Sheddy

Oh no. My worst nightmare! - you will notice quite a few differences. The Saturn version is totally *Perfect* In fact, I'm pretty sure all the games on Sega Ages are emulated rather than just ported. Interested you're using flickering on Adventure II. Makes it more authentic too, of course

Dennis, you have your PC screen refresh set to 60Hz? And the vertical sync option on the emulator? Cafeman's right that the flicker is less bad on the real thing (unless you're using a slow LCD monitor like me ) I found the external "real" palette to be closest (at least to my TV)

Hi Cafeman, I think you discovered a "feature" of Atari800Win! I've had something similar happen with some other things. XL/XE mode with 128K or above should work. Try "attaching" a different disk, then go back and attach again to drive 1. You will probably need the XL rom too, as oesii suggests. Tempest, yes, it is a limitation of the palette - disappointing I know, but flicker starts to get out of hand when the brightness is cranked up on the palette. You normally have your screen/monitor set at fairly low brightness? - Turn it up till the colours show up better, right up, to see what I mean about the flicker! Either I must have my TV set really bright to start with, or I've just got used to the muted colour scheme after all this time of working with it!

Hmm... OK, so mabe you can get similar results to something like Mood... :wink: BTW When I said "Vector" - I meant "Numen" - "Vector" was going to be the game based on the 3d Engine of Fox's which is also used in "Numen". My bad.

Mood's pretty impresive all right. Is there a reason why the Atari couldn't do something similar, TMR? Vector is based on a 80*48 screen from what I've read on Fox's site about it (sadly the site is no more). Without the real 3d of Vector, such an engine could presumably be done at a similar (if not faster) frame rate - not that Mood is in any way slow, it's very playable, considering what it's doing :wink: When I'm done with my current stuff, I'm really tempted to look at some of the clever methods used to create this kind of game. Don't hold your breath though, as I'm not particularly mathematically inclined or talented. Maybe emkay's ideas are slightly "pie in the sky" for this kind of game (Heaven's right emkay, we'd need a demo to prove the concept of the ideas!), but it's amazing what has been done already on C64.

Finally, more or less finished the dragon riding bonus stage, I hope There's a demo of it at the usual place www.sheddyshack.co.uk Do you think it's close enough to the original? (forget the scenery objects used on the demo, they will be changed in the final game). Does it need some changes?

Nice work on SB, Mark - looks very authentic. Hope you manage to find the time to carry on with it (after Elite, of course )

Thanks RC. That many! Dynakillers was the one I was trying to remember. I'll be sure to check out Tekblast now though. Xenon! I was (am) a big scrolling shoot-em-up fan. That was the first 16-bit game that made me think I'd seen a properly done 16-bit game - very talented artists. Speedball was great and very playable too. Sure would be interested to see your preliminary work Mark.

Hey, I'd nearly forgot about Bomberman! What a great game that is - still remember the PC Engine original. I believe there is a clone for Atari, but I can't think what it's called or where I saw it now

It's an interesting idea - so I hope someone does try it

Well, I'm glad you're seriously considering double buffering. Guess I'd underestimated the likely RAM required though. BTW I hope the line erasing code doesn't use the same routine as the draw - I'd hate the thought of a superfluous EOR Thanks for the insight into the game

Hey Memory is the only problem of the 8-bits... With a real amount of 4MB I would try to convert Wolfenstein 3D onto the XL and you all would think, it is a PC (seriously) Quite so, it'd still be the wrong shade of beige Of course I only meant memory size in comparison to the BBC model B which only had 32k. BTW, you know you CAN produce 4MB carts (or bigger)? Seriously. *Holds breath* Just kidding with yer, emkay. But you really can make a cart as big as you like (according to Sunmark, anyway)

Well, not a lot is really happening. Just speculation! Let's go and do some of the good stuff, like TMR suggests I know you did some fantastic stuff. It's a shame you were the exception to the rule, and more people didn't push the Atari further. Still it all boils down to simple economics - supply and demand - No money to be made on 8-bit Atari, just as games were getting more interesting and complex - and coders were taking up and meeting the challenge on other platforms

I think you pretty much answer your own question Heaven, with the examples you're giving here, if you're not talking about what people are doing today. LucasFilm, Archer McLean etc. were the ones showing innovations when it mattered. And after that?....heard of the expression "flogging a dead horse"? That there are only a relatively small handful of exceptional titles is not surprising, given the quantity of software. As others here have eloquently quoted - "90% of everything is crap!"

We are still stuck in the eighties here, after all, this machine is dead! It's asking a lot to expect homebrewers to be able to surpass some quite awesome efforts from back in the day. Only recently is there any renewed interest in these old systems, and you can't expect amateurs to produce triple A products straight out the door, even if they're "standing on the shoulders of giants" and have a lot more help these days/ A demo is not the same as a complete game. I doubt even the demo writers themselves would claim to be able to turn some of their superb efforts into whole games. Some of the effects leave little room for anything else to be added - fully using the available memory and CPU cycles. Not to say anything regarding the amount of time and effort required to develop said games. Still I agree that there's not a lot of point doing what has been done to death before. It's just that everyone feels obliged to write a space invaders clone to get themselves started

Well, one thing that springs to mind is double buffering - the BBC version isn't and that's passed on to every other implementation. The C64 version alone could be very much less flickery for it... No double-buffering??? WTF! Didn't know that. Little excuse not to do that unless they needed all-out speed (but then there's always triple buffer). Memory wasn't a problem for the C64 or Atari. Just got to look after another set of co-ords is all - if you don't want to clear the whole screen.

Nearly forgot: PacLand (Please JetBoot, resurrect this project!)

I think you guys are a little harsh on the old games - because it's damned hard (if not impossible) to create a playable game with moving graphics using some of the techniques Emkay is describing! Just my opinion but - for several years after the 8-bit came along there was nothing to touch what it could do using fairly standard Atari techniques such as player/missile reuse and DLIS, and they were easy to use (these were used right from the beginning. Don't know of a much better documented 8-bit than the Atari). Only a year or two after the C64 came along, did anyone really up the ante, and programmers were seeing stuff in the arcades, and thinking "I wonder if...". The Atari's market share was plummeting by this time, so the only market left was for bargin basement budget games - why chase technical glory for no reward?

OK, so most of these were arcade as well as 8-bit ports, but... Space Harrier (of course) Out Run Mad Planets/Crazy Comets Super Sprint Sanxion (or any other good horizontal shooters from C64) I Robot (Fox, if you're ever bored..) and Elite (Mark, don't let David Braben put you off, I really can't believe he gives a stuff about our obsolete systems) BTW I'd be surprised if Firebird managed to do a version superior to the beeb original, after all the BBC runs at 1.8Mhz as well as the Atari, and I don't see any huge speed benefits to be had from the Atari hardware in this kind of game? Also presuming Braben and Bell used efficient line-draw and division routines. What do you think about this Mark?

Oh Wow! One of my all-time favourites on little Atari! A bunch of us used to play this game lunchtimes at work (quite a few years back now ). Absolutely excellent multi-player game. Just love the choices of weapons, shields etc ("So....How do you want to die today?"). Looks like this could be a really good version too, although I only fired it up once so far. Thanks guys for making this! I suppose if the "free sex" links were not free but to paysites, you would get taken to Cray computers or ASCII "Blue" ?

As an aside, i heard a rumour ages ago from someone not entirely reliable in the industry that an excellent Atari 8bit port of Elite was done and dusted but some clause in the license Firebird had said it couldn't look better than the BBC version and it was canned... anyone know if this is true? I think you'll find Mr. Wrathchild knows more about an Atari Elite than most... 30-Jul-03 Edit Maybe I should have noticed Mark's post mentioned Atari Elite before posting this

Definitely worth turning into a book IMO. (Still can't beat the user interface of a book) You've a great way of explaining things, which makes it SEEM almost straightforward to use the 2600!

I agree with Eric, Frustrating though it is, a re-write is no bad thing - you often end up with something better. If it was easy, you wouldn't get any real satisfaction out of it either. It was 8 years before I picked my project up again with a complete re-write - no need to rush! I constantly re-write code if I think of a better way to do things (to the frustration of anyone actually wanting the game finished, I'm sure!)

Another cross-assembler for the 8-bits. Atasm - Mac/65 compatible too. http://www.cs.utah.edu/~schmelze/atari/atasm/

That's good to know. Thanks!