Rybags Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 This rather amazing looking game (by Plus4/C16 standards) now has a demo released. http://www.xeo3.org/ is the homepage for the game. Xeo3.zip or just unzip the game from this file. Run in your favourtite Plus4 emulator, I just used XPlus4 in WinVice. Be sure to enable the plugin SID cartridge emulation too. May the reverse engineering begin!!! /jk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 the more interesting part is the scripting... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 This rather amazing looking game (by Plus4/C16 standards) now has a demo released. http://www.xeo3.org/ is the homepage for the game. Xeo3.zip or just unzip the game from this file. Run in your favourtite Plus4 emulator, I just used XPlus4 in WinVice. Be sure to enable the plugin SID cartridge emulation too. May the reverse engineering begin!!! /jk brilliant, it's actually been released! it's really a great achivement with the limitations of the plus4. I remember a discusion here not so long ago about attempting to port this to the A8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 It's not my favourite genre but this game is excellent, considering Plus4 limitations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 brilliant, it's actually been released! it's really a great achivement with the limitations of the plus4. This second (well, technically third but second in the space of a week at least =-) demo is very nicely tuned now; the first one was pretty evil and the way the coins moved meant that grabbing them was a very risky business involving burying the nose of the ship into approaching waves. I remember a discusion here not so long ago about attempting to port this to the A8 i suspect it'd need quite a bit of recoding, everything on the Plus/4 is being done with characters and, if it's using all 256 characters in the font, that'll need to be allowed for... still, the Atari would'nt have to put even a fraction of the CPU grind in that the Plus/4 is for that scrolling... i believe Mike plans to release the source code when he's finished too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 (edited) i suspect it'd need quite a bit of recoding, everything on the Plus/4 is being done with characters and, if it's using all 256 characters in the font, that'll need to be allowed for... still, the Atari would'nt have to put even a fraction of the CPU grind in that the Plus/4 is for that scrolling... i believe Mike plans to release the source code when he's finished too.yes I would think it would need significant redesigning code wise in terms of the graphics. I think I recall reading up on their website when we discussed it in the past they did use all the 256 chars in the set. It'd be challenging to recreate this on the A8 with the char restrictions inc soft sprites. I'd be interested to read through the source when the guys have completed and released it. They've done a spectacular job with it. The A8 is missing scrolling shooters of this quality. Edited June 20, 2008 by Tezz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 Nice if he does release the source. I think it could be ported - some tricky coding and multiple charsets would do the trick. I don't fancy the coin behaviour either. Probably be better if they just maintained their position and faded away after a short delay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 I don't fancy the coin behaviour either. Probably be better if they just maintained their position and faded away after a short delay. +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 I think it could be ported - some tricky coding and multiple charsets would do the trick. [scratches head] i'm not sure... for speed i reckon it'd possibly be better off running with a couple of bitmaps; it might need 128K though, as it stands the Plus/4 is using two 1K screens and two 2K fonts. It's do-able, though. I don't fancy the coin behaviour either. Probably be better if they just maintained their position and faded away after a short delay. i do like the coins, at least since the changes that give them a bit more height and some horizontal drift; before those changes it was pretty evil but now it's a case of taking risks to get the coins and i like that personally... plus it worked in Blood Money so i'm not arguing. =-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 brilliant, it's actually been released! it's really a great achivement with the limitations of the plus4. I remember a discusion here not so long ago about attempting to port this to the A8 It's just a demo level and I wouldn't exactly say 'limitations' since many games on the Atari use character based graphics just like the Plus/4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 brilliant, it's actually been released! it's really a great achivement with the limitations of the plus4. I remember a discusion here not so long ago about attempting to port this to the A8 It's just a demo level and I wouldn't exactly say 'limitations' since many games on the Atari use character based graphics just like the Plus/4. yes, I didn't at first read the post fully that it was a new wip demo and thought it had been completed and released. The limitations I was refering to are the overall limitations of the +4, creating a game of this quality would be no mean feat on the +4 with the overhead of scrolling and having no hardware sprites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 brilliant, it's actually been released! it's really a great achivement with the limitations of the plus4. I remember a discusion here not so long ago about attempting to port this to the A8 It's just a demo level and I wouldn't exactly say 'limitations' since many games on the Atari use character based graphics just like the Plus/4. yes, I didn't at first read the post fully that it was a new wip demo and thought it had been completed and released. The limitations I was refering to are the overall limitations of the +4, creating a game of this quality would be no mean feat on the +4 with the overhead of scrolling and having no hardware sprites. And the Atari's PM graphics will look that good? Sorry... I think you'd be stuck doing the same thing. The c64 has sprites but a slow cpu, Frankly, any machine from that time would have limitations of some sort. The Plus/4 is probably as capable as any other 8 bit of the time on something like this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 (edited) And the Atari's PM graphics will look that good?Sorry... I think you'd be stuck doing the same thing. The c64 has sprites but a slow cpu, Frankly, any machine from that time would have limitations of some sort. The Plus/4 is probably as capable as any other 8 bit of the time on something like this. I think you might be talking at cross purposes James and you have misinterpreted what I ws saying? It wasn't meant that the +4 is more limited than the A8 or anything like that, I simply meant it as a passing comment that the game was well done with the +4's limitations. The discussion after that is talking about the extra restrictions of the Atari's available characters per set if it was concidered to be ported. You'd not be stuck IMHO but it would need to be redone with a different approach without a doubt. Edited June 21, 2008 by Tezz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Tezz, sorry if I misunderstood. I was trying to figure out how any other 8 bit could do any better. The closest I could think of would be the Tandy CoCo3 or Apple IIgs due to the bitmapped 16 color gfx modes and extra RAM. But scrolling and blitting that much data might be pushing the limit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 23, 2008 Author Share Posted June 23, 2008 C'mon. The Atari can shift 4 character positions before having to move any data. Or, you can just LMS scroll over a pre-rendered map. You can practically do that in BASIC if you wanted to. For it's shortcomings in certain areas, it can make up for it quite easily in others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 C'mon. The Atari can shift 4 character positions before having to move any data. Or, you can just LMS scroll over a pre-rendered map. You can practically do that in BASIC if you wanted to. For it's shortcomings in certain areas, it can make up for it quite easily in others. In that many colors? That many moving objects? That many total objects? It's one thing to do one of the things XeO3 does... it's another to do everything and squeeze multiple levels into RAM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 23, 2008 Author Share Posted June 23, 2008 Nothing wrong with loading level data from floppy. In a 10 second inter-level break, that's ~ 10K of new data that can be fetched, and it can happen in parallel with the normal bonus counts, musical interlude etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 James, I am sure a 99% but even 100% Xeo3 can be done on A8... as the game screen is antic 4 only. and the demo seems 25/30 fps because of double buffering. and just in case... Yes, I know the 256 chars per font vs 128 chars restriction but I would bet that it can be done in a similar way... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 In that many colors? Theorising somewhat but yes because the game only uses four. Getting the status panel identical wouldn't be possible since it's mixed mode but that's not really essential to the game. That many moving objects? That many total objects? Yes and yes, again in theory. Overall the Plus/4 has a bit more CPU grunt (since it has two DMA fetches per 8 pixel high character line and the Atari would most likely need to run in bitmap mode) but from what i gather it's constantly refreshing the entire back buffer so an LMS'd bitmap-based scroller will pull back a significant amount of time. It's one thing to do one of the things XeO3 does... it's another to do everything and squeeze multiple levels into RAM. i believe it's going to be multiload. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Jason, you have to stick to antic 4 instead of antic e as you need the char animation frames... or do you want to updated the entire screen per frame? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Jason, you have to stick to antic 4 instead of antic e as you need the char animation frames... or do you want to updated the entire screen per frame? They come under "non-essential cosmetic details" i reckon... =-) Thing is, i can't see the font being squeezed down enough to get everything into a single antic 4 character set even without the render space for the player ship (since it can use a couple of players) and if it's spread over several fonts the advantage of refreshing one character definition to move stuff on the entire screen is at least partially lost anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 They come under "non-essential cosmetic details" i reckon... =-) Thing is, i can't see the font being squeezed down enough to get everything into a single antic 4 character set even without the render space for the player ship (since it can use a couple of players) and if it's spread over several fonts the advantage of refreshing one character definition to move stuff on the entire screen is at least partially lost anyway. I think "non-essential cosmetic details" falls under "limitations". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 They come under "non-essential cosmetic details" i reckon... =-) Thing is, i can't see the font being squeezed down enough to get everything into a single antic 4 character set even without the render space for the player ship (since it can use a couple of players) and if it's spread over several fonts the advantage of refreshing one character definition to move stuff on the entire screen is at least partially lost anyway. I think "non-essential cosmetic details" falls under "limitations". Possibly, but certainly not in the way the game moves or plays; we're merely talking about some character redefinition that would have to be disabled and that's hardly anything considering. i've been giving it a bit more thought too, i reckon at least some of the nasties can be farmed out to players and their render space removed from the font; if the status bar is stored in the same font as the graphics (i'd be surprised but it's possible) that'll get some space back too and it might be possible to switch fonts on the fly with a bit of planning so if it can be wedged down to under 128 characters with the remaining software sprite render spaces, it might be possible to do it close to identical. Of course, that needs a lot of dissection of the code and font... i'd do that bit but i've got a lot on! =-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 (edited) well... when the source get released we can have a look how it works... panel could be as well simply gfx instead of font etc... and at least the player sprite I would use PMs to colour different so you can see the ship better... btw. wasn't a speccy port planed as well? how are they dealing with the ram and the font restrictions? Edited June 25, 2008 by Heaven/TQA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 well... when the source get released we can have a look how it works... panel could be as well simply gfx instead of font etc... and at least the player sprite I would use PMs to colour different so you can see the ship better... Well, if the panel is included in the font with the level that can be split off to it's own space to claw some characters back. btw. wasn't a speccy port planed as well? how are they dealing with the ram and the font restrictions? Well, they'll be running to a bitmap since that's the only option on the Spectrum... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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