roeoender Posted October 27 Share Posted October 27 Hi, So today with ABBUC contest end I published my first Atari 8bit game - new 3D, 6DoF combat flight simulator for 64Kb 8Bit Atari. Game besides traning missions contains full campaign of 15 missions. List of features, full description, game manual and game for download is always available at https://webchrono.pl/F16FalconStrike To ease learning how to fly, operate flight instruments and armament I recorded full tutorial illustrating and describing how to successfully complete the first mission: Package for v. 1.1.0 also contains separate version for accelerated Ataris for example with Rapidus. In this version keys 9 and 0 can be used to control simulation speed. Peri Noid recorded quick gameplay video on real Rapidus hardware: Please let me know if any game mechanics needs more clarification. Please inform me if you create any review/video etc. about this game - would be really happy to read/watch it. Happy Flying! 21 16 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted October 27 Share Posted October 27 Congrats and great job. 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556060 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yautja Posted October 27 Share Posted October 27 (edited) 2 hours ago, roeoender said: Please inform me if you create any review/video etc. about this game - would be really happy to read/watch it. Hi! Congrats on the 4th place finish! 🎉 Check this out: https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2024/08/primer-teaser-de-f-16-falcon-strike.html I’m planning to put together another article about it tomorrow. And with a bit more time, I’ll work on a Spanish guide for your game. Cheers, - Y - Edited October 27 by Yautja 3 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556067 Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Absolutely jaw-dropping title! I hope our page does it justice: https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-f-16-falcon-strike_43079.html 4 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556303 Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNameOfTheGame Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Spectacular programming and well-done game! 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556307 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cjherr Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Wonderful piece of work! 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556351 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 Thank you for this. I'm a long time simulation fan, all the way back to the Atari 8 bits. I have shelves dedicated to Microprose, one of my favorite old companies whose old games I still play to this day. This is an amazing achievement for the A8 line and the work and attention to detail that went into this is outstanding and I am having a great time playing with it. It truly is a love letter to the early days of great simulators and I hope you do continue work on it 🙂 2 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556459 Share on other sites More sharing options...
twh/f2 Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 I can only agree with the others. This simulation is really very impressive and possibly even the best of its kind currently on the XL/XE. I wonder if it is possible to add day/night support to the game? It would also be nice to see the sun. (Sun is AFAIK in F15 strike eagle). 2 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556477 Share on other sites More sharing options...
slx Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 As I wrote on the ABBUC forum, it is most amazing that someone takes the trouble to write a fighter simulator from scratch in the 2020s. From what little I could delve into it it seemed very well done. Thank you very much for donating this to the community. I spent endless hours on F-15 Strike Eagle BITD and will try to honour your creation by adding at least a few F-16 hours. 3 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556583 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philsan Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 This awesome game is a great achievement for Atari 8-bit computers (and 8-bit computers in general). I hope a cartridge version without loading times could be made, maybe boxed and with printed manual. 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556590 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tickled_Pink Posted October 28 Share Posted October 28 22 hours ago, Yautja said: Hi! Congrats on the 4th place finish! 🎉 Check this out: https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2024/08/primer-teaser-de-f-16-falcon-strike.html I’m planning to put together another article about it tomorrow. And with a bit more time, I’ll work on a Spanish guide for your game. Cheers, - Y - That was 4th? What was 1st, Rescue on Fractalus II? Flight sims are notoriously difficult to do on any 8-bit machine. TBH, the only one I ever really enjoyed was Tomahawk. 3 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556617 Share on other sites More sharing options...
roeoender Posted October 28 Author Share Posted October 28 Thank you all for kind feedback! It really means to me a lot, as I was afraid that not many people would be interested in playing a sim and even fewer would enjoy it on a very slow hardware. I am really glad that I can meet here people that share similar nostalgia to the first 8bit flight sims. I made this game so we could re-live it a little bit one more time At this point I would first of all like to thank TeBe for his many years long effort in developing awesome compilers Mad Pascal, Mad Assembler and many other tools. Without his high-level Pascal I wouldn't even consider making this game as a possibility. Another unsung hero is Avery Lee with his amazing Altirra emulator developement is so much smoother. @Yautja - I found your site short after publishing first teaser by reverse youtube search. Thank you for promoting my game and writing about it in your language. @www.atarimania.com - your page is a legend, thank you very much for adding my game and links to it's home page and tutorial video. @remowilliams - you nailed it! - indeed my sim is exactly as you described "love letter to the early days of great simulators". F-15 Strike Eagle, Fighter Pilot and Tomahawk attracted me both to flying (thanks to them I am a glider pilot now) and to computers and programming - at a very young age (my brother got Atari 130XE when I was 6) they set my goals what I want to do in life. In those days Poland was still a communist country, so we couldn't buy any oryginal games with full manual, so learning how to operate them was pure guesswork, but still spend many hours flying and trying to understand them. BTW Making this game helped me to appreciate genius of Sid Mayer in making and desigining F-15 Strike Eagle in a way that it is both action-packed and have a feeling of a serious simulator. Tomahawk's 3D engine is a piece of art - with large map and many objects on it. It was so much more difficult to achieve it without all the tools and access to knowledge we now got. As for continuing work - I'll probably do any serious fixes if people will report me (I was the only tester up to now) and when the right mood hits will try to do even more optimisations. I have some ideas for expansions as now I am not tied to the limitations specified by ABBUC contest, but I am not sure if I have time and energy to do it in near months, I don't won't to burn on it. @twh/f2 irronically first versions were "night only" as I didn't fill the ground, but later some people on atarionline forum convinced me that it will be treated as inferior so at the cost of few CPU % I changed it to be day with green ground. Sadly as I support 64Kb I simply do not have any RAM left (I already use xBootDos to gain some more low address memory and use RAM below ROM) and night mode would require some changes to drawing to maintain readability so it is not a simple change of palette. F15 strike eagle indeed has sun, but as it doesn't add anything to game mechanics and it would eat some precious RAM and CPU I didn't implement it on purpose to fit other stuff. @six - yes it was lots of hours spent, especially that it is my first project I did on Atari, previously I did only some really basic BASIC stuff about 30 years ago, so I had to learn a lot about Atari architecture, CPU, ANTIC etc. But I really tried to enjoy it and fill with nostalgia Once again thank you all for kind words, happy flying and "watch your six" 10 3 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556651 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yautja Posted October 29 Share Posted October 29 2 hours ago, Tickled_Pink said: That was 4th? What was 1st, Rescue on Fractalus II? Flight sims are notoriously difficult to do on any 8-bit machine. TBH, the only one I ever really enjoyed was Tomahawk. Totally agree—it deserved way more recognition in the contest. And speaking of jaw-dropping projects, check this mind-blowing stuff!: 6 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556698 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted October 29 Share Posted October 29 1 hour ago, Yautja said: Totally agree—it deserved way more recognition in the contest. And speaking of jaw-dropping projects, check this mind-blowing stuff!: That's amazing! I love seeing hardware abused in such creative ways. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5556726 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yautja Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 Just in case you miss it @roeoender: https://acortar.link/RhXfNK Will contact you when I'm done with the manual/guide for cross-checking. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5557940 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 Thanks and congrats. I'm not so much into playing flight sims on the Atari 8-bits, but I definitely appreciate what goes into creating them, and enjoy various aspects of the games and documentation. The game comes as quite a surprise given the typical contest-entry landscape. A welcome addition to the contest. Nice to see some GTIA-mode use for the arming screen. It works out pretty well. 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5557973 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 (edited) 2 hours ago, MrFish said: Thanks and congrats. I'm not so much into playing flight sims on the Atari 8-bits, but I definitely appreciate what goes into creating them, and enjoy various aspects of the games and documentation. The game comes as quite a surprise given the typical contest-entry landscape. A welcome addition to the contest. Nice to see some GTIA-mode use for the arming screen. It works out pretty well. I am the same. Huge Kudos to @roeoender for the dedication and quality of this game. It's also great you have created a Rapdius version as well. Whilst I was never good at playing flight sims, I did always try Tomohawk every so often. Really loved it, but always got distracted with the platformers and Boulderdash, and Rescue on Fractalus. Congrats for 4th place - well deserved. Edited October 31 by Beeblebrox Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5558028 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 11 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said: Congrats for 4th place - well deserved. The first 4 places were all within 120 votes; and 3rd and 4th place were only separated by 19 votes. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5558031 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACML Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 Wow! Looks amazing. I'll have to give it a try and check it out. I know a little something about the F-16. That's actually me in the cockpit (circa 1994). I was a flight test engineer at the Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards AFB, CA. 21 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5558051 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 4 hours ago, ACML said: Wow! Looks amazing. I'll have to give it a try and check it out. I know a little something about the F-16. That's actually me in the cockpit (circa 1994). I was a flight test engineer at the Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards AFB, CA. Kudos!! That looks one hell of a machine to be in control of! This is me, circa 1984.... 2 6 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5558218 Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted October 31 Share Posted October 31 Massive kudos for developing what is probably the most difficult genre to develop on the Atari 8 bits. I have done some 3d graphics engine programming on the pc and it is difficult, so it will be extra hard on the A8. Using GTIA graphics is brave, but works so well with the correct types of graphics. And a plane is a good choice and looks great. I haven't played it yet as time isn't allowing but I will see if I can this weekend. 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5558251 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari030 Posted November 1 Share Posted November 1 Brilliant. F-15 Strike Eagle got a pounding on my 800XL when I was a kid, this looks amazing. Well done. 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5558374 Share on other sites More sharing options...
roeoender Posted November 5 Author Share Posted November 5 Thank you all for nice words and showing interest in my simulator, sorry for late reply. @Yautja - thank you for your effort with your article. As for this: Yes I made this exactly 20 years ago as I thought it would be funny to create a flight sim running on a calculator, this calculator Casio Algebra FX 2 was created in 1999 has 8Mhz 16bit Intel 8088 compatible NEC processor and dot matrix 128x64 LED display It run an Ms-DOS compatible OS (Datalight DOS) and we were able to run 64Kb execs on it - compiled with Borland C/C++ or Watcom. I used then C/Asm to create it and still got the sources so tried to adapt it to Mad Pascal, but it was a bit shock how much slower than this calculator our 8bit Atari is, so I had to spend much time optimizing algorithms, reducing multiplications etc, if I'll find more time and willpower I'll try to optimize it even further but I don't expect significant speedup. @ACML - Wow I envy you - eventhough my country (Poland) have 2 very active F-16 airbases I didn't have even occasion to see one in RL yet. F-16 is a work of art! I could easily pretend that my sim models more modern or "fashionable" F-35, but I just couldn't resist the timeless beauty of F-16. But thanks to early 8/16bit flight sims I got hooked up to flying so when I was able to afford it in my thirties I got my glider pilot license (SPL), here's me piloting one of our club's gliders 12 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5561059 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+AtariPhreak Posted November 6 Share Posted November 6 just seeing this… absolutely fantastic. looking forward to playing this on my soon to be modded xegs.. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5561219 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted November 7 Share Posted November 7 ZeroPage Homebrew is playing F-16 Falcon Strike in part one of our ABBUC 2024 Contest Entries playthrough on TOMORROW's ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch! Hope you can join us! Fri Nov 8, 2024 | LIVE @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/ WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/ Games: Ruff In Trouble (2024 WIP | A8 Port) by Janusz Chabowski @shanti77 Dimo's Underworld (2024 Final Binary | A8) by Thomas Schulz @8Bitjunkie (Idea, Programming, In Game Graphics) / Mario Henning @130XE (Title Art, Music, Monster Animation), Jan-Soren Haas (Title Music) Twist Of Souls (2024 WIP | A8 Port) by Lars Langhans @LarsImNetz F-16 Falcon Strike (2024 Final Binary | A8) by Jarosław Wosik @roeoender (Code, 3D Engine, Flight Model, Graphic, Sound Effects) / Jakub Husak (Music) Eat-Me! (2024 WIP | A8) by Peter Hinz @RetroCoder 3 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/374527-f-16-falcon-strike-flight-simulator/#findComment-5561968 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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