A8 Cartoon Wars

[Goochman]

So,

 

I got an iPhone a few months back and have been collecting 'free' games to pass time at airports. I finally found a game worth paying $0.99 for - Cartoon Wars.

 

Its a pretty fun game (think Populous but only on a horizontal plane (ie, no land just build army and fight).

 

Its pretty simple and the graphics are nothing to write home about - It got me wondering if something like this would be possible on our old 8bit?

 

I think the biggest limitation would be the ability to handle so many enemies at one time - but otherwise should be simple enough for the 8bit to handle (thinking of alot of Lode Runner type men running back and forth).

[Jetboot Jack]

Cartoon Wars.

 

I think the A8 could do a good Tower defense game (of which Cartoon Wars is a variation), I have played ones better than it however, including field runners...

 

Another modern game that could ROCK on the A8 (also on iPhone) is Canabalt - http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

 

sTeVE

[Avram]

How about Dinorun- could that work as an A8 game?

[Jetboot Jack]

I think Canabalt would be easier than Dinorun - there are some HUGE sprites in Dinorun, Canabalt is pretty minimalist as far as I have played it...

 

sTeVE

[PeteD]

I've already had a look at Canabalt after you mentioned it previously and am kind of itching to do a C64/A8 and maybe other platforms version of it...

 

Cartoon wars looks fairly hefty to be done on A8 in terms of number of objects and colours but of course it doesn't have to be an exact copy.

 

Dinorun looks as doable as Canabalt. The big dinosaur sprites don't move around much so could probably be done as a bunch of pre-shifted/animated chars.

 

I think Steve pointed out some other ones in another thread that would make great 8bit games.

 

 

Pete

Edited October 12, 2009 by PeteD

[andym00]

I think Canabalt would be easier than Dinorun - there are some HUGE sprites in Dinorun, Canabalt is pretty minimalist as far as I have played it...

 

sTeVE

 

 

I hadn't seen Dino Run before, but I like The music is ace..

Dinorun looks 'pretty' easy to do though.. Unless I'm missing something, the Dinos you encounter on the run itself are pretty tiddly actually.. Even the parallax as a no-brainer (you'd be only masking together a few characters each time it intersects the foreground), and sprite-wise the A8 would be in it's element.. Not many colours, big patches of the same colour, lots of little widdy, not very colourful sprites..

 

A nice software sprite system that just masks in edges and solid fills the 'body' with characters fixed in the charset would be pretty doable I think.. In fact, I was thinking about just this after seeing that Zoku game on the Lynx, with the big flying toaster, and had been trying to find a suitable game for inspiration that features large cartoon like character with large expanses of the same colour inside, meaning only the outside edge needs to be properly masked and everything else just stores characters that are already in the character set..

 

Like the boulders flying around in DinoRun, just a sprite-like routine for the edges with the main bodies being filled chars.. When you look at a standard sprites eating 9 chars of full on lda;and;ora;sta action, you'd be able to move some chuffing big sprites in that particular style of graphics.. Hell, most of the time the edges wouldn't even need masking anyway..

 

The only bit that makes me really stop and think "Ummmmmm" is how to do something like the pyroclastic flow when it starts to appear on the screen

 

[Irgendwer]

I think Canabalt would be easier than Dinorun - there are some HUGE sprites in Dinorun, Canabalt is pretty minimalist as far as I have played it...

 

sTeVE

 

Seems, that somebody is working on it:

 

Great!

[Tezz]

Seems, that somebody is working on it:

Great!

That looks quite well in progress. Does anyone know who author is? The YouTube account lists the user in Germany.

[emkay]

Seems, that somebody is working on it:

Great!

That looks quite well in progress. Does anyone know who author is? The YouTube account lists the user in Germany.

 

 

 

Gratz to the producer of this. He has the right taste in POKEY music

[Crazyace]

I think Canabalt would be easier than Dinorun - there are some HUGE sprites in Dinorun, Canabalt is pretty minimalist as far as I have played it...

 

sTeVE

 

Seems, that somebody is working on it:

 

Great!

 

That's a really nice looking version - I love the way the runnig animation has come out ( and the parralax of course )

[miker]

Great one! I hope it turns someday into real thing. Keep up the work!

 

 

[Heaven/TQA]

impressive I have to admit because of the vertical movement, too...

[Bunsen]

Seems, that somebody is working on it:

Great!

That looks quite well in progress. Does anyone know who author is? The YouTube account lists the user in Germany.

 

Yes, right. He is german and I think he don't speaks english very well. I don't think that he is reading this forum regularly.

 

I've seen this demo on real hardware and it looks even better then the emulator movie shown on youtube (no jerking).

 

The author is specialist for building cartridges with some really nice menu software. Perhaps somebody knows him under his nickname KOMA?

[Tezz]

Yes, right. He is german and I think he don't speaks english very well. I don't think that he is reading this forum regularly.

 

I've seen this demo on real hardware and it looks even better then the emulator movie shown on youtube (no jerking).

Thanks, Bunsen, I've not heard of Koma being mentioned before in the scene. The game looks to be going well, I hope he is able to complete it.

[Heaven/TQA]

me either never heard of Koma... even being in Abbuc...

[BigBen]

Hi,

 

last year I create a cartridge only for the ABBUC members, sorry it´s in german language.

The cartridge software was written by Koma. The cart runs only on a Pal Atari.

 

BigBen

[Tezz]

Hi,

 

last year I create a cartridge only for the ABBUC members, sorry it´s in german language. The cartridge software was written by Koma. The cart runs only on a Pal Atari.

 

BigBen

That looks very good and a nice menu too

[emkay]

Hi,

 

last year I create a cartridge only for the ABBUC members, sorry it´s in german language. The cartridge software was written by Koma. The cart runs only on a Pal Atari.

 

BigBen

That looks very good and a nice menu too

 

 

Yeah.... let him add just some small enemies and some joystick control to have a game "under" the menue screen

[BigBen]

More about Koma:

The cartridge software from the Atari Megacart and the Ultimate Utility cartridge was made by Koma.

Ultimate Utility - he put 175 tools into one cart, look at the list, that´s unbelievable.

A small description inclusive of the prototype, can be found on my webpage. - use the google translate button.

 

The Megacart was my creation....

 

BigBen

Edited September 21, 2010 by BigBen

[BigBen]

The Megacart was my creation....

 

Sorry, it was "Megabyte Modul #1"

[+Stephen]

Amazing! Are these still available? If not, can they?

[BigBen]

Unfortunately, all cartridges are sold out and, for the time being, are not produced again, sorry.

 

BigBen

[miker]

I wonder how's the game.

[xxl]

KOMA ? his name is Aleksander ?

[Irgendwer]

KOMA ? his name is Aleksander ?

Yes.