Jump to content
IGNORED

porting T2 the arcade game to the atari 800


Recommended Posts

this is just a thought experiment for now but, would it be possible to port the arcade game to the Atari 800 or 800 XL. granted it would have to be cut down severely but would it be possible to at the very least render the truck level? I've wanted to do this for some time, but I've always wanted to make it easier to do, the arcade always kicked my ass and the genesis and snes ports are way too difficult,

 

what are your thoughts

 

and yes, I know its akin to suicide

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm,

 

I guess the truck level is this one, starting at 9:55 or maybe the one starting at 31:28

 

 

There are also several "Let`s compare" versions of T2-The Arcade Game on youtube including a Gameboy version (with various green shades) among them...

Edited by CharlieChaplin
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Popmilo, its level 3. i also want to add an indicator to level 6 to show where the helicopter is and maybe add hit detection for allied gunfire and grenades, so they actually work this time around. (the snes version had grenades but they never worked, and T800 grenades just flew off screen)

 

at best, I just want to do a prototype of the first level, using the master system version as a template.

 

basically, the master system's graphics but the genesis version's speed (or as close to that as possible)

 

my goal is to avoid an overabundance of peeks and pokes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That "Truck" Level really looks like a "must do" on the Atari, doing the "Trucks" with character movement and some parallax, plus additional horizontal movement of that lanterns would obviously work without the need of 100% Resources. All Players could still be used to "draw" the enemies or other stuff. Also enough characters could be available , to form other animations....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

we've got an engine for this (operation blood, special forces and even up and down scrolling in turrican 2 unfinished port with available sources).

it seems doable with some "buts" like

- memory (large sprites shifted and animated = lots of RAM)

- speed (large sprite area*many sprites = low framerate)

 

Other than that - doable. Certainly can be tuned to have OKayish playability.

All is needed is graphics and dedication :}}}}}}}

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

now for the $90,000 question: is there a way to improve the speed for PAL users, while maintaining a high framerate? I played narc for nes with PAL and it is dog slow.

Nice point. While here in the forums people always ask for NTSC fitting games that just run on PAL machines, a lot of Vertical Blanc adjusted games, were available for PAL machines, but played horribly slow. Salmon Run is the best example, as the game plays a bit slower , and the VBI time offers more time to do things, the bear runs too fast on a PAL machine, to get through it. Or Popeye, your beard is growing while waiting for things to drop . Or Sea Dragon..... sloooooooooow....

Hehe... in Boulder Dash, the problem is a funny one, not really disturbing, as Rockford could run out of the visual part of the screen for a short while.

But, most games, that don't run fixed on VBlank, get corrected automatically. As the scrolling of the A8 is 160 pixels, 50 or even 60 fps isn't always the solution. You could do animations that do an interleaved positioning, getting the same amount of moving steps in 300milliseconds. 300/60 = 5 steps 300/50= 6 steps.

Particular those "Street movement" levels could do the animation speed not 100% correct for a compensation.

The Trucks in T2 could even move in character resolution , while projecting a fast running.

And so on...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in our "operation blood" derivative engine the rendering is double buffered and based on speed of render itself, so it could be the same regardless the framerate. it is possibly not due to some game mechanics in kind of VBLANK, but this is to be easily fixed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I reckon that the truck section could be done with some simplification.

 

Don't have the truck going up and down, keep the background the same behind it.

 

Then animate the enemies above the truck and have the odd skeleton running in front of the truck (between the truck and the camera) . Skeleton's are great, you can get away with one colour for them (use a player for that)

Edited by snicklin
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I reckon that the truck section could be done with some simplification.

 

Don't have the truck going up and down, keep the background the same behind it.

No problems to shake them a bit up and down, using vertical scrolling in that range. Using some PM layed behind, would make the effect fully relieable.

 

Then animate the enemies above the truck and have the odd skeleton running in front of the truck (between the truck and the camera) . Skeleton's are great, you can get away with one colour for them (use a player for that)

Make them not just white. Using the palette of the A8 still makes it possible to suggest up to 8 different distances, depending on the lightning.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

now comes the hard part: Machine code or assembly?

It is year 2017, not 1987. You don't have to save those few bytes that will be occupied by the source code anymore (unless you want to do the dev on the actual HW, where memory consumption of a source code is a real problem - like with Atmas II).

 

Pick a nice Windows-based dev env (e.g. eclipse), crosscompiler and you're set. You can fold your source code, see multiple columns on your 40-60" TV/monitor, so you can be waaaaay more productive than you could ever hope to be on real Atari.

 

 

6502's hexa table is pretty simple, however. If I recall correctly after over quarter century, it took me about 2 weeks to get all the hexa opcodes into memory without having to look them up in the book. Might be tiny bit harder at this age, though :D

 

I definitely recommend this as an extremely exciting coding exercise. As a side effect, you produce more code in same timeframe, as writing in hexa is obviously faster than typing the tedious BRK/LDX/STX mnemonics :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...