May start coding a new game for the ST

[oky2000]

I was let go from work this week without warning (company going bankrupt) so thinking about getting off the rat race life for a while and doing some things I always wanted to do.

 

This made me decide that I am going to do a game based on the original Sega Buck Rogers (Planet of Zoom) arcade game for the Amiga 500/600/1000/2000. it is going to have massively improved graphics and is a remake in the same way that Super Stardust is a version of Asteriods if you get my drift This will be proper arcade quality of the late 80s Sega games like Outrun not the actual original arcade machine, so you can say the graphics will be big. Put it this way, the Star Fighter is a sizable 3D rendered model and the floor is from textures made via real desert terrain images.It looks pretty good so far to me anyway, and the goal is it should look like a scene from the TV show not a 1982 arcade game graphically

 

Why am I posting it here? Thing is I may also do a port for the ST too because once the 32 or 64 colour (depends how fast the textured 3D floor runs) graphics for my Amiga game are done and the levels designed etc the coding leaves not too much to do. Problem is this will have to be 68000 assembler, no way will it work in any other language............could take a while to learn that Anyway I am hoping ST 68k coding is a LOT simpler than Amiga 68k coding because it is all just CPU based routines.

 

I'm not sure how I am going to do the sound though, and I don't want to make it STE only.

 

I'm just wondering what people think of this idea? I will post some screenshots soon when I have put together a suitable system to start developing it. Like I said think Asteroids on C64 vs Super Stardust on Amiga 1200 you get where I am coming from in terms of 'remake' ie more of a re-imagining of the original.

 

May be 2mb only (sorry, lots of pre-calculated data needed on Amiga version and not sure if 1mb will be enough even though ST needs less memory for graphics)

 

PS The level gameplay mechanics will be taken from the 8 stage Coleco Adam 'Super' cassette version of the game not the more simple 4 levels of the arcade/atari/c64 versions etc.

[anzac]

sorry about the job loss. can´t say the same won´t happen to me soon if the economy doesn´t improve a little....

 

but i´ve had friends who in similar situations found the time and opportunity the dedicate themselves to projects they had been delaying. that, in turn, gave them new skills and a mind frame to take some risks they didnt have before.

 

and a new ST game will be good for the community, so i for one, will be waiting... still impresses me, that after all these years people are still coding for the ST...

[Christos]

It's a bit of an ambitious project. You will most certainly develop skills to make it. Just note that an 8MHz st isn't very good for texture mapping, and neither is the amiga. Good luck though

[+DarkLord]

I'm looking forward to seeing what you can come up with.

 

I know there are a lot of lower memory machines out there, but most of us have upgraded machines

somewhere, someway, so yeah...I vote go for 2megs base model RAM, mass storage device of some

sort, and please support accelerators! If nothing else, the emulator crowd will love that.

[oky2000]

Thanks for the support guys

 

I am thinking of learning visual basic anyway for money making activities (the ST game if it is done will be given free to the community of course).

 

When I say textured floor it's not really texture mapping it's just a way to describe the look but will be made up of lots of scaled soft sprites just like Sega arcade game does. This is where the 2mb comes in, the pre-defined graphics for the scaling. Graphics shouldn't be a huge problem, it is unlikely to require more than maybe 50-60% of the efficiency of the 68k code for Lotus Turbo II on the Atari. I may make it NTSC/PAL 60 only though given the benefits and also that there probably are no TVs left in the world that can't do PAL 60hz.

 

For an idea of what I am thinking if you watch the opening credits of Buck Rogers TV show you will see a clip for a few seconds of a few Star Fighters flying over the desert towards New Chicago (when the gold rings are zooming out of the screen and the years are counting up to 2589 on the screen etc)....this gives you an idea for the kind of look I am going for.

 

I would post a mock-up but my last mock-up is kind of based on a very different way of doing the textured terrain which I have abandoned for a more complex but ultimately less boring look. It's also in 32 colours because I am still really working out the look

[oky2000]

As a by product of making both a 64 colour and 8 colour set of graphics for the desert floor I have also managed to get it down to 5 colours with no real noticeable loss of quality for the ST. That leaves me with 11 colours plus any raster based palette changes for graduations too.

 

I don't know if I could write it on an ST without some ASM 68k help from a coder though. Depends how much faster STOS is on an STE than a stock ST if at all. If not then I am screwed

[Lynxpro]

I was let go from work this week without warning (company going bankrupt) so thinking about getting off the rat race life for a while and doing some things I always wanted to do.

 

This made me decide that I am going to do a game based on the original Sega Buck Rogers (Planet of Zoom) arcade game for the Amiga 500/600/1000/2000. it is going to have massively improved graphics and is a remake in the same way that Super Stardust is a version of Asteriods if you get my drift This will be proper arcade quality of the late 80s Sega games like Outrun not the actual original arcade machine, so you can say the graphics will be big. Put it this way, the Star Fighter is a sizable 3D rendered model and the floor is from textures made via real desert terrain images.It looks pretty good so far to me anyway, and the goal is it should look like a scene from the TV show not a 1982 arcade game graphically

 

Why am I posting it here? Thing is I may also do a port for the ST too because once the 32 or 64 colour (depends how fast the textured 3D floor runs) graphics for my Amiga game are done and the levels designed etc the coding leaves not too much to do. Problem is this will have to be 68000 assembler, no way will it work in any other language............could take a while to learn that Anyway I am hoping ST 68k coding is a LOT simpler than Amiga 68k coding because it is all just CPU based routines.

 

I'm not sure how I am going to do the sound though, and I don't want to make it STE only.

 

I'm just wondering what people think of this idea? I will post some screenshots soon when I have put together a suitable system to start developing it. Like I said think Asteroids on C64 vs Super Stardust on Amiga 1200 you get where I am coming from in terms of 'remake' ie more of a re-imagining of the original.

 

May be 2mb only (sorry, lots of pre-calculated data needed on Amiga version and not sure if 1mb will be enough even though ST needs less memory for graphics)

 

PS The level gameplay mechanics will be taken from the 8 stage Coleco Adam 'Super' cassette version of the game not the more simple 4 levels of the arcade/atari/c64 versions etc.

 

 

Sorry about the job situation.

 

I'm tempted to recommend shooting for an STe with 2MB of RAM as the baseline.

 

Too bad you couldn't use a Falcon to start the project with and then downgrade to both the Amiga and the ST.

 

Throw in support for a math coprocessor! I'd imagine that would help out with texture mapping...

 

 

Note: And no, I am not one of the people on eBay selling pallets of unused Motorola 68881 or 68882 math co-processors either, thank you very much.

[jens]

I'd recommend to use a plain ST and maybe add extras for more powerful systems. The vast majority of existing systems are ST's.

[+rdemming]

I am thinking of learning visual basic anyway for money making activities (the ST game if it is done will be given free to the community of course).

 

Sorry that I'm late but I hope you will get a new job soon.

But why learning Visual Basic? In my opinion, if you want to program for .NET, then C# is the way to go as it is the language specifically developed for .NET. C# syntax may seem cryptic at first compared to VB.NET but if you are used to it, I think C# will be more comfortable than VB.NET. And if you know how to harness .NET with C#, then learning the VB.NET syntax is easy when you really have to do a project in VB.NET.

Also since C# syntax is similar to Java syntax, you can do Java programming with relatively ease.

 

Robert