88 replies to this topic

[MaPa]

Hi, does anybody know anything new about these games in what stage are they, if still working on them or abandoned or whatever...

Space Harrier - on the project page no news for a long time...

One Moon & Two Suns - last i read about it on Kaz's page sometime in summer last year (2007) that Lizard is still working on it

"Turrican" - some time (long time) ago here on forums appeared some video from engine running "Turrican" on atari



If you have any info about these games (or even about some other awaited games ofcourse - Crownland 2nd release comes into mind), please share with us..

[Inky]

Ive been wondering about Space Harrier myself. It was looking real good.

[carmel_andrews]

I think that Turrican would be a non starter on the A8...As TMR would say it uses too many c64 hardware tricks to make an A8 conversion possible

Turrican would be an ace game on an A8, but i just don't see it happening, just like you won't see turrican 3 on an stfm/ste

[Shaun.Bebbington]

To add to that list, does anyone know any more about the IK+ conversion?

Regards,

Shaun.

[Tezz]

Shaun.Bebbington, on Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:49 PM, said:

To add to that list, does anyone know any more about the IK+ conversion?

Regards,

Shaun.

The IK+ project has recently been reserected. The author started continuing work on the game at the start of the year and intends to see it through to completion Which was great news to hear when it had been left idol for a long time. IK+ and also Chris's very impresive Space Harrier project is amongst the best and most eagerly awaited conversions.

Turrican btw was demonstrated with the core complete on the A8, it was coded by a demo crew some years ago and will not be finished. Someone recently found a copy and posted it here. There is a preview on you tube also for those who missed it.

Edited by Tezz, Fri Feb 22, 2008 2:29 PM.

[Plastron]

You Tube link Atari 8bit Turrican engine

[Sheddy]

Space Harrier is still alive. No updates on the site though as its pretty minimal news - sorry to disappoint, but (another) major graphics engine rewrite to try and minimize slow down with Stereo RMT music has taken a long while, and I haven't added any extra stages beyond stage 4 yet I don't intend to do that many (news) updates, but now the rewrite is done there should be more visible progress to share over the coming months. It will take as long as it takes, but I will lose my mind if I don't finish this soon - I just realised I've been 8 years doing this multi-colour version now!

Edited by Sheddy, Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:44 AM.

[happymonster]

8 years!

Nice to hear from you again though. Updates are good...

[Tezz]

Sheddy, on Sat Feb 23, 2008 10:10 AM, said:

Space Harrier is still alive. No updates on the site though as its pretty minimal news - sorry to disappoint, but (another) major graphics engine rewrite to try and minimize slow down with Stereo RMT music has taken a long while, and I haven't added any extra stages beyond stage 4 yet I don't intend to do that many (news) updates, but now the rewrite is done there should be more visible progress to share over the coming months. It will take as long as it takes, but I will lose my mind if I don't finish this soon - I just realised I've been 8 years doing this multi-colour version now!

Yes these projects certainly do take a long investment in time a effort.. a labour of love you might say I think some people forget about that when hoping to see it appear finished soon. It's 8 years well spend Chris as it is certainly amongst the most impresive achivement on the platform. For those of you following all these threads who are not involved in the programming side of Atari, re-writes often come about from nessesity after trial and error with other routes before the final optimal solution is found. It's a major task to complete something of this magnitute overcoming the endless limitations. However long it takes to complete any project gets nothing but total admiration from me. I'll definately be checking the progress when it next arrives. Best of luck

[NRV]

Quote

(another) major graphics engine rewrite to try and minimize slow down with Stereo RMT music has taken a long while

wow, what are you optimizing now!? .. you need to start writing tutorials of this stuff (like donlebeau)

NRV

Edited by NRV, Sat Feb 23, 2008 10:11 AM.

[Sheddy]

NRV, on Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:09 PM, said:

Quote

(another) major graphics engine rewrite to try and minimize slow down with Stereo RMT music has taken a long while

wow, what are you optimizing now!? .. you need to start writing tutorials of this stuff (like donlebeau)

NRV

only that 256 byte wide screen I got rather excited about when discussing your great soft sprites demo posted here last year. I had only just discovered the benefits it would have for space harrier back then, but it took till nearly the end of the year before tools and game code were rewritten completely. (Only about 4-5% frame rate improvement though, which RMT more than wipes out!)

[Heaven/TQA]

Tezz...well said... i will not count the hours I have spend already for Beyond Evil...

[analmux]

Sheddy, on Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:10 AM, said:

Space Harrier is still alive. No updates on the site though as its pretty minimal news - sorry to disappoint, but (another) major graphics engine rewrite to try and minimize slow down with Stereo RMT music has taken a long while, and I haven't added any extra stages beyond stage 4 yet I don't intend to do that many (news) updates, but now the rewrite is done there should be more visible progress to share over the coming months. It will take as long as it takes, but I will lose my mind if I don't finish this soon - I just realised I've been 8 years doing this multi-colour version now!

Sheddy, If I were you I wouldn't focus on Stereo RMT tunes for a few reasons:

1) stereo pokey is not included in standard machines.
2) stereo music wastes twice as much CPU time as a mono track.

Anyway, you'd need two different versions. One with mono music, one with stereo music....as IMO it doesn't make sense to waste cpu time when there's no 2nd pokey anyway.

The mono music will have more CPU time left compared to the stereo version. Maybe it's possible to use the extra cpu time of mono version to use more or bigger sprites.

Didn't you plan to do different versions for PAL/NTSC?

Another thought: Maybe there's a way to do a custom optimalization of the RMT runtime routines...or replace them?

[Sheddy]

Analogue Multiplexer, on Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:31 AM, said:

Sheddy, If I were you I wouldn't focus on Stereo RMT tunes for a few reasons:

1) stereo pokey is not included in standard machines.
2) stereo music wastes twice as much CPU time as a mono track.

Anyway, you'd need two different versions. One with mono music, one with stereo music....as IMO it doesn't make sense to waste cpu time when there's no 2nd pokey anyway.

The mono music will have more CPU time left compared to the stereo version. Maybe it's possible to use the extra cpu time of mono version to use more or bigger sprites.

Didn't you plan to do different versions for PAL/NTSC?

Another thought: Maybe there's a way to do a custom optimalization of the RMT runtime routines...or replace them?

you're absolutely right about wasted CPU time if there's no 2nd Pokey. That bothered me a lot, but I found that just patching a few of the loops in the stereo RMT player when there's only a single pokey makes it work at almost the same speed as the mono player. (a slight rewrite of the setpokey routine was also needed to easily patch writing 2nd pokey registers or not)

Sal (kjmann) has done the songs as Stereo but they also were designed to sound good if there is only 1 pokey, so no need for different versions combined with the patching.

There'll only be one PAL/NTSC version but they'll be pretty much identical due to some compensations

I don't fully understand RMT runtime routines, but there were no obvious optimizations when I looked through it, apart from maybe unrolling some loops, which wouldn't make that much difference speed wise, but make it much bigger. Of course assembling with only required FEAT does help a little.

[pseudografx]

Maybe you should consult the RMT stuff with Raster, and I believe he will be glad to help with optimizing the player routines to take as low cpu time as possible, and possibly also some size optimizations if they are necessary.

[Sheddy]

pseudografx, on Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:42 AM, said:

Maybe you should consult the RMT stuff with Raster, and I believe he will be glad to help with optimizing the player routines to take as low cpu time as possible, and possibly also some size optimizations if they are necessary.

good idea - it's not a major problem, but there's no harm in asking him nicely! (although I can see there is already a lot of optimizing in there already if different features are not used)

[www.atarimania.com]

BTW, wasn't there a more recent release of One Moon and Two Suns than this one? I remember seeing some panthers...

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

[pseudografx]

I have found this version on my disk, and it has panthers :-)
 onemoon.zip   21.28K   101 downloads

[www.atarimania.com]

Thanks a lot!

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

[Sheddy]

happymonster, on Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:18 PM, said:

8 years!

Nice to hear from you again though. Updates are good...

OK! I've posted an update on the site www.sheddyshack.co.uk and added some movies.

[Shawn Jefferson]

That is looking (and sounding) great! I wonder, could the engine be used for other similiar games (OutRun for instance?)

[Allas]

Looks perfect ! It's over the limits of my technical imagination.

[Goochman]

Insane that is an Atari 8bit running that - still amazing, even after 8 years Sheddy

[raster/c.p.u.]

Sheddy, on Fri Mar 21, 2008 1:07 AM, said:

OK! I've posted an update on the site www.sheddyshack.co.uk and added some movies.

Wow! It looks amazing absolutely. Great work!

[emkay]

Sheddy,
I had no doubt about your work.
The ATARI always could co this and you seem to be the only one who can put this stuff together to have a full working game, by your imagination and your intensive/massive work.

Really. "Amazing" is bad word for your work. Saying "Numen" is amazing for a Demo may fit. But your work is far superior.

At least, I'm really impressed.


....


Back in those days, how much was the overall Cartridge, including the rom banks plus a second pokey? 100$ ?
I'm pretty sure. If a high quality game like this existed, people would have bought it for a reasonable prize.