Jess Ragan Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 Okay, so I've gotta know... why do Asteroids clones on the ColecoVision look so... stiff? Ships don't rotate smoothly and have an annoying habit of stopping on a dime, ignoring the principles of physics. Why is that? Is it because the machine is so dependent on tiles? Ships in Atari 5200 games drift effortlessly through the void of space. Ships in ColecoVision seem to jutter into place. It's really jarring and takes you out of the experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+evg2000 Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 have you looked at team pixelboys version? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted May 5 Author Share Posted May 5 Hmm... better! Not perfect, but a big step up from the likes of Omega Race, Space Fury, and the Dondzila port of Star Castle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelboy Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 The only way you're going to get a "perfect" experience is to play this on a Vectrex, Jess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted May 5 Author Share Posted May 5 To your credit (and probably due to no small amount of effort on your part), your thrust/turn/shoot game comes a lot closer to reproducing the arcade feel than most on the ColecoVision. There's just no "glide" in most Asteroids-alikes on this system. The fact that you were able to capture some sense of that inertia speaks volumes about your skill with the ColecoVision. The Vectrex is of course an ideal machine for Asteroids, and we've seen a few clones of the game on that system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelboy Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 All the credit goes to Mystery Man. Fun fact: He actually analyzed the ROM of the arcade version of Asteroids to help him figure out how to best reproduce the "glide physics" of the player's ship in the ColecoVision version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnalogKid Posted Thursday at 12:26 AM Share Posted Thursday at 12:26 AM I found the challenge was to both utilize smooth floating-point drifting but also be able to null out your drift by reversing direction and thrusting. You can't actually stop your ship in Omega Race. One of the first things you learn about floating point math is that 1.0 - 1.0 = almost 0.0000, so you have to pick a very small velocity as a lower limit and treat everything under it as 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted Thursday at 01:35 AM Author Share Posted Thursday at 01:35 AM You wouldn't happen to be that man of mystery referenced earlier, would you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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