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The "Road" demo


R0ger

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We released small demo on Forever, and due to lack of serious competition we happened to win !

It's basically result of experimenting with some algorithms for road drawing.

Olomouc skyline GFX is done by PG, the music is by Hardcore, the code and the rest of the GFX is by me.

 

This version is updated with NTSC support. It fixes the color differences and music speed.

It runs at 50fps on PAL and 60fps on NTSC, with no compromises. There is just some reserve on PAL.

 

Enjoy !

 

 

 

road.xex

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Great demo!

Is the demo by Atariklub.cz or by R0ger+PG+Hardcore?

Is the music file available anywhere?

 

Thanks ! Atariklub.cz is organization organizing the Atariada party, R0ger+PG+Hardcore are members responsible for the demo.

The music is not available AFAIK, I will ask the author.

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Looks great especially on CRT! Do you have plans on making this into a full racing game?

 

Don't think so. I mean, not like this. There is too many limitations. This uses PMG for the road, that was the idea behind experiments. Outcome is like this:

 

Pros:

- independent colors for the road and the car

- hardware merging of foreground and background

- independent positioning, no scrolling required

- allows for 1 frame rendering times

 

Cons:

- limited road width

- extensive kernel code, inflexible (very hard to add slopes for example)

- impossible to do forks or more complex stripes on the road

- allows only one car with HW only. You want more cars, you are back to software rendering

- doesn't solve objects on the sides of the road at all, you would have to use software rendering

- even if you accept all limitation, the speed is just about right for 1 frame rendering, no reserve for more complex rendering

- not enough time to set both sides of the road on the same line, leads to artifacts. Can be somewhat controlled by camera angles, but it's not suitable for player control

 

I think the hardware approach is good for first person view games, like Elektra glide. It has the road in GFX, no other cars, and objects in PMG. High refresh rate, great sense of speed.

For third person view games I think it's better to go full software. Using PMG just for getting more colors. It would be way slower, but that's what I would do after playing with this.

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Hm .. sources wouldn't do you much good without explanation, it's deep in 'black magic' realm. There are comments, but not comments explaining the underlying principles, you mostly need pictures for that.

I plan to do a talk about this kind of road algorithms on the Atariada party. It's usually recorded and posted on YT. Might be good idea to do it in English. Or at least I could do some article about it afterwards.

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Perhaps some people don't know the difference between a demo of an upcoming game, and a demo part in a scene demo? R0ger already listed pros and cons, and it is worth stressing that in a scene demo you know exactly everything that will happen and when. Things can be precalculated, optimized, shortcuts can be taken to fool the eye. In a game situation, you have one huge random factor called a human which you can't predict as much so the game engine needs to be able to do and display anything at any given time, which is the opposite of taking shortcuts and optimize on known conditions.

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Perhaps some people don't know the difference between a demo of an upcoming game, and a demo part in a scene demo? R0ger already listed pros and cons, and it is worth stressing that in a scene demo you know exactly everything that will happen and when. Things can be precalculated, optimized, shortcuts can be taken to fool the eye. In a game situation, you have one huge random factor called a human which you can't predict as much so the game engine needs to be able to do and display anything at any given time, which is the opposite of taking shortcuts and optimize on known conditions.

Perhaps some people don't know the difference between complete and incomplete software ?

What's the difference between a demo and a triggered game ? Just a little interactivity!

 

Yes, the "Demo" needs some workaround, particular the scrolling had to be removed. Free CPU cycles allow additional things.

 

Particular those racing games on 8 bit computers weren't that flexible as someone might think.

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R0ger: ok, I understand that

Carlsson: I see your point

I mentioned that because it would be hell of a game, could be very nice

 

Well let's say I didn't give up on driving game. Not using this approach, not any time soon. But I'm still thinking about it.

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Atari needs an excellent driving game..

 

Pole Position is a stuttery mess.

Elektraglide is smooth, but is utterly ridiculous in gameplay.

Great American Cross Country Road Enduro..*cough* Road Race... ... it's Enduro...with better horizon :P

Taladega is...uh....yeah, moving on.

 

-Thom

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Atari needs an excellent driving game..

 

Pole Position is a stuttery mess.

Elektraglide is smooth, but is utterly ridiculous in gameplay.

Great American Cross Country Road Enduro..*cough* Road Race... ... it's Enduro...with better horizon :P

Taladega is...uh....yeah, moving on.

 

-Thom

 

They would be only possible, if the engine is based on a PMg Road. It will cost a lot CPU, to do that PMg - Road, but it will leave enough CPU time for character movement. Side elements of the road, also huge bridges will be possible. the Displaylist could be used to shake the screen and doing masking of landscapes would be possible with some "Pokes" .

But if the street is build on LMS DL shifting , you'll always get something like Pole Position .

Edited by emkay
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Atari needs an excellent driving game..

 

Pole Position is a stuttery mess.

Elektraglide is smooth, but is utterly ridiculous in gameplay.

Great American Cross Country Road Enduro..*cough* Road Race... ... it's Enduro...with better horizon :P

Taladega is...uh....yeah, moving on.

 

-Thom

elektraglide played rediculously fast in the USA with time running out somewhere around 9 percent to fast as well, I do believe that at least the time issue was patched not sure if it was fully done to adjust play speed as well, it's on the forum somewhere....

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