Zaxxon conversion?

[Keatah]

Imho Boulderdash looks better on the Apple II than it does the 400/800. I haven't seen it on the C64.

[kiwilove]

 

Most of these screenshots are taken from the Youtube video - Let's Compare Boulderdash - which gives some clue as to the hardware differences. But I thought the Atari 8-bit representation shown - was not the best possible, so I took a screenshot from another video - for comparison.

 

But the video shows only the one level for comparison - but at least you see it being played. I like seeing these kind of videos because you do notice the obvious difference in the hardware. The Apple screen certainly does look good - if only this was the case when the screen starts scrolling.

 

In some of these Let's Compare videos - the Atari 8-bit is poorly represented - which is probably due to the emulator? being used - in others it is an accurate representation.

 

You have to be careful when comparing - sometimes it's really not the hardware differences you are noting - but actually that person's work and whether he/she is using that hardware to it's utmost.

 

Harvey

[Tempest]

Most emulator screenshots make the Apple graphics looking worse than they really are due to bad artifacting support. They also make the pink fringing on text look worse than it really is on a apple monitor.

[kiwilove]

 

Most of these screenshots are taken from the Youtube video - Let's Compare Boulderdash - which gives some clue as to the hardware differences. But I thought the Atari 8-bit representation shown - was not the best possible, so I took a screenshot from another video - for comparison.

 

But the video shows only the one level for comparison - but at least you see it being played. I like seeing these kind of videos because you do notice the obvious difference in the hardware. The Apple screen certainly does look good - if only this was the case when the screen starts scrolling.

 

In some of these Let's Compare videos - the Atari 8-bit is poorly represented - which is probably due to the emulator? being used - in others it is an accurate representation.

 

You have to be careful when comparing - sometimes it's really not the hardware differences you are noting - but actually that person's work and whether he/she is using that hardware to it's utmost.

 

Harvey

[Keatah]

But the video shows only the one level for comparison - but at least you see it being played. I like seeing these kind of videos because you do notice the obvious difference in the hardware. The Apple screen certainly does look good - if only this was the case when the screen starts scrolling.

 

In some of these Let's Compare videos - the Atari 8-bit is poorly represented - which is probably due to the emulator? being used - in others it is an accurate representation.

Harvey

 

The screenshots are fairly representative. No amount of palette tweaking can make the Atari version look good. Just plain lousy programming. Too brown-drab-monochromatic. Simple as that.

 

I don't find the "stuttery" and blocky scrolling on the Apple that bad. It seems to be in multiples of the tiles. So it fits nicely with the character movement. It's an example well done.

[kiwilove]

 

The screenshots are fairly representative. No amount of palette tweaking can make the Atari version look good. Just plain lousy programming. Too brown-drab-monochromatic. Simple as that.

 

I don't find the "stuttery" and blocky scrolling on the Apple that bad. It seems to be in multiples of the tiles. So it fits nicely with the character movement. It's an example well done.

 

The Atari version was the first one done/made --- and I did not like the jerky movement at first. It's no doubt used because of how characters are used on screen - but you got use to it, as it's part and parcel to that game. I don't think you can complain at all about the Atari version especially - as with so few colours you have to use - I think what you see - are the best colour combinations possible - such that other levels probably show a better choice of colours.

These days - with what's available - you can sit down and see if you can do any better? And I'll say no - you can't do better - even if you tried? Whether you can add to the game part - and add new features? I don't know - but I'll guess new variations could be possible?

You don't have to be a programmer to suggest new ways of playing. I believe that the game designer of Boulderdash - did not know how to program the game by himself, and required assistance to do so - but by the time Boulderdash 2 came around - he did acquire the expertise to do so, by himself.

 

Rockfall (homebrew for the SNES) does try to do something different with the standard Boulderdash game design - using the SNES hardware. It's not a great success - but at least it's something somewhat different?

 

Harvey

[tep392]

This is all very interesting, but it's gone totally off topic of my conversion. I suggest starting another topic if you want to continue the conversation. Thanks.

[kiwilove]

It does look like I will be having a go at trying to do Zaxxon like graphics, just for the sake of seeing if I can do anything with it, and I can see what it is like diagonal scrolling along.

However this is not for a Work-in-progress project or future project. I'm just doing it as an experiment as such - because I was always a fan of it's graphics (the coin-op).

 

Trying to squeeze anything close to the coin-op to within the one character set (that it's usual to use a character set redefined to in-game graphics) - is of course impossible. You can only include only a few of the design elements present in Zaxxon.

I'm told that Super Zaxxon actually uses a bit-map mode (ie. not redefined characters as such) - which takes up more memory than say using redefined characters - and this could be the reason why a 5200 version/conversion of it will not be easy to do at all. Super Zaxxon is a more faithful conversion as far as the landscape graphics goes - and I am surprised at how this was done?

 

I don't want to spend much time on this effort - because it is only experimental and is not planned to be used for any game because there is not a programmer interested in working on it. I don't really want to do all the graphics work at present for different reasons. Though I am happy to play around with a few graphic elements within Zaxxon.

 

Drawing the robot is too hard - it would take up a lot of characters to have it detailed, and a small version of - is as difficult to do too. The player's ship design - is likewise very hard to portray accurately because of the very limited pixels/colours of the Atari sprite hardware.

 

Only a few design elements are doable to good standard.

 

I like to post a demo video - when I have enough to show - that looks halfway decent? At the moment it is just too rough looking - that people will likely say - why did you post this?

It is not an accurate rendition of Zaxxon - but is more of a Zaxxon styled game, with only some Zaxxon design elements present.

 

For those wondering - how could I have worked on something on screen running - when I am not a programmer at all - is that, Paul Lay has altered his screen designer used for AtariBLAST! to do a test for diagonal scrolling - with test graphics too, after reading how much of a fan I am of Zaxxon. This test, though very rough with quickly put together graphics - is a good test bed, to show how hard it is work on for such a game - but at the same time, shows some promise.

 

This is a proper diagonal scroll running - and is not the same as the horizontal scrolling zaxxon like level (for AtariBLAST!) - I have already posted a video of, on Atariage.

 

The reason for mentioning all this - is that others may show some interest? To maybe work on something themselves? Or perhaps work together? maybe...

I'm only going to work on this - off and on... (most times off) over the long term.

 

Harvey

Edited July 11, 2015 by kiwilove

[tep392]

It does look like I will be having a go at trying to do Zaxxon like graphics, just for the sake of seeing if I can do anything with it, and I can see what it is like diagonal scrolling along.

However this is not for a Work-in-progress project or future project. I'm just doing it as an experiment as such - because I was always a fan of it's graphics (the coin-op).

 

Trying to squeeze anything close to the coin-op to within the one character set (that it's usual to use a character set redefined to in-game graphics) - is of course impossible. You can only include only a few of the design elements present in Zaxxon.

I'm told that Super Zaxxon actually uses a bit-map mode (ie. not redefined characters as such) - which takes up more memory than say using redefined characters - and this could be the reason why a 5200 version/conversion of it will not be easy to do at all. Super Zaxxon is a more faithful conversion as far as the landscape graphics goes - and I am surprised at how this was done?

 

I don't want to spend much time on this effort - because it is only experimental and is not planned to be used for any game because there is not a programmer interested in working on it. I don't really want to do all the graphics work at present for different reasons. Though I am happy to play around with a few graphic elements within Zaxxon.

 

Drawing the robot is too hard - it would take up a lot of characters to have it detailed, and a small version of - is as difficult to do too. The player's ship design - is likewise very hard to portray accurately because of the very limited pixels/colours of the Atari sprite hardware.

 

Only a few design elements are doable to good standard.

 

I like to post a demo video - when I have enough to show - that looks halfway decent? At the moment it is just too rough looking - that people will likely say - why did you post this?

It is not an accurate rendition of Zaxxon - but is more of a Zaxxon styled game, with only some Zaxxon design elements present.

 

For those wondering - how could I have worked on something on screen running - when I am not a programmer at all - is that, Paul Lay has altered his screen designer used for AtariBLAST! to do a test for diagonal scrolling - with test graphics too, after reading how much of a fan I am of Zaxxon. This test, though very rough with quickly put together graphics - is a good test bed, to show how hard it is work on for such a game - but at the same time, shows some promise.

 

This is a proper diagonal scroll running - and is not the same as the horizontal scrolling zaxxon like level (for AtariBLAST!) - I have already posted a video of, on Atariage.

 

The reason for mentioning all this - is that others may show some interest? To maybe work on something themselves? Or perhaps work together? maybe...

I'm only going to work on this - off and on... (most times off) over the long term.

 

Harvey

Keep in mind that the character set can be stored in RAM and made dynamic. This is done in the Atari version. So when you get to the robot, you can redefine characters that are not needed for the background to be used for the robot. This is also how the missile silo's are animated. But the character animation has some major drawbacks. Any background graphics must also get modified, so the background characters in the path up from the silo can't be used anywhere else on the screen or you will see multiple copies of the missle as it's animated. Shots from the planes and canons are also characters, so the background becomes a serious complication in animating them. I'm guessing that the sparse background in the Atari version may have been a tradeoff to simplify animation of the characters. Ever notice that the missles don't travel very high? They never go above the transition from the ground to the wall. A solution would be to use player/missles, but they are already being used for the altimeter and plane. We would have to put up with some flicker to used them elsewhere. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Good luck!

 

[kiwilove]

Keep in mind that the character set can be stored in RAM and made dynamic. This is done in the Atari version. So when you get to the robot, you can redefine characters that are not needed for the background to be used for the robot. This is also how the missile silo's are animated. But the character animation has some major drawbacks. Any background graphics must also get modified, so the background characters in the path up from the silo can't be used anywhere else on the screen or you will see multiple copies of the missle as it's animated. Shots from the planes and canons are also characters, so the background becomes a serious complication in animating them. I'm guessing that the sparse background in the Atari version may have been a tradeoff to simplify animation of the characters. Ever notice that the missles don't travel very high? They never go above the transition from the ground to the wall. A solution would be to use player/missles, but they are already being used for the altimeter and plane. We would have to put up with some flicker to used them elsewhere. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Good luck!

 

Yes - your explanation makes a lot of sense - I've mistakenly assumed player/missiles were in use in the game - which explains the sparseness of the background.

Had multiplexing of players and missiles been used - maybe this would have freed up a lot of characters to add a more detailed background?

 

I'm taking a wild guess that going horizontally scrolling would be far easier to implement Zaxxon - and you can do more in this format - whereas going diagonally - you'd be best to copy the C64 version very closely - and probably improve upon it because doing it exactly like the coin-op is simply impossible because of the differences in hardware/etc etc.

 

I'll post a video by the end of the month? That might inspire someone to take up this kind of project seriously or not?

 

Harvey

[kiwilove]

A side note - I was told that the Zaxxon coin-op actually uses rotational hardware to rotate the graphics around - to achieve the diagonal scrolling as such. Or words to this effect.

You can see how the graphics look without the rotation - but running Zaxxon via the Mame emulator - Press F4 to see the graphics, press Enter, until you see the landscape graphics - and

then you'll see the landscape as per a horizontal landscape - which is different as to how it appears in the actual game.

 

There is distortion present - because it's not really a horizontal scrolling landscape at all.

 

Just like when I copy the missile silo graphic (from a coin-op sprite sheet somewhere - that someone has assembled the graphics from Zaxxon) - it looks fine when I see it scroll diagonally - but when I transfer it to the horizontal scrolling inspired Zaxxon level as in AtariBLAST! - it doesn't look right at all, so I have to make changes to the design (slightly) so that it'll look alright - to adjust it for the angle difference.

 

Harvey.

[tep392]

 

 

I'm taking a wild guess that going horizontally scrolling would be far easier to implement Zaxxon - and you can do more in this format - whereas going diagonally - you'd be best to copy the C64 version very closely - and probably improve upon it because doing it exactly like the coin-op is simply impossible because of the differences in hardware/etc etc.

 

Harvey

Conceptually, the diagonal scrolling is pretty simple thanks to the hardware fine scrolling and flexibility of the display list. Each visible row of characters has an entry in the display list with an address pointing to the location of the data. After fine scrolling vertically or horizontally by one character, you reset the scroll and move a full row/character, down/left by simply updating the addresses in the display list to point one character to the right and one row up. The display data doesn't need to be moved around in ram to make this happen. You are just manipulating pointers. Also, each row of charaters can be as wide as you want so they are made wide enough to span the visible display as they are scrolled from the upper right to the lower left via pointer manipulation.

[kiwilove]

The reason why I say that a horizontal scrolling Zaxxon like game - would be easier for designing graphics for, is because of the how designs easily fit within characters as such - whereas diagonal scrolling involves designs fitting within characters - will take up more characters.

You can make use of a dynamic character set in use - which involves careful choregraphy of certain designs spaced apart, meaning some design elements cannot be next to each other and are purposefully separated - but it won't look like the Zaxxon layout at all. This can be OK for some design team who wants to depart from the coin-op original.

 

I know that for a vertical scrolling landscape making use of several character sets - it can be possible to hide the join between vastly different character sets - such that the join is not noticeable. Before work started on Hawkquest (for 48k Atari 400/800/etc) a demo was made of the landscape for a vertical scrolling like game. I think it was around 4? landscapes - while the joins were seamless - a graphics glitch did appear elsewhere - also the colours were different for each character set/landscape. I don't know what the overhead was to achieve this - no player-missile hardware was used in the demo - in terms of processing time and resources used, etc. You can find this demo at Youtube, amongst the Hawkquest videos I have posted up there. Here is the link for the video - it starts from around 1:30

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xZ9Jg81wFM

 

Harvey

[kiwilove]

 

Here is how the Robot may look like - if you are using as many characters as you want to. The problem with using characters like this, is that you can't have the robot moving around.

The only way? you can do this, would be to have a rather plain'/simple background - and move the whole screen to make like it is the robot moving around.

About 51 characters are in use here - I cannot put the red precisely in the right position, to show the robot is armed as such.

 

I'm guessing you can use multiplexing of players (ie sprites) and missiles - to face off with the Zaxxon robot here. I'm guessing that should be possible - not too sure how it'll look though. There is limited resolution and number of colours - so it won't match the original coin-op exactly.

 

I would be tempted to use this robot design for use in the horizontal scrolling Zaxxon like level in AtariBLAST! - but I'm too low of characters to fit all this design in - and still it does require some tweaking for the changed angle - so I can't fit it all in, and I don't want to simplify the background too much - but I could have a go at fitting recognisable parts of this into it?

 

Harvey

 

 

[+darryl1970]

Gotta say the A8 version (48k) of Zaxxon appears better than c64

I am not sure if I am missing something. I definitely consider myself an Atari "fanboy", but I have never seen a version of Zaxxon on the Atari that was better than the Synapse version on the C-64.. I am wondering if there is a lesser C-64 version made by Sega (like Congo Bong has two version).

 

I still think the 8-bit could do better. if there is an 8-bit version I am missing, please show me. I only know of the 16 and 32k versions. Until this thread, I didn't realized there were such big differences between the two!

[tep392]

I've put a copy of the final binary in the first post. The plan is to build some carts to sell in the store for those who want a physical copy. If you are interested, please respond to this thread so we can get an idea of how many to build.

[Hyperboy]

I would be interested in a copy.

[kiwilove]

I still think the 8-bit could do better. if there is an 8-bit version I am missing, please show me. I only know of the 16 and 32k versions. Until this thread, I didn't realized there were such big differences between the two!

 

Yes the A8 hardware could do better - you have only to see AtariBLAST! to see the potential unlocked. Although it is not a Zaxxon like game - the techniques used, can be used for such a game. The next demo release will clearly show this - I don't know when that will be released - whether in a month or two? Or sometime later this year.

The technique of multiplexing - will enable more sprites and missiles on screen - but the sprites are not independent, as per the sprites on the C-64.

 

I don't think Ron Fortier was the right programmer for a Zaxxon conversion - although his version could have been worse still. Super Zaxxon was not done any better - although it went the bit-map route.

 

Harvey

[+darryl1970]

 

Yes the A8 hardware could do better - you have only to see AtariBLAST! to see the potential unlocked. Although it is not a Zaxxon like game - the techniques used, can be used for such a game. The next demo release will clearly show this - I don't know when that will be released - whether in a month or two? Or sometime later this year.

The technique of multiplexing - will enable more sprites and missiles on screen - but the sprites are not independent, as per the sprites on the C-64.

 

I don't think Ron Fortier was the right programmer for a Zaxxon conversion - although his version could have been worse still. Super Zaxxon was not done any better - although it went the bit-map route.

 

Harvey

Yes. I remember thinking that Super Zaxxon looked better back in the day. I was never a huge Zaxxon fan, so I wasn't that critical. The Atari versions are light years smoother than the ColecoVision, but the Coleco had more detail in the backgrounds. I figure that the Atari can do whatever the Coleco can and better. I remember Super Zaxxon added more detail, but it was jerky. I am going to check out AtariBLAST!

 

**EDIT*** Found Atariblast. Cool. Like to see the 3/4 perspective!

Edited July 30, 2015 by darryl1970

[kiwilove]

It was a tough ask - for any Zaxxon to be faithfully converted to the A8 hardware (or any other). I'm more inclined not to stick with a faithful conversion - but do a variation of one. I'm no programmer - but will guess it'll be easier to have a Zaxxon like game - horizontally scrolling instead of diagonal - while this will be shown in AtariBLAST! (which won't appear anytime soon - those keen to see it will have to be very patient) - there is no Zaxxon like interaction with the background/landscape - because AB! was not designed with this in mind.

Hopefully someone will see the potential in doing it this way - and they'll be welcome to reuse the graphics.

 

Harvey

[bikeguychicago]

If Zaxxon is anything like Pac Man Arcade, quality-wise, please consider me interested.

Edited September 11, 2015 by bikeguychicago

[kiwilove]

I was going to release an early demo of only an attempt at redoing Zaxxon in proper diagonal scrolling - a Work In Progress - kinda (it was never going to end up being finished, etc) but the graphics are so temporary/unfinished, I think there is no sense in doing so. Until I can get it looking more presentable looking. It is simply too rough at the moment. Because I have other more important stuff to work on, I have to put this on the backburner - but no doubt I'll be keen to have a go at it again, at some later date.

 

However I can say that Zaxxon in a side-scroller fashion is present in AtariBLAST! - which a video of it has been released some months ago. More work has been done on it, though it hasn't changed too much. It was never to be played like Zaxxon - and is along the lines of a standard kind of shooter. But these graphics will be available to any programmer who would want to take up the challenge of using them proper in a Zaxxon like game - if they wish to? Of course, it's a ton? of work to do, so I don't expect any takers for it.

If you've seen MetroCross? then it'll be more like that game?

Another game that springs to mind - is Mag Max, or MagMax? Perhaps a combination of the two games could be remixed in a new variant?

 

Harvey

[tep392]

Okay, let's get back to talking about this conversion. It looks like a few people have downloaded the binary from the 1st post. I would like to get some feedback on any testing that was done in hardware. If you have a flash cart, please try it out on your console. We are getting ready to make up some cartridges and want to make sure there aren't any bugs. Thanks a lot.

 

Perry

[Aking]

Okay, let's get back to talking about this conversion. It looks like a few people have downloaded the binary from the 1st post. I would like to get some feedback on any testing that was done in hardware. If you have a flash cart, please try it out on your console. We are getting ready to make up some cartridges and want to make sure there aren't any bugs. Thanks a lot.

 

Perry

a perfect conversion, runs without issues on 4 and 2 port systems

[tep392]

a perfect conversion, runs without issues on 4 and 2 port systems

Do you have a system to test on? Could sure use your help.