SKYFOX on Atari A8 before I die?

[oky2000]

For me this game was one of the most fondly remembered, not only did it make your jaw drop at what you thought was impossible on your humble 8 bit but it is a damned fine game. I find it more enjoyable than even Starfox on the SNES really.

 

Sadly EA never released this for the A8 which I presume is because the original programmer did all 8bit versions and nobody could take on the mammoth task of converting it.

 

Now that we have the excellent Space Harrier by Sheddy who has shown us just how impeccable 2.5D can look on the A8 I wonder if anybody is working on or thinking about converting this awesome game?

[Justin Payne]

I remember when that game was release. A guy in our group who had a tendency to run fast and loose with the truth claimed that this game was released for the A8. Of course, we didn't have the Internet as an instant bluff resolver so we had to do some work. In the end we did prove that he was full of sh*t. It was a little win from the loss we felt from not having the game.

It would be nice to see someone pull it off.

[Mclaneinc]

More enjoyable than Star Fox...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Star Fox is one game I can say I went ape for, both me an my mate Kev placed our order with Planet Distribution who we used as a supplier for the shop and 88 pounds each later (trade) we had it on our Snes's, when that first boss swept in from behind the player it was a thing of beauty...Brilliant game...

 

Never had the hots for Skyfox, played it a bit on the C64 and Amiga but it didn't stand out as that good to me..Horses for courses I guess.

 

Talking about the Snes reminds me of a time me and a mate used to buy 2nd hand snes games off a stall in East Ham just before the shop went live, we stood there on the day Street Fighter came out on import, I joked and asked what it cost, £150 he said, me and my mate burst out laughing saying along the lines of "you are having a laugh" but one after the other school kids came to the stall and got their 150 quid out and brought them, adults as well.

 

150 quid......Bloody nora....

[José Pereira]

Like many others there is somewhere in one magazine in one of those one page advert saying the release to A8.

With so many of these on the past probably I am confused and wasn't Skyfox and if it was we all can die and still no Skyfox .

[Rybags]

Sprite use could be the determining factor.

 

Unsure if the game uses bitmap or char - bitmap = remap the writes which is a chore but probably easier than

Char - cater for 128 instead of 256, solution there might be multiple chsets and use 130XE type banking to switch around.

[José Pereira]

How is it done on c64?

Enemys are hardware sprites?

I was thinking in heli vertical lines over sky and ground as PMG but we can still have enemys on the bottom sides of the panel.

Based on this idea I thought in Starglider one of these days but this one is much more complicated.

[oky2000]

Apart from palette I couldn't see a huge difference between C64 and Apple II version so I always assumed that the reason it wasn't ported to the A8 family was down to the lone programmer who did all versions (except ST and Amiga IIRC) not being experienced enough with the A8 chipset?

 

I don't think sprites vs player/missile differences would affect this game looking at the Apple II version (I presume the Apple doesn't have sprites or anything like it) so probably the best place to start would be to disassemble the Apple 2 code and take it from there?

[oky2000]

Never had the hots for Skyfox, played it a bit on the C64 and Amiga but it didn't stand out as that good to me..Horses for courses I guess.

You have to take the two games in context IMO, for the year of release Skyfox was very very impressive, it may even be technically one of the best 2.5D flight sim sort of games for the C64. Skyfox together with Rescue on Fractalus is really what separated C64 gaming and Coleco gaming for me quite distinctly, dawn of a new era of ever more complex game engines.

[Mclaneinc]

You have to take the two games in context IMO, for the year of release Skyfox was very very impressive, it may even be technically one of the best 2.5D flight sim sort of games for the C64. Skyfox together with Rescue on Fractalus is really what separated C64 gaming and Coleco gaming for me quite distinctly, dawn of a new era of ever more complex game engines.

 

That's what I love about here, when someone shows that sort of love of a game you know you must have missed out, so I'll have another bash at it..

 

Thanks Oky..

[popmilo]

Porting from apple seems like most straightforward approach.

 

Here is some info on that version:

http://www.bionictoad.com/skyfox/

[Heaven/TQA]

I think the Apple 2 version can be used as base code? how many RAM does it use? several sequences remind me Rescue on Fractalus

[Shamus]

The only gotcha with porting the Apple version is the 7 pixels per byte versus 8 on the Atari. Other than that, it should be a good base for porting as it doesn't use double hi-res.

[oky2000]

I'm sure the Apple is vastly different to the C64 screen mode used, and the A8 is probably different to all 3 but they all use more or less the same CPU so at least the basic framework of the engine would be useable and then you just tack on the different display and audio engine for Pokey and Antic/GTIA etc ? That's not to say it's easy at all, but probably less difficult that conversion of Rescue on Fractalus to Sinclair and Amstrad Z80 based machines with completely different memory maps and screen display characteristics

[oky2000]

That's what I love about here, when someone shows that sort of love of a game you know you must have missed out, so I'll have another bash at it..

 

Thanks Oky..

It's not really as well structured as Starfox in that you can feel 'lost' at times with the free roaming aspect whereas Starfox is pretty much a road to a purpose and you have a loosely defined path in a single direction (but Argonaut Software implemented that at Nintendo's request prior to that I believe it was a free roaming style game idea they were working on) but I do find even with the more simple gameplay it is still fun. Nay not become your favourite game and it sounds a bit weedy on the C64 on emulators but I found it impressive looking compared to games released in the same year. Maybe watching an episode of Buck Rogers prior to playing will help too

 

Obviously there is the rose tinted element for me because I played it as a kid but then again I played Nebulus as a kid and now find that really frustrating and no fun at all. Skyfox.....a time when the EA logo on a game box was a good sign

[Tickled_Pink]

Like many others there is somewhere in one magazine in one of those one page advert saying the release to A8.

With so many of these on the past probably I am confused and wasn't Skyfox and if it was we all can die and still no Skyfox .

I was just about to point out the same thing. I'm pretty damned sure it was one of those games that were advertised for the A8 but never made it out.

[Shamus]

Just speaking from experience, as I have done conversions from both the Apple and the C64. The Apple conversion might be a little easier, as setting up the hi-res screen amounts to making a custom display list with LMS on every scanline (yay for ANTIC!) to match the weird Apple memory layout. Though with that approach, you'll have to fix all the shape tables as they won't look right because the Apple hi-res screen misses a bit in every screen byte and the bits in each byte are displayed in reverse (what were you smoking Woz? ).

 

The C64 isn't much easier, though you can fake the C64 screen by using character mode and a DLI to change CHBASE every 3rd line. A bit more involved, but then you don't have to mess with shape tables.

 

And then there's sound to deal with, which is easier to convert on the Apple side, as all you have to do is a search and replace on accesses to $C030. With converting SID sounds, well, good luck there.

[oky2000]

Or take out the sound and video specific machine code from Apple II so you just get x,y,colour info and just the basic note,voice being generated (pick your own screen mode and just add volume,waveform from Atari chipset and code those 2 routines)

[TMR]

Or take out the sound and video specific machine code from Apple II so you just get x,y,colour info and just the basic note,voice being generated (pick your own screen mode and just add volume,waveform from Atari chipset and code those 2 routines)

 

It sounds simple, but that's actually a fairly hefty job... and there are several other hefty jobs around it as well. =-)

[oky2000]

Depends how nice the code looks too, was the source ever released?