Tempest Elite coming soon to Atari 8-bit

[_The Doctor__]

double post... yanked

Edited December 2, 2017 by _The Doctor__

[_The Doctor__]

Anyone who purchased Tempest Elite and experiencing a problem running the game on a VBXE system, send me a private message and I will forward my email address.

I am hearing support and research, I am 'extremely' hopeful!

[Gunstar]

Has anyone played and/or compared Tempest Xtreem to Tempest Elite non-VBXE? I understand that the web's have more lanes, and ability to use multiple controllers, but is Elite a large difference or improvement, in anyone's opinion outside of the programmer (Peter-no slight intended, I already own several of your games, reviews are in Excel #5 coming soon). I want a gamers-only perspective comparison in graphics, sound and game play, regardless of any new technical programming achievements.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Gunstar

[Keatah]

But if everyone always yells from the towers, "don't code for this, it's not real", you get nothing for the upgrade, hence you kill it. Should it not be the case, if a cool upgrade is out there, you encourage development for it? Especially in a case where this game, uses it if it exists, and runs better if it is there? That is a win, win for everyone.

 

I suppose there is no reason to actively discourage writing for an upgrade like VBXE. Only disadvantage in writing two versions is that you have to take away something from the original "standard" version. Particularly if you're limited in resources. If you split them into two separate code bases, that issue goes away.

 

Can you point out some threads that are saying, "Don't code for VBXE?"

[+davidcalgary29]

Elite plays like a “cleaned up” version of Xtreem. Graphics and sound samples seem...crisper, and I believe that there are more webs. And, of course, the new instructions are much better. You can tell it’s an upgrade when playing, but it’s not a vital purchase if you have Xtreem. That’s my takeaway from it.

[peteym5]

Tempest Elite has 96 playable webs. I made up over 120 and decided not to use about 20 of them with the standard game. Much of the unused webs were just little different then another webs chosen, or they would had caused glitches with bullets and spikes erasing parts of the web because the lanes were too narrow. I was intending to show them to KJMANN and ask him which ones he like or disliked. This was a time period when months had gone by without anyone hearing from him. What I ended up doing is sorting them, webs with less lanes can be used for the lower levels, and more lanes for higher levels.

 

Tempest Elite has an option of playing Random order or Elite (Sequential) order for the webs. Has the controller options, and an option to disable the music.

 

Tempest Elite has lane highlighting and the pause does work. I redone the flipper graphics so there are more frames as they flip. There is a new enemy that pops up in the higher levels. There is another power up in the game also.

 

Now there is also demand for someone to bring Tempest to the Atari 7800, but I am not sure how it can be done with just 4K RAM on the stock machine. However I am starting with something simpler like Delta Space Arena and Venture before tackling Tempest and Secretum Labyrinth.

[Level42]

Without all the hassle. It looks like a brilliant conversion. Too bad I'll never play it.

[Zap!]

Is it still available? If yes how much?

[+davidcalgary29]

Yes, about fifty bucks through Video61.

[Gunstar]

Tempest Elite has 96 playable webs. This is irrelevant to me normally, for example, I've had Tempest 2000 for over 20 years and my all-time best is 50-60 of it's 90 something levels. (using a rotary controller with it for the past 10 years)

 

Tempest Elite has an option of playing Random order or Elite (Sequential) order for the webs. This may change the irrelevance I mentioned above...maybe.

 

Has the controller options, This is the only main reason I would have to get it over Xtreem.

 

and an option to disable the music. Irrelevant to me, I like the musix.

 

Tempest Elite has lane highlighting and the pause does work. A plus.

 

I redone the flipper graphics so there are more frames as they flip. A plus.

 

There is a new enemy that pops up in the higher levels. If it's only higher levels, I'll probably never see it.

 

There is another power up in the game also. A plus.

 

Regardless of your points and my answers above, it was just out of curiosity and I will be getting ELITE at some point. I already bought and refurbished an Indy driving controller for it...I can't use that with Xtreem! Got any Tempest stickers I can apply to the top of my rotary dial? (it's the only game that I will ever use it with)

Edited December 3, 2017 by Gunstar

[Lynxpro]

Tempest Xtreme and Tempest Elite always ran on stock 64K machines. When you see 128K or 256K, it is referring to the size of the ROM used for the game. I had to use the whole 64K RAM because there was a lot of stuff that needed to be always mapped in memory and using areas not affected by bank switching. 64K RAM is what over 95% what people have with these old Atari 8-bit computers anyway. It is rare to find anyone with just 16K RAM. I did make a few games that just use the lower 16K RAM + 16K cartridge, but that was ensure making an easy 5200 port. Now I am looking to port a few titles over to the 7800, starting with the smaller games.

 

The 400/800 can be expanded to 48K, 64K with that incognito thing. A lot of people bought 600XLs and expanded them to 64K or more.

 

You've mentioned in other posts about being concerned with the 7800's standard 4K SRAM. The 7800 supports cart-based RAM and supposedly can support 1MB RAM and 1MB ROM on a cartridge. CPUWiz has plenty of info on that subject.

[tep392]

 

You've mentioned in other posts about being concerned with the 7800's standard 4K SRAM. The 7800 supports cart-based RAM and supposedly can support 1MB RAM and 1MB ROM on a cartridge. CPUWiz has plenty of info on that subject.

The next question that comes to my mind is, can CPUWIZ's current board offering support 8-16K SRAM + Bank switched ROM on the same board. It wouldn't be practical to recycle old Jinks carts or other games that used SRAM. Are small SRAMS still readily available? Might have to goto SMT board design.

[mechanerd]

Tempest Elite has 96 playable webs. I made up over 120 and decided not to use about 20 of them with the standard game. Much of the unused webs were just little different then another webs chosen,

 

 

Is there an Easter Egg level? I remember the skip level feature on the real arcade Tempest where you could warp to higher levels...

Any hidden combo moves?

[_The Doctor__]

the 8 bit can do the bacon river and tube easy enough as well... are they in there? would be cool faster yes yes yes yes yes ...... excellent... lol

[peteym5]

 

You've mentioned in other posts about being concerned with the 7800's standard 4K SRAM. The 7800 supports cart-based RAM and supposedly can support 1MB RAM and 1MB ROM on a cartridge. CPUWiz has plenty of info on that subject.

Atari 7800 Games are still in the early stages of development. Video61 has many 7800 cartridge boards in stock and there are several being sold by various people. I have not researched who has what yet as I am focusing on doing a few smaller games that can fit inside 32K or 48K right now. They are simpler and faster to develop and want to market them before moving onto larger, more complex games like Tempest. I started some research on simulating some of the 8-bit graphics modes on the 7800. Graphics modes 4 or 5 (80x48) 2 or 4 colors using a character set made of the 2x2 blocks to represent the pixels. The other is to use characters containing line segments to make lines are various angles. I am going to keep this research open source so anybody can use it for their game. Try to get some co-development involved. However any author who wishes to not share their game source code itself is up to them.

 

Some of the games I probably do first include Venture, Delta Space Arena, and a Miniature Golf on the 7800. I got to the point where I can port over and draw the levels from data on the 7800 a few days ago, some screen shots and WIP videos be posted soon.

 

 

Is there an Easter Egg level? I remember the skip level feature on the real arcade Tempest where you could warp to higher levels...

Any hidden combo moves?

Tempest Elite has a "Out of Here" power up that lets you skip levels. I tried to do the jump, but ran into issues with the ship moving off the screen and crashing the game. There was not enough room to make it work.

 

I thought about an alternative to Tempest that would be combining the concept similar to Yoomp. Where you will be going down an ongoing tube or tunnel, but have things on the side you shoot at or shoot at you. Solid objects or gaps you need to avoid. Probably do it on the PC or other modern machine.

Edited December 6, 2017 by peteym5

[peteym5]

 

You've mentioned in other posts about being concerned with the 7800's standard 4K SRAM. The 7800 supports cart-based RAM and supposedly can support 1MB RAM and 1MB ROM on a cartridge. CPUWiz has plenty of info on that subject.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/271064-looking-for-7800-programmer-to-assist-porting-a-game/page-2

 

Just to let everyone know, I did contact CPUWiz about his boards and did get the information. He even responded to Video61 and myself about his boards. I am investigating the options of displaying Tempest Webs on the Atari 7800 screen that include.

Using character font/tile with piece of the lines at various angles. This will allow the game to use the standard 4K SRAM as it will only be about a 1K screen.

 

Using a big sprite in the background that is mapped in cartridge RAM than can be manipulated to draw the lines: This will require one of those 128K or cartridges with RAM.

 

Saving a whole screen into one big ROM image. Each screen will take up around 8K, and I am not even sure how the Maria DMA and bank switching will handle this. Plus only a few webs could be put within the cart ROM since they will be consume lots of space.

 

Have to factor in the price. A 1024K cart may be reflected in the final price of the game, pushing it well over $50 USD, something I do not want to do.