 Previous Messages |
Posted By
gerliczer
on 2023-09-30
04:16:43
|  Re: Stunt Car Racer
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-09-04
15:35:08
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
BTW I noticed a difference between YAPE and Plus4emu.
As I mentioned beforehand, with YAPE I could not accelerate (boost, nitro) in the corners. When I used the boost, s the steering was not reposive together (when I also pressed the UP accelerate button). So I could not press 3 keys at the same time.
I tried two other keyboards I have at home, but with the same effect (in fact the very first was a "gamer" keyboard, should not show keyboard ghosting)
Yesterday I tried Plus4Emu, and to my luck, it seems able to receive 3 keypresses at the same time, so I could improve my laps and race result, by approx 1 second. Still not in the Top3, but came very close, just need a little more practice and less beer 
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-29
17:41:18
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
Aaah why I didn't read the instructions before? 
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-29
16:47:13
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Luca, did you use a filename starting with "HALL"? That's the only way to save the Hall of Fame, and you can even merge the results from several of these files by loading them all.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-08-29
16:36:53
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Noooo, a double post! 
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-29
14:44:02
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Curiously, I used to play it on a SD2IEC, I succesfully saved the game and I was sure to recover my record times once when loading'em back.
But no. No saved Hall of Fame.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-28
14:27:04
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Thank you @George, appreciated! And as you all can see, the difference in framerate is tangible and truly makes the difference!
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-28
12:30:54
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
@George, I was thinking of doing a comparison like this myself, and I'm very happy that I don't have to spend time on it now, since you did it much better than I could without access to real machines. Featuring the article is more than welcome, I wrote it for people to read after all!
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Posted By
George
on 2023-08-29
16:52:11
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
@Luca Your requested comparison video (side-by-side Plus/4 vs C64, real hardware):
Video:https://youtu.be/Hd83ffWJjU4
@cobbpg I featured your article in the video. I hope that's ok.
Overall both versions are great. The C64-sound is impressive though. It contributes much more to the whole experience.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-08-28
01:26:31
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Very nice scores,congrats!
I tried the 200% speed in emulator, but it was a "little to much", haha! :-)
I need to exchange my keyboard, as it seems does not accept more keys to be pressed at the same time, so I cannot accelerate at the curves.
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-26
05:03:08
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Okay, gave it a single try without preparation, and I managed to beat up the car on Hump Back quite badly. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vWJwnGNDxw
LR: 0:45.08 / 2:23.48
HB: 0:55.42 / 2:50.46
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-26
04:59:33
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Yaaas! Send in your times!
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-26
04:24:06
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I haven't finished that race, since it was only for demonstration purposes, but I can do it again any time.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-26
02:54:55
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
cobbpg definitely a time to beat! Post the whole video, we need to see that you finished the whole race in order to validate that fantastic lap!
MIK that Star Wars game has been converted...two times already! X-Wing and X-Wing 2.0. Anyway, a fully working conversion is still a wanted one on the requests' list.
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-26
02:45:49
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
> Don't you want to create an own game from an independent idea to Plusy?
Oh, I do, but I have a rather long backlog of ideas I'd like to turn into real games, and the Plus/4 hadn't been on my radar before. However, some of those games should be straightforward to adapt, knowing now what I learnt while porting SCR.
> I played your game on real hardware. It was suprising to me how well it plays...
In the end it does benefit from the extra CPU cycles, and even with the additional work shifting around colours it's generally noticeably faster than the C64. Where the original takes around 9 frames per update cycle, the port needs around 7. This is in line with the expected 16% speedup.
> Hiscore challange is on. Guys, you are REALLY fast!
Check the Little Ramp time in the gameplay video I posted with the release, if you want to see fast. 
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-26
02:42:30
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
SCR +4 was top of my Google feed today, some Time Extension website posted news on this port.
I was thinking maybe Star Wars, the Atari arcade as I remember it being sluggish on C64 but looking at it again it's not as good as I remember. I get the impression better could of been done. Making it run faster or porting to Plus/4 would not save it. Playable yes but not good enough to warrant a port.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-08-25
20:13:56
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Hiscore challenge is on. Guys, you are REALLY fast!
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Posted By
George
on 2023-08-25
20:15:44
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
@cobbpg
Just read your article. It's really amazing how you pulled this off. Congratulations and my deepest respect. Thank you very much to take the time and explaining how the game works and detailing the challenges of the port. Thats really interesting.
I really love 3d graphics on these limited machines. Maybe you can make some more 3d miracles happen on our system.
I played your game on real hardware. It was suprising to me how well it plays...i vagley remembered trying out this game many many years ago and i felt like a slide show, so i did not have this game on the radar. I recommend using a Joystick with leverage instead of an joypad.
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Posted By
Verona
on 2023-08-25
19:52:54
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I will try that.
And I will read the article.
Again, awesome work, Gergely! It's outstanding accomplishment!
Don't you want to create an own game from an independent idea to Plusy?
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-25
19:18:35
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Nice writeup on porting the game to Plus/4! That SuperCPU version for C64 was impressive, and so was the driving! 
Thanks for sharing!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-23
12:40:49
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Hiscore challenge started, gentlemen start your engines and submit your race times.
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Posted By
Pigmy
on 2023-08-23
07:57:34
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I must say wow It's great to see how well it runs on +4. Better than on C64, of course. Congratulations!
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Posted By
dLst
on 2023-08-23
02:09:01
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I love it. This is one of my favourite games on Amiga. Thanks for it and congratulations!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-22
19:18:45
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Damn fast! Comparative video now!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-22
19:06:28
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Awesome work porting this to Plus/4 and nice update to the original title image! 10/10
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Posted By
George
on 2023-08-23
18:50:41
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Congratulations cobbpg!
Fantastic game and very playable on real hardware!
I also did a small video about the game on real hardware: https://youtu.be/mZIJEmGQlpg
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Posted By
Ko-Ko
on 2023-08-22
16:06:05
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Absolutely fantastic, I'm stunned! Congrats for this superb conversion!
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Posted By
TCFS
on 2023-08-22
16:03:26
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
Congrats for this big achievement! The community needs more and more cool stuff like this to turn the "ugly duckling" into a "high-soaring flamingo".
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-22
14:02:49
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Congratulations Gergely! Gonna test it immediately on real hardware!
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-22
13:41:55
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
And the game is officially out in the open now: Stunt Car Racer. I hope you enjoy!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-08-21
20:04:37
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Yay for testing and feedback That's all I ask.
Looking forward for the final release!
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-20
15:43:27
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Issues fixed so far:
- pressing fire now triggers a return key when entering a name (so you don't need to reach for the keyboard if you don't care about naming your player)
- added escape key as an alternative to the commodore key for interrupting actions (either to leave the race instantly or to cancel entering a file name)
- flames were not cleaned up properly if they were showing on the last frame before returning to the menu
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Posted By
Mad
on 2023-08-20
15:13:05
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Wow!!! This really looks absolutely fantastic!! Almost like the Amiga one (also framerate wise).. I really like how the opponents looking gorgeously when passing each other and the car!! Great port! Thanks for that!! (have to look onto it later a bit more intensively)..
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-20
08:28:57
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
It looks like the build is finally in a good enough shape, so I'm sending out the previews to everyone who contacted me so far. Whoever else wants to test (preferably on real hardware), please write to my email.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-19
06:36:18
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Just remember, there is no need to rush just because the cat is out of the bag and we sincerely mean that! In your own good time, and don't take to heart any feedback even if it's meant with best of intentions. As they say, all good things come to those who wait.
Gentlemen Start Your Engines! "DAYTONA..."
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-19
05:55:34
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
> Can you share some more details about the 3D renderer and the x-y-z space coordinate system?
I'm actually planning to write a proper article on this topic at some point, I can link it here when that's done. It's a long story that I don't want to retell in many small fragments scattered around in random places if I can avoid it.
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-19
05:51:47
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I'm happy to report that the load/save functionality is back in the game! I'm still going through a bunch of smaller things, but I believe that I'll be ready to distribute test builds tomorrow for anyone interested. Those who want to take part in testing should drop me an email (address mentioned above), and I'd especially like to hear from people with real hardware to play with.
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Posted By
seff
on 2023-08-19
05:50:06
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
@cobbpg
Hats off!
>For instance, it has the most impressive perspective projection logic I've ever seen in 8-bit land, and among other things it involves an arctangent table that's queried in its compressed form thanks to the really clever way the data is represented.
Could you share some more details about the optimization techniques used in SCR? I know that many 3D projections do not use 360 rotation degrees but define 256 degrees instead. Also you mention a compressed arctangent look-up table...
>Most of the meat is in the 3D renderer that works in bitmap mode, and that was the easiest part. In fact, getting the few places where sprites were used translated was by far the most involved part of the work.
How is it accomplished? Can you share some more details about the 3D renderer and the x-y-z space coordinate system?
Many thanks!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-08-18
15:06:07
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
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Posted By
Unreal
on 2023-08-18
03:55:01
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
titlescreen is done
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Posted By
George
on 2023-08-17
08:33:40
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
My humble opinion:
Consider to add a title screen and intro music to round up the game.
The plus/4 scene has some of the best pixel-artists and TED-musician in the 8-bit world. Truly masters.
We could open a friendly competition where everybody can suggest to you a picture or a song.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-17
07:18:27
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Cool.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-08-16
18:29:03
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
@cobbpg: thanks for the answers!
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-16
12:56:05
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
> cobbpg, please send the file out to at least a handful of testers before release. (IMHO the more the better.) It's one of my biggest pet peeves, there are so many new products (and not just games) that would have benefited from proper testing.
Maybe, but a "release" for a homebrew port is not a very formal thing nowadays, builds can be easily replaced etc. In any case, it took one whole year before someone realised that the disk functionality was broken in my SuperCPU hack. My current plan is to throw out a build somewhere for anyone to try, and if all goes well, maybe it can find its final hosting place on this very site.
> I agree with Csabo: it deserves a great intro
Since growing into an old geezer I kind of lost my enthusiasm for anything that makes me wait more than necessary before I can play. That said, I can squeeze in a plain static bitmap with the title screen, since that can be done in a single load, the same way I did it with the SuperCPU build.
> as I see this game had no music on C64, nor on Amiga...strange
Maybe because the game was originally conceived on the C64 where there was no memory left for such luxuries, then I guess they decided that it wasn't necessary anyway and didn't include music in the 16-bit versions either. In fact, the 16-bit versions didn't even have proper title screens, which is even more curious.
> Some weeks ago I converted and repixeled the intro screen of stunt car racer (just for fun), if you need it.
Sure, feel free to send it to me, I have a very obvious gmail address you can use (patai.gergely). No guarantees about including anything though, I'm still playing around with some ideas, but I do appreciate the offer!
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Posted By
Unreal
on 2023-08-16
03:34:11
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Some weeks ago I converted and repixeled the intro screen of stunt car racer (just for fun), if you need it.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-08-15
16:49:31
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
As a kid, I've never had the chance to play with Stunt Car Racer on C64. I had it on disc, but it was not readible
First I played it on Amiga at a friend, and was really nice, and later played on PC EGA.
For a long time I did not play with this game, but then the first C64 emulator I started to use, and man, that emulated SCR was SLOW on my 386, but it was still enjoyable
So now it is here, one of the best old school racing program ever made, including Amiga and ATARI ST.
"Several publications consider it to be one of the greatest video games of all time"
So thank you for transferring this game to our platform. I agree with Csabo: it deserves a great intro
(as I see this game had no music on C64, nor on Amiga...strange)
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-15
14:18:28
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Okay, I just finished with the key bindings. Still have 1.8K memory left to get the disk functionality back.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-08-15
12:12:59
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
cobbpg, please send the file out to at least a handful of testers before release. (IMHO the more the better.) It's one of my biggest pet peeves, there are so many new products (and not just games) that would have benefited from proper testing.
Also, in case you're planning on adding an intro or title screen to make it a more well-rounded release, there are plenty of folks around who would be happy to do graphics/music/whatever. Just throwing this out there, not trying to imply that you couldn't do these yourself, you are obviously a very skilled programmer
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-15
11:55:27
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Lol ok how about this... It runs at the correct speed on Plus/4 but acts like the odd frame is being skipped on C64.
Nothing against the C64 tho as I love that also.
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-15
10:46:04
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Finally back from work so I can react to this deluge of messages! :P
> It looks way more smoother, almost as if the frame rate has doubled and loving the new colors.
I saw several comments along these lines, which I found amusing, since the frame rate is pretty much the same as on the C64. This version actually does implement a few optimisations, but the best they can do is offset the effect of the extra work needed to handle twice as much colour data as in the original. In any case, if I could squeeze in the screen clear optimisation, that should have a noticeable effect. I tested the idea with a modified C64 build that I adapted to cartridge, so I'd have ample space to unroll code, and it really did breathe a new life into the game.
> It might be a cool feature to allow user define colors for the track and sky with so many to choose from, just for added fun.
At the moment these are mostly hardcoded and baked into assets. The only thing you can change via a single byte is the chroma component of the ground, the rest would be tricky to handle during runtime.
> You could built in a setting which switches off the overlayed car or part of the animations in favour of speeding up the 3d rendering.
That wouldn't help with the speed too much, since the overlay is basically free; it's added as part of the screen clear step, before any lines are rendered. The fire is also free (I just choose the picture used during clearing depending on whether it needs to show or not). You could save a bit of time on the wheels, but they are not very significant in the grand scheme of things. The only thing that could help with frame rate besides the above mentioned optimisations would be to shrink the viewport, and that would really take away from the fun factor.
> I wonder if this would have beaten the Lemmings at the Árok Party?
To me, Lemmings is an infinitely more impressive port. The code for SCR could be reused almost in its entirety, with only minor, mostly cosmetic changes, while Lemmings needed a complete rewrite.
> TL;DR, engine sound could probably still be improved, i.e. made more similar to that of the original one, by code taking the TED's frequency curve into account.
Yes, I gave this some thought while adapting the sounds, but I came to the conclusion that it's not worth the additional memory needed for a LUT, since it's going to sound different anyway. While playing the game in its current form it feels to me that the frequency feedback is adequate: it does the job at least. I'd rather focus on more valuable features. Of course when there's a public build and people have low-effort/low-cost suggestions to improve it, I'm going to be open to that.
All in all, based on the overall feedback I'll be working to recover the key rebinding and load/save functionalities, since they seem quite feasible at the moment. I'm just going to leave out unneeded functions, like the encryption logic or the ability to list the disk directory (yes, you can do that in the original by typing DIR for the filename). If all goes well, hopefully I can get the release build ready later this week.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2023-08-15
10:36:41
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Wow! What a surprise! Certainly one of my favourite games on C64. I've been secretly hoping that someone / someday would come up with this conversion (given the little to no use of sprites in the game - but, without ever taking a look at actual code at the same time).
My 2 cents:
- Configurable key bindings could be handy.
- Load/Saves could be handy.
- C64 compatible load/saves - would be striking, but probably not top prio for the conversion to be complete.
- I don't care about SID support, I prefer stuff for the stock platform (personal taste). Maybe a SID specific build could be supplied if desired, who knows. Additional note for sound: TL;DR, engine sound could probably still be improved, i.e. made more similar to that of the original one, by code taking the TED's frequency curve into account. (This is the same note that I could have said WRT Pigmy's Revs conversion back then). Long story: as you have probably noticed, the frequency curves, as a function of register value, fundamentally differ on the SID and the TED. For the SID, f is of type c*R, and, for the TED, f is roughly c/(N-R) (f is output frequency, R is register value, c is platform / TV standard specific constant, N=1023). For the SID, f is a linear function of R. For the TED, f is a 'reverse' 1/x of R. If you glide (i.e. keep increasing or decreasing the sound register value linearly), you get different glide characters (frequency curves) on the two platforms.
- Mem expansion, see: SID support . Probably a nice to have for a specific (extended) build. Add: there are probably much less memory expansion equipped machines out there than there are SID equipped ones (due to the fact that the memory expansion has to be built into the machine).
Again, thank you very much for working on this.
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Posted By
Verona
on 2023-08-15
09:00:40
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Great work, indeed!!!
I wonder if this would have beaten the Lemmings at the Árok Party?
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Posted By
z9leca
on 2023-08-15
08:31:51
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
*picks up jaw from the floor* Fricking awesome port judging from the video! I will try it as soon as I get home from the office. Great work!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-08-15
07:07:26
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I would sincerely be of some help to choose the best features to consider on, but I got speechless And can't currently react as it would deserve...
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Posted By
George
on 2023-08-15
06:04:25
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
What a great surprise. I love this kind of early 3d driving games. And i always hoped that stunt car racer would be ported one day. Never played the game though.
I am also a great fan of every 3D related.
Your priorities are fine.
What comes in mind as a feature (if you havent built in already)
You could built in a setting which switches off the overlayed car or part of the animations in favour of speeding up the 3d rendering. Like in Gran turismo, where you have different camera views. So that the driving gets as smooth as possible.
If you have questions about sound or any optimization, feel free to ask the wizzards here. Everyone is kind and helpful.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-08-15
03:51:01
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I have this for C64 on cartridge but sadly never got into it, it was too slow...
Very impressive to see it on Plus/4 though! It looks way more smoother, almost as if the frame rate has doubled and loving the new colors.
It might be a cool feature to allow user define colors for the track and sky with so many to choose from, just for added fun.
Great work!
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Posted By
SukkoPera
on 2023-08-15
03:06:10
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I've never been a fan of this game but the work is surely impressive, well done! 
If you can solder, I'd happily send you some PCBs for the SIDcard and memory expansions.
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Posted By
KiCHY
on 2023-08-15
02:59:17
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
That looks fantastic!
A bunch of the older Plus/4 enthusiasts were chatting about this game every now and then, that it's convertible to +4, and how to solve the sprite issues (wheels, flames, etc.), but nothing has happened so far, for various reasons (working on other projects, laziness, real-life activities, perhaps even apathy).
I'm glad this game will come to our Plus/4 and it's made by a person who knows the code of the original and even improved it
My suggested improvements, from most important to less important, are:
- Save/load
- Configurable keys
- RAM expansion support
- SID support
- Save file compatibility
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Posted By
Rachy
on 2023-08-14
21:16:45
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
SCR was/is not my cup of tea, but I have to admit that this is a great port so far.
Congrats!
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Posted By
Charles
on 2023-08-14
18:50:56
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
@cobbpg, this is madness, amazing port!! As you see everyone has different priorities, would vote for sg else. I think the most widely spread HW expansion is the SID card (also emulators support it with no extra config needed) though not sure if it adds a lot to the experience in this game (no music just the engine sound), maybe you can consult Csabo how to tweak the +4 sound if that stays, he has done some magic recently with TED.
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2023-08-14
18:28:53
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
!Looks Fantastic!
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Posted By
Murphy
on 2023-08-14
17:56:48
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Awesome! It's nice to see the speed increases, and the graphics looks way better with the palette of the plus/4.
We are waiting for the final version!
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Posted By
Wayne
on 2023-08-14
15:23:39
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Well ! This is Superb News - ALWAYS Nice to see New Games for the Plus 4 :->
Really as long as it works on a Stock Plus 4 ( SD2IEC Compatibility please !!! ) then I am Happy :->
Congratulations on Converting the Game !
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Posted By
Unreal
on 2023-08-14
15:20:24
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Wowww Man!! This is my all time favourite C64 game! Always fucking the others ( Tcfs, Murphy, etc ) , anyone port this!! Awesome!
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-14
14:20:05
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
> I wanted to ask you if you're using the first 2k of memory for your game.
Oh yes, this game really stretches as far as the RAM goes. In standard Geoff Crammond fashion, it needs to rearrange things in memory whenever switching between the menu and gameplay modes just to fit in 64K. It also keeps things nicely compressed and unpacked on the fly when needed. For instance, it has the most impressive perspective projection logic I've ever seen in 8-bit land, and among other things it involves an arctangent table that's queried in its compressed form thanks to the really clever way the data is represented.
> It's nice to see a newcomer who wasn't told this would be impossible.
Heh, I never thought this game would be particularly difficult to port, since it doesn't make particularly heavy use of sprites. Most of the meat is in the 3D renderer that works in bitmap mode, and that was the easiest part. In fact, getting the few places where sprites were used translated was by far the most involved part of the work. Expanding colour RAM usage to chroma+luma was a bit tricky, but still more straightforward.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2023-08-14
13:54:06
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
Very nice, pal
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2023-08-14
13:45:02
 | Re: Stunt Car Racer
hmm looks good! Happy to test the final version and burn some rubber.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-08-14
13:44:36
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
Wow, this is a huge surprise! Stunt Car Racer has been one of the "holy grails" (on par with the likes of Last Ninja - which we almost have - and Impossible Mission and Lemmings - which we now have). I've heard some folks as for this game over and over (and over) again, and most coders responding with "can't be done" or "too hard"; but basically no-one would go for it.
It's nice to see a newcomer who wasn't told this would be impossible
We do have a Stunt Car Racer record in our database; but to be honest I always wished we didn't. The game was never converted, all we had was rumors and confusion. If this becomes an actual Plus/4 release, we shall re-purpose that page to hold the game's record.
As for the priorities, I would say the order you listed them is perfect (in order or priority). The last 3 (for me) is unnecessary, especially the save files being compatible with the C64 version; I can't imagine anyone actually needing/wanting this. SID/RAM expansion is a nice to have, but I think most sceners would be perfectly happy without it.
So, hats off to you sir, this is incredible news, looking forward to seeing more
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Posted By
Harry Potter
on 2023-08-14
13:27:05
| Re: Stunt Car Racer
I admit that I'm not all that familiar with Stunt Car Racer, but I kind of like the idea of supporting RAM expansion. As for which features you want, I think they are all optional. I wanted to ask you if you're using the first 2k of memory for your game. If not, putting some code there could buy you a little extra memory. That's what I did with my text adventure. Also, you could compress your map data and have it be decompressed in place on every level. I use printtok.c to compress my text adventure's text. It doesn't do much: it compresses using only tokenization and RLE of spaces, but it helped the text adventure's database file by about 25%. You probably don't need too much, but maybe you can use BPE to compress repeated two-byte values or reference the same location--or even a different location--in a previous map if the same as the current. Does this help?
BTW, I'm going to look on Lemon64 for the C64 version of the game now.
I got a link to CSDb, but two downloads--one of the game and the other some documentation--were blocked as dangerous.  I might be able to do it at home--I'm at my day program right now.
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Posted By
cobbpg
on 2023-08-14
12:28:21
| Stunt Car Racer
Hello all!
As a lurker, I'm happy to present to you a fresh port of Stunt Car Racer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2We6haARv8
After reverse engineering SCR to modify its physics so it can run at 50 FPS I started looking around and quickly realised that this game hadn't been ported to the Plus/4 yet. Since the TED is in many ways similar to the VIC-II, especially in the absence of sprites, I figured this might be an interesting challenge. And so it was!
The biggest limitation was RAM space. The original game doesn't leave much of the C64's memory untouched, and the Plus/4 has less accessible RAM while needing an extra 1K for colour information. For the time being, my solution was to remove load/save functionality and the ability to change key bindings, so I'd be able to get a working game and have some breathing room to shuffle things around. At the moment I have a bit over 2K memory left, so I should be able to restore some of the missing bits.
I really like the way the game looks with the rich TED palette, even if the multicolour mode limitations (i.e. only two unique colours per block available) were sometimes difficult to deal with. The result is somewhere halfway between the Amiga and the C64 visually, which makes it distinct in its own way.
Since I'm not really familiar with the Plus/4 (I'm originally a C64 kid), I wanted to ask the community for some advice on what to prioritise so the first release could deliver as much value as possible. Here are some features I could work on:
- bring back configurable key bindings
- bring back load/save functionality (with configurable drive number)
- make save files compatible with the C64 ones (there's some encryption involved that takes up valuable memory, and it's not necessary if you just want to reload your own saves)
- SID support
- support for RAM expansion (this would e.g. allow me to generate some speedcode to get better a frame rate, and also to squeeze in some of the above functionality)
Which of the above do you think is the most important? Anything else that comes to your mind?
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