grafixbmp

Many years ago before I treked out on the daunting task of castlevania for 2600, I was wondering about F-Zero gameplay and what it would take to get that type of gameplay working on atari and I designed a way to produce a convincing facsimile of the look of the tracks. But at the time, the possibility was marginal at best. But since then I've been following a few projects that could relate towards a general purpose mode 7 equivelent graphics system.

The first project that intriged me was Roland's work on ballblazer. It has a similar perspective and is wonderful from the perspective of even working on a 2600 which is near a mirical in tis own right. Awesome work Roland.

The other is the forementioned DPC+ which most of us know the benefits of and would prob be key to making this possible.

The real tricks with such an engine will be with geting a high enough frame rate and allowing for full 360 degree rotation. Player sprites, ball and missiles aren't really involved with the sudo mode 7 graphics. Only the playfield need be used. I guess the best way to describe it would be interleaved mode 7. Here is a simple image of a direct top down view like unto when you would start a race in the original f zero with 2 levels of zoom. The track markers (disks) alternate with the dark blue (out of bounds). The light grey is simply the background color changed. Now if this were scaled into the distance giving a force perspective it would look damn near like a real f zero track. Now as far as rotation goes, that can be graphicaly doable with in this style matrix and still look good. Also when you would be actualy looking down the trck (force perspective) the color tones could reflect that going darker the closer to the horizon ya get.

 fzero test.PNG   7.5K   139 downloads

I also have an original image from long ago that I added to the new what ifs. The old one has incorrect color rendering but illistrates the force perspective and tone shading.

Any thoughts on what ifs? Sure would be nice for lots of racing games.