...

 

ps. When are you converting Dark Side and Driller ?

pps. You can do Castle master later I guess

[José Pereira]

ps. When are you converting Dark Side and Driller ?

pps. You can do Castle master later I guess

Come on, give Mariusz a break. He has to finish the other three, then this followed by this the II (almost sane as I) and later he'll see, I hope so ...

But yes, I already started the colours and the sides PMGs to have them like this in 32Bytes wide and even more faster than the C64 version ...

Edited October 9, 2015 by José Pereira

[José Pereira]

In the meantime I did some small pixels re-arrangment on the loading screen (the II will folow this 'year of release' method).

Whatever screen can be used or Mariusz choose to have as a title screen must be this one to be present while loading because is a simple with no DLIs GR.15 bitmap mode:

[zeropolis79]

I enjoyed these games on the Amstrad CPC.. They too were slow, but barable. You could do a keypress with joystick to help you move faster...I think as the series progressed, they optomised the code to help things go quicker. It was quicker when it came to Total Eclipse and later Castle Master..

[Irgendwer]

--- Deleted ---

Edited October 9, 2015 by Irgendwer

[Irgendwer]

Whatever screen can be used or Mariusz choose to have as a title screen must be this one to be present while loading because is a simple with no DLIs GR.15 bitmap mode

 

 

Ok...:

[+Philsan]

That looks awesome. Although if the code could check for PAL vs NTSC and adjust accordingly it would be nice because the colors under NTSC are not so nice for that picture.

 

Bob

160x240 pixels, 34 unique colors:

Philsan_TotalEclipse_NTSC.xex

[kool kitty89]

OMG! I've been reminiscing about this game! I couldn't remember the name. I clearly remember the airplane. The doors had different geometric shapes. And the eye was open, then closed depending on the puzzle status.

Here is the thing...I never had a C64...was it ported to 286?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Eclipse_%281988_video_game%29

MS/PC DOS, Atari ST, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum. So yes.

[Irgendwer]

Forgot to attach the G2F file for my non-DLI version...

te.g2f.zip

Edited November 15, 2015 by Irgendwer

[+Adam+]

Just to let you know. I'm working on improvements of main panel graphics. For example now the compass looks like this (compared to other 8-bit platforms):

 

[+Adam+]

Hi, this is the current state of bottom panel graphics in Atari 8-bit version (compared to the original Commodore graphics).

 

 

 

[+Stephen]

Very nice, especially the shading on the watch.

[popmilo]

Hi, this is the current state of bottom panel graphics in Atari 8-bit version (compared to the original Commodore graphics).

 

 

 

Looking good !

 

How about rest of the game ?

[+Adam+]

Looking good !

 

How about rest of the game ?

Thank you Theoretically, the game is almost ready, but some more thorough testing is needed and we think about adding some kind of an intro at the beginning. And it all takes time.

[+Adam+]

Meanwhile in another thread:

I would like to see an example of "true 3D" in any existing A8 game, during gameplay.

Well... I think that Total Eclipse is "3D" enough

Freescape engine, which is used there, was probably the first "true 3D" video games engine with filled polygons. All the locations in the game are constructed of 3D objects and we can quite freely change the position and the direction of "camera" (of course there are some limitations imposed mainly by gameplay - as we see the game through the eyes of someone walking or crawling).

Edited May 6, 2018 by +Adam+

[Fingolfin]

Followed my post from the Stunt Car Racer release thread back here: I agree that Total Eclipse is more than 3D enough.

For that matter to me SCR is more than 3D enough too but in a different way. Total Eclipse has filled/shaded polygons and SCR does not, so maybe Total Eclipse is "more 3D" but that would be, as stated in my SCR thread post, a matter/question of individual perception. I like the 3D effects of SCR, Koronis Rift, Rescue at Fractalus and The Eidolon.

However, I don't mind filled/shaded polygons! More color and increased sense of depth is cool too!

 

Total Eclipse looks like a great game and top notch conversion in the works!

And yet another C64/Amiga game with which I am unfamiliar.

Total Eclipse looks a little bit like A8 Dungeon Hunter but with more graphical detail and variety in environments and more involved or complicated/complex gameplay mechanics.

 

Thanks for the link to Freescape engine info, +Adam+. Very cool to learn more about early 3D software and specifically how it was developing in the later 80's.

 

Best of luck with Total Eclipse!

When it's ready I look forward to seeing Total Eclipse in action on A8.

 

When I first saw this thread I thought of the 3DO Total Eclipse which would be a bit harder to convert to A8.

[+Adam+]

Hi, the game takes place on October 26th, 1930 and we will publish it exactly 88 years later

Finally there will be no special intro and no Odyn1ec's picture, just a loading screen that I prepared (based on Amiga version):

 

 

Some more information here on AtariOnline.pl

[+Adam+]

And tomorrow...

 

[jvas]

It is now tomorrow

[snicklin]

Has been for a while for me! Oh well, it wasn't stated what time of day it would be released!