Armalyte by Thalamus for the Atari ST...missed opportunity.

[macgoo]

I was playing a trained version of Armalyte from Thalamus on the ST today and in many ways I was quite surprised to be honest. Now those who came from a C64 before or had friends with C64s will know this over-hyped game from that format (it's too hard to be truly playable so just A/V goodness only).

 

OK first things first the game would be really too tough if it wasn't for the trainer but I expected that. What I did not expect though was such nicely drawn graphics AND amazingly the 8 way scrolling (you can nudge the screen up and down vertically while it scrolls horizontally like R-Type...so a bit like Konami's Vulcan Venture). The scrolling is super smooth here, we are talking good enough to not know if you're watching someone play the Amiga version actually.

 

OK I was playing it in STEem so maybe it is STE enhanced? But judging by the god awful crackly sample pretending to be music at the start I doubt it is STE enhanced in the game engine.

 

So the missed opportunity? For god sake why oh why didn't Arc Developments rip-off Konami's iconic shooters Nemesis/Salamander/Vulcan Venture!? Why didn't Imagine give them a call to do their licensed game Salamander on the ST, they did Slap Fight on the ST after all. Their code in that game engine is probably man enough for the job. I bow down to these guys for their technical coding skills. If only I knew people this damn good at coding the ST, I could hand them my finished graphics for Salamander

 

Anyone else played this game?

[Charlie_]

I was playing a trained version of Armalyte from Thalamus on the ST today and in many ways I was quite surprised to be honest. Now those who came from a C64 before or had friends with C64s will know this over-hyped game from that format (it's too hard to be truly playable so just A/V goodness only).

 

OK first things first the game would be really too tough if it wasn't for the trainer but I expected that. What I did not expect though was such nicely drawn graphics AND amazingly the 8 way scrolling (you can nudge the screen up and down vertically while it scrolls horizontally like R-Type...so a bit like Konami's Vulcan Venture). The scrolling is super smooth here, we are talking good enough to not know if you're watching someone play the Amiga version actually.

 

OK I was playing it in STEem so maybe it is STE enhanced? But judging by the god awful crackly sample pretending to be music at the start I doubt it is STE enhanced in the game engine.

 

So the missed opportunity? For god sake why oh why didn't Arc Developments rip-off Konami's iconic shooters Nemesis/Salamander/Vulcan Venture!? Why didn't Imagine give them a call to do their licensed game Salamander on the ST, they did Slap Fight on the ST after all. Their code in that game engine is probably man enough for the job. I bow down to these guys for their technical coding skills. If only I knew people this damn good at coding the ST, I could hand them my finished graphics for Salamander

 

Anyone else played this game?

 

Yes, I've played this game a bit. It is really good as you say, but it is too damn hard!

 

The game can be found, patched for harddisk by DBUG, here:

http://dbug.kicks-ass.net/patch.php

Edited July 3, 2012 by Official Ninja

[Rybags]

The problem with the STe is it came too late - relatively very few games took advantage of the extra capabilities.

 

Given the 1040 ST/FM probably accounted for 60% or more of total STs ever made, it became the lowest common denominator.

 

It was bad enough in the early days... having to put up with single-sided 360K releases that were made for 512K machines, so I guess at least we can be thankful that later on at least some software was aimed at 1 Meg machines.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

We could list couple hunderts of such cases - games made after STE release, but not using it's capabilities. I guess that one of the reasons was pure lazyness of coders (or nicer said - they were not paid enough ). But main reason was for sure decreasing sales of machines and SW. I remember that in 1991 was very hard to buy some newer Atari ST SW in Munich. Shops were full with Amiga stuff, and ST SW choice was poor. And ST was best sold machine in Germany just couple years ago. Things can change fast, and slow ones lose.

[+Stephen]

Not much different than what happened with the 8-bit line. Shit ports coded for 48k machines, when 128k machines were out there. Why release new hardware if you are not going to support it?

[macgoo]

We could list couple hunderts of such cases - games made after STE release, but not using it's capabilities. I guess that one of the reasons was pure lazyness of coders (or nicer said - they were not paid enough ). But main reason was for sure decreasing sales of machines and SW. I remember that in 1991 was very hard to buy some newer Atari ST SW in Munich. Shops were full with Amiga stuff, and ST SW choice was poor. And ST was best sold machine in Germany just couple years ago. Things can change fast, and slow ones lose.

 

No the simple fact was the UK software companies were greedy bastards If what you say is true then the Amiga would not have been affected, and yet there are probably only 20 games on the Amiga from 1985 to 1994 that use anything close to all the features of the custom hardware out of some 15-20 thousand games released. A game that uses ALL of the original chipset features probably doesn't even exist because at the time the companies had the pressure of time and today nobody with any real genius coding skills is making homebrew Amiga games. Had the UK software houses vetted the coders rather than just milking the public with shit games on both formats they would have designed the Amiga game first (from 1988 onwards the Amiga outsold the ST) and then used the digital sound and blitter routines on the STE enhanced port and finally done a separate version in 68k with software scrolling/sprites and YM sound only etc is an isolated project.

 

Anyway, on a happier note, I just had a go on R-Type 2 and was suitably impressed indeed, anyone who has played NOT super at all R-Type on the SNES (basically a rubbish slow CPU of 8/16bit making it suitable only for boring Mario and Zelda game engines zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) the ST with no custom chipset to help manages no less slow down than the SNES. This is quite an achievement and actually shows that had Atari released an ST console for £199 with only 64kb RAM and cartridge port in 1985 it could have worked if you look at Arc Developments and the TCB coders of Enchanted Lands coding quality.

 

I will have a go on Forgotten Worlds later, this is a couple of years before these two games however so will be interesting to see if they were coding geniuses from the start or they honed their awesome soft scroll/sprites over time.

 

If anyone would like to see full playthrough of either Armalyte or R-Type 2 uploaded to Youtube let me know.

[macgoo]

Not much different than what happened with the 8-bit line. Shit ports coded for 48k machines, when 128k machines were out there. Why release new hardware if you are not going to support it?

 

Memory doesn't magically make games technically better, the 8bit line had very severe compromises with player missiles and number of uniquely placable colours anywhere on screen and this took a lot of ingenious coding to get around. Probably as much effort as coding Shadow of the Beast was on Amiga to make good Atari 8bit games. Just look at the difference between Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 only games (bugger all because that pile of crap had to drop to 1mhz speed in 40 column mode on the 128 and even if you used it in 80 column mode the VDC video chip had no sprites or hardware scrolling either).

 

However due to how popular the Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and C64 was there really was no point for Jack Tramiel to spend billions fixing the faults of Pokey and GTIA/Antic setup to bring it out of the 70s because software houses wouldn't jump on that band wagon a second time. The Amstrad CPC+ and GX4000 as well as the MSX 2 machines prove upping things to close to the Amiga in still screenshots is a waste of time for an 8bit CPU unless you are NEC (who made an 8bit 6502 console the size of a CD case that in many ways pissed all over the Amiga 500!). Had Atari brought the 8bits up to C64 levels of flexibility in the XL range they may have staved off the wane in interest of the 8bit line but they didn't and it was a lost war to the C64+Spectrum and C64+Apple 2 (another shit machine that deserves door stop duty IMO) depending which side of the Atlantic you were on

[+rdemming]

Anyway, on a happier note, I just had a go on R-Type 2 and was suitably impressed indeed, anyone who has played NOT super at all R-Type on the SNES (basically a rubbish slow CPU of 8/16bit making it suitable only for boring Mario and Zelda game engines zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) the ST with no custom chipset to help manages no less slow down than the SNES. This is quite an achievement and actually shows that had Atari released an ST console for £199 with only 64kb RAM and cartridge port in 1985 it could have worked if you look at Arc Developments and the TCB coders of Enchanted Lands coding quality.

 

64KB is too little memory for a console based on ST hardware. The screen memory takes already 32KB and since there are no hardware sprites and hardware scrolling you need at least double buffering taking all the memory for the screen alone.

Enchanted Lands used special tricks (sync-scrolling, pre-shifting, more than 2 screen buffers, electron-beam precise sprite drawing so you can draw on the same screen as which is displayed without tearing) to achieve smooth scrolling. And because of the technical difficulties of those tricks it is very hard to use it in a game and therefore Enchanted Lands is a technical masterpiece and a one of a kind. And those tricks need far more memory than the 64KB you want to put in the ST game machine.

And the CPU says not much about the graphics performance of a system. The Intellivision had a 16-bit CPU but the graphics was not much better than a 2600. And the PC engine had a 8-bit CPU and was in the same league as the 16-bit SNES and MegaDrive. It is the graphics chip that makes the difference.

 

Robert

[simonsunnyboy]

Armalyte is pretty good for ST standards, I agree there. Besides Menace and R-Type 2 it belongs in the very small category of really playable ST shooters with horizontal scrolling.

 

(BTW Slayer from Hewson is slick and smooth on ST too!)

[high voltage]

Thalamus was one of the few British companies who managed to shine on C64, but not on other hardware.

 

(I met Thalamus at the Frankfurt book fair 4 years ago, still, it was nice talking about the 'good old days')

Edited July 7, 2012 by high voltage

[macgoo]

Anyway, on a happier note, I just had a go on R-Type 2 and was suitably impressed indeed, anyone who has played NOT super at all R-Type on the SNES (basically a rubbish slow CPU of 8/16bit making it suitable only for boring Mario and Zelda game engines zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) the ST with no custom chipset to help manages no less slow down than the SNES. This is quite an achievement and actually shows that had Atari released an ST console for £199 with only 64kb RAM and cartridge port in 1985 it could have worked if you look at Arc Developments and the TCB coders of Enchanted Lands coding quality.

 

64KB is too little memory for a console based on ST hardware. The screen memory takes already 32KB and since there are no hardware sprites and hardware scrolling you need at least double buffering taking all the memory for the screen alone.

Enchanted Lands used special tricks (sync-scrolling, pre-shifting, more than 2 screen buffers, electron-beam precise sprite drawing so you can draw on the same screen as which is displayed without tearing) to achieve smooth scrolling. And because of the technical difficulties of those tricks it is very hard to use it in a game and therefore Enchanted Lands is a technical masterpiece and a one of a kind. And those tricks need far more memory than the 64KB you want to put in the ST game machine.

And the CPU says not much about the graphics performance of a system. The Intellivision had a 16-bit CPU but the graphics was not much better than a 2600. And the PC engine had a 8-bit CPU and was in the same league as the 16-bit SNES and MegaDrive. It is the graphics chip that makes the difference.

 

Robert

 

Was just a figure plucked out based on the Megadrive having 64kb only (plus video ram too for screen memory which I would assign as seperate) but point taken. I'm sure using a cartridge 128kb is enough given the ROM will act as the extended ram so only live code and possibly double buffing the screen memory for RAM is sufficient but the source graphics/samples/game map layouts can be taken from the ROM via the cartridge port which would probably be mapped into contiguous memory.

 

My point was the SNES is meant to be this all conquering Megadrive beating super machine when the reality is it is only suitable for a select few game engines, certainly the SNES can not do shootem ups OR 2.5D racing games like Outrun, Top Gear II on SNES looks shit compared to Lotus 2 on the ST, hell the Amiga rips the SNES a new one with shmups and 2.5D into the screen racing games.

 

Just because something is 8 or 16bit means bugger all I agree, it IS all about the custom chips, and that is why I thought Arc Developments deserve so much credit because in this unusual situation the ST, when programmed well, can do stuff even a SNES can not do with it's lame 65816 CPU on 8bit bus and Mario/Zelda type games is what it was optimised for, guess nobody at Nintendo plays real racing games like Chase HQ or shootem ups like Gradius/Salamander etc

 

(Street Racer etc plays fine on the SNES sure but Mode 7 racing games look rubbish, it's like pushing toy cars around one of them tablecloths with roads painted on them designed for kids to push their matchbox cars around shooting "brum brum neeeeeeeeee" etc. I'd rather play Chase HQ on a PC-E than Mario Kart bletch!)

[Charlie_]

(BTW Slayer from Hewson is slick and smooth on ST too!)

 

Hi Simon.

 

Found Slayer in the Hangloose archive. Only seems to work with TOS1.x

Anyway, very cool game. Very hard too. Thanks.

[simonsunnyboy]

(BTW Slayer from Hewson is slick and smooth on ST too!)

 

Hi Simon.

 

Found Slayer in the Hangloose archive. Only seems to work with TOS1.x

Anyway, very cool game. Very hard too. Thanks.

 

Seems to depend on the crack. The Pompey Pirates crack (PP #9) works here under Hatari with a 4MB STE config and TOS 2.06. I have not verified it on real hardware though.

 

Definitly a title for Klapauzius to patch for Falcon usage

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Speaking about technical issues, features: There are games with very good scrolling on bare ST - like GoldRunner, Turrican 1-2, etc. So, it is possible to achieve with good coding + time, effort, I guess. But for sure, it needs some extra RAM too, in compare to primitive and not so nice scrolling.

 

There are many good horizontal scrollers on ST, even without HWS, but after playing both Turricans from begin to end, I became spoiled, and others did not impress me much :-) Beside flawless scrolling ( even diagonal ), Turricans have very fast control response, what is elementary by shooters. OK, enough with ADs here