Centron 3D Official web page completed. Info + Pics

[+wood_jl]

At least Shatron is right on schedule.

 

Rumor has it the release date is Stardate 43125.8 - but only if you show a hell of a lot of love and/or apologize profusely for lack thereof.

[ravard]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Robocop. Classic!

 

ravard

[kiwilove]

I do think the Centron-3D game could be possibly done on the Atari A8 hardware - but it'll be jerky as hell - and that only with modified hardware could it be smoothed out. This is comment coming from a non-programmer.

The mock up of it - shows a very simple game as such - which you'd think would lack playability/addictness to it, etc. Adding extra features to make it truly playable - would be next to impossible, or improbable.

I still don't like the resolution though - which takes the edge out of it being impressive.

 

Some projects are simply too hard to do - well enough. Like Space Harrier - that it's always better to do something that the hardware can cope with. eg. a Xevious game.

I'd like to see a decent Zaxxon or Zaxxon-ess type game developed (or a Blue Max 2?) - but apparently the Zaxxon coin-op actually does some pretty unique stuff with it's hardware - and so porting to any home computer/etc system is a tough ask. Which can explain why the so many substandard versions that have turned up.

I'm surprised no one wants to do any kind of galaga game - which I can only guess would simply be too hard to do - for most programmers. ie. beyond the A8 hardware..

I would say it's not enough to do the standard game - but that you need to carry it to the next stage - an enhanced version, to make all the work and effort worthwhile. However, this will make it into a long term project - and that is where the difficulty always lies - no one wants to spend 3 years of their life - programming it because of no financial gain from it. But there would be the sense of achievement and pride of having done something outstanding - that should have been done decades ago...

 

A comment about the Amiga - is that it had limited hardware sprites - and while there is no limit on software sprites - I did not see a game which could generate a lot of these on screen - fast and smooth. I only had an Amiga 500 during it's hey-day and didn't see any shooters that stood out. While I did note the exceptional ones - they seemed to have been panned, instead of praised. On the ST - while there were many sprites on screen - they of course, were not smooth - but jerky.

 

Harvey

Edited July 12, 2014 by kiwilove

[AtariNerd]

At least Shatron is right on schedule.

I want THIS to be real, dammit. And with that, I'm out for now (Deep sighs of relief, all around.) unless a gameplay demo, or something more substantial manifests itself.

[+Stephen]

At least Shatron is right on schedule.

 

I am no expert coder, but I think that is a fake. There seems to be too many shades of yellow in that image.

[jaybird3rd]

For whatever it's worth, this looks suspicious to me, too, for all the reasons others have stated. I also couldn't help but notice that, according to the Workbench screen, the program file that was supposedly launched to start this "mockup" was ~214K in size. Is it possible to fit a full-screen bitmap image and over two minutes' worth of music into a file of that size? I'm not at all familiar with the Amiga, so I don't know, but it seemed too small to me.

[Rybags]

A HAM6 image comes in at 128K uncompressed. The music would likely be composed under a tracker and be mostly instrument samples which can be played back at arbitrary frequency, and come in at a fraction that an 8-bit WAV of equivalent length in terms of size.

 

I tend to agree with the earlier comment that it's suspicious that there'd be exactly 5 seconds of black. Lack of black artifacts I don't have much problem with - likely it's captured from emulation rather than video capture which means black registers as zeroes.

 

But with creative editing you can dub some existing track onto a video of a static pic or even take some modern day music piece and reduce to 8-bit precision to give the appearance it is playing on an older computer.

[Yautja]

Just ran into this:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/p/336916/1176787.aspx

This:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/p/335828/1174454.aspx

And also this (that might explain the music)...

http://fandalism.com/movesystems

- Y -

Edited July 12, 2014 by Yautja

[phoenixdownita]

As a staunch supporter of the "port" of Centron 3D to Amiga I think I can ask if we can move on now.

 

He said it'll take a couple of months so with a little luck he'll shut up in the meantime and we can all go back to our normal lives. I do miss the bashing though, Pteve made for an interesting, albeit sad, character.

I'm pretty sure in 2 months there'd be a whole new chapter of bashing, while we eagerly await for that I think we can get back and play some M.U.L.E., or not, whatever we were doing with our silly lives before Santa Claus dropped by and gave us Christmas in July.

 

Now, there was Shaq-Fu, why not make it a Shat-Fu .... you know maybe based on Ye Ar Kung Fu and have the Shat fart around here and there just to be a joy for the ears, the eyes and the nose ... too many games completely forget the nose.

Edited July 12, 2014 by phoenixdownita

[pixelmischief]

Yeah. I wonder if a moderator shouldn't just lock this one up and let us all get back to normal.

Edited July 12, 2014 by pixelmischief

[Rybags]

That music video shows he has some skills in the editing area and lends credence to the theory that most of the pics and the Amiga video are simply mockups and not the real thing as claimed.

[Synthpopalooza]

Well, if Steve, Pteve, Stete, or whatever you call him ... decides to finish Centron 3D (if it even exists) ... here's a thought ...

 

Instead of using 10+10, use 9+9, cycle the BAK register between opposite sides of the color wheel (say, blue and gold), and use PMG overlays of the fifth player (color register PF3) atop the spheres to increase the color resolution even more.

 

Using this method, you can get 1,024 colors onscreen at once, with certain limitations. I posted a demo of this on my ICE thread here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/188370-doing-pictures-using-super-irg-2-and-other-ice-modes/page-7?do=findComment&comment=3021616

 

Of course this is full screen flicker, but maybe there's ways of minimizing this?

 

Or if you stayed in 10+10, instead of using a mono+color switch, I would suggest using the color palette I designed here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/188370-doing-pictures-using-super-irg-2-and-other-ice-modes/page-7?do=findComment&comment=3028493

 

How it works is, you have three reds, four blues, four greens, three yellows, and a solid white. The layout would be like this:

 

Screen 1: red 1, Red 2, red 3, blue 1, blue 3, blue 4, green 2, white

Screen 2: green 1, green 3, green 4, yellow 1, yellow 2, yellow 3, blue 2, white

 

White is in the BAK register (712) on both instances. This serves two advantages, first that you get a solid non flicker color, and second that it can be used as an alternate background if you wanted to overlay PMG's.

 

The other colors are laid out so that you get the widest possible color range, from reds, purples, blues, greens, yellows, to oranges. This is helped by putting an extra blue or yellow color on opposite frames.

 

Using this, you get a total of 80 colors, instead of the 72 from the previously proposed mono+color blending, and two of them are non-flicker.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[Bryan]

Never mind... I'm much too silly tonight...

[fibrewire]

Could someone take the splash screen and turn it into a short demo on the A8? Then if someone sues for intellectual property theft, the game will be made available via subpoena for supporting evidence to the plaintiff! We'll finally get to see Centron 3D!

 

Thats my convoluted answer, and i'm sticking to it.

Edited July 12, 2014 by fibrewire

[Synthpopalooza]

Maybe someone could also do a RMT version of Huey Lewis's "Power of Love" from the Back to the Future soundtrack.

[Bryan]

 

Just ran into this:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/p/336916/1176787.aspx

This:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/p/335828/1174454.aspx

Hey, there's that familiar carriage return syntax we all know and love.

 

Looks like he's trying to make an UZEbox out of the C2000 chip.

 

Here's more:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/p/336647/1175754.aspx

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/t/337172.aspx

https://www.facebook.com/JackboxGames/posts/10202093500809309

[Marius]

Did it ever occur to people that all these posts about Pete, will justify his attitude about certain people here on the forum more and more?

 

Like I wrote posts ago: yes he made some strange moves, and I think he should drop that apology thing; but the more I read here, the more I think: Pete you are damned right about the Atari community (here).

 

It is so easy to make fun of someone, behind your safe keyboard.

[Poison]

Why are you still so bad? Is not it enough that because of your confidence, impudence and indecency, we lost a very pretty game? When you are all so very clever . . . so . .make this game and stop your bullsh**s.

But short video of gameplay would be more usefull than project freezing.

[Irgendwer]

Did it ever occur to people that all these posts about Pete, will justify his attitude about certain people here on the forum more and more?

 

Kind of compensation. We lost this brilliant game, so we are trying making fun of what was left.

 

"OK. YOU WIN ! To show that the REAL THING exist, here more than 10h of original Atari game play footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTpfMLV6STQ

To demonstrate the power of OUR SOFTWARE DMA, we had to switch hardware DMA OFF (559,0) - Company policy!"

[Heaven/TQA]

now that I have seen his not so bad Phil Collins cover... he should stick maybe more to music... and video style is 80s

[Marius]

Kind of compensation. We lost this brilliant game, so we are trying making fun of what was left.

 

But enough is enough right?

 

And I can imagine that Pete sees all these post as a justification of his demand for a apology.

 

And what about the quality of the responses. FJC came with a very cool respond with that short video. I'm pretty sure Pete has laughed about that one too. Thát was great, and fitted the situation. No hate, no personal attack… just a cartoon, with a sniff of sarcasm and irony. I also like that comment above my post from Heaven/TQA. He gives Pete positive credit about his Phil Collins cover. +1

 

If you also see what posts RPC_GAMES did like in the several threads about his and his Centron 3D, you'll notice that he also like posts with more skeptical and critical sound.

 

I have seen a lot of posts that were absolutely meant to hurt his feelings, and/or injure him. I think that isn't necessary, and again: The more posts in that line, the more outsiders who read the statement on the RPC_GAMES-website and then read this thread, would probably say: Pete is right.

[Irgendwer]

And I can imagine that Pete sees all these post as a justification of his demand for a apology.

 

 

And this is the real problem. Try to see it the other way around. What about the users which weren't offensive? He says on his site: "We are totally sorry for the inconvenience ."

I don't believe him. He puts a collective penalty in action - and my guess is: He just isn't honest. I don't doubt that he would like to release something, but he isn't capable of - at least now. If he likes to know the kind of people here, he could ask for help, or show interest in complains:

 

* Ok, CMODE flickers - why is this bad? How many people care? What do you suggest?

* I have problems to deliver in time. Please be patient.

* I need support - anybody willing to help?

 

But he played two roles: The one of the achiever and the boss/manager one - knowing obviously very little about the current scene and developments. As time passed, both roles become more and more hilarious. I don't think he's really a bad guy, as he e.g. doesn't took advance orders. But he likes to appear much more important than he is. If he would come down and change his attitude, I'm sure he will discover a completely different forum here...

 

And for god's sake, this is my last post in this thread.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Irgendwer

[miker]

Just by pure curiosity...

 

I've converted one of the screenshots into RIP format (using latest AIS).

 

Can someone with CRT monitor check it and tell us if it flickers so much (on both NTSC and PAL machines).

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Centron3D_L06.xex

[mgr_inz_rafal]

Yes, it flickers quite a bit on PAL machine.

[Shamus]

@ProWizard: Oh please. All that people have been posting WRT Pete is publicly available information that HE put on the interwebs. It isn't like people are stalking him to find out where he llives, who his family is, etc. Nobody is trying to ruin him; he's doing a bang-up job of that all by himself.

 

That said, I agree with Irgendwer. Pete could have approached this whole thing very differently and who knows? Maybe he would have eventually given up his project anyway. I think the thing that gets most people riled up is the lying. We've seen over the years here a few (fortunately very few) people who would get caught up in pretty outrageous lies that a little digging revealed--however the persons telling the lies would deny that they lied with more and more righteous indignation. I think that more than anything is what grinds people's gears here.

 

So the irony of the situation here is that Pete is the one that needs to come here and offer his apologies to us. I think if he did that, and came clean about the fact that RPC Games ! is just him (I used to work for someone who did the same thing, though he would never continue the ruse with someone who figured him out), it would go a long way towards mending bridges. If he would just come clean I think he would find himself in the midst of one of the best and most supportive dev environments around.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Shamus