 Previous Messages |
Posted By
George
on 2023-10-14
09:18:23
 |  Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
I did a comparison video Plus/4 vs C64 of "The Empire Strikes Back" for the interested like me:
Video: https://youtu.be/E6Dg99oUhKQ
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Posted By
seff
on 2023-10-03
02:56:25
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
@TCFS nice,
thanks for the technical explanation.
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Posted By
Unreal
on 2023-10-02
07:16:41
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
on pc we have unreal engine, now we have tcfs engine on plus4
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Posted By
TCFS
on 2023-10-01
15:05:54
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Hi seff,
Short summary:
- All stuff use charset (only the main title screen with the AT-ATs and the studio logo are bitmaps)
- The game uses standard multicolor mode (hud and radar are hires with some raster trick to increase color density)
- My sprite engine uses double frame buffering
- Different scroll speeds are implemented mainly with raster interrupts, where the player is not crossing the raster cuts; top clouds and the fastest bottom foreground terrain is a pure raster-ineterrupted scroll.
The only place where you can cross terrain elements different speeds is the one between the distant hills and the main ground, where the ATs are walking on. The "distant hills zone" is a special purpose sprite (40 characters wide) to be able to move horizontally in pixels with different speed. The ATs are not sprites, they are using the advantage of the distant hills being a sprite, the hills are masking behind the ATs, giving the illusion that the ATs are the sprites masking on the hills. Sometimes - in order to reduce color clash - the distant hills zone turns off bitwise masking of ATs on some character positions. Frame-by-frame the sprite engine decides which positions are in danger of color clash and controls the masking behavior dynamically to ensure the best visual experience.
- The sprites (player, probe droids, bullet, rocket, explosion) are not precomputed, they are shifted on the fly. I don't use negative masks, my sprite engine is able to combine masked bytes properly, taking the multicolor pixel pairs into consideration.
- Refresh rate is dynamic, somewhere between 25 and 12, based on the screen occupancy.
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Posted By
Mad
on 2023-09-30
18:01:41
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Absolute remarkable stuff! Congrats! Parallax n Sprites everywhere.. Great color choices.. All looks very well and greatly choosen from the explos to the crafts..  Have fun! ( I am absolutely no fan of SW :) )
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2023-09-30
04:15:27
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
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Posted By
Ati
on 2023-09-29
09:55:19
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
It looks great, and how cool the music. Thank you guys!
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Posted By
seff
on 2023-09-29
07:43:37
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
@TCFS great job!
Could you shed some light on the programming/video techniques used?
Is it MCM bitmap or charset? How many colors? Single/double frame buffer?
How did you achieve/cope with different scroll speeds (clouds, mountains, ground)?
How did you implement software sprites? Pre-computed sprites? Pre-computed masks?
What is the refresh rate?
Many thanks in advance!
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Posted By
TCFS
on 2023-09-28
16:12:25
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Hi guys, your enthusiasm is really hearthwarming. Thanks for the comments...
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Posted By
5tarbuck
on 2023-09-27
17:08:50
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Massive respect to everyone involved... this is a fantastic port for our beloved machine!
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Posted By
Hendriks
on 2023-09-27
10:04:15
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Congratulations on a game very well done! If only we had this back in the days, the c64 wouldn't have been able to make fun of us 
Here's a nice video showing the gameplay and music (not from me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnPX6oI1bIo
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Posted By
Majikeyric
on 2023-09-27
10:10:31
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
What an incredible Plus4 port !!! Congrats to all involved
a Devlog post would be so great !
I really wonder how you could make so huge software sprites with parallax scrolling...
There were so many free chars in the original game charset ?!!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-09-27
06:11:49
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
@GeTE just to be clear, I was counting the releases, not only the commercial releases
EDIT: we're loosing ourselves in too many words...scores guys, s-c-o-r-e-s! :D
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Posted By
Murphy
on 2023-09-27
05:21:34
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
A faithful remake of the c64 version, which I didn't think could be done so well on plus/4.
Because it just works, it's not so obvious how technically innovative this game is. Congratulations to all the creators!
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Posted By
George
on 2023-09-27
05:07:40
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
you could also consider to release them on dedicated labeled SD-Cards like on the switch. They are cheap, easy to handle and you could do games that are not limited to by traditional floppy/cartridge limitations. Sd2iec drives could become a further natural standard (if its not already). By the way i love cartridges.
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Posted By
SukkoPera
on 2023-09-27
05:29:20
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
I have a very simple 64 kB cartridge design if it helps. Actually I will ask for help from some coders in order to test it soon.
To get beyond that, and closer to the capacity of a (couple of) floppy disk, we would need to introduce bank switching. Which actually has already been done.
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Posted By
GeTE
on 2023-09-27
03:12:53
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
@Luca (and the others)
It startet with 'Adventures In Time' and went far to 'Lykia' according to the boxed releases. This one here might not be released (otherwise Disney could send their Lawyers) but there will be more in the future. Unortunately, as you told us, Kenz went out of spare disks. Therefore in the future we may only have single file games commercially and physically published on tape again or - that goes to all the hardware guys here - we have to invent a cheap to make cartridge design that holds more than 8 KB for our machines as base for new software. Or is any other path to go? Remember, that I don't like to buy - and I wouldn't - only a file to download with no cover art, no box, no sheets inside and nothing to place on the shelves above the plus/4 desk.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-09-27
02:17:22
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
What an astounding surprise it has been! TCFS started to convert the ancient classic, and performed his time journey into C64 conversions till reaching the contemporary era, with a C64 original dated only one year ago! And over all this, Csabo signed what we can easily judge as his masteripece till now!
Taking The Empire Strikes Back as a milestone where to start counting, and considering Adventures In Time the beginning of the modern Plus/4 games era, the Top 50 Games ranking is now counting 33 out of 50 games which can be considered as "modern" (2010 or later). That's a big leap forward, am I right? What happened to the so-called dying Plus/4 scene, uh?
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Posted By
George
on 2023-09-26
20:59:10
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
I repeat myself, but this i a true piece of art. Amazing if the best talents get together and create something special. @Csabo: i think this is your best work. Sounds like an SID version.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-09-26
18:23:50
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
@Charles, no, you're correct, it is 3 channels. (It's mentioned here in the HVTC.) It's the same DigiSaw player I used in Defiance, Raid Over Moscow and Stick Man. You can check the description of Defiance for a more detailed explanation about the player. Very glad you liked it
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Posted By
BSZ
on 2023-09-26
16:19:37
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
This one is good too! The "menu" screen is also quite stylish, you see similar on old arcade machines, not 8 bit home computers. Congratz!
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Posted By
Charles
on 2023-09-26
14:36:42
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Amazing guys!! And the music in the intro.... @Csabo, this is super cool, and seemingly now you can play more bass tones, it really sounds like a full blown 3rd channel, or is it just my mind deceived?
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Posted By
SVS
on 2023-09-26
14:22:36
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Very nice! Congrats to all the coders! The Force be with you.
I really missed it
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Posted By
dLst
on 2023-09-26
06:58:53
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
No words, awsome! 1000/10
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2023-09-26
03:30:38
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Been playing it on my new steam deck. Never really been a fan of this particular game, but it's a very solid nice looking conversion which plays really well. Really utilised the extra colours to its advantage over other ports. Nice renditions of the musical scores too. I like this game a bit more now.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-09-25
20:43:06
 | Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Uridium style but done horizontal, very cool.
Loving the Ted versions of those classic tunes and the instructions were like wow, great looking images!
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Posted By
George
on 2023-09-25
18:52:34
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Amazing port! This is masterpiece on every level. Superb gameplay, graphics and music. Done by true masters! Well done!
My video on real hardware: https://youtu.be/oZmaooxYaoE
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-09-25
16:01:02
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Oh my gosh, it's actually real?! Who could have foreseen such an event? This is certainly the first time I ever heard about it.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-09-20
08:20:37
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Can't believe everything you read on the net, I suppose.
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Posted By
TCFS
on 2023-09-20
04:55:03
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
I can neither confirm or deny this information
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-09-19
22:00:31
| Re: Tamás Sasvári comes back with a port of last years C64 Remake from "The Empire Strikes Back"
Wow that title screen looks amazing, and if I remember correct it's an actual frame from the movie!
As Darth Vader would say..., "Most Impressive".
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