STUNT CAR RACER?

[Lost Dragon]

Off top of my head (and as I mentioned in another thread,  I have been drinking this evening,so a bit fuzzy) i remember Super Cars 2, loved that game.

 

Falcon linked up, but we got bored quickly with that.

 

Armour Geddon, but that was just far too confusing. 

[Marius]

On 12/24/2019 at 1:16 PM, xxl said:

update xB. you can put ATR on cartridges

 

 

Hi XXL!

 

What Cartridges are you talking about? I would *LOVE* to put this fabulous game on a cart. I tried it adding to The!Cart but that failed. So I was wondering whether you could point me in the right direction.

 

By the way: is the version that should work on carts, the one that is later in this thread, or didn't you upload the ATR for that? 

 

There is some confusion on my side, since there is also an ATR posted that should work on happy drives? Is that the same ATR that should work on cartridges?

 

Thanks

Marius

 

[xxl]

this is the original atr bunr on cart - see the movie description

 

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

though these were all basically pulled from...

Hard Drivin' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin'

and it's sequels...

Race Drivin' (1990, arcade)

Hard Drivin' II - Drive Harder (1991, Atari ST, Amiga, MS-DOS)

Hard Drivin'(s) Airborne (1993) (unreleased prototype)

Street Drivin' (1993) (unreleased prototype)

 

Stunt Car Racer in the UK, Stunt Track Racer in the United States... was a microprose game for a number of systems! Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum

I wonder why the splash screen calls it a c64 original game..

 

stunts and stunt driver were also around by other publishers

 

Our particular port seems to stack up very well against all of these other offerings.

Edited February 13, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Irgendwer]

9 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I wonder why the splash screen calls it a c64 original game..

Because it is based on the C64 binary.

[_The Doctor__]

It looks like the team reworked a great deal of code and increased/gained speed and efficiency. And of course the graphics are handled differently I'd swear it was enough changed to consider this great game it's own port by all rights and merit. In fact it plays better... Nice job!

Were there any insights from the C64 port that helped make it happen?

 

More of this sort of this would be beyond expectation

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Jacques]

I just wonder if Stunt Car Racer could be updated for some sort of max. FPS lock or speed cap?

It would make it playable on Rapidus accelerator (either real or in Altirra), because looking at the speed on this youtube video, it's way too quick compared to original, thus unplayable:

 

 

It would be nice to have this great conversion making proper use of additional power, especially the game is all about power

Edited February 18, 2021 by Jacques

[Gunstar]

53 minutes ago, Jacques said:

I just wonder if Stunt Car Racer could be updated for some sort of max. FPS lock or speed cap?

It would make it playable on Rapidus accelerator (either real or in Altirra), because looking at the speed on this youtube video, it's way too quick compared to original, thus unplayable:

 

 

It would be nice to have this great conversion making proper use of additional power, especially the game is all about power

It's my understanding that Rapidus can be set for several different clock speeds up to 20MHz, is it only 20MHz? But watching that video, it looks perfectly playable to me, the guy playing just sucks at playing it. It sounds like he's using keyboard controls too, a choice I would never personally make as a racing game enthusiast.  I know I could properly control it at that speed and it would be AWESOME. Now I know I need to get a Rapidus when that US stimulus hits!

 

I did just go looking at Lotharek's site again, and there is only mention of 20MHz. I mainly want one myself for the older 3D simulations like Tomahawk, Flight Simulator II, Mercenary and other simulations to hopefully make them more playable. Has anyone tried these titles or others like them with Rapidus?

Edited February 18, 2021 by Gunstar

[Jacques]

43 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

But watching that video, it looks perfectly playable to me, the guy playing just sucks at playing it.

 

Untrue, it's way too quick than it should be (though his sucking might be true ).

I've spent hundreds of hours playing SCR on Amiga 500 as a child and I know exactly what the ACCURATE SPEED is (leaving FPS aside).

The speed of our Atari version is ideally the same as on Amiga, but only on standard Atari (again leaving aside FPS) and SCR is all about your timing you have in blood after playing it a lot, so I know what I'm talking about
Accelerator should increase FPS, not the actual speed of the game, so some sort of speed control/lock would be great.

I mean, SCR is almost perfect already, but making proper use of Rapidus would be just great, especially it can be emulated in Altirra, too.
 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by Jacques

[Gunstar]

57 minutes ago, Jacques said:

 

Untrue, it's way too quick than it should be (though his sucking might be true ).

I've spent hundreds of hours playing SCR on Amiga 500 as a child and I know exactly what the ACCURATE SPEED is (leaving FPS aside).

The speed of our Atari version is ideally the same as on Amiga, but only on standard Atari (again leaving aside FPS) and SCR is all about your timing you have in blood after playing it a lot, so I know what I'm talking about
Accelerator should increase FPS, not the actual speed of the game, so some sort of speed control/lock would be great.

I mean, SCR is almost perfect already, but making proper use of Rapidus would be just great, especially it can be emulated in Altirra, too.
 

 

 I agree, in as much as I want games that can be made to work better with Rapidus, but I don't think it has a large enough audience, especially programmers capable of hacking/fixing such games. My guess is there are less Rapidus installed than even VBXE. So just the fact that they work right at all, if a bit too fast, is pretty cool to me. I still think I would be able to play SCR with Rapidus with little difficulty learning to control it. And if it's faster than the Amiga original speed, good, even 16-bit 3D games suffered from lack of enough FPS as far as I'm concerned (though I'm one to always except them and enjoy them for what the are anyway). The game is new to me, I have no history of how it "should feel." so I can accept it for what it is, too slow or too fast. But SCR isn't a simulation that comes to mind for being too slow, the A8 version I think teeters on the edge comfortably at 1.77MHz even. On the other hand, Flight Simulator II always looked ridiculously slow to be bothered with on the 8-bit and I think I might be able to actually enjoy it with Rapidus, assuming it works. I'm surprised there aren't more Rapidus videos showing what it can do for old vector/wire-frame 3D games instead of showing mostly 3D demos and games that really don't need the increase or they become unplayable, like videos of Karateka I've seen.

 

I found this video below, showing Choplifter!, Racing Destruction Set and F15 Strike Eagle. Choplifter! is far too fast, and I'm not sure about F-15, but RDS actually looks much better and possbily playable! I expect that wire-frame simulations that have more happening on-screen at a time, like landscapes and buildings in Tomahawk, FSII and Mercenary might work better than F-15 too.

 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by Gunstar

[Jacques]

23 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

My guess is there are less Rapidus installed than even VBXE.

That's pretty certain. VBXE is much longer on the market and way more popular, also its features are more in demand (starting with crystal clear picture). I personally own VBXE, but don't own Rapidus (yet).

But with Altirra offering multiple hardware emulation, SCR speed "fix" for Rapidus would be put to a good use, I think

Maybe it's not that popular on 8-bits, but on 16/32-bit platforms it was taken care in most cases that faster computer increased FPS, maintaining proper gameplay speed.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Jacques

[MaPa]

AFAIK in SCR there is a constant speed regardless of FPS. You just get less or more frames in the same distance traveled. But in one second of real time, you will travel the same distance on track with 10FPS as with 100FPS.

[Jacques]

It's clearly visible you travel way more distance within 1 second on Rapidus

[Gunstar]

All I know is that I'm actually good at Checkered Flag on the Atari Jaguar, and if you can play that game with it's amount of frame-skipping and poor control, you can play any other racing game successfully, period.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Gunstar

[Mark2008]

I own a rapidus and might even get a chance to turn on my atari in a week or two, going from memory it only has two clock speeds - normal atari speed, and 21mhz.

 

To hack a game to properly use the atari's timers is one thing, but I suspect that hacking code to find a place to just add a loop to bog it down somewhat - wouldn't be quite as difficult in my imagination.   Makes sense to me, speed it up to 21mhz, then bog it back down.   Then someone will speed it back up using a 200mhz atari, and the cycle repeats.

 

 

[Mazzspeed]

Stunt Car Racer on any 8 bit system actually becomes totally unplayable once you get over about 2 - 4Mhz. You just can't control the damn thing as more than just the graphics is accelerated.

 

I always thought Stunt Car Racer was ported from the PC to alternate platforms?

[Mazzspeed]

3 hours ago, Mark2008 said:

I own a rapidus and might even get a chance to turn on my atari in a week or two, going from memory it only has two clock speeds - normal atari speed, and 21mhz.

 

To hack a game to properly use the atari's timers is one thing, but I suspect that hacking code to find a place to just add a loop to bog it down somewhat - wouldn't be quite as difficult in my imagination.   Makes sense to me, speed it up to 21mhz, then bog it back down.   Then someone will speed it back up using a 200mhz atari, and the cycle repeats.

 

 

This is pretty much what the Amiga community does regarding WHDload...

[Jacques]

On 2/19/2021 at 9:16 AM, Mazzspeed said:

Stunt Car Racer on any 8 bit system actually becomes totally unplayable once you get over about 2 - 4Mhz. You just can't control the damn thing as more than just the graphics is accelerated.

 

I always thought Stunt Car Racer was ported from the PC to alternate platforms?

I've just learnt about C64 version altered for their SuperCPU, that maintains correct speed with FPS increase. 

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=3883

 

 

Would be great if Atari conversion could be fixed for Rapidus one day to work at correct speed. 

[gilsaluki]

I have yet to win a single race, keep going off track.  Never can catch up.  

[Mazzspeed]

14 hours ago, Jacques said:

I've just learnt about C64 version altered for their SuperCPU, that maintains correct speed with FPS increase. 

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=3883

 

 

Would be great if Atari conversion could be fixed for Rapidus one day to work at correct speed. 

I'll have to try it under VICE with the SuperCPU enabled. Anyone with a real SuperCPU I'm truly envious of!

[Jacques]

Meanwhile... C+4 got one

 

[Rybags]

Looks quick.  Would be nice to see how RC handles that title pic, which in itself looks very well done.

And would be interesting to see this running on our computer from the Plus/4 code - a sort of quick and easy way would be to use VBXE to do blit translation of the graphics.

[Beeblebrox]

46 minutes ago, Rybags said:

Would be nice to see how RC handles that title pic, which in itself looks very well done.

challenge accepted 

[Jacques]

3 hours ago, Rybags said:

And would be interesting to see this running on our computer from the Plus/4 code - a sort of quick and easy way would be to use VBXE to do blit translation of the graphics.

That would be amazing