17 replies to this topic

[Jack-Ass Tramiel]

I was thinking about this the other day. Could Star Castle be brought to the 2600? Would it be difficult to program?

I think this would be a cool one to see brought to the 2600. Hope somebody out there who's looking for ideas for their next 2600 homebrew considers this.

[Scott Stilphen]

Take Yar's Revenge, get rid of the neutral zone, and put the Qotile in the center, and there ya are!

[mos6507]

You couldn't do the ring very easily. That's why Yar's revenge uses a blocky shield. That's the main problem.

The Atari 400/800 is a different story. There is a game called Star Isle for that platform that does a fine job of Star Castle.

[Scott Stilphen]

Star Isle was a GREAT version! Put many hours on that one...

[Nukey Shay]

Raiders of the Lost Ring was also cool. It was made around the time that SC was relatively new in arcades. Many study hall sessions devoted to that game back in the day.

[mojofltr]

...

Edited by mojofltr, Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:55 PM.

[Paul Slocum]

Atari 2600 graphics just aren't conducive to a game like Star Castle. There's probably some way to do it, but it would be exteremly diffcult and probably wouldn't look very good. 5200 would be a better candidate.

-Paul

[slapdash]

IIRC, HSW said that he did Yar's Revenge when he realized that it was impossible to do Star Castle.

But thinking about it now, I'm not sure that's true... P1 is the cannon, P2 is your ship. Your bullets would be M2, its bullets M1. But the ball might be able to draw the rings with repeated images?

I'm not positive though -- I don't know what kind of restrictions there are on repeating sprites. Maybe it is impossible after all.

[Scott Stilphen]

Could the rings be a player? Then you could make the background the castle. Or vice-versa?

[Nukey Shay]

Yes, but working out the bitmaps for the walls of the rings would be a logistical nightmare...even with added RAM. If HSW couldn't work it out, I doubt any of us would stand a chance.
But it -could- be possible. Use P1 as the player, P2 as the walls (divided and multiplexed), M1 and M2 as the player shots and enemy sparks (both cloned), and the ball over a background circle as the castle center...so you can tell which direction it is facing. The ball would also double as the castle's primary weapon when it faces the player through an opening in P2 (another logic bomb here).
Gotta admit, this is really stretching. With so many cycles needed just to get the dynamics, it would probably flicker so bad as to be unplayable.

[Nukey Shay]

Oh, and more cycles would be needed to add the drifting movement (like Asteroids), instead of the more thrifty "move when told" routine. But I think that the whole thing could easily be possible simply by substituting the rings with the moving shield (which could be made to move pretty much the same way that the rings do...changing direction as you work inward). Blocky, yes...but just as challenging as the coin-op.

Changes:
Asteroids-type movement
Delete neutral zone
Delete zorlon cannon
Double number of missile objects
Alter enemy missle movement to alternate between staying on the shield/tracking the player
Move Qotile to center
Add Qotile movement (via inner ring or multiple sprite bitmaps) to "face" the player
Move shield to center
Alter levels to consist of only "moving shield"-type
Alter movement routine of shield
Allow Qotile to fire only when a clear shot exists

That last one would be the only tricky part, I think...and it would be pretty faithful to the arcade gameplay (other than having square ring walls instead of octagonal). The missle objects can be easily doubled by ORing the vertical location with 1 every other shot (so the objects are never on the same scanline). Even more challenging gameplay can be had by increasing the # of times the Qotile needs to be shot (changing color as it is hit). Spreading the rings outward would be very challenging to pull off (when the outer rings are destroyed), but you could simply replace the entire ring when it is completely shot away.

11111111
12222221
12333321
12300321
12300321
12333321
12222221
11111111

1=outer wall (cw)
2=center wall (ccw)
3=inner wall (cw)
0=blank (Qotile sprite goes here)

Anyone up to it?

[ 03-16-2002: Message edited by: Nukey Shay ]

[Nukey Shay]

Come to think of it...you could just have Qotile firing constantly when facing the player and have any background collision indicate a dead shot. This would also be slightly different, but easier to pull off than computing a clear coarse. That makes the shifting wall the hardest part (which might not be too difficult as the above pattern only uses 8 bytes of RAM).
Damn, I wish I knew how to do graphics on the 2600.

P1=player
P2=Qotile
M1/M1=player shots
M2/M2=sparks
ball=Qotile shots

[ 03-16-2002: Message edited by: Nukey Shay ]

[Albert]

I haven't played Star Castle in some time, but it is a great game (and I would love to own the original arcade cabinet). Isn't the player movement more like that in Asteroids? You have a ship, left and right buttons, thrust, and fire. I don't think a proper Star Castle treatment on the 2600 would be the same without also altering this aspect of gameplay. Here is the KLOV entry for Star Castle, for those who've never seen the original.

..Al

[Paul Slocum]

The Vectrex version of it is almost arcade-perfect. I wish I had the overlay.

-Paul

[Albert]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Smart Patrol:
The Vectrex version of it is almost arcade-perfect. I wish I had the overlay.

---

Yes, I agree. I haven't fired up a Vectrex in some time, but I'm tempted to dig one out of my garage since they don't take up too much space. I have the Vectrex multi-cart that I haven't yet tried, and there are quite a few games on it I've never seen before.

..Al

[jahfish]

vectrex is a great system ....

i bet you don't know this game

[mos6507]

I own a real Star Castle machine.

The ship movement is similar but not identical to Asteroids. The ship slows back down more abruptly in SC. Also, SC has a bug or a feature depending on how you view it. Ship movement direction is apparently quantized. What I mean by that is if you are pointing at 92' your ship flies at 90' which looks weird but it's part of the game's charm. I don't know how many directions it supports--probably 8 or 16. This must have been done to simplify the animation calculations.

These subtleties did not get transferred well to the Vec port. Also, I don't think you can shoot the drones on the Vec either, which really changes the gameplay.

I really don't think vector games make good candidates for 2600 ports in most cases.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

IMO a 1:1 translation of Star Castle to the 2600 would be impossible or very bad. And with Yar's Revenge we already have a very good compromise.

The only idea I have, is to distort the whole thing:
Turn the rings into vertical lines and let the shots go in a more or less rounded way.

That would become a very weird game.