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I am new to the Colecovision scene but I have noticed in the threads that Flappy Bird & Space Taxi are being ported to the Colecovision.

 

I even read about Zelda for the CV so I thought since that's possible why not some classics like Archon, Trap Door, Mail order Monster, etc.

 

Is there any interest in the community to have some C64 all time classics ported to the CV.

thanks

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I'd be interested but I would think it would be fairly tough to do. No?

 

Another game that would be great to see would be Trolls & Tribulations:

 

Trolls_And_Tribulations.png

 

The game looks interesting, I don't know why this could not be ported to the CV. maybe Opcode, Collectervision or Pixelboy could advise us.

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The game looks interesting, I don't know why this could not be ported to the CV. maybe Opcode, Collectervision or Pixelboy could advise us.

It's indeed interesting, but after watching some footage on YouTube, I have to say I'm not a fan of the floaty physics of this game. Maybe I was spoiled on Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, Contra, etc., but I have certain expectations with jumping physics in platformers.

 

Aside from that, however, I don't see why this game could not be done on the ColecoVision.

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It's indeed interesting, but after watching some footage on YouTube, I have to say I'm not a fan of the floaty physics of this game. Maybe I was spoiled on Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, Contra, etc., but I have certain expectations with jumping physics in platformers.

 

Aside from that, however, I don't see why this game could not be done on the ColecoVision.

 

What about Archon

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Porting a game from the C64 amounts to basically reprogramming the game entirely. It's feasible, but it's as long as programming a new game entirely. That may be the reason why we haven't seen a lot of those yet. The only thing you can really port realisticly from a C64 is the rules of the game or some internal calculations (like the AI). Even then, you have to reprogram it for the Z80 processor.

 

Also, lots of things on the C64 are fairly difficult to emulate on the Colecovision and, depending on what it is, it can even be impossible to do properly. The most obvious one is hardware scrolling. It can be done on the CV but lots of graphical details will be lost in the translation. There's also the hardware collision detection between sprites or sprites/background, which, for example, Space Taxi uses exclusively. 64k RAM vs 1k RAM, and the 32k "normal" cart limit are hurdles that can't be overcome in a lot of games (except by using special cart or the super module I guess).

 

By the way, I'm the one doing the Space Taxi Coleco game. I disassemble the original game just to get the original movement calculations routine, since this is one of the most important part to get the original game's feel. This is the only salvagable code from the original game though. The rest will be all redone. Also, if the game is released on a normal 32k cart with all 24 levels, I expect some things will have to be stripped down. Don't worry though, the talking passengers will stay in! I'll use the same routine as in the Squish'em Sam game, which Daniel Bienvenu worked his magic on it to make it even better (I think it was back in 2003...)!

 

Also, I thought about doing the Trolls & Tribulations game a while ago. The only real problem with this game is the hardware scrolling. But as the game has a mostly monotone feel in its presentation (mostly gray and blue), I think it's possible to make it look good on the Colecovision even with smooth scrolling.

Edited by tabachanker2
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Porting a game from the C64 amounts to basically reprogramming the game entirely. It's feasible, but it's as long as programming a new game entirely. That may be the reason why we haven't seen a lot of those yet. The only thing you can really port realisticly from a C64 is the rules of the game or some internal calculations (like the AI). Even then, you have to reprogram it for the Z80 processor.

 

Also, lots of things on the C64 are fairly difficult to emulate on the Colecovision and, depending on what it is, it can even be impossible to do properly. The most obvious one is hardware scrolling. It can be done on the CV but lots of graphical details will be lost in the translation. There's also the hardware collision detection between sprites or sprites/background, which, for example, Space Taxi uses exclusively. 64k RAM vs 1k RAM, and the 32k "normal" cart limit are hurdles that can't be overcome in a lot of games (except by using special cart or the super module I guess).

 

By the way, I'm the one doing the Space Taxi Coleco game. I disassemble the original game just to get the original movement calculations routine, since this is one of the most important part to get the original game's feel. This is the only salvagable code from the original game though. The rest will be all redone. Also, if the game is released on a normal 32k cart with all 24 levels, I expect some things will have to be stripped down. Don't worry though, the talking passengers will stay in! I'll use the same routine as in the Squish'em Sam game, which Daniel Bienvenu worked his magic on it to make it even better (I think it was back in 2003...)!

 

Also, I thought about doing the Trolls & Tribulations game a while ago. The only real problem with this game is the hardware scrolling. But as the game has a mostly monotone feel in its presentation (mostly gray and blue), I think it's possible to make it look good on the Colecovision even with smooth scrolling.

 

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation.

I will look forward to the release of your game.

 

So I guess if we wanted to see the Archon Game it would have to go through the same process.

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By the way, I'm the one doing the Space Taxi Coleco game. I disassemble the original game just to get the original movement calculations routine, since this is one of the most important part to get the original game's feel. This is the only salvagable code from the original game though. The rest will be all redone. Also, if the game is released on a normal 32k cart with all 24 levels, I expect some things will have to be stripped down. Don't worry though, the talking passengers will stay in! I'll use the same routine as in the Squish'em Sam game, which Daniel Bienvenu worked his magic on it to make it even better (I think it was back in 2003...)!

 

Also, I thought about doing the Trolls & Tribulations game a while ago. The only real problem with this game is the hardware scrolling. But as the game has a mostly monotone feel in its presentation (mostly gray and blue), I think it's possible to make it look good on the Colecovision even with smooth scrolling.

Hi Steve! Forgive me for going off-topic for a minute, but what's the current status of Wizard Siege? When I saw it running back in 2005, it seemed pretty playable. :)

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Thank you very much for your detailed explanation.

I will look forward to the release of your game.

 

So I guess if we wanted to see the Archon Game it would have to go through the same process.

You're welcome!

 

Archon should be fairly simple to do on the Colecovision, If I remember correctly, the pieces on the board are all monochrome so they could all be rendered without that sprite flickering that plagues a couple of CV games. There is no scrolling, the collision detection subroutine should be pretty simple, the game is small enough to fit on a cart and it doesn't probably use a lot of RAM. So yes, probably a pretty easy game to do on the CV. But, as I said in my previous post, not a single line of code can be lifted from the original game, everything would have to be recoded.

 

Well I guess it still is faster to do an oldie than a new game. You don't have to spend time on creating the game itself, the rules, the animations, the musics are already done. It's just a matter of rewriting the game well enough on the new console.

 

Yeah, Wizard Siege... my Duke Nukem Forever... (in developement since 2001 I think!) Well, the core game is pretty much finished. The game is 100% playable. What's missing is adjusting the parameters like the speed of the ball, the time it takes to accelerate, the wizard apparitions frequence, etc. I'd like to add sounds and musics. And a couple of levels (I have about 20 levels done IIRC). What I want to do is complete the game to my satisfaction, then fill the rest of the cart with as many levels as I can squeeze in.

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Yeah, Wizard Siege... my Duke Nukem Forever... (in developement since 2001 I think!) Well, the core game is pretty much finished. The game is 100% playable. What's missing is adjusting the parameters like the speed of the ball, the time it takes to accelerate, the wizard apparitions frequence, etc. I'd like to add sounds and musics. And a couple of levels (I have about 20 levels done IIRC). What I want to do is complete the game to my satisfaction, then fill the rest of the cart with as many levels as I can squeeze in.

Any chance for a release in 2014 (maybe through Team Pixelboy)?

 

Would you be interested in doing Archon, as this game is on many people's wishlist (on mine too :grin: )?

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For what it's worth, Archon was officially ported to the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC too, both Z80 computers in case porting in any way gets easier when the source and target CPU are the same. I am not so sure about that, perhaps the MSX games were easier to convert to Colecovision as they for most part also share the video chip.

 

Anyway for nit-pickers, weren't most of the early EA titles originally games for the Atari 8-bit that almost instantly got ported to the C64?

 

Interestingly, this summary page lists the publisher to be Activision, not Electronics Arts. That surely must be a typo, or did at some point Activision acquire the rights to the original game from EA? I believe today most of the rights lie with the original developers: Jon Freeman, Anne Westfall and Paul Reiche III.

http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/archon-series

 

As for a popular C64 original (I think!) that indeed uses smooth parallax scrolling but not an awful lot of colours so it might be able to emulate, is Paradroid. However I seem to recall that Graftgold took a different approach with the ZX Spectrum and made it into an isometric follow-up due to difficulties to get parallax scrolling on the Speccy, see Quazatron.

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Any chance for a release in 2014 (maybe through Team Pixelboy)?

It's already been scheduled for a 2014 release by CollectorVision:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/221841-collectorvision-2014-lineup/

 

From Steve's comments, I'd say putting Wizard Siege in that 2014 release lineup could have been a little premature, considering Steve is working on another game at the moment...

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It's already been scheduled for a 2014 release by CollectorVision:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/221841-collectorvision-2014-lineup/

 

From Steve's comments, I'd say putting Wizard Siege in that 2014 release lineup could have been a little premature, considering Steve is working on another game at the moment...

 

Or rather, it's Space Taxi that's a little premature... I haven't written a single line of code yet for the game!

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