Gunship on Atari 8-Bit?

[Xebec]

8 minutes ago, Tickled_Pink said:

Gunship didn't come out but I remember playing Tomahawk over at a friend's house. TBH, though, I never really thought that flight sims worked that well on 8-bit machines as they often had pretty shocking frame rates. The 16-bit era is where they really (ahaha) took off.

Yes, but it is those 8-bit flight sims that led to interest in making 16-bit flight sims

 

 

[youxia]

The framerates weren't really "shocking", this is a modern perception of it. Back then seeing something moving at all in a 3D space was simply mindblowing, especially when it was a fairly complex (comparatively) flight sim. And when using wireframe gfx the fps was quite acceptable and the games playable, so it wasn't just a novelty factor. Games like Tomahawk were amongst my most played on ZX Spectrum.

[Mclaneinc]

Yes, the frame rates while shocking compared to now were seen as more than acceptable, things like Mercenary were seen as superb.

[machf]

I remember worse things  than the framerates... like on Ace of Aces, you might be firing at an enemy plane coming at you and attempted to turn to avoid it, and since the trigger+joystick left/right combination was used to switch to a view to the side, the results weren't the expected ones... I mean, it was good to provide the option for the pilot to turn around inside the cockpit, but the way it was implemented may not have been the best.

[Lostdragon]

Never mind the frame rates.. It was the anti-piracy methods that shocked me. 

 

Fighter Pilot used this wretched creation.. 

 

Oh the horrors ?

Edited June 5, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Mclaneinc]

Thankfully, the Atari saw little of that foul thing..

[Jetboot Jack]

On 6/4/2022 at 1:44 PM, Lostdragon said:

 

Before that, Jaguar Gunship 2000,which one of the various folk i had been chatting with at the time, knew the Jaguar coder of the game and he'd said work was abandoned after early 3D modelling done. 

 

 

I find that extremely unlikely - the only Jag Dev we did was in the UK and was porting 68K Tin Head as proof of concept, avoiding the custom chips as much as possible ?

 

Why on earth would we have done "3D modelling" before having code up and running, sounds fish -since all the assets were already created for the PC at various LOD's and those would have been used for POC or test purposes if such work had been undertaken, of which I have no recollection...

 

sTeVE

[Lostdragon]

2 hours ago, Jetboot Jack said:

 

I find that extremely unlikely - the only Jag Dev we did was in the UK and was porting 68K Tin Head as proof of concept, avoiding the custom chips as much as possible ?

 

Why on earth would we have done "3D modelling" before having code up and running, sounds fish -since all the assets were already created for the PC at various LOD's and those would have been used for POC or test purposes if such work had been undertaken, of which I have no recollection...

 

sTeVE

Honestly no idea. 

 

 

Gunship 2000 was one of a multitude of titles looked into at the time after that 'infamous' colour-coded status list of Lost Jaguar titles, along with videos on YT were doing the rounds. 

 

 

I remember reaching out to various ex-Microprose staff who'd worked on CD32 etc titles around the Jaguar period, including CD32 Gunship coder (he never replied). 

 

 

One individual got back to me, said whilst he himself hadn't touched the platform, he was friends with someone who'd been assigned the conversion, would ask about it and get back to me. 

 

 

A few days later he emailed saying his friend had said.. 

 

"Gunship 2000 was started. early 3D modelling work and other early work underway before project shutdown."

 

 

Which was pretty vague and not direct from a key source and there was no supporting documentation etc. 

 

I thanked him for his time, put the info up, but like so much of this lost games research, it had to be seen as hearsay until further evidence came forward. 

 

You can never go on single source claims. 

 

 

And there's been so much conflicting info from people who worked on many big publishing houses over the years, it was a key reason I stopped looking into Lost Games period. 

 

It started to boil down into he saod/she said nonsense and individuals saying I see you interviewed.. well I can tell you that wasn't what happened.. 

 

 

People were  looking to open old wounds that had festered since they'd worked together on projects and were bad mouthing old bosses, fellow coders, artists etc.. 

 

All we were after was there any info to suggest recoverable code might be out there and did work even begin. 

 

I never really put the time into finding status of conversions to the Jaguar from other systems as I might have done with the exclusives. 

 

 

They were simply me too titles, if you wanted to play em, play em on Amiga CD32, PC etc. 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Mclaneinc]

 

From what little effort I've put in to all this, I found so many at odds stories, company head says one thing, individual dev's say another thing. Often, neither telling the truth, just old scores being put out there. Pointless tittle tattle..

 

These days I'd rather look back at the industry with rose tinted specs and just enjoy the actual fruits of their labour..

Edited June 8, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[Jetboot Jack]

2 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

 

From what little effort I've put in to all this, I found so many at odds stories, company head says one thing, individual dev's say another thing. Often, neither telling the truth, just old scores being put out there. Pointless tittle tattle..

I was the game designer on Amiga AGA and CD32 Gunship 2000 - https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/gunship-2000/credits

 

I did no work on Jag Gunship 2000 - and I would have if it had been a project...

 

Less tittle tattle and more actual experience ?

 

sTeVE

[Mclaneinc]

12 minutes ago, Jetboot Jack said:

I was the game designer on Amiga AGA and CD32 Gunship 2000 - https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/gunship-2000/credits

 

I did no work on Jag Gunship 2000 - and I would have if it had been a project...

 

Less tittle tattle and more actual experience ?

 

sTeVE

Lol...Not accusing you of that, I know you were a dev back then and a bastion of the truth

 

I was more talking in general re the software industry as I interacted with it back then and then meeting the same folks years later, often with what I knew were just beefs with the company and not 100% true.

[Jetboot Jack]

5 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

Lol...Not accusing you of that, I know you were a dev back then and a bastion of the truth

If only ? 

 

I was pulling your leg...

 

sTeVE

Edited June 8, 2022 by Jetboot Jack

[Mclaneinc]

Lol...I think my leg is mangled from the times it's been pulled

 

As an Amiga owner and fan, thank you for your work.. Off to find a copy of Amiga Addict in WH Smiths..

[Lostdragon]

On 6/8/2022 at 12:36 PM, Mclaneinc said:

 

From what little effort I've put in to all this, I found so many at odds stories, company head says one thing, individual dev's say another thing. Often, neither telling the truth, just old scores being put out there. Pointless tittle tattle..

 

These days I'd rather look back at the industry with rose tinted specs and just enjoy the actual fruits of their labour..

Very true. 

 

When I was looking into why Lynx Battlezone 2000 had the solid 3D version hidden as an Easter Egg, I found 2 very different accounts from Jim Gregory and Rob Nicholson 

 

We have both Zero 5 coder Matthew Gosling and Battlesphere creators claiming after Atari saw their game, they canned Jaguar Space War 2000.

 

 

You get to the stage where you start to think it's just not worth looking into, a game was hidden, another was canned, it happens, it's the manner of the industry. 

[Tickled_Pink]

On 6/5/2022 at 9:04 AM, Lostdragon said:

Never mind the frame rates.. It was the anti-piracy methods that shocked me. 

 

Fighter Pilot used this wretched creation.. 

 

Oh the horrors ?

I actually have one of these somewhere. It came with a job lot I picked up about 15 years ago. Ironically, it's for Tomahawk. Didn't get the game, though. The job lot was a mixed bag of C64 and Spectrum stuff.

[Beeblebrox]

Lenslock! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Horrible horrible thing!! Had one for Fighter Pilot. 

[Tickled_Pink]

IIRC, Elite had it on the Spectrum as well. Remember a friend having to go through the novella every time he wanted to play it.

[Tickled_Pink]

On 7/8/2008 at 5:39 AM, machf said:

Well, there is a chance that it may have been just some other game with a hacked title screen reading "Gunship", but what could it have been? It wasn't Tomahawk, Super Huey or Infiltrator (I had seen those back then), and as I said, it looked very much like the C64 version of Gunship. I doubt it was an elaborate hoax with a Commodore computer and drive hidden inside Atari casings...

 

One possibility is that it might be something like when another guy told me of a friend who had ruined an A8 version of Outrun (!) attempting to crack it - and then it turned out to be California Run, with this guy saying they both were basically the same. So, any info on someone programming a Gunship-lookalike in 1986 or earlier?

Remember hiring Super Huey from a software hire club. That was a bloody awful game. IIRC, that didn't have wireframe graphics. What I remember most about it was the approaching mountains. When mountains get bigger as you approach, you expect the gap between them to get wider as well. Oh, no. Not in Super Huey's world it didn't. The gap got smaller!

[Mclaneinc]

A small benefit of being around the pirate scene, all that stuff had been neutered.

 

Thankfully, I only saw it in action on the speccy, none of my C64 original tapes had it on..

[machf]

Browsing through old stuff, I just found this sheet of paper I ripped off one of my school notebooks... I think either Magilla had handed me over his printed list and asked me to give it back to him, or I gave it to my cousin-in-law, so I copied the titles by hand to keep a copy for myself. Near the end of the list is Gunship...

The reverse of the sheet has a list of what I had stored on some cassette tapes on the Atari 800XL, that's why it was sitting folded inside the cassette storage case.

 

 

[Jetboot Jack]

On 6/12/2022 at 9:34 PM, machf said:

Browsing through old stuff, I just found this sheet of paper I ripped off one of my school notebooks... I think either Magilla had handed me over his printed list and asked me to give it back to him, or I gave it to my cousin-in-law, so I copied the titles by hand to keep a copy for myself. Near the end of the list is Gunship...

The reverse of the sheet has a list of what I had stored on some cassette tapes on the Atari 800XL, that's why it was sitting folded inside the cassette storage case.

 

 

Still never existed ?

 

sTeVE

[bandit]

Just remember, the reason we do not have that and many other games , is Thanks to Trip Hawkins.

 

 

[Mclaneinc]

48 minutes ago, bandit said:

Just remember, the reason we do not have that and many other games , is Thanks to Trip Hawkins.

 

 

What did 3DO man do?

[darwinmac]

19 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

What did 3DO man do?

As I recall, when Trip Hawkins was heard of EA, he claimed rampant piracy was why EA didn’t produce more games for the Atari. I know he said that about the ST. I wasn’t aware the quote applied to the 8-bit as well. 
 

Bob C

[youxia]

It was easier to blame pirates than openly say that the market is shrinking for these platforms and they can't be bothered, because big money is elsewhere.