Commando or ikari warriors or Alien syndrome-are they possible?

[gooner73]

Hi

just wondering if any of these 3 games will be possible on the coleco , maybe utilising the Sgm module.

 

commando

ikari warriors

alien syndrome

 

3 top shooters that the coleco seems short of!

[Pixelboy]

Commando was started on ColecoVision last year, but was dropped because the programmer lost interest in the project. Do a search on YouTube with the keywords "Commando ColecoVision" to see some footage of it.

[Trebor]

Do a search on YouTube with the keywords "Commando ColecoVision" to see some footage of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23kmdGnibus

[gooner73]

Do a search on YouTube with the keywords "Commando ColecoVision" to see some footage of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23kmdGnibus

 

looks really good, what a pity, is there anyone who would carry it on or is it not allowed?

[Pixelboy]

looks really good, what a pity, is there anyone who would carry it on or is it not allowed?

 

The game does look very good (I'm the one who drew the soldier sprites, by the way) but I have to agree with the author that the game didn't have much meat to it. The arcade game was all about being dropped into a chaotic battlefield, filled with soldiers and vehicles coming from every direction, and the ColecoVision doesn't have the processing power to reproduce so many enemy elements. The YouTube videos present how nice the game looks, but it also underlines the lack of challenge in the gameplay.

[opcode]

Well, I suppose you want my take on that, since you posted the question here in the Opcode forum.

 

Everything is possible, it is all a matter of how willing to compromise you are.

 

Assuming each enemy takes 4 sprites, 2 for the upper body, 2 for the lower (so a 2 colors soldier), and considering we have 32 sprites, that gives us 8 soldiers on screen.

Now, since objects are fairly scattered on screen in this game, using a 64 sprites driver should work ok. 64 sprites can give you 12 soldiers plus 16 shots on screen. That should be enough for the most intense parts of the game. But 6 soldiers and 8 shots (32 sprites) should be enough during 80%+ of the game. Vehicles can be done from tiles.

The major problem would be sprite patterns, but since we are scrolling anyways, and that is already very I/O intensive, loading sprites patterns on the fly in between screen scrolls would be an option.

 

I am a super fan of Commando, played the hell out of it in the arcades. I never considered porting it (even though the arcade uses a Z80) because I never saw it as the golden age arcade type of game that most CV users associate with the console.