ARCADE CONVERSIONS ATARI 800XL

[cgfatari79]

I Don't Know What The Atari 800xl is capable of But I Made These Mock Up Screen Shots Using A Genuine Black Lamp Screenshot As a Base And It Seems Possible That The Atari home computer could have Indeed made Impressive Arcade Conversions. I Have Stuck to The Existing Resolution And Have Used 9 Colours From The Atari Palette. So Can It Be Done?

[+davidcalgary29]

Great work! I too would love to see what could be done with this.

 

The 8-bits did, by the way, have some incredible arcade ports. I'd suggest taking a look at (and playing) Joust, Defender, Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man, Crossbow, and Mr. Do!.

[Wrathchild]

Hi,

 

For me, there are too many colours going at that resolution.

A 9 colour palette would limit you to 80 pixels wide,

but the g'n'g image has 128 pixels.

 

If sticking to 4 colours and using DLIs you could approximately get this but you'd lose alot. And then you'd still have to get the man and monsters moving too, the man/weapon can be players&missiles but the monsters would need to be software, limiting them to the 4 colours. Using a 4 colour char mode you could use the 5th colour, but this would lead to some colour bleeding in 8*4 blocks as the soft-sprites move around.

 

Sorry Nice pics though

 

Mark

 

P.S. I'd had similar issues with 'Kung Fu Master', you can happily get the background and main character going on the A8, but then you have nothing left for the enemies.

[TMR]

If sticking to 4 colours and using DLIs you could approximately get this but you'd lose alot. And then you'd still have to get the man and monsters moving too, the man/weapon can be players&missiles but the monsters would need to be software, limiting them to the 4 colours.

 

Looking at the Black Lamp screen it's running in 5 colour char mode; the player is made from players, soft sprites are using two shared colours (the two used on the fence graphics, brown and grey) and their third is one of two unique character colours which are blue and cyan in this case.

 

The Ghost 'n' Goblins screens aren't do-able because they just don't stick to those rules, for example the one using the fence from BL has five colours to the background (the original two and the colours for the gravestone detail, two shades of cyan and a grey) and that's just not possible using the same techniques. Similarly, the face of the player would have to be the two shared colours - that means he wouldn't be able to jump because the colours are split to make the treeline detail further up...

 

P.S. I'd had similar issues with 'Kung Fu Master', you can happily get the background and main character going on the A8, but then you have nothing left for the enemies.

 

Does the background detail elsewhere actually appear behind the player and opponent sprites or does it remain like the screen you've posted all the time all the time? If it's the latter, i can see that particular NES screen being do-able with only resolution changes and one or two colour concessions.

[Wrathchild]

If it's the latter, i can see that particular NES screen being do-able with only resolution changes and one or two colour concessions.

When the player or an opponent are killed they 'drop' off the screen, so say you killed a knifeman and a purple/cyan thug you need to draw them over the floor supports. Unless this is done another way, say they fall to the floor then flash a couple of time and disappear, this would be tricky to do IMHO.

[TMR]

Oh, as an aside i liked the graphics in the mockups themselves. =-)

[emkay]

[Nukey Shay]

lol

 

BTW those pictures lack a balogna sandwich

[TMR]

 

Actually, i was expecting a four page diatribe on MCS from you emkay... =-)

 

Speaking of which, anyone managed to get a full game engine running with MCS yet? Analmux...?

[cgfatari79]

On The To Many Colours Issue If You Look At Black Lamp And Break It Down You Have I Belive 22 Colours In All, Heres A Pic. With Colour Palettes To Show You What I Mean.

 

May be Someone Could Take My Pic. Of G. And Goblins And Modify it To How It Would Really Look Colour Scheme Wise On The Atari. I would Be very Interested To See This.

[TMR]

On The To Many Colours Issue If You Look At Black Lamp And Break It Down You Have I Belive 22 Colours In All, Heres A Pic. With Colour Palettes To Show You What I Mean.

 

You're confusing the areas a little, the playfield is only the area in the slice i've added below - none of the nasties can move up or down so their colours being recycled for the mountains and even the lighter brown for the ground that's below them aren't an issue. There are nine colours in use, but three are generated by players (the player's sprite) and not all of the rest are on a scanline. Look closely, there are five on a line where the nasties move.

 

You can happily split the colours on a scanline basis, but trying to get more than five on a line (not including the players) is where things become difficult...

[cgfatari79]

Ok Heres A 6 Colour Version With an Idea Of How The Screen Would Be Split Into Sections. I Believe They could Be Separate Graphic Display Modes. I'm Not in The Know Of such Things Only Ideas Of some Of The Stuff I Could Get The Jist Of Reading Through Various Threads In This Forum I Do not Progam Code Or Anthing all Though I would Love To get to Learn How, Just Don't Know where to Start.

[emkay]

Ok Heres A 6 Colour Version With an Idea Of How The Screen Would Be Split Into Sections. I Believe They could Be Separate Graphic Display Modes. I'm Not in The Know Of such Things Only Ideas Of some Of The Stuff I Could Get The Jist Of Reading Through Various Threads In This Forum I Do not Progam Code Or Anthing all Though I would Love To get to Learn How, Just Don't Know where to Start.

 

 

In my next life i will become a coder and write the whole software myself

 

When keeping some rules, such game could be very colorful..

 

1) build the main Sprite by software

(keep in mind that only the main sprite is THE sprite you are looking at through the whole game)

2) use Charmode

3) Build missiles/shots by software too and use mainly block movement for them...

4) Build the enemies with PMg and when there is time enough by software too...is not enough time left, let the PM enemies flicker...

5)Try to use 2 fixed colors for the background plus the background color itself.

6) For the main character chose the "inverted" color plus the available color plus background color.

7)Use DLI's for a color enhancement and think about, that a DLI can be moved with the Y-Movement of the Main sprite ...

8 ) Enemies are not moving everywhere. In such Positions you can use PM Underlays generally.

...

 

Background ->black

Playfield -> green + grey (colors can cange due to level issues but only change the "green color" to blue or else)

Main Sprite -> Background black + grey + brown + light grey(white)

The two Main-Sprite colors can be carefully used to enhance some elements on the screen.

Enemies can have all PM colors. Elements (goodies) -fixed on the playfiled - can be built by playfield with some PM underlays.

 

The nicest thing would be overall Software-sprites with PM underlays... But if there would be enough time available... we know only if such a game engine is built.

[Heaven/TQA]

@ cgf

 

your new screen mockup looks good to start with... now you can try to colourize the areas... you have splitted up the screen quite usefull...

 

you can change colours on a scanline line basis so f.e. the background colour of the mountain... like it was done in black lamp...

[TMR]

The screenshot is going to still have colour issues when it moves; looking at the Black Lamp screen, the player is made from two overlaid players so it's 8 pixels wide and generally speaking three shades of one colour. After that, there are two shared colours which, in that screen, are the brown and grey on the fence and they carry over to the nasties, whose third colour is one of two possibles depending on the highest bit of their character data - either blue or turquoise. If you look at the ground, the second shade of brown doesn't appear until after the feet of the nasties finish because it's one of their third colours recycled and the colour split happens during the change over.

 

This system places some restrictions; for sheer speed the sprites need to be kept quite small (8 pixels wide would be best and between 16 and 24 tall for preference and to get a reasonable ratio) because soft sprite routines will take a large clump of CPU power. The nasties shouldn't try to pass over each other because their third colours can't do that and they'll have colour clash issues (BL has problems here, find a safe spot indoors and watch the nasties move around) and they're pretty much hardwired so they can't move vertically, which is something that Ghost 'n' Goblins pretty much needs since the terrain changes height.

 

My advice is find a coder; in order to realise this you're going to need someone to write the program and possibly break the restrictions the Black Lamp code has but it'd be better for you to draw to order rather than the coder having to find ways to animate something that may turn out to be impossible or at least extremely limiting.

[cgfatari79]

I Have Not Found The Coder Yet At Least Not By Name But Who Ever Is Responsable For This Game Well I Feel They Have The Answer (GAME ENGINE ) To Making This Game On Atari 8 Bit As Well As Any Other Side Ways Scroller You Can Think of in This Genre E.g. Super Mario Bros. Well What Do You All Think? sorry but i tried to attach an atr or xex file for atari 800winplus but could not so look up the game "Wloczykij" and you will know what i mean.

[TMR]

I Have Not Found The Coder Yet At Least Not By Name But Who Ever Is Responsable For This Game Well I Feel They Have The Answer (GAME ENGINE ) To Making This Game On Atari 8 Bit As Well As Any Other Side Ways Scroller You Can Think of in This Genre E.g.  Super Mario Bros. Well What Do You All Think?

 

Wloczykij was coded by Maciej Stefanski and Tomasz Palka (s'on the titles page) but it has some limitations like only one nasty and the player on a horizontal line with the pick-ups and static nasties being made from characters. So that code doesn't really work for Ghost'n'Goblins unless you only want one zombie at a time and is actually simpler than the Black Lamp soft-sprite engine. On top of that, Wloczykij was released over ten years ago and what i meant was, find an active coder to work with.

[cgfatari79]

Well that’s that you Have Convinced Me You're clearly the Man for the Job. Only you’d be on your Own I Doubt I Would be of any Help!

[TMR]

Sorry, i'm already working on one game and i tend to do me own graphics... =-)

[cgfatari79]

Here's An Idea i Had along While back This Is a Game That Should Have been released For the atari 8 bits But Never Was. I Would Love To See someone Bring This Project To Life.

[Dracon]

Yeah, RTYPE wasn't released for A8, but... there are some other similar games like HUMANOID, GUARD, KULT .... Aren't they cool enough?

[cgfatari79]

Cool Yes But R-Type They Are Not

[cgfatari79]

Well Here's How Ghost 'n' Goblins Would Look With 8x24 Sprites (PMG)

[andy_bernstein]

Hi to all,

 

For cfgatari79, I recommend you log onto www.atariarchives.org and gives a shot at learning ML programming (go for De Re Atari first). I understand your passion for Ghost'N'Goblins but each one of us has different goals, motivations and priorities so I suggest you do the conversion yourself.

 

BTW- look at your fellow brit Sheddy who's doing a kick-ass conversion of Space Harrier.

 

AB.

[miker]

cgf: i recommend you to enlarge scrolling playfield a little - i remember that in game you could climb by a ladder onto hill... and so on

 

hmm... how about put the mountains from Plastron to the upper part of the screen (and of course scroll them too)?

 

i think that the nasties may be made as objects (fonts) and the all sprites left may be used to color-up them...

 

btw. i want also make the conversion of ingame music - maybe form midi version, bcoz i have no commy here around my place.

 

oki - tha's all 4 (k)now!