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Space Harrier Update 2018


Sheddy

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I might as well ask this question. Seeing that no one has asked about it before?

What is the reason for the dark colours for the sprite objects? I guess it's a hardware complication - that you don't have a choice of what colours you can use?

 

I would have thought that using normal bright colours would be the preferred option?

 

This is the only query I have, regarding this excellent conversion.

 

Harvey

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As I said, I don't know the technical stuff about Atari 8-bit but I welcome educating about it but many thanks

 

No problem; most people wouldn't know about using that setting unless someone told them.

 

Chris used to have a website that talked about technical development details for the Atari 8-bit version of Space Harrier; but the site was taken down shortly after release of the first version.

 

Chris used a technique of quickly flipping between two screens with partially differing color palettes for adding more perceived color to the overall display of various objects.

 

If you want a better idea of what's going on, turn "Frame Blending" back off, then go to the "Speed" settings (on the same options panel) and use the "Speed Adjustment" slider to set the system to some lower percentage of normal speed (10% or 15% for instance).

 

post-6369-0-04083100-1551198658.png

 

Edited by MrFish
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The colors and base were darkened slightly per players request. look at the original and then this version. Of course one can use the controls on their crt/monitor to brighten/darken etc etc per their own tastes, sounds like you wants them choice of palettes and bright dark etc controls in game...Mr. KiwiHarv??

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Chris used to have a website that talked about technical development details for the Atari 8-bit version of Space Harrier; but the site was taken down shortly after release of the first version.

 

Silly me... we have the WayBack Machine to retell the past. This looks like the last version/date: SheddyShack - Space Harrier XE (June 2009)

 

That version/date for the site doesn't have pictures; some other versions/dates for the site do.

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It uses an AtariMax bank switching model which presents an 8KB bank selected from the cartridge through the address window at $A000->$BFFF

This is an 8Mb(it) / 1MB(yte) model which means there are 128 banks in total which are selected by addressing the cartridge bus at $D500->$D57F.

Any addressing of $D580->$D5FF disabled the cartridge area enabling the RAM there to be accessed.

 

With cart-conversions the approach normally centres around moving all of the cartridge memory into extended memory.

So most of those done to date would be for XEGS type cartridges which are normally 64KB or 128KB and so can fit on the 128K/256K expanded machines.

So far so good, copying blocks of data elsewhere is straight-forward enough but immediately we see you need a machine with 1MB and loading the data is (I think) going to take over 20 seconds to transfer from a fast device .

 

The next hurdle is that the extended memory window sits between $4000->$7FFF, so 16KB rather than the 8KB bank size of the AtariMax carts from $A000.

Therefore all code pertaining to the bank selection and then what is done with that data would have to be handled by Sheddy as well as possibly shuffling around other code/data to fit around the extended memory window area.

 

So whilst not impossible, a fair bit of effort.

Seeing as an 8Mbit Maxflash image can also been run from devices such as the Ultimate Cart, The!Cart and an AVG Cart then you are not tied to just a physical AtariMax cart to play this game :)

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Is there a xex version for computers with RAM expansion?

Not this version. It would take a lot of work to make a 1024K xex. I'm not sure if Fandel managed it with the 2011 version in the end.

How long does it take to load a 1024K program even with a high speed loader?

I just don't like the idea of that.

I would want to rewite it to use less RAM, which would be much, much more work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks to everyone who worked on this!

 

AtariMax 8mega cartridge running on 64K 800XL NTSC plays great!

 

Many amazing things going on here:

Space Harrier working on both NTSC and PAL, playing SEGA game with large sprites on the 1979 home computer hardware, the extra colours technique, speech during gameplay, etc.

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  • 1 month later...
I'm just curious if there's any plan on releasing the source code ?

 

or maybe just the sampled sound replay code ?

 

The source code is available (AFAIR it was posted here in the original thread), but I'm too lazy to browse for it now.

 

You can find the discussion about the sample player here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/123208-playing-samples/

Edited by Irgendwer
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The source code is available (AFAIR it was posted here in the original thread), but I'm too lazy to browse for it now.

 

You can find the discussion about the sample player here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/123208-playing-samples/

 

That was fast, thanks!

 

The 2018 release would be great indeed, I'm interested in understanding how to play samples while modifying PM graphics and position every scanline.

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Thanks for the source!

 

A screen kernel like an A2600 kernel with WSync every scanline ? Doesn't seem too good for what I want to do... I'm going to study this a little more.

We have the ability to make use of a POKEY timer and drop non-maskable interrupts all together.

Edited by Tezz
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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...
On 10/16/2018 at 10:02 AM, Sheddy said:

Updated version with RastaConverter based title screen, serious bug fixes and some other bits and pieces to make things easier.

Not tested on real hardware yet, so interested if you come across any problems.

*CONFIRMED CRASHES WITH CONSOLE KEYS PAUSE*
NTSC colors may be poor still

*Fixed on attached versions*

 

NB .bin version is for AtariMax 8Mbit cart type (old and new)

 

New title screen and attract mode
https://youtu.be/5GYyB_evG0I

space-harrier-black(64K).zip 404.63 kB · 331 downloads

space-harrier-black(64K).bin 1 MB · 111 downloads

Hi,

Do you know if its technically possible to convert or run this on a 5200 console, say with a 5200 cart with SD insert?

 

Or would it need to be reprogrammed, or is it just incompatible with hardware?

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  • 6 months later...

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