GTIA Blast update

[Creature XL]

The SMB and Contra's were excellent tests - as the graphics and the feel/handling of the game sprite was very good. Whereas in Crownland - my fuzzy memory tells me it was not that good, when I tested it - some time back...

I personally don't see much point in doing straight conversions - that putting in some extra work and effort to make it your own, will be more satisfying, and you'll likely end up with a better end result too... in playbility?

Of course - you can only do projects - that you really want to work on, and not because of someone else's insistance.

 

To comment on another thread - about bringing Xenon to the A8 hardware. That you'll be hard pressed to bring 16-bit graphics to an 8-bit machine - successfully. I'd doubt it's possible.

That you can only do what the hardware does well... That if you were to do such a project - that you should take advantage of what the A8 can do, and use that.

That it should stand well on it's own two feet - and hopefully not to be compared with it's 16-bit origin. Which it can never equal.

 

Though I see nothing wrong with doing an Atari version of say - Megaman? or Metroid?

 

Harvey

 

This is almost the same answer I give Jose (or others) when they talk about convert games like Turican and so on.

It is much better to make an own game designed for the Atari which takes ideas from other games. Instead of working your a.. of just to make it look like a C64 game (which you can never achieve due to the diferent HW). Additionally, you can make "your game" with stuff you like to have.

 

I am doing something like this ATM. Although it is posponed for next year because not much time. Even no time for my little idea for ABBUC competition. It is just so damn hot in Germany that I can't concentrate.

 

I really like your comments. Did I caught it correctly that you were a professional game developer back in the day? (Sorry if I am wrong, but - as said - my concentration is low ATM )

[+Stephen]

 

This is almost the same answer I give Jose (or others) when they talk about convert games like Turican and so on.

It is much better to make an own game designed for the Atari which takes ideas from other games. Instead of working your a.. of just to make it look like a C64 game (which you can never achieve due to the diferent HW). Additionally, you can make "your game" with stuff you like to have.

 

SNIP

Exactly - and not just with the C64 either. It's not always possible to do pixel perfect conversions from the 2600. "Inspired by" and "ports" are two different things, and I think usually a game inspired by another will turn out better.

[kiwilove]

 

...Did I caught it correctly that you were a professional game developer back in the day? (Sorry if I am wrong, but - as said - my concentration is low ATM )

 

No, never a professional developer as such... I was always an enthusiastic amateur as such .. I had correspondence with Roy Lynch back then, who did have the opportunity to work 'commercially' as such - and what he revealed to me, was it was pretty terrible work to do (conditions, etc). Though if he had the opportunity to work for a decent company (eg. Thalion) [Also exchanged some correspondence with Erik Simon] - his experience would have been totally different.

 

I did want to become a freelance videogames graphic designer as such... back then... but my standard of work wasn't really up for that... nor did opportunities open up....

 

Nowdays - I want to venture into the writing field - as there's such terrible writing being done everywhere - that the plain simple truth is not being told anywhere, in the mass media, etc etc.

Also all the stories being fed to the public are fatally flawed, etc etc. An insightful observer will make the comment - that too often we are being fed such rubbish, and that it usually takes someone outside of the field in question, to bring forth breakthroughs and advancement in that field, etc. That a breakthrough in medicine, for example, will come from someone working in an allied field, the same will apply to art, music, and even videogames? (eg. how Tetris came about...).

 

Harvey

[Tezz]

Not forgetting Andrew Bradfield's Laser Hawk released by Red Rat (1986) that Harvey provided the graphics for. I still have my original here

* Edit * and Hawkquest of course

Edited July 23, 2014 by Tezz

[kiwilove]

A note...because we are at opposite sides of the world and our development has been archived as such - it's full developmental history is available.

The space invaders file, ie. ag3.xex - is dated around 30 Jan 2013. The project started around the 1st January?

The demos may have reached around 30? by end of January... by the time of it's first public release demo - it probably ended up to around 100+

 

My first efforts with GTIA11 - were pretty bad, and stayed like that for some time.

Also many other ideas were tried and tested - no doubt will not be used in the game at all - because there's not the time to utilize them.

 

Harvey

[kiwilove]

 

This is almost the same answer I give Jose (or others) when they talk about convert games like Turican and so on.

It is much better to make an own game designed for the Atari which takes ideas from other games. Instead of working your a.. of just to make it look like a C64 game (which you can never achieve due to the diferent HW). Additionally, you can make "your game" with stuff you like to have....

 

We do have many fine examples to illustrate how someone taken an inspiration and then did their own 'take' on it. Such examples as... Dropzone outdoing Defender, Encounter outdoing Battlezone, Blue Max outdoing Zaxxon - as well as original twists ... such as Miner 2049'er, Bristles, Atomsmasher.

And I think it is so disappointing to see someone spending so much time on a conversion - while not fully utilizing the target hardware. Sure - if the original game was so innovative in game design - then it may justify itself in being a straight port - but how many games are like that? Worthy of such respect? Thrust would be a nomination? Which was successfully ported to different hardware - Vectrex users should be especially pleased with that - although it is one very hard game. I would have liked to have seen new variations on it too...

 

While I can be critical - say in saying that Space Harrier was not going to end up being so nice on A8 hardware - because after all the coin-op original had such amazing sprite hardware (for it's time) or perhaps I am thinking of Powerdrift/Afterburner/Thunderblade/etc .... the humble A8 hardware simply cannot cope well...

I do think some kind of zooming effect could be done - but it'll have to be with so-called 'squares/blocks' as such within an action game format - or maybe I am wrong with this? That a sprite multiplexer might be achievable - say with a proper Buck Rogers attempt? That it won't equal the original (which is an impossibility) but maybe could outdo the C64 version?

 

Of course, it should still always be possible for someone to surprise us all, with a new variation of any classic videogame - that looks to be playable and fun.... with some really nice graphics as well... we all hope a few of those kind of surprises will turn up?

 

Harvey

[snicklin]

While I can be critical - say in saying that Space Harrier was not going to end up being so nice on A8 hardware

 

It would never be as good looking as the arcade, but if you consider that this game was re-implemented on an 8-bit machine which was older than the arcade game by 8 years or so, I'd say that the game was extremely well implemented. And in comparison to other 8-bit machines, we were lucky enough to get the best 8-bit version.

[kiwilove]

I'm not denying that the programmer did a great job with his implementation of Space Harrier on A8 hardware - but I will always feel that had he given himself the freedom to drift away from the original in any way - maybe he could have provided an enhanced version or variant - that could have been even better?

And with that kind of game type in mind - I've preferred seeing a better Buck Rogers game instead - again with some variation done...

 

Onto something different altogether - I think that with Thrust being done all over again - for other formats, eg. Vectrex - although this was completed some time ago - with it being such a hard game, I think perhaps a trainer mode would have been welcomed? In which you merely bump against the walls? While this would allow you to complete the levels much more easily and faster - there would be the challenge of playing it for real (with normal collisions) later... Of course new layouts/level designs with new? additions to them - would have been greatly appreciated.

 

Harvey

[+Adam+]

Game engine's perfect (many multicolor on-screen objects, smooth scrolling colorful interactive background...).

 

If a good level design will be made, it will easily enter my top 5 homebrew list.

 

Yeah, I agree. Great game engine, smooth movements, nice sprites. One thing that worries me are levels' backgrounds, some of them (for example in GR.9) look very chaotic - I hope that they look like that just for testing purposes

 

 

Crownland is an amazing piece of coding. There is no small amount of work on the graphic design side either, and Miker did a great job creating music for the atmosphere.

 

It was Mateusz 'Born' Wiśniewski who created that music, not Miker.

[+MrFish]

It was Mateusz 'Born' Wiśniewski who created that music, not Miker.

 

You're right. And all this time I was giving miker the credit. I think it's because he was the one that first introduced it to the forums here (Crownland Intro). So I wrongly assumed that he was part of the project, and taking the musical role as usual.

 

In that case, good job Mateusz 'Born' Wiśniewski.

[+Adam+]

I felt very strongly that this was going to be one quality project (this was apparent after only 3 months progress) - and the first to explore the GTIA modes fully - that it would have been disappointing to release it finished - only to have other GTIA? games from other developers released - when GB!/AB! was there first?

 

Well, you sound like there was no GTIA modes games before 2013, which is simply not true. Even in the early 80's there existed Atari games that used those modes... Sure, some of them were simple usages, but I don't see a point in disregarding them entirely - for example when I look on Koronis Rift from 1985, I see a good game and a good usage of GR.10 and GR.9.

[Synthpopalooza]

Still, I believe there is still a lot of unexplored potential where the GTIA modes are concerned, including not only using them in the normal mode E, but also with the various text modes as well, including Antic 2, Antic 5, and the Graphics 1 modes. When I started playing with these in emulation, I found that there were some quirks which the various Atari emulators weren't even aware of (the Graphics 12.10/13.10 color 8 PF0 bug for instance which was in Altirra pre 2.0) so I'd guess this hasn't been used much.

[kiwilove]

 

Well, you sound like there was no GTIA modes games before 2013, which is simply not true. Even in the early 80's there existed Atari games that used those modes... Sure, some of them were simple usages, but I don't see a point in disregarding them entirely - for example when I look on Koronis Rift from 1985, I see a good game and a good usage of GR.10 and GR.9.

I did have a look at 2 English? games (from back in the 80s') which used GTIA 9 as such, one as a static background, and the other tried it's best... But these were not successful efforts to show the effectiveness of this mode. I didn't like how it was used in Koronis Rift - that the design could have been better?

Back then, I did make use of GTIA 9 for the end of game sequence of Hawkquest. Part of this was done in 1987-1988 because your helicopter leaving the shuttle craft -was to be used in game - but was dropped out of there, because there was not the memory there, to use it in-game. So it got tacked onto the completion end of game seqence done around 1989.

Paul Lay provided a BASIC utility for redefined graphics in GTIA 9 - without which, we could not have done it otherwise.

 

I guess it was the demo preview of Battle Eagle that made me think - that GTIABlast! needed to be publicly shown - as a Work-in-progress... I do like the designs used in Battle Eagle - but don't think the sprites fit in well with them...

 

Harvey

Edited July 27, 2014 by kiwilove

[TMR]

I guess it was the demo preview of Battle Eagle that made me think - that GTIABlast! needed to be publicly shown - as a Work-in-progress... I do like the designs used in Battle Eagle - but don't think the sprites fit in well with them...

i tried using higher resolution sprites in Battle Eagle at one point during it's development but didn't think they worked as well personally, the mixing of ratios and size of the objects just felt a little "off" to me. That left just what i went with, maybe running software sprites and trying to ignore the coarse horizontal movement or the earlier idea of 4:1 ratio Callisto-style sprites i'd been trying back in 2010.

 

i was fairly recently toying with a horizontal scrolling shooter using the Battle Eagle sprite engine without expansion over Callisto's scrolling and enemy spawns handled from the tile data, but that's a while off even if i can convince myself it works... =-)

[kiwilove]

i tried using higher resolution sprites in Battle Eagle at one point during it's development but didn't think they worked as well personally, the mixing of ratios and size of the objects just felt a little "off" to me. That left just what i went with, maybe running software sprites and trying to ignore the coarse horizontal movement or the earlier idea of 4:1 ratio Callisto-style sprites i'd been trying back in 2010.

 

i was fairly recently toying with a horizontal scrolling shooter using the Battle Eagle sprite engine without expansion over Callisto's scrolling and enemy spawns handled from the tile data, but that's a while off even if i can convince myself it works... =-)

 

Yes - I do know of the problems getting sprites to work in with the background designs - not an easy thing to do successfully.

We have done tests doing horizontal-scrolling levels in AtariBLAST! - but it does seem very likely we'll not add them as such - the main issue being, it'll end up being a far bigger project than what we are prepared to spend time on - the other being there are technical problems with doing them too. Not all modes are easily usuable.

 

Harvey

[Heaven/TQA]

Koronis rift worked well because the sprites are software sprites and have same aspect ratio to be consistent... That's why I am with Jason... With space lobsters or how the game of red rat was called mixed mode9 with pm and that looks somehow odd... Look at Electra glide and it works...

[Heaven/TQA]

And Koronis rift of course uses mode10 which does not allow to use PM colors freely and it does assign colors dynamic for depth shading

[+Adam+]

Back then, I did make use of GTIA 9 for the end of game sequence of Hawkquest. Part of this was done in 1987-1988 because your helicopter leaving the shuttle craft -was to be used in game - but was dropped out of there, because there was not the memory there, to use it in-game. So it got tacked onto the completion end of game seqence done around 1989.

 

Oh, interesting, I haven't seen this sequence before - very nice!

[Heaven/TQA]

Can not remember that, too.... And the game... I thought that I have seen the helicopter somewhere before but in mode9

[kiwilove]

Can not remember that, too.... And the game... I thought that I have seen the helicopter somewhere before but in mode9

 

The helicopter was used in the loading screen (disk) for Laser Hawk. That helicopter design was then coloured in graphics mode 10 in the title screen of Hawkquest, with it's title likewise in mode 10 for it's colour cycling animation. With the end of game completion animation - it was mode 10 for the energy effect [drawn using Rambrandt] (again colour cycling) for the generator part (top part), whereas the bottom part of the screen was in mode 9. The helicopter could not appear on screen with the energy effect. You did not have to complete the game to see this sequence, as it was available via the map screen (like how you access options on the Windows 7 desktop) - an easily found easter egg - so to speak.

 

While back then, the device in Hawkquest - was some kind of ancient revolutionary free energy machine - I did not think I would encounter true life stories concerning them later on.... Anyone interested in strange but true? stories of this kind - should check out Ed Leedskalnin's Perpetual Motion Holder [ED.L PMH] and information about his understanding of how magnetic (electric current) works? He says they are both one and the same. A series of lectures titled Imhotep Leedskalnin Magnetic Current Series are at YouTube. There are 3 devices which he is known for - two are known of to some detail - his PMH and flywheel devices - but the 3rd simply remains a black box of some kind... Something similar yet different - is the work of John Searl. They are probably equal to Tesla - but of so-called modern times...

 

Andrew felt very strongly about giving the player a visual reward for completing his two games - probably because of how Shamus ended, when you completed it - that had a disappointing text congratulations screen at the end of it.

 

Harvey

Edited July 27, 2014 by kiwilove

[+Philsan]

There is a new demo available here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/573/entry-11165-atari-blast-demo-july-2014/

 

Tested today on real hardware with Atarimax 8Mbit Flash Cart.

 

Impressive! On real hardware I was able ot appreciate horizontal overscan (and stereo too).

[kiwilove]

Something I'll mention about GTIABlast!/AtariBLAST! - is that there was the option of keeping everything secret and not to release any public demos (ie. previews) at all - however I felt very strongly that something very special was being developed - and so rather than keeping it secret over it's long development (which could be anything of up to 3 years or more?) that previews/demos of it should be released...

 

I have already been through the experience of working on a project in secret over it's long development time (ie. Hawkquest) - and I thought this would not benefit GTIABlast!/AtariBLAST!.

Of course there are pros and cons either way.

 

There will probably not be too much in the way of more previews to come - and so everyone would have to be patient for some time - while it goes through it's last (hopefully) stage - which will take some time yet... The main reason is to keep some stuff - new for it's final release. We don't really want it's final version to be an anti-climax - where nothing new is shown in it... Hopefully there will some really nice new stuff that'll be present - eg. 5 to 10%? Which we'll have to come up with...

 

All comments have been received gratefully - and various comments have affected it's development positively. There cannot be that much more new stuff added to it - because it has already far exceeded what was envisaged for it in the first place. It was not to be such a huge project which it has developed into.

 

Harvey

[Mclaneinc]

That missing end sequence is lovely, so LucasArts but in my opinion better..

 

Shame it never made it, would be nice to see it in the flesh even just as that sequence as a demo.

[kiwilove]

That missing end sequence is lovely, so LucasArts but in my opinion better..

 

Shame it never made it, would be nice to see it in the flesh even just as that sequence as a demo.

If you are referring to that sequence in Hawkquest - it is in the game, but I don't expect anyone to see it proper - but they cans use the cheat to see it.

It is a very hard game to complete - even with it's game saves. But being a PAL only game - I don't think many NTSC users would make the effort to play it.

I have put a more user friendly version at it's information-tips site in which you can run it via emulation - set up it's 4 disk sides to drives 1 to 4 thereby eliminating the disk swapping necessary during it's gameplay. This was hacked by Paul. This hacked version is not at the various archive internet sites.

 

I don't know why this game was not picked for play in the High Score Club - probably because players are NTSC purists? An exception could have been made when they realise how challenging this game is - when the secondary games are completely different for Levels 1 and 2. And there are surprises in store there.

Altirra is such an excellent emulator - allowing you to play games on large screen LCDs etc - I don't think players will notice any difference at all.

 

No other game is/was as extensive/vast as this - though it can now be said that GTIABlast!/AtariBLAST! will be bigger than Hawkquest.

 

I was going to have the same landscape layouts as Hawkquest in GTIABlast!/AtariBLAST! but with the special target locations marked/revealed - but I have had to not go ahead with this - because I don't have the reference maps for them anymore. (I had asked someone to scan them for me - but he hasn't got back to me with them done...). You do need to use as much of the special targets that you can find to reach the end of the top view Xevious like levels - with as many spare helicopters in reserve - thereby giving you extra men to start the secondary game with.

I don't see any reason to keep the AB! landscapes like Hawkquest's anymore - so they'll change radically by the time it's finished - probably. The main reason to keep their Hawkquest look - is to show how much has changed since back then, while the hardware is still the same - Paul's programming has enabled considerable change to take place - also the games are different too. I do have to take out the roads - as they were functional in HQ - but unused in AB!

 

I'll make this comment about Centron-3D - having viewed the Amiga video preview demos. That it's not such a hot game design and severely underutilises the Amiga hardware. Maybe because it's their first serious game project - that it is so quirky. I just do not see how the gameplay can be fun at all - especially with that limited sprite movement. The original A8 version - would not have looked all that much better. I will guess it was up and running but I can imagine it was not looking all that good. You can't be too sensitive about peoples' comments - as I always think it is good to know what peoples' comments are - instead of not knowing them at all. If you don't know your own faults (which first games invariably have) - how can your projects become better and better?

Laser Hawk was not intended to be anything that special - but for someone's first game - it is certainly a good effort. It certainly was not 'original' in any way. I didn't take part in it's game design - apart from suggesting what the end of stage targets could be... And writing the story for it.

 

Harvey

[Faicuai]

There is a new demo available here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/573/entry-11165-atari-blast-demo-july-2014/

 

Andreas: I managed to use Superpacker/Exomizer to make a smaller .xex file (I'm not 100% sure I did it right, but it seems to work ok on Altirra) but I don't know what you did to make an ATR.

 

F-AMAZING (!!!)

 

...Wow!!! Talk about pushing / extracting some good stuff out of the Atari!

 

In terms of fluidity and screen-play dynamics, this thing reminds me of MAME (!)

 

What an ingenious combination of graphic-modes with background designs (I *DO* like the look of them), wise us of the gradients / color-set, "dimensional" look of projected elements and shadows, superb multi-speed scrolling, and the dual-layer, seemingly "asynchronous" PARALLAX... OMG(!!!)

 

Also impressive is the Gr.8-dot-pitch resolution of one of the screen-plays. On the DVDO iScan processor, I swith to composite (on-the-fly) and it can be enjoyed with tons of naturally occurring color-artifacts. The Sprites are great looking, with what seems careful design and attention to detail, on them...

 

All-in-all, what a GREAT piece of work, and I thank those guys behind it for putting that much time and effort on it.

 

In the Scroller / Shooter gender, this will be a KILLER, and for a long time, to come.

 

Kudos!

Edited September 24, 2014 by Faicuai