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Prince of Persia for the 7800?


7800Lover

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Okay, an idea I'd like to throw out here - who remembers the game Prince of Persia?

 

To refresh your memory: Prince of Persia was made in 1989 by Broderbund (the people who brought us Karateka and the Carmen Sandiego games) for the Apple II. An evil vizier in ancient Persia has seized power and is forcing the princess to marry him within one hour. You, the hero, is the true love of the princess but you have been locked in the dungeon. You had 60 minutes to make your way up through the tower to rescue the princess and stop the vizier.

 

While there was action involving swordfights with guards, you also had to collect potions for health and get past traps like pits, spikes, and guillotines.

 

This game was ported to A TON of systems, both computer and console, like the Amiga, Amstrad, Sega Master System, NES, etc.

 

Could someone try to develop this title for the Atari 7800?

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I remembered Perry mentioning something about considering doing Prince of Persia and to see if it is possible for the Atari 7800 back in August. The thing is I also remembered Perry mentioning about him planning to do a 7800xm version of Dig Dug based on the same post in August of this year.

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I really thought PoP was choppy and full of death.. extremely frustrating and actually a bore. Maybe played on wrong system?? I dont know for the bang for buck there is lots of other great games that are fun. But maybe thats just me.

Dig dug xm woud be great!!

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I remembered Perry mentioning something about considering doing Prince of Persia and to see if it is possible for the Atari 7800 back in August.

 

 

That would be awesome.

It would be very nice if we can use the 320 mode in order to preserve the beauty of the animations.

 

I made a makeup, I have applied the palette 7800 to the Amiga / DOS version (the Atari ST version has a high number of colors), I reduced to 6 colors + transparent + background color.

It can get a good result with 5 colors, while with only 4 colors we have to make compromises.

 

This makeup is only a draft (I still have to refine it), I apologize for the imperfections.

 

 

 

 

50yz.png

blu6.png

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WOW...That is incredible, Marco; amazing work.

 

Gorgeous artwork and fluid animation is an absolute must for this title (Heck, anything even close would be great). The lack of colors is not a big deal (As the mock screens clearly demonstrate), as much as keeping it at 320 (Again, look at that awesome work). I recall seeing and playing it on my (Turbo) XT with only a 4-color CGA card and PC speaker sound. What really amazed was the fluid movement of the character. There was nothing like it at the time.

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WOW...That is incredible, Marco; amazing work.

 

Gorgeous artwork and fluid animation is an absolute must for this title (Heck, anything even close would be great). The lack of colors is not a big deal (As the mock screens clearly demonstrate), as much as keeping it at 320 (Again, look at that awesome work). I recall seeing and playing it on my (Turbo) XT with only a 4-color CGA card and PC speaker sound. What really amazed was the fluid movement of the character. There was nothing like it at the time.

 

 

 

 

Unforgettable memories.

 

Thank you Robert. :)

 

 

 

 

55ic.png

 

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Okay, an idea I'd like to throw out here - who remembers the game Prince of Persia?

 

To refresh your memory: Prince of Persia was made in 1989 by Broderbund (the people who brought us Karateka and the Carmen Sandiego games) for the Apple II. An evil vizier in ancient Persia has seized power and is forcing the princess to marry him within one hour. You, the hero, is the true love of the princess but you have been locked in the dungeon. You had 60 minutes to make your way up through the tower to rescue the princess and stop the vizier.

 

While there was action involving swordfights with guards, you also had to collect potions for health and get past traps like pits, spikes, and guillotines.

 

This game was ported to A TON of systems, both computer and console, like the Amiga, Amstrad, Sega Master System, NES, etc.

 

Could someone try to develop this title for the Atari 7800?

 

 

Correction, Prince of Persia was developed by Jordan Mechner and published by Broderbund. I read his book on it.

 

But Prince of Persia on 7800? Yes! That'd be awesome. We need POP on every platform.

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So here's those CGA memories. All I had was 4-color CGA and PC speaker:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT4AM16B3T4

 

 

This PC game can be presented in 16 colors and Ad-Lib sound (Finally experienced ~1994 with my P100 and ATi Mach64 graphics card and Ensoniq Soundscape audio card):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv20j8ChtRY

 

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So here's those CGA memories. All I had was 4-color CGA and PC speaker:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT4AM16B3T4

 

 

This PC game can be presented in 16 colors and Ad-Lib sound (Finally experienced ~1994 with my P100 and ATi Mach64 graphics card and Ensoniq Soundscape audio card):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv20j8ChtRY

 

Oh man, I used to play Prince of Persia on my Dad's old Packard Bell 8088 XT clone. It only had CGA graphics, and a PC speaker. I miss that old PC.

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Very cool :)

 

Lookng at the mockups, if 320b mode was to be used, the 4 color mode would have to be used as well. This is because transparency would be needed, and then it's limited to two pallets of two colors each. I know there are some ways to get the third color to work in transparency by modifying the bitmap, but I would think with this game the bitmaps should be as close to original as possible. Especially since 320b mode would be used to try and get this close.

 

Regarding the zones, it looks like the bricks should only be 16 scanlines high to get the 12 zones comfortably on the screen (You can't have a zone higher than 16 scanlines).

 

The cool thing about this, is there aren't many sprites on the screen at one time, so you can concentrate CPU time on the background.

 

BTW, I know a certain member would normally come in and correct me if I got anything wrong, but he hasn't visited the 7800 fourm in quite a while.

Bob

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Hi Bob

do not care about him

You are the BEST 7800 programmer and he normally never finishes his projects and it seems he disappeared into Intellivision :)

But i woul like to see him back here.Somehow i miss him and i would like to see his roms of the projects he started and not only a stupid video

greetings Walter

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and he normally never finishes his projects and it seems he disappeared into Intellivision :)

But i woul like to see him back here.Somehow i miss him and i would like to see his roms of the projects he started and not only a stupid video

greetings Walter

 

He is good at what he does. But it seems like he gets distracted and moves on to other things quickly when bored. I can't fault him for that - I have the same problem. :-) Hope he comes back. Some of the things he was working on for the XM were quite nice

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Prince of Persia was made in 1989 by Broderbund (the people who brought us Karateka and the Carmen Sandiego games)

Correction, Prince of Persia was developed by Jordan Mechner and published by Broderbund. I read his book on it.

 

Not really a correction. It's true that Broderbund distributed all of those games.

And it's true that Jordan Mechner developed Prince of Persia AND Karateka.

Although he didn't develop Carmen...

 

The animation for PoP is incredibly fluid.

But if someone is going to try to convert it to the 7800, remember the lessons of Karateka. It HAS to play well too!! :-)

Although the control system for PoP should be much easier to do right on the 7800..

 

desiv

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Very cool :)

 

Lookng at the mockups, if 320b mode was to be used, the 4 color mode would have to be used as well. This is because transparency would be needed, and then it's limited to two pallets of two colors each. I know there are some ways to get the third color to work in transparency by modifying the bitmap, but I would think with this game the bitmaps should be as close to original as possible. Especially since 320b mode would be used to try and get this close.

 

 

Bob, thanks for your kind explanation. :)

 

I updated the mockup to 4 colors + background color, I also made an alternative that is inspired by the original Apple II. :)

 

 

 

 

 

z4kf.png

rsko.png

y84n.png

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Regarding the zones, it looks like the bricks should only be 16 scanlines high to get the 12 zones comfortably on the screen (You can't have a zone higher than 16 scanlines).

 

The cool thing about this, is there aren't many sprites on the screen at one time, so you can concentrate CPU time on the background.

 

 

Bob, a question.

I have noticed that there are always placed in column 3 bricks. I wonder if it is technically possible to use 4 zones for the graphics of 3 bricks (so as to leave unaltered the original aspect ratio).

 

Thank you for your attention.

 

 

 

meoe.png

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Bob, a question.

I have noticed that there are always placed in column 3 bricks. I wonder if it is technically possible to use 4 zones for the graphics of 3 bricks (so as to leave unaltered the original aspect ratio).

 

Thank you for your attention.

 

 

 

meoe.png

 

 

That one might not work, only because if you look closely, there's one scanline extra in the bottom zone than in the zone just above the top one you outlined.

 

I guess the best thing to do is to make the zones smaller, so that they evenly distribute (i.e. assuming 20 scanline high bricks + 'grout', use two zones of 10 lines each. Then there would be 19 zones of playfield, + two scanlines at the top for the above head bricks, and the 8 scan line zone at the bottom for the health meter. It's going over the 192 scanline 'limit' by those 8 scanlines, but it should still work.

 

*EDIT* - I'm an idiot - that's 18 zones, not 19, so we're actually good.

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That one might not work, only because if you look closely, there's one scanline extra in the bottom zone than in the zone just above the top one you outlined.

 

I guess the best thing to do is to make the zones smaller, so that they evenly distribute (i.e. assuming 20 scanline high bricks + 'grout', use two zones of 10 lines each. Then there would be 19 zones of playfield, + two scanlines at the top for the above head bricks, and the 8 scan line zone at the bottom for the health meter. It's going over the 192 scanline 'limit' by those 8 scanlines, but it should still work.

 

*EDIT* that's 18 zones, not 19, so we're actually good.

 

 

I'm glad to read this! Thank you.

 

These are just the first evaluations, but ... :)

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