Stunt Car Racer for BBC Master

[kieranhj]

Thanks for the feedback Sydney - let me know if you run into any definite problems.

One thing to note is that we did add audio volume support - press plus/minus on the Master keypad to turn the volume up/down. You can also silence the menu music with 'M' whilst on a selectable menu.

[sydney]

It was turning down the volume that made me notice the noise so thanks for that too. It's surely a relatively easy thing to add - I wish more games allowed volume control bitd. Noisy games annoying the wife is the main reason I started using a master with audio sent to the tv.

[Andrew_Waite]

Stunt Car Racer in IndieRetroNews.

"A mind blowing port released for the BBC Master"

http://www.indieretronews.com/2019/03/s ... .html#more

[trixster]

“is this a worthy port for the BBC Master?”

What sort of nonsensical question is this?

[mr-macrisc]

Think they meant does the port to this particular 8bit machine stack up to the original amiga game... As in is it worthy against the original

Well I'd say the only one that does

[minwah]

Wow, this is amazing! Haven't played it much yet but feels really good, surely the quickest & smoothest 8 bit version.

Congrats and thanks to all involved

[sydney]

Someone has posted a review on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMUkkHklJgc
He seems a bit confused by the controls and I was too until I googled the instructions. I remember playing on the C64 with a joystick and forward was accelerate with boost being assigned to the fire button. It seems keyboard controls differ and there is no accelerate key but accelerate and boost are on the same key.

I found the following on lemonamiga : http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=1570

2. Keyboard (default keys)

The key controls differ slightly form the joystick in order to avoid the need
to press more than two keys at any one time.
With the "Boost and Accelerator" key depressed, your car will be accelerating
with boost. Once the key is released, the car will continue to accelerate, but
without the boost. Therefore, the key does not need to be held down continuous-
ly unless boost is required.
Forward acceleration is turned off by pressing either of the two brake/reverse
keys. The car will then freewheel until another key is pressed. Two brake/reverse
keys provide two braking/reversing rates,i.e. with and without boost.

Personally I think they've done this badly and the game would have been fine with an accelerate key, a break key and a boost key which would apply to both accelerate and brake depending on which key it is pressed with.

I've read the readme and guide text files and I'm pretty sure they didn't cover this - though with the number of mistakes I've made the past few days it wouldn't surprise me if I missed it.

[trixster]

Your reading of the controls is exactly how it plays on the Amiga with a joystick. Having a separate accelerate would be good.

[tom_seddon]

Thanks for the report - looks like I missed that bit out when updating the manual text that goes on the disc...

This oddity was inherited from the C64 version - sounds like the C64 suffers quite badly from ghost keys - and we tried to leave the gameplay code alone.

--Tom

[jregel]

A great review on ChinnyVision's YouTube page.

He does throw the gauntlet down for a Starglider port...

[chinnyhill10]

A great review on ChinnyVision's YouTube page.

He does throw the gauntlet down for a Starglider port...

Yes, sorry! Although someone else told me when I mentioned it they were thinking exactly the same thing!

[Ramtop]

Really entertaining review, Chinny. And well done to the Bitshifters for a very nice port. I hopefully have a Master arriving next week, so looking forward to giving this a go!

[vanpeebles]

I was a veteran of the speccy version which used a separate key for accelerate and another key for boost. I'm sure on the joystick this was up for forward, and fire for the boost. I recently tried the amiga version with the auto boost, and I was arl ower the shop. Didn't like it those controls!

[trixster]

I’m pretty sure Amiga doesn’t have auto-boost. Up on joystick to accelerate, fire for turbo. Unless you’re talking about using the keyboard?

[vanpeebles]

Could of been on the keyboard?

[chinnyhill10]

Could of been on the keyboard?

I believe it's the C64 version only that does this and of course its the same code on the BBC hence why it does the same.

[minwah]

I believe it's the C64 version only that does this and of course its the same code on the BBC hence why it does the same.

I actually think the Amiga keys are the same. It's possible it has a separate accelerate key, but I'm sure it has the 'accelerate + boost' key (Return IIRC).

I could be wrong, and don't have my Amiga setup at the moment to be 100% sure though.

[tom_seddon]

A minor Stunt Car Racer update has been released: version 1.1. This fixes a couple of issues with the first release, and adds ADFS compatibility.

You can download it from the site: https://bitshifters.github.io/posts/pro ... -beeb.html

Stunt Car Racer now also comes as an ADFS image: https://bitshifters.github.io/content/bs-scr-beeb.adl - apologies for the current lack of a download link on the site!

Changes:

• Now ADFS-compatible, and can run from hard disk (see README for installation details)
• Loading time improved slightly
• A few code improvements
• Hall of fame load issue fixed
• Missing manual note about the keys fixed

Thanks to sydney for the bug reports and giving it a pre-release trial run on real hardware :)

Please let us know if you find any bugs or have any issues!

--Tom

P.S. you can check which version you've running by pressing V on the initial instructions screen showing you the keys. This will show the version number in the top right, or do nothing if it's V1.0

[tricky]

Runs great on my Compact DFS, although I haven't had much time to play.

[cmorley]

I just tried Stunt Car Racer on my Amiga 1200 and yeah it has more colours but the frame rate is pretty rubbish.

I can confirm it doesn't have an accelerate button only the boost. There is normal brakes and boost brakes too (which make flames and use boost up). So that must have been removed in the C64 version then I suppose?

I have a C64 I will try it on that at some point.

So +1 in the win column for the Master port!

[jbnbeeb]

Got my copy of Retro Gamer in the post yesterday.
Congrats to Bitshifters on a full page review of Stunt Car Racer in homebrew section!

[trixster]

I just tried Stunt Car Racer on my Amiga 1200 and yeah it has more colours but the frame rate is pretty rubbish.

Yes, the framerate on a 7mhz Amiga is quite surprisingly low. There’s a ‘turbo’ version for 020 and 030 Amigas which really improves things

[kieranhj]

Got my copy of Retro Gamer in the post yesterday.
Congrats to Bitshifters on a full page review of Stunt Car Racer in homebrew section!

Oooh! Exciting. I’m surprised I didn’t get my subscriber copy yesterday as well then. Look forward to it arriving on Monday.

[Elminster]

Got my copy of Retro Gamer in the post yesterday.
Congrats to Bitshifters on a full page review of Stunt Car Racer in homebrew section!

Oooh! Exciting. I’m surprised I didn’t get my subscriber copy yesterday as well then. Look forward to it arriving on Monday.

Maybe teasing you by not sending it.

What is the next 16 bit course conversion? Xenon 2 was reason I bought Amiga over 8bit. Would like to see what you could do with that!

[trixster]

Speedball 2 for me.

Or something really ambitious like Pinball Dreams - the c64 and cpc6128 work-in-progress versions of this are remarkable.

They’d be an X68000 bounty for PD!

[mr-macrisc]

I'd love to see what could be done with r-type fully utilising the master. It's another game I loved and there are already good c64 and spectrum versions which would make the challenge interesting.

[tricky]

I can't speak for Kieran, but R-Type is a little tricky.
You can do single pixel scrolling with a double buffered screen to make your life easier on the beeb like this.
To do R-Type properly, you need 1/2 pixel scrolling or one every two frames which means displaying the same frame twice in a row which looses you the benefit of being able to draw to an off screen buffer. On the Master, you could quad buffer the screen, but then keeping track of things is a pain.
I would love to see it done, but don't like the compromises of the other 8 bit ports. (Maybe someone could finish Jeltron )

[danielj]

93% in Retrogamer this month

[mr-macrisc]

I can't speak for Kieran, but R-Type is a little tricky.
You can do single pixel scrolling with a double buffered screen to make your life easier on the beeb like this.
To do R-Type properly, you need 1/2 pixel scrolling or one every two frames which means displaying the same frame twice in a row which looses you the benefit of being able to draw to an off screen buffer. On the Master, you could quad buffer the screen, but then keeping track of things is a pain.
I would love to see it done, but don't like the compromises of the other 8 bit ports. (Maybe someone could finish Jeltron )

Hence why I'd love to see it done... Think stunt car racer shocked us all with its quality and ability for an 8bit machine. And for me R-type offers as much if not slightly more challenge and was one of the seminal 16bit games. So to see a version that comes close to 16bit and trounces the other 8bit machines would be another shock to the system titles like stunt car racer has been.

We can but dream. Be even cooler if there was a nula version to make it proper colourful.

[RobC]

We can but dream. Be even cooler if there was a nula version to make it proper colourful.

VideoNuLA would help with the horizontal scrolling too as you can do single pixel scrolling in all modes. (And even half pixel scrolling in mode 1 but you can't plot sprites on half pixels boundaries...)