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New game released: Total Eclipse


mariuszw

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Hi everybody,

 

We are proud to release Atari 8bit port of 3D adventure game: Total Eclipse!

 

Team:

Code: Mariusz Wojcieszek

Graphics: Adam Wachowski

Music and sound effects: Michał 'stRing' Radecki

Additional graphics: Jose Pereira.

 

Game is ported from C64. It features much better speed due to heavy optimizations and faster CPU clock, so it is much more enjoyable on Atari. It requires Atari with 64KB of RAM to run. It supports both PAL and NTSC, and also (for the first time) NTSC-50 and PAL-60. Game will also run properly on Atari with Rapidus accelerator.

 

post-42656-0-19383400-1540578098.png post-42656-0-74373100-1540578102.png

post-42656-0-48602300-1540578106.png post-42656-0-23633700-1540578110.png

 

Game control:

  • joystick up (or key arrow up) - move forward
  • joystick down (or key arrow down) - move backward
  • joystick left (or key arrow left) - turn left
  • joystick right (or key arrow right) - turn right
  • joystick fire (or key 0) - fire a pistol
  • key P - look up
  • key L - look down
  • key A - angle change (small,medium or big, for current angle see heiroglyphics above the watch)
  • key S - step size change (slow,medium or fast, see heiroglyphics for current state)
  • key F - face forward (useful when disorientated)
  • key U - U-turn
  • key H - height change (stand or crouch)
  • space key - shooting mode
  • key C - enable/disable crosshair
  • key R - rest
  • key I - interrupt, a pause, displays a menu which offers music/sfx change (M) and game abort (ESC)
  • key SELECT - changes between music and sound effects, work on title menu and in-game

 

Gameplay video:

 

 

 

TOTAL ECLIPSE
Featuring Freescape by Major Developments

Commodore 64

WELCOME TO EGYPT

BACKGROUND
It is written that, in the heart of ancient Egypt hundreds on years
ago, the High Priest of the day had become annoyed. His people were
revolting and refused to continue the sacrifices to Re the God of Sun.
His anger had erupted so he set an ominous curse as punishment to the
people.

A great pyramid was erected and at the topmost chamber a shrine was
built for Re the Sun-God. The curse was set. Should anything ever
block the sun's rays during daylight hours it would be destroyed.

It is now 26th October, 1930 and in just 2 hours the moon will totally
eclipse the sun, triggering the curse of Re, causing the offending
moon to explode showering the Earth with colossal meteorites thus
upsetting the ecological balance, and plunging civilisation into a
dark age of starvation and conflict.


YOUR MISSION
It is 8 o'clock, you have just landed your bi-plane next to the great
pyramid. Your mission is to reach and destroy the shrine of the
Sun-God Re, which is located at the apex of the pyramid.

TREASURE
Collect as much as possible-you're gonna be rich! First day's target
#125,000.

YOUR EQUIPMENT
A revolver -plus an ample supply of bullets.
Your wrist watch -the eclipse is due just before 10 o'clock.
A water bottle -keep this topped up-it is very hot! It is not
healthy to be without water for long periods.
Your trusty compass -an essential item for succesful orientation.

THE SCREEN DISPLAY
Top left -Ankhs collected.
Top middle -Value of treasure collected.
Top right -Current state of the eclipse.
Main window -Freescape 3D generated view of your present
surroundings.
Message display -(Under main window). This normally indicates your
current location plus the height of this chamber
above sea level shown in cubits eg. 24c=24 cubits.
The entrance to the shrine is at a height of 72
cubits.
Bottom left to right-Wrist watch, water bottle, heart beat, compass.

 

26th OCTOBER 1930, EGYPT...
After a three day journey involving most methods of transport one can
think of, and a few one would probably not like to, I arrived at
Ankh-Arah village. It was a fairly typical North African town, with
dry dirty streets, square whitewashed houses, and a stone well in the
main square.

I jumped clumsily down from my "taxi" and payed the camel driver his
money. Doing a quick calculation in my head I came up with the same
answer as when I started the journey-five shillings and a sixpence for
a six mile camel ride. Captive markets such as helpless English
Archaeologists obiviously lend themselves to exploitation by the
locals... oh, well, at least I had learned the knack of getting off a
camel without landing on my head, and that probably lowered the price
by sixpence or so.

The driver unstrapped my cases and let them drop to the ground.
Without any ado he spurred his camel, turned about and was gone,
leaving me looking rather lost in a slowly setting cloud of dust.

I retrieved my cases and set off in search of somewhere to stay.

It took me twenty minutes to find the only inn in the village: a small
sandstone building like all the others, with two bedrooms, a hole in
the ground for a latrine and enough insect life to set the whole
English population scratching themselves. One of these was the owner,
who quinting into the sun I could just make out the tiniest silver of
the crescent moon, which would soon eclipse the sun.

All the other exploration work I had conducted had been very much
smaller than this, and took months of painstaking effort, researching
and training.

It was too big. I would never make it in time. The shrine that "Tiny"
had identified was right at the apex.

Skirting the base of the pyramid, I saw the door into the
ante-chamber...

te.xex

te.atr

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And source code for those interested.

 

Game is built upon binary image of C64 version, with Atari routines replacing C64-specific stuff. Atari version also feature several optimizations, which make the game faster than C64 original: fast table-based multiplication, optimized integer division, optimized polygon rendering and polygon sorting. Ornaments on game screen are built with PM/G graphics, which allow to use different colours in different sections of the screen (i.e. upper panel, game 3d view and bottom panel). Game also supports stereo Atari with extending mono sound to sound channel (RMT player has been modified with this feature).

 

Enjoy!

 

Mariusz.

tesource.zip

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Technically an amazing game here, I am surprised that games like this can be ported. Although the Atari can do it technically, you'd think that the code between the 2 platforms would be so, so different.

 

I've been playing it in Altirra in the 21MHz speed mode. Now I don't know if this is classed as a bug or not (as 21MHz isn't an original standard, but these things could be argued), when my game was over, it went into the demo mode where it shows you what to do. It went through really quickly. I guess that there may not be a way of slowing that down if going at high speed. But I thought that I should mention it as the game itself became very playable at a high speed, however the demo situation didn't work as expected.

 

Thank you for your massive amount of work, time and probably frustration (all programmers get a lot of it!). An excellent production here.

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It's pretty responsive at 3MHZ and 7MHZ, though I'm preferring the 3MHZ speed for some reason. The higher speeds, above that,seem to speed up the action much more , even as they smooth out the frame-rate, making control reckless in the confined areas. A flight sim based on this engine might be nice, though, if recalibrated and optimized for that higher clock speed, allowing smoother frame-rates.

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Thanks for your comments.

 

I've been playing it in Altirra in the 21MHz speed mode. Now I don't know if this is classed as a bug or not (as 21MHz isn't an original standard, but these things could be argued), when my game was over, it went into the demo mode where it shows you what to do. It went through really quickly. I guess that there may not be a way of slowing that down if going at high speed. But I thought that I should mention it as the game itself became very playable at a high speed, however the demo situation didn't work as expected.

 

That "demo mode" sequence scenario was created for specific settings of angle and step size. We couldn't use the same scenario for the settings we applied to faster version (with angle twice smaller and step size 3 time shorter). Mariusz decided to keep the original scenario (and settings) in demo mode, not to create (or convert into) another one.
Edited by +Adam+
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I'm a bit confused as to what "extending mono sound to sound channel" means exactly.

 

"supports stereo Atari with extending mono sound to sound channel (RMT player has been modified with this feature)."

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I'm a bit confused as to what "extending mono sound to sound channel" means exactly.

 

"supports stereo Atari with extending mono sound to sound channel (RMT player has been modified with this feature)."

 

Yeah, that sentence was a little bit unclear. This is what was implemented: in case of two POKEYs the second one is playing the same sounds but 2 frames later, which together gives more "spatial" sound. A kind of "false stereo".

Edited by +Adam+
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Congratulations, that is a very nice port indeed!

 

I'm not sure if I found a glitch/bug:

I've played not very long, but discovered that in two places, the graphics have clipping/visibility problems.

I've checked the C64 version at those places too, but wasn't able to reproduce the faulty visualization.

(The C64 version was really a cold shower, the original speed is close to unplayable.)

 

post-7778-0-24161500-1540846194.png

 

post-7778-0-37190100-1540846205.png

 

 

Do you plan to release even a bit faster version for 128k machines? (Loop unrolling (like in SCR) for e.g. "sub_4608_loop" or "copy_back_buffer_to_screen" could increase the frame rate further...)

 

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Hi everybody,

 

We are proud to release Atari 8bit port of 3D adventure game: Total Eclipse!

 

Team:

Code: Mariusz Wojcieszek

Graphics: Adam Wachowski

Music and sound effects: Michał 'stRing' Radecki

Additional graphics: Jose Pereira.

(...)

 

Absolutely GREAT work!!!

 

LOVE the choice of color / palette, the fact that runs in ANYTHING you throw at it, and loads in almost 3.0s flat on A800 / Incognito or XL / SIDE.

 

3D is always hard on A8bit, but the work is commendable, besides the good sense of depth and textures for tonal separation of side surfaces, etc.

 

Kudos!!!

Edited by Faicuai
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Right now, I'm preparing a multi-format review in addition to a retrospective/chart video dedicated to the Dizzy series.

 

But I can a typical review/gameplay video done in less than an hour. (assuming I don't try to showcase everything)

 

But my channel is at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqO6nxLDpZqY5ZGGWh13TMw

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