Anybody interested porting the game Ghost Town?

[awsm]

Hi!

 

I recently ported the game Ghost Town from the Commodore 16 to the Commodore 64 and made the source code available on Github:

https://github.com/Esshahn/Ghost-Town

I was wondering if anybody here would be interested in porting the game over to Atari's 8bit computers?

Being a Commodore 16 game initially, hardware requirements are very low, e.g. no hardware sprites, no scrolling. It's mostly character based.

 

If you are interested, feel free to get in touch with me ( also on twitter: @awsm9000 ), I'd be happy to get you started.

 

You can download the game here (even play it in the browser):

http://www.kingsoft.de/

 

And I've written a blog post about the conversion process here:

http://hinterding.com/ghost-town-64/

 

Cheers!

Ingo

[+CharlieChaplin]

Great idea!

 

[Rybags]

I gave it a quick go in the embedded JS version in the browser.

Not real impressed that you die by simply walking into a tree (or is that a tree with teeth?)

 

I've done a few Plus4 to Atari conversions.  Probably the biggest stumbling block for this one could be the 128 vs 256 character problem, assuming it's using the full range of characters which I think it probably would be.

Alternatively it could probably be done in an emulation layer using VBXE and blits to just convert the graphics on the fly but that'd limit the audience.

[awsm]

Yeah, the game is quite unforgiving, but that's more or less the point of the game. I still remember my sweaty hands moving the joystick around when I was a kid.

I must admit I know too little about the specifics of the Atari platforms. The character limit would defenitely be a challenge. Since you did some conversions already: what else would be typical challenges when converting a game from Plus/4?

[TracMan]

Not having heard of the game before, I could only wonder if this was anything to do with Ricky Gervais, sadly it is not, it looks a fun enough puzzler though, sort of like a flatter looking version of Robin of the Wood without the animations.  The C64 version definitely looks and sounds far better than the C16 version, the title screen is very good and the SID version of the music grows on you.

 

Interestingly, it looks like on both versions you have more than 5 colours on screen even without hardware sprites, or this a trick of the eye?  Like on the C16, the player's face looks Green whereas, it is Pink on the C64 (which seems to be one of the screen foreground colours), also on the C64 version, his trousers are always Green.  Also, it looks like C16 uses Red only in the border and Brown and Pink on the screen, whereas the C64 uses Brown, Red and Pink all on one screen.

 

If no hardware sprites are being used and there is only 5 colours per scanline then maybe you could use the Atari PMG to have a different colour player shirt to add some improvement, or even more daring, use two missiles as the left/right borders and have a completely different coloured border to the Red.  I reckon Grey would be nice.

Edited May 3, 2020 by TracMan

[awsm]

Hey TracMan,

 

13 hours ago, TracMan said:

Interestingly, it looks like on both versions you have more than 5 colours on screen even without hardware sprites, or this a trick of the eye?  Like on the C16, the player's face looks Green whereas, it is Pink on the C64 (which seems to be one of the screen foreground colours), also on the C64 version, his trousers are always Green.  Also, it looks like C16 uses Red only in the border and Brown and Pink on the screen, whereas the C64 uses Brown, Red and Pink all on one screen.

colors are no special trick, really. Both C16 and C64 use multicolor charsets with an individual foreground color per char. I've released an updated version for the C16 with uses an identical charset and looks similar. Border colors can be set completely individual from the rest of the charset colors on the C16 and C64. The different player colors (green face, pink face) are because the green face is the original whereas the pink face is my correction. Technically it was simply a matter of assigning different colors within the charset.

 

13 hours ago, TracMan said:

I reckon Grey would be nice.

Funny as the updated C16 version does use grey as border color.

 

 

 

[TracMan]

Yeah that's looking so much better now without the green face, from the title screen I can see the character was meant to be a young guy and not an alien ?  I also like the grey border change as it takes away the fact that previously everything looked red or pink.  On the title screen and inlay pic, the player guy actually has a red shirt and blue trousers, whereas the villain is correct in the game with a blue cape.

 

Without seeing all the C64 screens but having watched the C16 version, an Antic Mode 4 Atari version might work something like this:

 

BG: Black

FG1: Brown

FG2: Pink

FG3: Red / Dark Grey for Rocks or Green for trees/bushes or Yellow for bottle or Blue for water (5th colour)

 

Our guy = mainly Pink + Brown from the FG colours above, we can stick with the brown shirt for now but I think it could be Red, we could later decide to use something else for his trousers.

 

M0 + M1 = Border colour of Grey where M0 = quad sized on the left border, M1 = quad sized on right border.  As a result, without wanting to reuse the 5th color with the missiles, our player could have Grey trousers using one of P0 or P1 (who wears Green trousers?).

 

However, we also still have P2 + M2 and P3 + M3 so we could use the players to also colour the purple question marks and the yellow scroll.

 

A white PMG will also be needed for the glove, key, and maybe one or two Players for the white fence.

[awsm]

Thanks TracMan, quite a fascinating read for an Atari Newbie like me. I need to learn more about charset graphics, color and resolutions of the 8 bit Ataris (I upgraded from a C128 to an Atari 1040 STE back in the 90s). I'm surprised that the colors turn out to be a challenge here, might not be worth the effort maybe.

Edited May 23, 2020 by awsm

[_The Doctor__]

It's always worth the effort.