Opry99er Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Anyone ever long for an Elite port or clone for the TI? Other than the vector graphics in most iterations, this would fit quite well into the TI's architecture. It feels like we have something of a void when it comes to large-scale simulation games... Elite would be an epic undertaking, but perhaps a lighter version as a proof of concept for starters? Where's Vorticon? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 How about 1337 on the Oric? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Didn't Tursi take the text-only version and port it over? I think it is somewhere in the Elite April Fool's spoof thread. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Didn't Tursi take the text-only version and port it over? I think it is somewhere in the Elite April Fool's spoof thread. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/223819-elite-for-the-ti-994a/page-3?do=findComment&comment=3412178 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 I suppose I have to be the one to ask... Anyone planning to convert << THIS >> to FlashROM 99 format? << GO HERE for Tursi's DOWNLOAD >> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 I suppose I have to be the one to ask... Anyone planning to convert << THIS >> to FlashROM 99 format? << GO HERE for Tursi's DOWNLOAD >> All you have to do to convert Tursi's loader cart image for flash ROM 99 is to un-invert it. The super simple bank invert tool linked in the flash ROM threads makes that literally: open, save, done. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/193163-512k-cartridge-status/page-16?do=findComment&comment=3025762 -M@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted July 7, 2016 Author Share Posted July 7, 2016 Wow, 1337 looks AWESOME!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 I suspect that you could take the text-only version and add the necessary graphics to make it into a 512K cartridge game--just have the engine load what it needs for each screen directly from the cartridge, with the main loop running in the 32K space. It might be possible to keep everything in the cartridge space, but that would probably be some very interesting programming. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted July 8, 2016 Share Posted July 8, 2016 Most of the game could be written with C, but you'd want to have some pretty optimal math + line drawing routines in assembly.Having a large cart might make the game easier to implement, but the biggest obstacle might be the size of scratchpad RAM.I'm guessing you'd need a little more CPU RAM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted July 8, 2016 Share Posted July 8, 2016 That was why I suggested it run the main loop in the 32K space--and not to try and run it out of the Scratchpad. With a 512K or even a 2048K cartridge, you could pull all of the pregenerated graphics you wanted straight out of the cartridge to put them into VDP space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted July 8, 2016 Share Posted July 8, 2016 It's definitely doable... I'd tackle the job, but I would definitely need an annotated source code listing. I've done 6502 to TMS9900 conversion work before, and it's painful... I have a source listing but it's basically just uncompressed code and nearly unreadable. The principal issue with a port is, can you make the game playable on the TI? I would probably limit the screen to the upper two sections, 16x32 in size, and leave the bottom for instrumentation. I'd definitely go for all monochromatic for the main display. Also, we DO have a pretty good bit-map flight simulator with the Red Baron cartridge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 When considering porting a game to the TI it's always a good idea to look for an MSX version first because the VDP is the same. Here we go: It would probably end up running 50% slower on the TI (just a wild guess). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 What I don't understand: We learned that the 9918/28 is not the best choice for vector graphics, but we're seeing them here again ... is there any particular advantage of the MSX system compared to the TI? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted July 9, 2016 Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 That Elite for the MSX looks pretty good. The vector graphics seem to work well in that environment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted July 9, 2016 Share Posted July 9, 2016 The vector graphics seem to work well in that environment. Right, and this is strange. The MSX must access the VDP by ports like the TI. Since the VDP manages the VDP RAM on its own (including refresh), I would not expect any way of mapping the VDP RAM into CPU space (cautiously formulated, surprises welcome), unless there is some clever way to synchronize CPU and VDP memory cycles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted July 10, 2016 Share Posted July 10, 2016 Right, and this is strange. The MSX must access the VDP by ports like the TI. Since the VDP manages the VDP RAM on its own (including refresh), I would not expect any way of mapping the VDP RAM into CPU space (cautiously formulated, surprises welcome), unless there is some clever way to synchronize CPU and VDP memory cycles. I think the MSX can hit the VDP almost twice as fast as the TI because of its CPU. Tursi will know. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 I think the MSX can hit the VDP almost twice as fast as the TI because of its CPU. Tursi will know. If you are moving a block of memory, the Z80 is very fast due to certain instructions designed for that. However, vector graphics cannot take advantage of this, the Z80 has a high number of clock cycles per instruction when you aren't just performing block moves, and the MSX design has added wait states for the processor making it even slower. I don't think the slowest part is drawing the lines anyway, it's the math. This depends more on how fast you can implement the fixed point math. Are there any existing fixed point math routines for the 99? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 Are there any existing fixed point math routines for the 99? No, I guess everyone brewed his special kind of FP math where needed. In my Fractals program for the Geneve I designed a 16/48 bit fixed point arithmetics support (1 word integer, 3 words fraction) for addition and multiplication that fit onto the 256 byte on-chip RAM of the 9995. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 I don't know how the original Elite code worked, but I'd TOTALLY avoid floating-point math. I'd try and use integer-based calculations as much as possible. I was able to replicate the Sine/Cosine functions using pure integers in assembly before and it was fairly effective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 If you are moving a block of memory, the Z80 is very fast due to certain instructions designed for that. However, vector graphics cannot take advantage of this, the Z80 has a high number of clock cycles per instruction when you aren't just performing block moves, and the MSX design has added wait states for the processor making it even slower. I don't think the slowest part is drawing the lines anyway, it's the math. This depends more on how fast you can implement the fixed point math. Are there any existing fixed point math routines for the 99? I would draw the graphics to a 4K buffer in CPU RAM, which is much faster than constantly setting up VDP read and write addresses, and then copy the whole thing over once a frame was done. Fixed point math, even with sine and cosine, is relatively fast and you could perhaps do a lot of the rotations in advance, but the copying would be much faster on an MSX. However, even if we could make some decent 3D graphics on the TI, which we haven't event seen at the demo level, it would take a lot of work to try to understand and recreate the Elite engine, which was designed by geniuses. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddemann Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 Talking with some friends about old games and I came across this YT about Elite: Then I started to think... Have this been made for the TI? And if not, there are a lot of new skills. Maybe NOW it can be made? Quick looking around here, and yes there has been some talk about this game. Guess my main question is, can this game be made for the TI? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+TheBF Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 On 7/12/2016 at 2:30 PM, mizapf said: No, I guess everyone brewed his special kind of FP math where needed. In my Fractals program for the Geneve I designed a 16/48 bit fixed point arithmetics support (1 word integer, 3 words fraction) for addition and multiplication that fit onto the 256 byte on-chip RAM of the 9995. I know nothing about the magnitude needed here but does the problem require 48 bits? Would 32bits work? Forth systems have something called "mixed math" operators that map onto the TMS9900 very well. They allow you to solve a lot of problems that require larger magnitude numbers while staying in the integer realm on 16bit machines. unsigned mixed multiply ( int * int -> double) unsigned mixed div&mod ( double / int -> remainder, quotient) int -> double (conversion) scaling operator */ ((int * int ->double) / int -> int ) print unsigned double with formatting with character insertion. (decimal point, $ signs etc) print signed double with formatting with character insertion. (decimal point, $ signs etc) If you had these routines in the code could they replace a fixed point math system? Asking for a friend. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 8 hours ago, oddemann said: Guess my main question is, can this game be made for the TI? I don't think you will get a clearer answer than what's already written in this thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted September 2, 2022 Share Posted September 2, 2022 Totally doable, if we are ok with a very slow frame rate. There is nothing inherently unusual about the graphics, mostly coordinate transformations, but rendering will be quite sluggish. Memory will likely be another issue, although we could leverage the SAMS here. As for the undelying play engine, that's a completely different matter as it will have to be deduced from gameplay on other machines, but I don't see why we couldn't come up with something close. Am I volunteering? Heck no 🙂 This will be a massive undertaking... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted September 2, 2022 Share Posted September 2, 2022 (edited) At least we now have the fully documented source code for Elite on the BBC Micro: https://github.com/markmoxon/cassette-elite-beebasm and https://www.bbcelite.com/ Edited September 2, 2022 by Asmusr 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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