Is it possible make "Space Ace" on little Atari?

[Synthpopalooza]

I think it could be done.

 

I was also thinking about an experiment, to use Super IRG 2 in Antic 5 (12 rows). The screen could easily handle three character sets, and a screen flip could handle the PF2-PF3 conflicts (I.E. inverse character maps). If you can send me some pics, I can convert them for you, now that I have a system worked out. The technincal explanation of how this display is generated is in this thread here ... for those who are technincal minded. The pics will have to be in narrow (32 byte) mode. One interesting effect, is that due to screen flipping, the color resolution would actually be increased to 25 colors (as opposed to 23), since you can now mix PF2's with PF3's (inverse with non-inverse).

 

Each screen would take up about 6k of ram (three interlaced character sets) plus 768 bytes for the screen characters (two Antic 5 screens). You might also need to change the color registers with each screen.

 

The key is, resize each pic to 256 x 96 pixels (as I will be doing these in narrow mode) before putting them into G2F.

Edited October 8, 2011 by Synthpopalooza

[José Pereira]

Sorry, but why I can't run this into Atari800WinPlus Emulator.

 

Basic disabled to load/Run the 'atr', o.k. but then it crashes and ask for the Monitor

-> If I use LOAD "D:SPACEARE.TUR" it loads and I can see the listing but when I 'RUN' it crashes

OR

-> If I 'RUN "D:SPACEACE.TUR" it crashes.

 

Why?

[emkay]

 

Sorry, but why I can't run this into Atari800WinPlus Emulator.

 

 

Basic disabled to load/Run the 'atr', o.k. but then it crashes and ask for the Monitor

 

-> If I use LOAD "D:SPACEARE.TUR" it loads and I can see the listing but when I 'RUN' it crashes

 

OR

 

-> If I 'RUN "D:SPACEACE.TUR" it crashes.

 

 

Why?

 

 

 

Because Turbobasic is missing

 

[Synthpopalooza]

sorry about that ... boot with turbobasic then switch disks, should fix it

[Synthpopalooza]

Ok, I got something

 

Keep in mind this screenshot is only single screen so there are some PF2-PF3 conflicts all over the place, but I think it's a start. I need to fix it for 2 screens so that all the colors show up properly. I may tweak the color register settings too.

 

I'll have an ATR ready tomorrow I think This is from that Atari ST pic you had earlier, in Super IRG 2 using Antic 5. 128x96 resolution.

 

 

EDIT:

 

A further fix of the PF2-PF3 priorities:

 

 

Looks a bit less choppy I think. Still need to do double screens tho.

Edited October 9, 2011 by Synthpopalooza

[Synthpopalooza]

Ok, finally got an ATR and a stable screenshot:

 

 

The PF2-PF3 conflicts are gone, and the colors have been brightened. The VBI routine now does 3 character set flips, flips of 4 color registers, and a display list screen flip which allows blending of PF2-PF3 without conflicts, and increases the color resolution to 25.

 

The whole game should be doable in this mode, with each frame taking up 6k for the fonts and 768 bytes for the screen.

 

Memory locations to remember in this routine:

 

1042: COLPF0a (708a)

1043: COLPF0b (708b)

1044: COLPF1a (709a)

1045: COLPF1b (709b)

1046: COLPF2a (710a)

1047: COLPF2b (710b)

1048: COLPF3a (711a)

1049: COLPF3b (711b)

 

Background is still register 712.

 

Ok, those of you really advanced programmers maybe can use PMG overlays or DLI color changes to enhance this. Limitation on DLI color changes is, they can only be done once every 4 char lines, which means you get only 2 DLI color changes per register. Not really practical when using Super IRG 2 unless you wanted to do it on the background.

 

Anyway, here's the ATR ... gonna try other screens next. Does anyone have a complete set of artwork and frames from the Atari ST Space Ace?

 

Run "D:TESTST.TUR"

 

spaceacest1.atr

[Synthpopalooza]

I want to try other experiments ...

 

What I need, is to find an Atari or PC program which will take a GIF or JPG file and convert to Graphics 10 ... I wanted to try doing these pics in the PCIN mode (Gr. 12 + gr.10 at about 30-45 colors) to see if they would look any better, Any ideas?

[Synthpopalooza]

At the risk of sounding like Jose here ...

 

Here's a screenshot from the Atari ST Space Ace where Borf has Ace pinned:

 

 

I went into xnview and converted the pic into 64x96 resolution and 8 colors:

 

 

The idea is I want to be able to convert the original file into a Graphics 10 bitmap reduced to 96 scanlines in narrow mode. If I can do this, I'm confident I can write a font converter which will put this picture into a Graphics 13.10 font (that is, Antic 5 with the GTIA set to mode 10).

 

The trick with Graphics 13.10 is, you get all the Gr. 10 colors but they are divided between normal and inverse video. I have a color chart here:

 

 

So, you have 704, 705, 708, 709 usable in either normal or inverse characters.

706 (P2), 710 (PF2) and 712 in normal characters only.

707 (P3) and 711 (PF3) replace 706 and 710 with inverse, 712 unavailable.

 

I believe by flipping this font picture with one generated in normal antic 5 using G2F, and the corresponding color settings for 708-711 I can generate a flipped picture at about 35 colors onscreen, with very little flicker.

 

The key is, a means of generating a Graphics 10 bitmap from a picture file. Are there any utilities which will do this?

[1NG]

What about reusing tiles (by calculating optimized ones) for one picture to reduce memory usage?

Like graphics 7 this would be using 128 tiles for a Screen of 40x12 tiles?

 

Don´t kill me, but I did a first and ugly version:

these are the 120 tiles:

 

And this is the picture:

 

This can be improved. Dithering is simply possible but not implemented. And some things can be done better ...

CTP only.

 

 

(BTW: It takes about a minute on my 2600k at 4,2 Ghz with Parallel.Foreach of .net 4 in use to calculate the tiles. This can take a while for films ...)

[Synthpopalooza]

Not bad.

 

The trick will be figuring out the base colors (708-711), and watching out for PF2-PF3 conflicts (where you try to mix PF2 with PF3) ...that's the trouble I came up with when trying to do my own Super IRG 2 screens, you can't mix PF2 with PF3 unless you do double-screening with two screen maps and a screen flip ... but one font (2k) on each screen would be terrific. The limit would be 4 fonts for use in this mode, as the other 4 VBLANKS are for the color registers. 3 fonts if you use double-screening like in my example.

 

There is one more caveat: Any scene changes in the game must be done at 25 fps or less (30 for NTSC) because the VBLANKs for Super IRG 2 happen at 50 cycles per second (60 for NTSC) ... trying to change frames faster would cause nasty artifacts.

Edited October 21, 2011 by Synthpopalooza

[miker]

Nod bad, indeed.

 

There are some frames captured using Steem (all in BMP format). Feel free to play with them.

SA_frames.zip

[1NG]

There are some frames captured using Steem (all in BMP format). Feel free to play with them.

It is possible to build each frame with 1 tileset, but I thought of this:

- The people (the word characters is misleading here :-) ) have to be of better quality than the rest of the screen. That can be achieved by differencing between pictures and converting the differences between them with higher quality/priority. The rest of the screen would be of lower quality then of course, because it has to share more tiles.

- The given pics are mostly the same so maybe tiles are not the best idea. If the screen is in normal graphics, but is updated with some kind of "software-tiles", this could lead to a better quality with the same bytes per screen.

 

I have never played Space-Ace, so I don´t know the game. I think it is like dragons lair the laserdisk game, right? I have seen that once, but didn´t played it.

Is there an "action tree" of the game available and all the pics?

Edited October 21, 2011 by 1NG

[1NG]

I have postet first real results on http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/188370-doing-pictures-using-super-irg-2-and-other-ice-modes/page__st__25__gopid__2393823?do=findComment&comment=2393823

Much work to do ...

[Synthpopalooza]

I have been working on some new Space Ace pictures, here:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/188370-doing-pictures-using-super-irg-2-and-other-ice-modes/page__st__50#entry2514122

 

The picture I did is in the Super PCIN mode ... Graphics 12 + Graphics 10, which gives 34 colors roughly at 160 pixel resolution. There are no color changes, so the flicker is a lot less.

 

These pictures look good but there are limitations ... currently I can only display 20 lines of character, uncompressed, in narrow (32 wide) mode. There are ways around this.

 

1. Use Antic 5 resolution. This will halve the resolution, and the Graphics 10 colors are paletted differently when using Antic 5

2. Throw away register 712, or use 704 as a color register and have a flickering border, this buyus 4 more lines

3. Come up with a way of optimising the tileset to buy more real estate. maybe a job for 1NG's Graphics Tilemaster?

 

My idea is, do the game on a 130XE and use bankswitching in the extra memory to do the animations ... using compressed tiles it would be about 2K for each frame, less if you take into account each frame will have mostly similar characters. Super PCIN would work well, because there is less flicker, you can dither color pairs across modes with registers 708-711 (i.e. use a checkerboard pattern).

[Stormtrooper of Death]

IF you need a decrunche/cruncher , i might make one. I did it long ago. A simple zero byte eraser, or a multi packer. Loading data in memory banks, while playing video. Dont know if the 1,79 mhz is fast enough. Otherwise my best bet is:

 

huge storage space, like MyIde or so, or some flash storage. Using straight video conversions, and a simple turbo-basic program to control the joystick keyboard input. Might look dull or so, but its very fast to create.

 

IF you want to have all nice colors and so, then this project will take too long. And before its finished, people might stop working on it.

 

Its good that new ideas still come to our beloved Atari 8bit!

 

Domo Agregatto.

[emkay]

Now that the Rastaconverter works that good....

It seems only an interface that is fast enough to put all data through, is missing....

 

 

output.xex

 

[1NG]

Now that the Rastaconverter works that good....

It seems only an interface that is fast enough to put all data through, is missing....

xex size is 22KB. -> 1MB is 44 pics only.

How much pics/second are needed in Space Ace?

The RastaConverter pics are great of course, but they can not be loaded fast enough.

 

IMHO loading speed is about 40KB per second. This leads to 4 KB per picture for a framerate of 10 pictures/second

And the cpu is used nearly 100% while displaying the actual picture so there is not much power left to unzip the next picture in time.

 

I think it needs a different mode with even then lots of tricks to get it running on 8 Bit Atari. There is some research to be done ...

Saving only differences between pictures will save memory as well as crunching. The format of RastaConverter does not take that in account by now. The RP RasterProgram is very different between two (similar) pictures because of the random and independend calculation. Maybe some day it evolves to a RastaMovieConverter ...

 

It is very good for the title screen though. And it brings a lot of new thoughts ... Good!

[emkay]

I see no problem with the speed itself. As we have things like Cartridges.... particular those with RAM extensions, it is possible to fill the RAM from outside.... which results in an interface with "effective" megabytes per second of transferspeeds.

[1NG]

I see no problem with the speed itself. As we have things like Cartridges.... particular those with RAM extensions, it is possible to fill the RAM from outside.... which results in an interface with "effective" megabytes per second of transferspeeds.

That is interesting: How big are they and how fast is "filling from outside"?

megabytes per second of transferspeeds.

I thought that is impossible on our 6502 even from ram to ram, because it would mean less than 2 cpu cycles per byte for load and store and update the addresses. How does it work?

 

Wait: Bank switching is that fast! So if a memory has enough 16 k pages to blend in normal memory and every picture has 16 kb that will work perfectly even with RastaConverter!

I don´t know any memory extension greater that 2M but if we convert a movie with 24 frames/s and 600 seconds time it leads to only 14400 pages of 16k wich is below 256MB memory.

Is there anything like that available?

 

(-> The community has to do the conversion of 14400 pics together with RastaConverter - We can do that!

But I would like a project like that where a complete movie is converted with a lot of cpu power in more time than it takes to calculate a blue ray just to get a movie running in 160x200 (or 160x152 for 21:10 ratio) I would spend my whole free time in that! - The result would have been possible in the 80s - wow! That is that kind of spare time project I like best )

Edited May 7, 2012 by 1NG

[devwebcl]

There is Dragon's Lair Gameboy Color version . Maybe it is more feasible to port these pictures.

[Synthpopalooza]

I don't know if this helps, but 24 frames per second isn't necessarily a requirement ... the Atari ST version manages to do it with less, I think, according to the gameplay I can see. It would also save on the memory required ... the Atari ST version is on about 4 or 5 floppies as I recall, and pictures are loaded from disk into RAM as needed.

 

I don't know alot about RastaConverter, but the pictures look really terrific. Is each picture about 16k in size? Maybe there is a way to compress these, and uncompress them on the fly? Or use a lower resolution like Graphics 7? Or use Antic 4/5 character mode with character optimization to reduce the size even further ... can scanline changes be done in this mode using RastaConverter? You get PF3 to play around with too using this mode. Another idea may be to use the RastaConverter pictures in narrow mode which saves on CPU time and picture size as well.

 

Using characterflip modes like PCIN, CIN, or Super IRG 2 would make each frame about 12k (if you use narrow mode ... 10k if you use only 20 lines of display), though that can be cut down by using optimization routines for the character sets (eliminate redundant characters) ... and with 1NG's GraphicsTileMaster I think it could be reduced to about 1 or 2K per frame. And this could be cut down further if Antic 5 resolution is used. I really think PCIN would be the best, to reduce the flicker, in this case, even though the color resolution is less than CIN (34 vs 80). The Atari ST pics only use 16 colors anyway. Plus, solid whites in PCIN look 100% better than in CIN mode.

 

I think one thing that would be needed is an action tree for the game. And of course a complete set of pictures.

 

If PCIN mode is used for this, I can convert whatever pictures are needed in my free time, may take awhile tho.

Edited May 7, 2012 by Synthpopalooza

[Chilly Willy]

Another thought is storage devices like the SIO2SD or SDRIVE. They can handle much higher transfer rates than floppies (without something like Happy), and can store a whole lot more as well - theoretically, you could devote an entire SD card to the game.

[1NG]

Another thought is storage devices like the SIO2SD or SDRIVE. They can handle much higher transfer rates than floppies (without something like Happy), and can store a whole lot more as well - theoretically, you could devote an entire SD card to the game.

IMHO highspeed sio is <20klb/s, Ide up to 80kb/s in a special mode. Original floppy speed is extreme slow: How long does it take to load a normal 40kb game or to copy a 170kb disk? Not 1 or 4 seconds which would be 40kb/s.

Size of ATR is limited to 16mb, but that should be enough.

 

We need the complete set of pictures to plan how much kb each picture can have. After that the best graphics that meet the specs can be done in an appropriate way.

Can somebody provide us a full set of pictures?

Edited May 8, 2012 by 1NG

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Size of ATR is limited to 16mb, but that should be enough.

 

For convenience and compatibility, yes, but you can have 8 of them available simultaneously.

[Synthpopalooza]

I think I have the ST disk images for Space Ace laying around ... may be possible to either get ST format pictures off of them or do screenshots. I think the ST does 12 fps which would be enough for the 8-bit.