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Does Druid do the best job of pushing the 800/XE graphics to be comparable to other 8-bit machines?


Leeroy ST

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7 hours ago, +Adam+ said:

@R0ger: Plastron is very good graphically.

 

I was very impressed with the graphics of Plastron when I first saw the game in the early 90's.

Games using the extended colors available with DLI's and also multi-colored sprites and care given to the "artwork" were unusual in US games that were mostly hastily and carelessly ported games from the C64. Too bad Plastron's controls and collision detection weren't as good as the graphics.

 

Back then it and most English/European games were unknown to us in the states. I had my first taste when I ordered (what turned out to be pirated disks) a catalog of English/European games (which turned out to be a multi-page xerox copied print-out) out of the classified section in the back of Antic magazine. I had no idea what any game was like, just lists of names, not even genres listed. I recognized a few that I already had like US released Mastertronic titles, but I randomly picked titles that caught my eye. Luckily it included games like Zebex and Draconus. But better than half the games I got didn't work at all or were seriously glitched due to being PAL running on NTSC. I didn't get to play those games until the 2000's when I put a PAL ANTIC in my NTSC 1200XL after hearing of Nir Dary's (sorry if I spelled that wrong) success with the experiment.

Edited by Gunstar
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I wouldn't necessarily have had a problem with Green Beret's graphics when I bought it for £2.99 back in the day, if the controls and gameplay had been tighter as Mr Mclaneinc says. The C64 version has better graphics sure, but it also has a fluid jumping action (compared to diagonal up and diagonal down with no arc on A8). The speed at which enemies appear and move on both versions is too severe, but exacerbated on A8 by the fact that when you jump you're locked in and the collision detection for the knife attack is shonky.

 

Surprisingly, I find the Spectrum version has the "best" gameplay feel for me. Noone loves monochrome graphics, but the speed of enemies and your character ("responsiveness") are spot on. C64 version nails the presentation but gameplay fails for being far too punishing.

 

Is there scope for improving the A8 version? Not talking about graphics, even if they were the same as they are now, it would be great to play it with a bit more care in the jumping, enemy spawning and collision detection.

Edited by NuY
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On 10/29/2019 at 5:38 PM, Lost Dragon said:

Living Daylights was the other game i wanted to ask them about.

 

The infamous Atari User Magazine claim the review copy they were sent had a proper title screen and extra level not found in the retail version.

 

Ahhh for an Atari 8 Bit GTW like Frank Gasking does with the C64.

 

 

Spoken with some of the Kremin guys regarding their Sega work, nothing but helpful and a pleasure to speak with.

 

 

 

I have worked with John on several occasions, at Domark, Crystal Dynamics and EIDOS - in fact I had a chat over a cuppa with him last week at an industry event.

 

TBH I have never thought to ask him about his old games, same as the many other people still in the industry who started out on the A8, like Adam Billyard (saw him last week too)...

 

sTeVE

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1 hour ago, Jetboot Jack said:

 

I have worked with John on several occasions, at Domark, Crystal Dynamics and EIDOS - in fact I had a chat over a cuppa with him last week at an industry event.

 

TBH I have never thought to ask him about his old games, same as the many other people still in the industry who started out on the A8, like Adam Billyard (saw him last week too)...

 

sTeVE

I worked at Domark / Kremlin / Eidos from 1993 to 1999 and worked with John K too :)

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10 minutes ago, zzip said:

M.U.L.E.

"Nothing to look at" . Doesn't this include to have a game that looks horribly bad but play great?

M.U.L.E. doesn't really look like the graphics could be enhanced. It was so "original" .  Remakes with better (?)  graphics didn't look better

To me , one of those "look bad" and "plays well", is Journey to the Planets.  

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39 minutes ago, Jetboot Jack said:

Cool - what projects were you on?

 

sTeVE

I was the in-house sound designer / musician. I worked on pretty much everything from Sega Mega Drive thru to PS1. Prince of Persia, Marko's Magic Football, more Championship Manager conversions than I care to remember, Blood Shot, Total Football, Crimewave, F1, Deathtrap Dungeon etc.

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2 hours ago, Tea Party said:

I was the in-house sound designer / musician. I worked on pretty much everything from Sega Mega Drive thru to PS1. Prince of Persia, Marko's Magic Football, more Championship Manager conversions than I care to remember, Blood Shot, Total Football, Crimewave, F1, Deathtrap Dungeon etc.

I would be interested to know what brings you to this particular forum - and your connection with the Atari 8-bit hardware/software?  Your background, favourites, etc.

 

We don't get too many people who worked in the videogame/computer game industry active in these forums.  Maybe they're lurkers and like to stay that way?

 

Harvey

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5 hours ago, kiwilove said:

We don't get too many people who worked in the videogame/computer game industry active in these forums.  Maybe they're lurkers and like to stay that way?

 

A lot of folks just don't want to be "noticed". Between NDAs (old or new), or just plain burn-out from working on games for years, it can take some time for the old love to rekindle (if ever).

 

 

10 hours ago, Jetboot Jack said:

I have worked with John on several occasions, at Domark, Crystal Dynamics and EIDOS - in fact I had a chat over a cuppa with him last week at an industry event.

 

Nice! Us old-folk do tend to stay in touch and share a pint occasionally (a cuppa ... WTF!), even after all of these years.  I only met John once-or-twice in the late 80's, and have no great connection.  As for the Atari Green Beret, that was one of the old Ocean/Imagine out-of-house contracts.  The Atari didn't have enough market-share at the time that Ocean/Imagine would put any in-house staff on that project ... that was still Ocean 1st-Generation (Martin Galway, Dave Collier, Paul Owens, Joffa Smith, Mike Webb, etc), just before the 2nd-Generation crew were hired.

 

IIRC, the last time that Ocean did an Atari game in-house was when Colin had finished the C64 version of "Head Over Heels", and some naive Atari-fan suggested that it would be a quick port (i.e. easy-money) to do an Atari 8-bit version, and then lent the company his Atari 800.

 

From what I remember, Colin had less than a month to finish it, when he'd never owned/used an Atari before ... which is why it doesn't excactly take a lot of advantage of the Atari's capabilities.

 

Edited by elmer
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1 hour ago, elmer said:

 

A lot of folks just don't want to be "noticed". Between NDAs (old or new), or just plain burn-out from working on games for years, it can take some time for the old love to rekindle (if ever).

 

 

 

Nice! Us old-folk do tend to stay in touch and share a pint occasionally (a cuppa ... WTF!), even after all of these years.  I only met John once-or-twice in the late 80's, and have no great connection.  As for the Atari Green Beret, that was one of the old Ocean/Imagine out-of-house contracts.  The Atari didn't have enough market-share at the time that Ocean/Imagine would put any in-house staff on that project ... that was still Ocean 1st-Generation (Martin Galway, Dave Collier, Paul Owens, Joffa Smith, Mike Webb, etc), just before the 2nd-Generation crew were hired.

 

IIRC, the last time that Ocean did an Atari game in-house was when Colin had finished the C64 version of "Head Over Heels", and some naive Atari-fan suggested that it would be a quick port (i.e. easy-money) to do an Atari 8-bit version, and then lent the company his Atari 800.

 

From what I remember, Colin had less than a month to finish it, when he'd never owned/used an Atari before ... which is why it doesn't excactly take a lot of advantage of the Atari's capabilities.

 


when I was working as part of empire interactive and my few years in games biz we always had this “it’s hard to get into this business it’s harder to get out”.... ;)

 

it was strange for me meeting folks like Greg Bernett (way of the exploding fist) when we had a chat at E3 in Los Angeles not talking about Ghost Master his latest game.

 

or flying to UDS in Sweden when they developed our PS2 game and I was talking with CEO about their Atari ST games substation and that Pinball game.

 

one of the empire producers was working on Metroid Prime on the game cube and we talked about the curved HUD on a flight to London haha.... those were times...

 

or when I met the guys from NEO Vienna.... (Jowood) which later became Rockstar Vienna doing the GTA port on Xbox with the legendary C64 Intro....


so many stuff forgotten...


or flying to E3 and stopped by border patrol in Stuttgart air port because the PS2 debug station in my luggage looked dangerous on the scanner....

 

Edited by Heaven/TQA
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11 hours ago, Tea Party said:

I was the in-house sound designer / musician. I worked on pretty much everything from Sega Mega Drive thru to PS1. Prince of Persia, Marko's Magic Football, more Championship Manager conversions than I care to remember, Blood Shot, Total Football, Crimewave, F1, Deathtrap Dungeon etc.

 

Awesome - I was doing games for EIDOS in the late 90's when you were on DD etc - I spent a fair amount of time up at the Wimbledon offices (I go back quite a long way with Ian Livingstone) -  I was with Hot House and we were doing Cutthroats, Abomination, Gangsters and WWTBAM...

 

     sTeVE

Edited by Jetboot Jack
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3 hours ago, elmer said:

 

A lot of folks just don't want to be "noticed". Between NDAs (old or new), or just plain burn-out from working on games for years, it can take some time for the old love to rekindle (if ever).

 

 

 

Nice! Us old-folk do tend to stay in touch and share a pint occasionally (a cuppa ... WTF!), even after all of these years.  I only met John once-or-twice in the late 80's, and have no great connection.  As for the Atari Green Beret, that was one of the old Ocean/Imagine out-of-house contracts.  The Atari didn't have enough market-share at the time that Ocean/Imagine would put any in-house staff on that project ... that was still Ocean 1st-Generation (Martin Galway, Dave Collier, Paul Owens, Joffa Smith, Mike Webb, etc), just before the 2nd-Generation crew were hired.

 

IIRC, the last time that Ocean did an Atari game in-house was when Colin had finished the C64 version of "Head Over Heels", and some naive Atari-fan suggested that it would be a quick port (i.e. easy-money) to do an Atari 8-bit version, and then lent the company his Atari 800.

 

From what I remember, Colin had less than a month to finish it, when he'd never owned/used an Atari before ... which is why it doesn't excactly take a lot of advantage of the Atari's capabilities.

 

 

Absolutely - we lurk a lot, any people do, there is always a risk of getting the odd over enthusiastic gamer on your case, so anonymity can be nice ?

 

It had to be a cuppa - we were mid session at an all day event, beer would have been nice tho...

 

I have often beat up Gary about Ocean's lack of Atari support back in the day ? 

 

sTeVE

 

 

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9 hours ago, kiwilove said:

I would be interested to know what brings you to this particular forum - and your connection with the Atari 8-bit hardware/software?  Your background, favourites, etc.

 

We don't get too many people who worked in the videogame/computer game industry active in these forums.  Maybe they're lurkers and like to stay that way?

 

Harvey

Basically the 1st computer I owned that actually generated sound was an Atari 400 then the 800XL.. from there I moved on to C64 and Atari ST which lead to MIDI and hardware synths.. I released a couple of records which ended up with me working for Domark / Kremlin / Eidos. In 1999 I moved over to Criterion but was pretty burned out by the industry by then and in 2000 I left and just did pro-audio stuff for about 5 years. From 2005 however I decided to separate my career and hobby and have been working in tech but not video games since.

 

I've been lurking on AtariAge for over a decade. I don't post very much at all as most of my questions are already answered as there's people here with far more Atari 8 bit knowledge than me.. but I find it all still fascinating.

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7 minutes ago, Tea Party said:

Basically the 1st computer I owned that actually generated sound was an Atari 400 then the 800XL.. from there I moved on to C64 and Atari ST which lead to MIDI and hardware synths.. I released a couple of records which ended up with me working for Domark / Kremlin / Eidos. In 1999 I moved over to Criterion but was pretty burned out by the industry by then and in 2000 I left and just did pro-audio stuff for about 5 years. From 2005 however I decided to separate my career and hobby and have been working in tech but not video games since.

 

I've been lurking on AtariAge for over a decade. I don't post very much at all as most of my questions are already answered as there's people here with far more Atari 8 bit knowledge than me.. but I find it all still fascinating.

Interesting - very similar to mine - but I hopped the C64 and went ST/Amiga then off to Microprose at the end of the 80's - and PC/Console ever since!

 

sTeVE

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4 hours ago, elmer said:

IIRC, the last time that Ocean did an Atari game in-house was when Colin had finished the C64 version of "Head Over Heels", and some naive Atari-fan suggested that it would be a quick port (i.e. easy-money) to do an Atari 8-bit version, and then lent the company his Atari 800.

 

From what I remember, Colin had less than a month to finish it, when he'd never owned/used an Atari before ... which is why it doesn't excactly take a lot of advantage of the Atari's capabilities.

This kind of goes back to what I said about Green Beret though - as it was a port (presumably from the C64 version) it mostly inherited the inherent qualities that the source version had, which in this case was excellent gameplay in the first place. I don't perceive much difference in the controls of HoH between the two versions at all, and of course the C64 graphics were taken straight from the Spectrum original anyway. It's hard to see how it could have been improved significantly given the time frame. Looking at its isometric peers of the time the only one that springs to mind is Chimera, which looks nice but is incredibly chunky and lacks details in the building blocks, where HoH has the pixel count of a GR.8 screen at the cost of being monochrome.

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On 10/31/2019 at 5:35 PM, emkay said:

"Nothing to look at" . Doesn't this include to have a game that looks horribly bad but play great?

M.U.L.E. doesn't really look like the graphics could be enhanced. It was so "original" .  Remakes with better (?)  graphics didn't look better

To me , one of those "look bad" and "plays well", is Journey to the Planets.  

Well even in 1983 I thought the visuals to MULE looked weak.  Especially in screenshots in magazines.  The graphics don't "pop" in any way.  It was very minimal.  Even then reminded me of something you might see on the Vic-20. 

 

Let's just say it wasn't the screenshots that sold me on the game.   I had a Buy 2 Get 1 offer from EA, and of all the free games they had to offer, MULE was the only one I didn't have that seemed even slightly interesting.   So I didn't expect much, but was blown away when I finally did play it.

 

But as you say, can they be improved?  On that hardware?  Maybe not.   A less pixelated MULE would be nice, but other than that, the graphics serve the game just fine.

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Nice to read that the Atari 400 was the start of a person's career into computer videogame development.  I need to go back through the Antic interviews to see if any of my favourite authors are listed there or not?

 

As far as MULE goes - I never got into playing it - but seen friends playing it - so I know what the graphics are like in it.  It would be possible to enhance the graphics - if some team wanted to do so.  By adding lots more animations - I'd guess.  Playfield graphics could be improved by use of more colours present? It has that 2600 look to it - so it could be changed to more of a 5200/8-bit look to it.

 

A PlayStation console/coin-op game that could be converted to the 5200/8-bit Atari would be Super Puzzle Fighter II - that the extensive fighting character animations can be left out or simplified a great deal - but the actual gameplay action area is represented well.  Don't know if anyone has done a game so similar to this already?  Dr Mario maybe?SuperPuzzleFighterII.jpg.2fa70f419bb0160a3c883b081ec57de5.jpg

Harvey

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17 minutes ago, kiwilove said:

A PlayStation console/coin-op game that could be converted to the 5200/8-bit Atari would be Super Puzzle Fighter II - that the extensive fighting character animations can be left out or simplified a great deal - but the actual gameplay action area is represented well.  Don't know if anyone has done a game so similar to this already?  Dr Mario maybe?

Harvey

I'm working on Puyo puyo. Not direct port of any existing game, but the rules will 100% true (to Puyo Puyo Tsuu). Can't promise any date though, first I have big plans with the game graphics and I also want some tutorials and lessons in it. I'm also easily distracted :-D

 

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/284327-puyo-puyo-wip/

 

Edited by R0ger
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11 hours ago, kiwilove said:

Nice to read that the Atari 400 was the start of a person's career into computer videogame development.  I need to go back through the Antic interviews to see if any of my favourite authors are listed there or not?

 

As far as MULE goes - I never got into playing it - but seen friends playing it - so I know what the graphics are like in it.  It would be possible to enhance the graphics - if some team wanted to do so.  By adding lots more animations - I'd guess.  Playfield graphics could be improved by use of more colours present? It has that 2600 look to it - so it could be changed to more of a 5200/8-bit look to it.

 

A PlayStation console/coin-op game that could be converted to the 5200/8-bit Atari would be Super Puzzle Fighter II - that the extensive fighting character animations can be left out or simplified a great deal - but the actual gameplay action area is represented well.  Don't know if anyone has done a game so similar to this already?  Dr Mario maybe?SuperPuzzleFighterII.jpg.2fa70f419bb0160a3c883b081ec57de5.jpg

Harvey

One of my favourite games

 

Picked it up on GBA..PSN and PSN.

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