Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Morning all, last weekend I released a new demo called Chequered Past for the Archimedes at the NOVA demoparty.
You can download the ADF from our Bitshifters site as usual. Emulate in Archimedes Live or watch on YouTube. Yes, I know I need to sort out a !Spark archive so it doesn't take forever to load in the emulator.
It's currently only optimised for ARM250 (eight layers), although if enough people ask I'll finish the ARM2 version that drops the bottom two layers. It also requires a whopping 4Mb to run because, well, to do anything fast on this machine everything needs to be unrolled and word aligned, so there are 8 copies of lots of things.
Thanks to Sarah Walker for helping me figure out how to even do this effect in the first place. Enjoy!
You can download the ADF from our Bitshifters site as usual. Emulate in Archimedes Live or watch on YouTube. Yes, I know I need to sort out a !Spark archive so it doesn't take forever to load in the emulator.
It's currently only optimised for ARM250 (eight layers), although if enough people ask I'll finish the ARM2 version that drops the bottom two layers. It also requires a whopping 4Mb to run because, well, to do anything fast on this machine everything needs to be unrolled and word aligned, so there are 8 copies of lots of things.
Thanks to Sarah Walker for helping me figure out how to even do this effect in the first place. Enjoy!
Bitshifters Collective | Retro Code & Demos for BBC Micro & Acorn computers | https://bitshifters.github.io/
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Cool. Nice music in particular.
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Thanks, it’s a great tune by Rhino. I love that it doesn’t sound like an Archimedes at all! It has bass for a start.
Bitshifters Collective | Retro Code & Demos for BBC Micro & Acorn computers | https://bitshifters.github.io/
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Clean visuals and nicely synchronised music. Very well done!
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Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Outstanding once again Keiran! And thanks for sharing the sources as well, I love having a nosey at things I generally barely understand.
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
It's a really neat effect, but the demo also has a lot of style to it, especially synching with the music and the understated presentation. Ace.
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Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
This is really nice, enjoying seeing you put the Archimedes through its paces. It's not a system I know a huge amount about so good to see it holding its own against the Amigas of the world. Any plans for a killer game port like we got for the Master?
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Thanks for the kind words everyone. I hadn’t really thought about a game port for the Archie as they are a lot of work, even on the Beeb. (Although I do have an outstanding itch wrt Paradroid, but that’s for another year.)
What game would be worth the effort to port, do you think?
What game would be worth the effort to port, do you think?
Bitshifters Collective | Retro Code & Demos for BBC Micro & Acorn computers | https://bitshifters.github.io/
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Nothing specific in mind from me, I'd have just enthusiastically supported whatever you came up with! I guess the beeb has the advantage of sharing that 6502 with a number of other contemporary systems, no such luck with the Archie (unless I'm ignorant of some of the others?)
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
There's a really nifty game on the 3DO called StarFighter. Think it came out for PS1 too. Could we get a conversion of that?
A slightly more serious suggestion would be something that plays to the ARMs strengths. I'd suggest Stunt Car Racer (which you may be familiar with) or something like Damocles - Mercenary 2. That would probably fly on the Arc.
For 2D titles Alien Breed and Super Cars II would be fine additions to the Archie platform - especially in terms of novel gameplay for the system.
For pseudo 3D - Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master or Bloodwych would be great options - especially Bloodwych. We don't have a lot of dungeon crawlers and certainly nothing 2 player co-op.
A slightly more serious suggestion would be something that plays to the ARMs strengths. I'd suggest Stunt Car Racer (which you may be familiar with) or something like Damocles - Mercenary 2. That would probably fly on the Arc.
For 2D titles Alien Breed and Super Cars II would be fine additions to the Archie platform - especially in terms of novel gameplay for the system.
For pseudo 3D - Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master or Bloodwych would be great options - especially Bloodwych. We don't have a lot of dungeon crawlers and certainly nothing 2 player co-op.
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Another backport of features from the 3DO version?
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Ha! The Amiga 68K source is well documented, I actually referenced it whilst porting the Master version. Funnily enough the track data for the Amiga is byte-for-byte identical to the original C64 code…
That actually wouldn’t be too intimidating of a project tbh.
Bitshifters Collective | Retro Code & Demos for BBC Micro & Acorn computers | https://bitshifters.github.io/
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
That's quite a sad story that no publisher could be found, glad it found a way to be released.
Also well up for Stunt Car Racer (even more) Enhanced Edition
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Agree, with all comments, often its not about cranking out everylast pixel, its about style and production quality - another hallmark example here! Bravo! I'll also start the +1 for an ARM2 version.
Electron,+1,+3
BBC B,GoTek,Boobip 64k SRAM + 64k EEPROM,Speech, BeebSID,VideoNula,Pi Copro
BBC Master,BeebSCSI,UPUSFS,MultiOS,GoTek,DS12887 RTC,VideoNula,Pi Corpo,Mouse,MasterSD,User Port x2
A3000,GoTek,4MB,Watford IDE,CF HD
A5000 Alpha,4MB,CF HD
BBC B,GoTek,Boobip 64k SRAM + 64k EEPROM,Speech, BeebSID,VideoNula,Pi Copro
BBC Master,BeebSCSI,UPUSFS,MultiOS,GoTek,DS12887 RTC,VideoNula,Pi Corpo,Mouse,MasterSD,User Port x2
A3000,GoTek,4MB,Watford IDE,CF HD
A5000 Alpha,4MB,CF HD
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Oids (for either Beeb or Arch)kieranhj wrote: ↑Fri Jul 07, 2023 8:37 pm Thanks for the kind words everyone. I hadn’t really thought about a game port for the Archie as they are a lot of work, even on the Beeb. (Although I do have an outstanding itch wrt Paradroid, but that’s for another year.)
What game would be worth the effort to port, do you think?
Quazatron for Beeb
Wonderboy 3: The Dragons Trap (I can dream can't I?)
A quick port of 'The Ur-Quan Masters'
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
Should say this is fantastic work Kieran an awesome demo with mind-blowing music. Definitely up for seeing the ARM2 version if you have the time
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
For game conversions, I think the Archie would really benefit from a high quality 2D overhead shooter or even platformer, something away from where the Archie's usual strengths (3D), home-grown games or mainstream conversions were. One of my favorite conversions to the Archie was Gribbly's Day Out (and not just because it features raster bars ) because it was very polished and quite different to other Archie games at the time. Then there's the game often talked about that's missing a conversion to the Arc... Exile. A conversion of the Amiga version could be very interesting.
http://starfighter.acornarcade.com/sfwelcome.htm
http://starfighter.acornarcade.com/sfwelcome.htm
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/2014/nov.html
RISC OS User Group Of London - https://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/
RISC OS London Show - https://www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk/
RISC OS London Show - https://www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk/
Re: Chequered Past - Archimedes Demo
I like how this thread has just turned into 'we did port StarFighter 3000, we promise! In fact we did it twice!'