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jetpac port for a8


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Just watched the vid. As a direct port so far, it's pretty good, although it does appear to be a little slow compared to the Spectrum version. I like the act that even the flicker, that is present in the Spectrum original, is also there. ;)

 

I look forward to seeing the updated versions.

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A Jetpac port is a cool idea.

 

It was a very popular game, and even ran on the 16K Spectrum. It was far too easy, though, and a couple of difficulty tweaks might help. If it had been sold as an A8 cartridge back in the 80s, I'm sure it would have done very well.

 

The sequel, Lunar Jetman, was a much more interesting game.

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The early Ultimate games were some of my favourites on the Spectrum, in fact Cookie was the first computer game I ever bought.

 

I believe a 'port' of Jetpac was attempted on the A8 before, but it doesn't do the game any justice.

 

It can be found here

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I believe a 'port' of Jetpac was attempted on the A8 before, but it doesn't do the game any justice.

 

It can be found here

Yes, that was a bit of a mess.

 

Ultimate games, in general, were among the most played games on my Spectrum. My sisters loved Atic Atac, and Sabre Wulf and Underwurlde were very popular with the D&D crowd.

 

The Spectrum had some very good games that never made it to the A8.

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The Spectrum had some very good games that never made it to the A8.

 

That was one of the biggest shames about the games in the 80's. The fact that most (not all) A8 games come from the US, whilst most Spectrum games were home grown here (in them UK), meant that some ports that should have happened, never did.

It would be cool to see some other Spectrum titles ported over (properly, unlike the Jet Set Willy farce).

 

I always thought it a shame that we never got Manic Miner or Lords of Midnight.

 

As a quick aside, I am currently working of a port of the Spectrum game The Tripods. If this goes well, I may look at porting others.

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As a quick aside, I am currently working of a port of the Spectrum game The Tripods. If this goes well, I may look at porting others.

Hej Pengwin,

 

Good luck with your project. Using Quick, Turbo BASIC XL?

 

I've started to code the project using Quick. I did look at doing it in Kyan Pascal or Turbo Basic XL, but they are too slow for the landscaping methods to draw the screens. I also need to free up as much memory as possible to have a map of 4096 locations, and as Quick's runtime is fairly small (as opposed to Kyan's) this should allow me to do this.

 

Fortunately, being a port, I am ripping the graphics directly from the Spectrum version, but I do intend to enhance the game a little by adding a little more intelligence to the Tripods, as well as increasing their number, and doing the same with the Black Guards. I also would like to add shops inn more appropriate places and give the player a little more freedom as to what they can do.

 

I'll just have to see if I can fit it all into 64K!!! If anyone is interested in this project, I have set up a sub-site in the Krazy Pengwin web site, the link to it is http://www.krazypengwin.co.uk/thetripodsproject/

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...Lords of Midnight.

I spent hours on that game, and also on the sequel, "Doomdark's Revenge".

 

There was a lot of UK coding talent around in the 80s.

 

I feel that the 80's talent for coding was some of the best because there were no 'rules' nor restrictions. If someone wanted to write a game, they could...often in the comfort of their own home. And a lot of the games went off in completely radical directions (Pimania springs to mind here). Also there were new things to produce, again I mention Lords of Midnight for the amazing technical feat that hadn't been accomplished before.

 

This is one of the reasons why I like retro computers so much, even now, the games remind us of the inginuity of programmers back then.

 

Writing games professionally now seems to be something akin to producing a film, with a credit list almost as long. 20 years ago, the credit list would be one, two, or very occasionally, three names long. Hell, even I've fallen into the 'overkill trap' by producing a complete website about a game that's only just begun production :roll:

Edited by Pengwin
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It would be cool to see some other Spectrum titles ported over (properly, unlike the Jet Set Willy farce).

... I may look at porting others.

How's about "Ant Attack"?

http://sandywhite.co.uk/fun/ants/

 

Regards,

Mark

 

Now there's a challenge. ;)

 

Well, while we're at it, I might as well mention one of my favourite Spectrum games: "Dynamite Dan II: Dr Blitzen and the Islands of Arcanum" by Mirrorsoft.

 

That's one I'd love to see on the A8. I suspect that it would be tricky to do well, though.

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Writing games professionally now seems to be something akin to producing a film, with a credit list almost as long. 20 years ago, the credit list would be one, two, or very occasionally, three names long. Hell, even I've fallen into the 'overkill trap' by producing a complete website about a game that's only just begun production :roll:

Pengwin, the cards are on table ;) Good luck!

 

http://atari.online.pl/v01/index.phtml?sub...&ct=nowinki

Edited by Gury
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Well, while we're at it, I might as well mention one of my favourite Spectrum games: "Dynamite Dan II: Dr Blitzen and the Islands of Arcanum" by Mirrorsoft.

 

That's one I'd love to see on the A8. I suspect that it would be tricky to do well, though.

 

That's part of the problem, I think. Turning the Spectrum action games to the Atari. OK, so we have player missile graphics, but the speccy had a constant high resolution throughout all of it's games. So in doing the ports, we have to take the colour depth/resolution compromise into consideration.

 

If (and that's only an 'IF') I were to try Ant Attack, I would probably forgo PM graphics and use Graphics mode 0 for most of the gameplay area. I believe Sandy White did the game with UDF's rather than hires graphics, so it should work the same way. Plus, the graphics are relatively small, so the animation should be quite simple.

 

Other games, such as Cookie, I would probably consider mode 9 or 10 for the playfield and 'bad guys', whilst multiple sprites to make the main character and the flour bombs look better. But that's only a quick idea, I've not really looked into it.

 

For The Tripods, I am using Graphics mode 8 exclusively, which seems to work with this style of game.

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I'm nor sure I see why converting games from the speccy requires use of Mode 8, just because the resolutions are near seems a pretty slim reason to go that route. I would sugest that using the A8's features would result in a great game, based upon a speccy one, not a pixel copy...

 

The gameplay was NOT defined by the resolution, just the rather limited visual quality. Not that I would want to deter any homebrewer of course, plough your own path. I've not seen the jetpac demo yet, but the VIC 20 version done at 160X192 was a FANTASTIC version.

 

sTeVE

post-579-1185283398_thumb.png

Edited by Jetboot Jack
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I'm nor sure I see why converting games from the speccy requires use of Mode 8, just because the resolutions are near seems a pretty slim reason to go that route. I would sugest that using the A8's features would result in a great game, based upon a speccy one, not a pixel copy...

 

The gameplay was NOT defined by the resolution, just the rather limited visual quality. Not that I would want to deter any homebrewer of course, plough your own path. I've not seen the jetpac demo yet, but the VIC 20 version done at 160X192 was a FANTASTIC version.

 

sTeVE

 

Please, no roll back.

The Game in "Speccy resolution" is a "last" hope of having colour hires games for the A8.

When the coder changes the game to b/w and with some pm overlays at the platforms and for some objects, the game may look REALLY surprising to soemone's eyes.

Edited by emkay
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I'm nor sure I see why converting games from the speccy requires use of Mode 8, just because the resolutions are near seems a pretty slim reason to go that route. I would sugest that using the A8's features would result in a great game, based upon a speccy one, not a pixel copy...

 

The gameplay was NOT defined by the resolution, just the rather limited visual quality. Not that I would want to deter any homebrewer of course, plough your own path. I've not seen the jetpac demo yet, but the VIC 20 version done at 160X192 was a FANTASTIC version.

 

sTeVE

 

I'm not suggesting all spectrum ports should be mode 8. As I said, I would look at using a multi colour mode for Cookie.

 

The reason why i suggested mode 0 or mode 8 for Ant Attack was that it was primarily a mono game anyway. At least in the main gameplay area. Looking at it again, if I were to attempt this conversion, I would still probably use mode 0 for the main area, although I would use a colour mode for the status area. To get the same kind of view in the play area, I'm not sure how it could be achieved without a high res mode.

 

The reason for mode 8 in The Tripods is just that I started playing with the idea in mode 8 and haven't really thought about doing it in any other mode.

 

I do admit though, the Vic-20 version does look good.

Edited by Pengwin
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emaky - what do you mean - some largely mono stuff with spot color like that image of Dizzy you posted a while ago!!?! I cannto see the beauty in these images truth be told, they leave so much of the A8's power untapped...

 

Pengwin - surely the reason ant attack is mono is because the game is isometric and the attribute layout on the speccy screen is orthogonal, not becuase Sandy wanted to make a mono game!?!? Just look at Realm of Impossibility (Zombies) or other iso games on the A8 like Bluemax to see how the 160 wide mode would look ideal for iso games!

 

I liked the CPC screenshots of Tripods BTW...

 

sTeVE

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