What is your favorite Rasmus game?

[Omega-TI]

 

Here are the dreams I make (not exhaustive, these are the things that come to mind first):

- Less repetitive terrain, more realistic

- Stars and planets scrolling on the background like your fantastic LightYear demo

- Smoother scrollings

- Plain sprites (not Wire-frame models like current Parsec)

- Better laser shape

- Ambiant Music

 

But:

- Keep all the Parsec endemic voices

- Keep the shapes of the objets (juste make them more detailed)

- Keep the assault waves (Urbites, Dramites, Bynites, aliens and the asteroid belt ) but add some other (if possible) could be interesting to surprise people who used to play Parsec.

- Keep refueling sequence

- Keep all sounds but just revisit them.

- Keep colors of levels (yellow, green, red, ...)

 

Because the goal would not be to make a "Generic Space Shooter", not to make an ersatz of R.Type or Defender... but to make "Parsec" keeping its soul, to see what might have been this Great game with a maximal exploitation of the power of the TI-99/4A.

 

 

I agree with everything you said, except I'd make the refueling sequence a mini-level of it's own... possibly even a view from the pilots perspective. Once you exit the tunnel, it would then switch back to the regular view. That would give it a two-games-in-one kind of feel and really amp up the fun.

[Asmusr]

Smooth scrolling on the 9918A using 'modern techniques' requires repetitive graphics where the total number of combinations of two neighboring tiles is small, e.g. <= 128 in Graphics mode I for 1 pixel scrolling. Unless someone can think of a clever algorithm for paging in new characters on the fly, the existing Parsec graphics is already way too detailed for that method (266 combinations). Another way to obtain faster smooth scrolling would be to take advantage of the 512K cart and store the graphics pre-scrolled in 8 frames - then you could perhaps scroll the screen every second VDP frame (would have to transfer 1K each time). I have attached a Magellan file of the Parsec graphics that I used for the Light Year demo.

parsec.mag

[Dexter]

Hard to choose between Road Hunter and TI Scramble, but I finally chose TI Scramble.

The fact that the source code Rasmus's games are available, makes it outstanding.

 

[fabrice montupet]

@Rasmus,

 

I am well aware that it will take compromise due to the TMS9918 capacities and the tormented TI99 architecture and memory limitations :-)
Here are two drawings that I made in order to show how I saw things. It's quick drawings, it's just to imagine :-)
The top third of the screen will stay fixed for each assault wave (Saturn is far, not need it moves all the time, it could move a little to the left with each change of enemy). The stars could blink, but that's not important.
The middle third would move slowly and the bottom third (the ground) will move fast and especially fluidly.
All sprites are full color (no transparency). The focus would be on the animations of sprites. Maybe we could go further ? Don't know... You're the specialist :-)

 

Edited July 9, 2015 by fabrice montupet

[Asmusr]

I can count 8 colors in the ship. How would that be possible on the 9918A?

[Omega-TI]

I can count 8 colors in the ship. How would that be possible on the 9918A?

 

Live large! Break out of the box! Make an F18A only game! We'll love you for it!

[Asmusr]

 

Live large! Break out of the box! Make an F18A only game! We'll love you for it!

 

That's interesting because it's not my impression there has been much interest in the F18A demos I have posted. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Fabrice is not talking about an F18A version.

[fabrice montupet]

I made a palette correction, now the ship has 6 colors. But I can reduce the flame ejected by the reactor to one color instead of two, and we'll obtain 5 colors... Is it too much?

We are not forced to make waves of 6 or 7 enemies, this will avoid the problem of masked sprites when they are too numerous on the same line

Better is to work on the intelligence of the enemies instead of their number.

 

My drawings are just a first shot, just to see what I am thinking, nothing definitive :-)

Edited July 9, 2015 by fabrice montupet

[Iwantgames:)]

Idk that one F18A Shoot em up demo was pretty sweet. Id definitely buy something like that

[Tursi]

Yeah, only 4 sprites per line, which translates to four colors on a scanline, then you get flicker.

 

That said, I love that background design!

[Asmusr]

I made a palette correction, now the ship has 6 colors. But I can reduce the flame ejected by the reactor to one color instead of two, and we'll obtain 5 colors... Is it too much?

We are not forced to make waves of 6 or 7 enemies, this will avoid the problem of masked sprites when they are too numerous on the same line

Better is to work on the intelligence of the enemies instead of their number.

 

My drawings are just a first shot, just to see what I am thinking, nothing definitive :-)

 

Even with only two colors your ship would have used up all the four 16x16 sprites available on a scanline. To add more sprites, e.g. for the enemies, they would have to flicker. There is an interesting technique where you stack two sprites with different colors and alternate between them each frame. In the areas where the colors overlap you would see a third color that is a blend between the two colors. If this technique was used for the flames and the (16x16) enemies there would be two, non-flickering sprites left for the front of the ship.

[artrag]

I have would like to do some tests but I think the solution used in the light year demo could be used in a parsec like level.

Is there a bitmap picture of a whole level of the original parsec ?

[fabrice montupet]

On a TI-99 game which uses Sprites for moving elements, we will always be faced to their hardware limitation. Flickering is a real problem...
Continuing to use Sprites, even if I simplify the ships (2 colors , the black color inside the Sprite in truly black and no transparent) and the flame (1 color) , their shape stay cool :

 

Edited July 10, 2015 by fabrice montupet

[Dexter]

 

That's interesting because it's not my impression there has been much interest in the F18A demos I have posted. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Fabrice is not talking about an F18A version.

Then I’d like to express that I’m very interested in you demos, and to see even more for the F18A. I’m very impressed by your F18A demos, I’ve downloaded them all, (I hope), together with their source. I haven’t used (part of) the F18A because I’m not (yet) ready / experienced for it.

But you’re right, that’s just one person to begin with

Edited July 10, 2015 by Dexter

[Omega-TI]

 

That's interesting because it's not my impression there has been much interest in the F18A demos I have posted. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Fabrice is not talking about an F18A version.

 

Hmmm, maybe it's time to take another poll?

[Asmusr]

 

Hmmm, maybe it's time to take another poll?

 

The Mole posted the coolest graphics we have seen on the F18A here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207586-f18a-programming-info-and-resources/page-14?do=findComment&comment=3259078

 

There were 4 downloads.

[+Schmitzi]

5

[Omega-TI]

 

The Mole posted the coolest graphics we have seen on the F18A here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207586-f18a-programming-info-and-resources/page-14?do=findComment&comment=3259078

 

There were 4 downloads.

 

The photo below might be part of the problem...

_{(Sorry, but I miss a lot since the forums split)}

[Tursi]

But you guys wanted to split the forums!

[globeron]

 

Since you ask, there are just a few things for starters that could be tweaked...

 

You know what is funny. Because of the TI- NTSC cable (Never The Same Colour). My Parsec gets all kind of colours already. The yellow is very colourful without programming. The emulators all have yellow only of course. Regarding speech i have done comparisons between different emulators as well

[am1933]

Personally, I would prefer a Parsec II for the native hardware, it may help me forget about Beyond Parsec.

 

Something similar to the original but with a few twists, like some of the ships that form the scenery being sprites that can actually launch at you, how about the big tower on stilts becoming a coolant tower (making contact with the top stops your laser overheating for a set period of time), the radar dish could be replaced with some form of laser that makes it hard to make contact with the tower.-------------I gotta stop smoking this s**t!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Opry99er]

You know what is funny. Because of the TI- NTSC cable (Never The Same Colour). My Parsec gets all kind of colours already. The yellow is very colourful without programming. The emulators all have yellow only of course. Regarding speech i have done comparisons between different emulators as well

The Paesec "glitter" effect.. YES!!!

[fabrice montupet]

You might have guessed, I am interested by programs running on a native TI-99/4A without any motherboard modification. Of course, 32 Kb expansion RAM can be used.

[fabrice montupet]

 

The Mole posted the coolest graphics we have seen on the F18A here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207586-f18a-programming-info-and-resources/page-14?do=findComment&comment=3259078

 

There were 4 downloads.

The F18A is a great hardware but I no longer recognize the TI-99/4A in these F18A demos.

[Asmusr]

The F18A is a great hardware but I no longer recognize the TI-99/4A in these F18A demos.

 

Ironically it's the only programs that require a real TI-99/4A to run properly - everything else runs fine on emulation.