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How hard would be to convert Stunt Car Racer?


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Hi guys.

How hard would be to convert Stunt Car Racer?
The game was made for C64; do you think that this game if converted for Atari could be nice as that for C64?
How could be resolved the limitation of 4 colors in this kind of game?
I'd like to hear your opinion and what approach do you suggest for reverse engineering.

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The problem with C64 conversions - in text mode we have just 128 characters available instead of 256.

In bitmap mode the mapping is linear on Atari but cell-based on C64.

Linear in most cases will be faster to render to but converting from one to another with nothing more than disassembled blocks of code isn't exactly easy.

 

Sprite use - no idea, but we have the ICU64 addons for Frodo and Vice that make it easy to work out what resources are being used.

 

It'd be an interesting project - for years I've wanted to convert something from C64 to VBXE equipped Atari using as little modification as possible and utilizing VBXE to do graphics remapping and rendering the sprites.

This game would probably be a good candidate.

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This game has been criticized for the low frame rate on the c64.

Other games , too.

 

Maybe on atari 8-bit the cpu could render faster graphics.

Maybe 3 times faster than the C64 version...

It was one of the best game anyway.

 

That's a matter of taste. Indeed a fun game.

Edited by emkay
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The most impressive part is the Engine overlay, which seems to use the Sprites.

On the A8, double scanline mode is the solution, using bitmap for the "Engine". The chains, wheels and sparkles could be done with PMg then...

 

Or just leave teh engine out (or make it different?

However, the gfx of the actuall track seem to 4 colors and not so hard to render in GR.15.

"Just some lines" :)

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Plenty of C64 games don't use the colour attributes in action areas as it adds processing time plus it isn't necessarily feasible to use when arbitrary graphics are being rendered such as a vector type game as this.

 

Red bars at the side - use PMs for sure if they're included. On C64 they're probably bitmap data using colour attributes.

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Stunt Car Racer would be amazing... the c64 version seems to be playable (me plaid it on ST and best was playing it with friend of mine while drinking beer and as more beer we get as more oftenI was flying off the first corner... so don't drink and drive :D).

 

an a8 version I guess would be 2x speed at least in Gr. 15 (128x192) or even use Gr.7.

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just watched the video longer... it's pretty amazing and near to the ST version...

No, it's not. Neither in details nor in speed.

 

Actually, the most impressive stuff is that those C64 coders somehow did the right stuff to make people overlook missing stuff.

;)

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The limit is not the hardware but the human mind.

Since the human mind has no limits also a C64 can do a 3d game.

The Atari 8-bit could do better, even using the undocumented instructions of Sally.

Please, let's not start the illegal instruction thing again! That only offends those with upgrades the same way as if I said "let's take advantage of the 65c802/65c816 extended instruction set to make this game really great."

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Plus which, I'm not convinced that the use of LAX, etc, is the deciding factor in whether such a game becomes a slideshow on the A8. If illegal opcodes where THAT good, I'd be using them now, regardless of the consequences (my A8s all have 1.7MHz CPUs).

 

The C64 game looks superb, BTW. Really astonishingly good.

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Geoff Crammond and John Cumming are the 2 behind the C64 game i believe, so they'd be the ones to 'find' and ask how they did it.

 

Geoff Crammond was doing an update on PS2, ' Stunt Car Racer Pro' but developer, Lost Toys went under before it was finished if memory serves.

 

Had a lot of fun with it on the ST myself, along with mates.

 

Was one of those ST games part of me hoped would of been updated on the Jaguar, but sadly never was :-(.

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At first glance, I think the way to do it is to divide the view into two sections. Above the car draw to a bitmap, and where the car graphic starts switch to using the bitmap (or char mode, which would make the tire animation super easy) for the car and put in the remaining road line segments using PMGs. You could even drop down to just supporting all black or white lines in this region and it would probably look okay.

 

On 2nd thought, it's just as easy to draw into characters in that region and then the PMGs are free to frame the screen.

 

So the 64 does the whole thing with predefined character sets?

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