Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
13:34:16
|  We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Hi Guys,
This year we took the decision to do a racing game for the Plus/4.
We 5tarbuck,Kichy and me Mad developed all to a state where there is probably an all new "Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge" like racer fully possible on the Plus/4.
However we got stuck at some point. Mainly FPS wise, it's all drawn in bitmap mode  .. Mainly the coder didn't want to release a full game with that raw blitting performance .. Perhaps it may improve on using more memory and raster tricks..
But..
We got it running and having some proper audio tracks from 5tarbuck for your ears. And some fresh graphical work by Kichy Maestro.. So here it is.. It's a fully running tech demo providing two original roads.
So yeah this sorta Lotus game is possible on the Plus/4 or 64k enabled C16.. And this is also some sorta birthday present!! :)
You may see this as an extra addition to the 2019 release count! Greets from all the people involved..
May the best CarTeDers win!!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0dnqfb2c7a85h0u/carted.zip?dl=0
Please excuse my awesome english!! Greets and all the best! Have fun!!!!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
13:37:36
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Aaah so you've found a way to release it in the very end 
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2019-11-14
13:42:49
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Very impressive!
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
13:52:44
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Haha!! Luca yes!! It was too hard to bear this blitting stuff whilst developing, we may have done a full game since there are many games out there on other 8 bit platforms with even lower FPS.. But however, it's out now.. Btw: It seems even to work with NTSC machines (not 100% confirmed, yet)..
Csabo: Thanx!!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
13:58:31
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Mad: so, it's definitely going to be just a preview and never change into a gorgeous swan?
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2019-11-14
14:00:01
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
wow I did not see this one coming. Awesome! Especially liked the tunnel implementation.
I still don't understand why not releasing this as a small game instead of just demo of game? Too good to be abandoned.
Anyhow, the output row looks like this now:
demo, demo, demo, demo, game, game, game, game, game, game, game-demo, ???? - I hope next is a demo.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
14:04:32
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
The next one is a DAME 
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
14:11:33
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Luca there is a possibility to improve it for sure.. But maybe that would need a memory extension beyond 64k.. Let's see if there is another try on a racing game later on then. This is the 3rd attempt of a racing game engine for me. I always used character mode before.. And yes a DAME is at least planned, for years already..
Lavina Thanx!! I hope you are working very hard on your next masterpiece / milestone currently .. I think we are settled for at least another one or two games here. I know that Degauss wants to do a demo and if he does, I will support him with some parts I think.. Btw the tunnel was possible because people here, especially Doug, pointed me to the black pixel output via ff06.. Thanx!! TED is awesome!!
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Posted By
KiCHY
on 2019-11-14
14:14:12
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
There are some unused assets of this demo. We made 6 sceneries and you saw 2 of them yet. Here comes the other 4...
City
Night
Rain
Winter
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
14:11:12
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Mad: that means: it has not been a decision taken since the very first approach, you had to check it three times before tasting the bitter juice of a total technical obstacle, I see :/ It's another Lemmings affair, on its own...
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
14:25:20
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Luca: I didn't try raster tricks yet.. But maybe that there would be the need for more memory then.. A demo with a car driving fluidially through some !!predefined!! track in 25 fps and bitmap mode is certainly possible in 64k.. But a game would be very hard to do in 64k..
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
14:15:32
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Mad: yes, I remember we talked about saving rastertime here and there...
KiCHY: oh come on, look at those beasts over here! Fantastic screens! Today is *your* birthday, but we got the present! ;) Is there a reason for not releasing the other 4 scenarios directly on that D64?
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2019-11-14
14:30:27
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Slowly, slowly we will have every genre professionally realized on our beloved machines. You are HEROES. You are GODS. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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Posted By
KiCHY
on 2019-11-14
14:32:02
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
We started working on those two sceneries in the demo. Some roadside objects were made and Mad designed the roadmaps. After this sad decision, there were no more objects or maps designed. We built this d64 from what we got at that point.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
14:38:00
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
KiCHY: that's both so great and sooo saaaad :_(
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
15:03:30
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
gerliczer Thanx a lot!! Me for myself are no god! I think we are just using the potential given by the TED designers to the people. I dunno why a business machine even has 121 colors.. But hey.. If the machine has 121 why not using them!! It's sad, that people in the 80s seemed to not recognize the potential of our machine! There are other machines without sprites and with no advanced sound chip, and the people in the 80s coped with that easily.. But yeah, perhaps as everyone here knows.. It all was a business matter in the 80s.. Not the fault of the 264.. Let's see what the future will bring!! And of course this is also a work of the Plus/4 community (in general and here)..
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-14
15:02:31
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
KiCHY: this gives me a chance to ask you wjat happened with Arkanoid, which looked practically complete to me in CD5...
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Posted By
siz
on 2019-11-14
15:07:02
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Awesome work! For me the speed is "good enough". I won't say it's lightning fast but it's very playable, looks very good and the music and sfx is superb too.
So I'd really like to see it in a final version. Keep up the good work guys! Respect!
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
16:02:37
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
siz: Thanks!!
I did a youtube of the gameplay.. However youtube seems to only encode it as 240p.. So quality is low.. Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR-9iorhVsc
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Posted By
George
on 2019-11-14
16:15:27
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Mad Great and impressing demo as always..Like you are reading my thoughts, because i was thinkng about that there is a cool "Out Run" game missing. Are you you going implement some cool engine-sounds for the car? Another cool option would be to make it like "Gran Turismo". Collecting a garage full of cars or make custom cars for the game.
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2019-11-14
17:19:01
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Mad:
1., Magnify your video (at least) three times (resize it as i did with my yape captures, using "Free Video Resize") and then yt shows it properly even in "HD".
2., The game looks impressive!!!!
Kichy:
Great graphics, all my thumbs up AAND Happy Birthday!! again..
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-11-14
17:34:56
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Very nice!
Anyhow, some ppl need to create some 256K games for the masses in this decade.
64K is really not that much for so much nice and big GFX.
(I ordered my Hannes compatible 256K RAM upgrade from Lotherek, hopefully once I will have some stuff to play with. I am pretty sure, some of the readers here already own 256K upgrade...
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Posted By
Doug
on 2019-11-14
18:06:04
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Congrats Mad, that's simply amazing. The speed is really not bad from what I can see on your video clip. Its clean, crisp and looks quite playable. Yet another 'impossible game' that can't be done on the 264, errr, being done! When will we see Doom I wonder ???
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
18:12:10
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
MMS We may give it a try later on.. 256K should be pretty enough to do a propper game... Let's see what the others say.. Btw: Doing this game in the current decade will get a little complicated I suppose, or?
Doug THANX!!!! Perhaps we give doom a try some day.. Dunno!! :D
btw. I adored Power Drift on C64 in the 80s and there are also good engines like that one done already on the Plus/4.. I was happy to see Motormania some years ago on Plus/4!! So we aren't alone with this type of game!! :D
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Posted By
Charlemagne
on 2019-11-14
19:11:07
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
I have just tried out this breath-taking game and I was able to say: "WOW" After the first shock, I am thinking now about how you can make it so colorful. Could you use multicolor or extended mode or switching color-tables?
Congrats to you (5tarbuck, KiCHY, Mad) Very nice work!
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-14
20:19:51
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Thanx Charlemagne!! We used normal multicolor bitmap mode. Kichy and me had to scratch their heads in order to get all those colors on screen without colorclashes! The top of the screen is character mode for easy modifying the numbers and letters there. The rest is bitmap mode.. ff15 is switched and ff16 are switched one or two times, though..
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-15
02:23:52
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Had a quick check on real hardware, and occasionally there's some garbage remaining on the screen when some interactions between the main sprite, the other cars and some track's objects occur; the debris of your car's sprite remain overlapped on the screen till the main car does cross'em again. Did you have the same, so this is a well known weirdness?
In all cases, I saw other 4 scenarios from KiCHY and all in all, relatively short tunes to compose for'em, so if you're aiming to release an addon with those 4 scenarios, I call dibs on composing some of them together with 5tarbuck :D
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Posted By
bubis
on 2019-11-15
06:22:03
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Your productivity is truely amazing guys! There must be some trick, this is not natural! Have you kidnapped your alteregos from parallel universes? I wish I had this time/energy to finish what I planned/started.
This product is excellet too, hats off to you all!
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Posted By
Hypex
on 2019-11-16
10:21:33
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Wow! This is awesome! I just discovered it. 
So everything is in gfx mode? Does it use any raster interrupts for mode switching? Say char for fast top text and gfx for main game?
Could you employ a raster interrupt to scroll the clouds at different speeds so it looks cool? And simulate multiple playfields? LOL.
Wink wink nudge nudge.
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Posted By
Majikeyric
on 2019-11-15
09:21:35
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
WOW that's really impressive guys ! great work ! 
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Posted By
Doug
on 2019-11-15
10:15:28
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
I confirm what Luca is seeing regarding the glitches.
I have had it running all day on my Plus/4 at work (in the break out area for people to grab a quick game when getting a coffee), and its getting a LOT of positive reactions from people! ... 'Surely that must be an Amiga!', 'But how is that possible..???', etc! Great job
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Posted By
Luca
on 2019-11-15
11:28:52
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Ok, the bug occurs just in the Forest level, when you hit a gray boulder. I tried to clone that on any reliable emulator, but both YAPE and plus4emu can't show the same effect: you Mad have just bruteforced the Plus/4 emulation in general
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2019-11-15
13:03:42
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
the tune is GREAT!
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2019-11-15
16:16:39
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
I still can't believe what I see. All these colors and huge movements with superior gfx. Genial.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-11-15
17:19:51
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Actually this is the game I always though very much possible on Plus/4. I enjoyed especiallythe several phases of the main car. Really really nice achivenment! Congrats!
(256K rulez! )
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2019-11-16
02:06:49
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
we only need a blond girl,next tto the driver!!
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Posted By
Skoro
on 2019-11-16
03:16:53
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Again a masterpiece. Respect!!
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Posted By
Spektro
on 2019-11-16
18:34:05
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
WOW Mad, 5tarbuck, and Kichy! Lotus Turbo Challenge II was one of my favourite games on Amiga. It's a shame that Plus4 has such modest sound properties: only 2 audio channels and no bass sounds. Any chance we'll be hearing digital sounds in the game intro/menu/high score list?
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-11-17
19:19:09
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
I really like the night scene withthe stars! it looks awesome!
(heh, you just need some palmtrees and the full retro feeling is there...)
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Posted By
Exin
on 2019-11-18
04:28:05
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
The graphics are mindblowing! Too bad the whole speed is too slow to play. (Not that this stopped game devs. in the 80s)
I guess having no sprites pretty much rules out most Raster-setup approaches. A shame, really. 
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Posted By
Atisoft
on 2019-11-19
02:27:59
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Why don't you use raster effects for the road like trailblazer?
I think it would be faster.
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2019-11-19
13:12:19
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Or maybe 2-4 char rows should be knocked out of the screen where there are only clouds. That would help, too.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2019-11-19
15:15:50
 | Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Congrats guys! By playing it I feel a 30 years less
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2019-11-20
15:51:01
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Frankly, I would not mind the FPS.
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Posted By
Verona
on 2019-11-23
05:37:45
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
"Atisoft:Why don't you use raster effects for the road like trailblazer?
I think it would be faster."
I think too.
And I think, this demo is just a waste of a huge potential, if it will stay in the demo state.
If it's just possible with RAM expansion, then it's okay for me. Maybe it's new, but for long time, it's the first game, that I truly likes!
And now firstly, I thought I didn't release my game in the shadow of Carted, but on second thought, I will complete that and release too! I wanted to see more games alongside the demos, and it will be done!
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Posted By
George
on 2019-11-23
06:16:36
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
You should really make a full game of it. Because its a masterpiece. I am missing the reving engine noise. Music is secondary for my taste. Another suggestion: Make it a cabrio with a girl next and draw the car bigger.
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-23
19:34:59
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
All: I talked to Kichy some days ago. Seems we do the full game at some point in the next years. But we will use the Hannes 256k mode. Sadly the 6502plus4 prozessor project didn't support the Csory 256k expansion, what would have made things a lot easier, I suppose! But anyhow we'll do a 256k release later on if the universe is still existing in some years...
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-11-24
04:18:24
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Great news! Thank you guys for your hard work! I agree it looks to be a masterpiece. BTW if we should pass motorcycles or bicycles, then less collision would happen, even can pass through them. (everyones' secret dream, haha!)
Partially OFF:
I just received a message from Lotharek, than my 6502plus4 with the 256KB RAM is on the way. I will do and write a small test after arrival.
I will try first in my C16, if tracks need to be cut on the mobo, then before that I will try in a Plus/4 first to see the dimensions and space remaining in the computer.
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Posted By
Majikeyric
on 2019-11-24
08:41:51
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
MMS : I also purchased the 256KB expansion from Lotharek I hope it won't be too difficult to mount in a C16.
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2019-11-24
13:31:25
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
that is great! i can see a deal coming.....256KB expansion together with the Game!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-11-25
13:51:50
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Patrick, it would be cool
The other way around is more realistic, but would be a great deal to get 256KB games/tools next to yout 256KB RAM card. (though at the time of internet it is rather easy to find and download them)
OFF:
(actually a LOT of programs could make a great use of the 256KB RAM, even 3+1 or Script/plus, GEOS, if anyone could hack them. I really think (next to really fast and bigger mass storage devices) the missing bigger RAM option (the hard expandability over 64K) was the thing was missing from the 264 series to able to fulfill the need for a real home office PC and was missing to develop bigger games).
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Posted By
Mad
on 2019-11-25
17:26:47
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
OFF:
MMS 64k are already more than enough for bigger games. 128k or more would've most probably been killing other 8 bit stuff.. But that was not the business plan of Commodore!
ON:
The problem for this CarTeD demo wasn't the memory. It looked possible with 64k to do this game. More memory may be really more of FPS later on..
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Posted By
MMS
on 2019-11-25
17:57:16
| Re: We got a Car Racing Tech Demo for you!
Hi! Thanks for the clarification!
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