Space Harrier for TI

[+acadiel]

Curious from the wizards here if we have enough tools in the toolbox to reproduce Space Harrier. It seems it’s been ported to a gazillion systems

 

 

Maybe with the F18? The SID Master might also be able to be taken advantage of.

[pixelpedant]

Yep, ported (in some form) to pretty much everything.  Including MSX1, so we've got a 9918A example. 

 

And someone even did an MSX port which uses Multicolor Mode: Spade Carrier

https://www.msxgamesworld.com/software.php?id=5655

 

 

That port has its priorities in the right place, from my point of viewpoint.

 

A Space Harrier port's got to have speed.  Pretty graphics (and even frame rate) are secondary.  Even in the arcade version, it's more about movement patterns than twitch reactions to graphics on screen.  The fastest/busiest levels move too fast with too much obstruction for players to simply react to what they're seeing, consistently.  Instead, you're figuring out survivable movement patterns, much more so. 

 

So as weird as it sounds, Space Harrier being kind of a slideshow where object scaling is concerned, or otherwise blocky as all hell graphically, does not ruin it for me, and having fast, responsive control and well-implemented object and enemy patterns is way more important.  The Sega 32X version for example has a very noticeably lower framerate than the arcade original, but is otherwise almost completely arcade accurate.  So I don't mind it at all. 

 

Space Harrier being slow as molasses (like in the Sega Master System version, for example), is what ruins it for me. 

 

Speaking as someone who owns 10 or so home versions of Space Harrier, I sure hope to see it on TI-99 some day. 

 

[PeteE]

I've given a bit of thought toward a Space Harrier port, for stock 9918A.  I was thinking prescaled software sprites in bitmap mode, and using hardware sprites for the player's avatar and bullets.  I did an animation test for the 3d checkerboard which is the part that fascinated me the most, but I think it still needs more work on the furthest distance part of the checkerboard where it seems to oscillate at a fixed frequency.  I've also played with the bluewizard tool to convert the Space Harrier speech samples to the format used by the TI speech synthesizer. 

 

I totally agree with @pixelpedant that having the control speed and correct movement patterns are critical for having a port that is fun to play.

shtestc.bin

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, PeteE said:

I was thinking prescaled software sprites in bitmap mode, and using hardware sprites for the player's avatar and bullets.

I believe this is the method used by the Commodore 64 version.  While critically panned, I rather like that release.

[pixelpedant]

Nice!  A great start. 

 

It's a challenging setup from the standpoint of using 9918A hardware sprites, since one's projectiles are very, very often on the same scanline as one's avatar, when strafing horizontally. 

 

It's very much not the setup of a Buck Rogers, where you're always shooting "upward". 

 

I could see an argument for giving up on sprite projectiles, and making *only* the main character hardware sprites, given how hostile the setup is to vertical separation of its objects. Given how often literally everything is happening on the same group of scanlines. 

 

Plus, the appearance of the character is fairly iconic, so it's nice to use a few sprites to add some colour. 

 

For fun, here's my rough attempt to reinterpret a relatively lower resolution Harrier (via Space Harrier GG - on a 166x144 device) into a version using a moderate proportion of the TI-99 palette:

 

 

In practice, you'd probably want to go lower resolution and detail than that, though.

 

It occurs to me that sound-wise, there's ample opportunity to steal SN76489 sound design ideas from the Master System and Game Gear versions. 

 

[+acadiel]

Nice!  A great start. 

 

It's a challenging setup from the standpoint of using 9918A hardware sprites, since one's projectiles are very, very often on the same scanline as one's avatar, when strafing horizontally. 

 

It's very much not the setup of a Buck Rogers, where you're always shooting "upward". 

 

I could see an argument for giving up on sprite projectiles, and making *only* the main character hardware sprites, given how hostile the setup is to vertical separation of its objects. Given how often literally everything is happening on the same group of scanlines. 

 

Plus, the appearance of the character is fairly iconic, so it's nice to use a few sprites to add some colour. 

 

For fun, here's my rough attempt to reinterpret a relatively lower resolution Harrier (via Space Harrier GG - on a 166x144 device) into a version using a moderate proportion of the TI-99 palette:

 

 

In practice, you'd probably want to go lower resolution and detail than that, though.

 

It occurs to me that sound-wise, there's ample opportunity to steal SN76489 sound design ideas from the Master System and Game Gear versions. 

 

What I’ve been doodling with in the back of my brain is we have enough cycles to drive a pass through sidecar OPL2 (YM3812?) or OPLL chip. Probably do it in the form factor of the 44 pin headers that the 32K and SAMs use so we can stack it. That would be a great add in to get some pretty darn good sound on it. I just don’t know how to do the timing calculations to see if we can drive the graphics and send the data to a sidecar sound system. IMHO, I think the Yamaha chip would bring some really great sound capabilities to the TI. It wouldn’t be the first time we injected sound via the sidecar, either. The speech Synthesizer and ForTI card did so, and the Mattel Aquarius multi game/joystick adapter also included a GI sound chip inside it.

 

We could also put an optional headphone jack on it if someone doesn’t want their OPL sound mixed into the console.

 

Edit: OPL2 application manual - https://usermanual.wiki/Document/Yamaha20YM381220Application20Manual.26216546.pdf

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[+Ksarul]

SID Master also injects sound through the side port--but it tends to take over the system when playing sounds. . .

[pixelpedant]

The more I experiment with TMS9919 sound, the more I think it's entirely possible to do really worthwhile things with it, even without making sample-based audio happen in software, and the biggest impediment is just that, to get a nice, rich instrumental sound using any of the popular advanced techniques, you've got to devote at least two but often three tone generators to the purpose, and if you want bass notes, you've got to dedicate both your only noise generator and at least one tone generator (but preferably all three) to the purpose (one silently furnishing the noise frequency, one or preferably two handling overtones).  Which is severely constraining, less so in terms of what sounds are possible than in terms of how many of them you can make at once (i.e., often just one). 

 

For all these reasons, I really like the basic idea behind the ForTI card.  Because I really do think simply having *more TMS9919s* opens up an array of possibilities that aren't there, with only one.  It's no surprise a number of arcade machines used multiple SN76489s.  And happily for us, chips in the SN76489 family are a dime a dozen.  Turning a TMS9919/SN76489 into various kinds of appealing single-voice instrument is very viable and fairly easy.  But one such voice doesn't really cut it.  So it'd be great to have more. 

[Tursi]

1 hour ago, Ksarul said:

SID Master also injects sound through the side port--but it tends to take over the system when playing sounds. . .

My VGM compressor supports playback through the SID as well. Though, it does not support the additional envelope features (because it's targeted to the SN). However, the SID doesn't cost as much to write to as the SN does - there's no CPU hold.

 

The FM chips are neat, of course, but remember while you're writing to them to calculate how many MORE writes you need to set them up.

 

I agree the ForTI is a neat solution. I also made sure my VGM toolset would be able to support that, though I haven't written a player for it (mostly because I would have to implement it in Classic99 first). Of course, processing more chips takes more time, too.

 

I always thought the master system rendition of the Space Harrier theme sounded quite good on its own.

 

[+arcadeshopper]

Main game theme converted from master system 

 

SPACEH SPACEI

SPACE_HAR8.bin

Edited July 10, 2022 by arcadeshopper

[+acadiel]

This system looks pretty close sound-wise….

[pixelpedant]

Just to be clear, the Mark III *is* the Master System.  Just the original Japanese release of it.  And subsequently, even Japan got a Master System branded release resembling the one more familiar in the West. 

 

Anyway, the Mark III contains an SN76489 clone, just like the North American Master System (and Game Gear). 

 

The Mark III did get an FM chip via add-on peripheral, and this was built in to the final Japanese Master System model.  But the Mark III/Master System Space Harrier releases (which are identical to one another) don't use it.  Space Harrier 3-D does (it has both PSG and FM soundtracks).  But actually, I kind of slightly prefer the PSG soundtrack.  Maybe I'm just biased, as far as that goes.  But it really is a very good PSG soundtrack.