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What is wrong with The Extirpator


Marius

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18 minutes ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Time to change that, e.g. give the Extirpator a proper + fully working collision detection, including the walls.

Or maybe replace "START to begin" with "START to win" to make the game even more fun.

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3 hours ago, Larry said:

Was this ever hacked to a disk file or disk boot?  I see that Atarimania just has the tape version.

 

 

Available as COM/XEX at dozens of places...

- Fandal

- Homesoft

- atarionline.pl

- pigwa

...

 

Would be nice to get a patched version of the Extirpator, where the collision detection fully works (including the walls), the ship is smaller and faster and the shots are faster, so we can play it like a real shoot-em-up.

 

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On 5/17/2021 at 1:14 AM, CharlieChaplin said:

 

Well,

 

believe it or not, the "issue" with the wall was done intentionally!  Quoting the author G. Rimmer from the above mentioned youtube page:

 

"Hi, I was the author of this game. Lots of people have said about the poor collision detection. This was programed into the game for the wall. The detection for the wall was randomly accepted as a hit or not a hit so destruction was not certain. This was to make the game harder."

 

Pure evil I would say. And errrmm, I also read the sentence "this was done to make the game harder" in several other A8 programs - most of them do also contain some unfair elements/enemies/whatever.  Time to change that, e.g. give the Extirpator a proper + fully working collision detection, including the walls.

 

 

Hey thank you so much for this. I personally dislike this kind of jokes in games. I remember one of the positive critics of Yoomp was that when you miss, it is never the game to blame, but simply yourself. I think when you aim right and you fire at the right time, it should simply be a hit.  I agree: we need a fully working game. I actually like the game. I also would appreciate a setting where you can play the game and the tune plays.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/16/2021 at 6:26 AM, Yautja said:

Has anybody been have to reproduce this trick using emulators? I gave it a shot with Altirra, without results.

Gary Rimmer, the author of the game, commented in this video: "I wish Firebird had done that (keep the music playing) on the original. It ads a lot to the game. I don't know how to do it, but from other posts I've seen it could be done".

 

 

You can do it on Altirra but only by using the CAS image. Let the demo sequence play once (press F1 to skip the whole waiting) and then press RESET.

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-extirpator-_1913.html

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  • 1 year later...

Well considering the way SID and POKEY make sound in a completely mutually exclusive way I think Rob Hubbard's wife did a great job converting Thalamusik to POKEY (the name of the tape loading music for C64 Sanxion). Rob Hubbard didn't write any AY or POKEY tunes, his wife did all the conversions he said in an interview.

 

I think it's pretty good for budget price of a couple of bucks back then, played a LOT worse full price games and with much more crap music too. Couldn't find a real copy to buy on tape sadly.

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9 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

Well considering the way SID and POKEY make sound in a completely mutually exclusive way I think Rob Hubbard's wife did a great job converting Thalamusik to POKEY (the name of the tape loading music for C64 Sanxion). Rob Hubbard didn't write any AY or POKEY tunes, his wife did all the conversions he said in an interview.

 

I think it's pretty good for budget price of a couple of bucks back then, played a LOT worse full price games and with much more crap music too. Couldn't find a real copy to buy on tape sadly.

High Pass Filter wasn't "properly" used (i.e. demo:GENE by lamers, bomb jack etc) so  the result was never going to match that of SID's. Btw I find Sanxion loader to  be really noisy and muffled on the C64. The extirpator was an excellent  if not the best playable tech demo for the system.

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I know we talking gameplay here but I wonder what it would look like if some levels used the same parallax bottom of screen technique but with the lines in hi res like those C64 games that mix hires parallax.  See the ones @10:34 in the video above.

 

Also would like to see the screen "remixed" so the bottom part of the top user interface with the colourful flashing panel lines are instead at the bottom of the screen , the score panel still at top, this might remove the "restriction" feeling of not being able to move up higher on the screen but framing the whole screen vertically.

Edited by TracMan
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While the game is nice, it appears it can be improved on a number of things, maybe there will be fixes, and toggles to allow for such things to be turned on or off, new proper filter music that could cycle between old and new giving a depth and change that could be pleasing to experience. A couple of graphic or video tweaks

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On 3/28/2023 at 1:39 AM, oky2000 said:

Well considering the way SID and POKEY make sound in a completely mutually exclusive way I think Rob Hubbard's wife did a great job converting Thalamusik to POKEY (the name of the tape loading music for C64 Sanxion). Rob Hubbard didn't write any AY or POKEY tunes, his wife did all the conversions he said in an interview.

 

I think it's pretty good for budget price of a couple of bucks back then, played a LOT worse full price games and with much more crap music too. Couldn't find a real copy to buy on tape sadly.

Can you please link the interview where he mentions this?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/1/2023 at 8:22 PM, pseudografx said:

Can you please link the interview where he mentions this?

I don't have a specific magazine article to link, it's common knowledge though in the scene. He may mention it in a podcast at some point but again I can't point you to a specific youtube interview as I haven't seen that. The story is he wrote the notations, passed them to his wife, who adapted them to various other machines. I have no idea what his wife's coding background was either, sorry.

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On 4/1/2023 at 8:22 PM, pseudografx said:

Can you please link the interview where he mentions this?

I was watching this interview from 2003 with Rob, it's not 100% clear if he did anything directly on the Atari computers or whether his girlfriend, who became his wife, did all of the conversions including the A8.

 

 

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