Arsantica by Desire

[Heaven/TQA]

Yesterday we presented our latest demo for 130XE. Here is a video of the competition version only as I will release final next couple of days. I simply forgot the credits scroller in the end

 

Code: heaven

Gfx: alien, bokanoid, jac, lowlife, premium, no-xs

Msx: bewu, triace

 

Tools used:

 

wudsn, mads, rmt, g2f, xboot128 by xxl, turbo basic XL

 

Would be a nice game

[Heaven/TQA]

[+GroovyBee]

Brilliant! Loved the planet/water effect.

[Mclaneinc]

Love it...Love the Snes Mode 7 Axelay water (that every one loves) dunno if that was the inspiration but it is a lovely sight.

 

Only slight downer is the last pic, sits there for so long with you expecting something to happen and it never does..?

 

Epic coding...

 

Oh, how about a shout out to This forum in the creds

Edited April 20, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[Heaven/TQA]

The last screen should contain the credits scrolling up I forgot them as it was 3am prior deadline and we were not sure if the corridor fits in

[Rybags]

Nice... yes, have to agree, that skimming over the water does look nice.

[+Ripdubski]

Well done!

[+CharlieChaplin]

@Heaven:

 

The demo looks very good !!

 

But please, if you release an update of the demo in ATR format, use a standard ATR size (90k/130k/180k or 92176bytes, 133136 bytes and 183936 bytes), otherwise it will be difficult to turn the ATR image into a real 5,25" diskette again...

 

-Andreas Koch.

Edited April 20, 2014 by CharlieChaplin

[Heaven/TQA]

Andreas. Will do.

[voy]

I fixed a size of .ATR image:

 

http://atarionline.pl/demoscena/cp/Revision%202014/8bit_demo//Arsantica%20%28fixed%20length%29.atr

http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_8bit_demos_and_intros/A/Arsantica%20(2014)(Desire)%5b128k%5d%5bstereo%5d%5bparty%20version%5d%5bfixed%20length%5d.atr

Edited April 20, 2014 by voy

[Umberto]

Cool, love it

[Heaven/TQA]

I will just upload a new version on youtube with fixed msx... seems that the melody did not get encoded well...

 

and as mentioned in a few days I will include the final scroller in the end screen. I really missed that one out... (we inserted a scroller on the fire planet and exchanged the credits with last minute gfx and I forgot to activate the scroller in the corridor blame on me... but it was 3am in the morning ) the syncing to the msx was hard, too. (with Altirra, Atari800win, real hardware timing issues, not to mention all the modern devices like sio2sd etc).

[Paul Westphal]

How about a .xex version I can show at PRGE this year with MyIDE II?

[Paul Westphal]

It would be nice to have an new shooter along the lines of Encounter with updated graphics...REALLY NICE

[Heaven/TQA]

An exe would be no problem... But I need free ram $0800ff. And most game loaders do not like that.

[Heaven/TQA]

Btw. Demo imho shows off why Lucasfilm Atari games stood out of the crowed... They used and combined all Atari features cleverly so did I.

 

There are NO new school tricks involved... All out of the box features:

 

- mode10 - 9 color mode for desire logo

- mode9 for the raycaster and using PM overlays

- unlimited bobs... 96x58 full screen in again mode10

- 160x240 gr. 15 screen with some PM overlays (no DLIs)

- loading scroller using VBL $E45F

- planet screen mixing gr.15 panels with sprite underplays with mode9 and multicolor PMs overlays left/right. Shaking done with altering display list. 160x240 resolution. Planet appearing with altering display list, same scrolling and distorting of the planet surface

- battleship 4 color in charmode. Simple color cycling for engine. Shaking with Hscrol and Vscrol. 2 multicolor Player comets

- 3d warp tunnel mixing again same modes like the surface part. No shaking here because no CPU time left to run it in 50 fps

- gr. 7 realtime fire with PM overlay

- flickering 160x240 gr. 15 corridor with random color changes

 

Alien who did the gfx wanted to use 3 colors only for all artwork.

 

I am just telling that to show how clever you can do nice looking games etc by only using build in features when having good artists. And of course the msx done by BeWu which was written exclusively for the demo.

[+CharlieChaplin]

I fixed a size of .ATR image:

 

http://atarionline.pl/demoscena/cp/Revision%202014/8bit_demo//Arsantica%20%28fixed%20length%29.atr

http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_8bit_demos_and_intros/A/Arsantica%20(2014)(Desire)%5b128k%5d%5bstereo%5d%5bparty%20version%5d%5bfixed%20length%5d.atr

 

Thank you, Voy !!

[lotek_style]

Nice stuff

 

http://demozoo.org/productions/109137/

[popmilo]

Awesome work !

Love it

[Stormtrooper of Death]

There is a certain screen, that looks like some parts are inspired by the game "The Last StarFighter", or am i wrong ?

[Heaven/TQA]

Just to give non atarians some insights

Btw. Demo imho shows off why Lucasfilm Atari games stood out of the crowed... They used and combined all Atari features cleverly so did I.

There are NO new school tricks involved... All out of the box features:

- mode10 - 9 color mode for desire logo 4:1 aspect ratio
- mode9 for the raycaster and using sprite overlays (16 shade mode)
- unlimited bobs... 96x58 full screen in again mode10
- 160x240 4 col screen with some sprite overlays (no Raster irqs)
- loading scroller using VBL only
- planet screen mixing gr.15 4col panels with sprite underplays with mode9 and multicolor PMs overlays left/right. (Main inspiration Star Raiders 2) Shaking done with altering display list. 160x240 resolution. Planet appearing with altering display list, same scrolling and distorting of the planet surface... For Amiga coders display list=copper list
- battleship 4 color in charmode. Simple color cycling for engine fire. Shaking with Hscrol and Vscrol. 2 multicolor sprite comets
- 3d warp tunnel mixing again same modes like the surface part. No shaking here because no CPU time left to run it in 50 fps. Mixing 4 col 160x mode with 16 shade mode. Square pixel 4:4 done via display list.
- 160x96 realtime radial bitmap fire with Sprite scroller. Mirroring done via hardware = copper list
- flickering 160x240 4 col corridor with random color changes

Alien who did the gfx wanted to use 3 colors only for all artwork. On a 256 col machine... So don't blame me

I am just telling that to show how clever you can do nice looking games etc by only using build in features when having good artists. And of course the msx done by BeWu which was written exclusively for the demo.

While watching the revision videos... Well... When strollers appear I am loading next part. I am using 128kb ram banks to preload stuff like ram disk. Each fx would run on 64k machine.

Last but not least.... Why no irq loader. On A8 it is not easy to have stuff running esp music while loading because pokey who does I/o needs 2 sound channels for serial interrupts. And I played around with using XXLs track loader but failed as I am using low ram. Means $0800 ff. and XXL has a boot loader which can handle such low ram but uses OS disk routines and therefor no music while loading possible. More info http://xxl.atari.pl

Inspiration sources from my side:

- axelay on snes
- Electra glide
- koronis rift by lucasfilm
- rescue on fractious intro by lucasfilm
- star raiders 2
- turrican 2 intro