MaxCoderz

I remember a good game from the mid 90's called Raptor - it was a vertcally scrolling shooter, and was heaps of fun.

I was thinking about it today, about how it could be done on an 83+, and have some ideas.

What if you made use of the LCD's z-page capability to implement the scrolling... Then you would only have to draw one horizontal line per frame (not counting non-static objects).

Now, couple this with some nice greyscale code. I was thinking about a system which would keep track of which bytes or areas of the screen need a greyscale effect, since "all on" and "all off" pixels don't need to be updated.

I think this would make a cool project and a great game. I'm tempted to try it myself, but my workload is heavy enough at the moment!

Anyway, if someone wants to pick up on this idea, let me know how it goes!

Link?

threefingeredguy wrote:Link?

http://www.solscape.com/games/Raptor/rap.html

Raptor is a great game, i played it heaps back in th day. I also remember some cheat about cows ... O_o.

Ive been very tempted to make it myself, just never got around to it.

qarnos wrote:What if you made use of the LCD's z-page capability to implement the scrolling... Then you would only have to draw one horizontal line per frame (not counting non-static objects).

I think using Z-address would be more trouble than it's worth. Just think about it how much hassle it would be to make it flickerless, i.e. updating all the sprite bytes in a single run (especially making sure that you don't update a byte twice if it holds a sprite in two consecutive frames). And that's not even greyscale. Also, a Raptor lookalike would reqire lots of sprites, and using a simple fully redrawn virtual screen would be likely no more cost than trying to look for unchanging bytes.

The best: [ http://www.reptilelabour.com/software/chromium/ ]

I agree with CoBB, also,if you use grayscale only the the middle (between to other black pixels) pixels remain the same (same for white ofcourse) all the rest (probebly 90% or something) would have to change anyway, so the "normal" way might actually be faster, or not much slower.

Firetrack was similar to this.

I used to play demonstar, and that looks pretty similar to this.

heh looks cool and I would love it as a calc game.

CompWiz wrote:I used to play demonstar, and that looks pretty similar to this.

That is probably because Mountain King Studios made both Demonstar and Raptor.

I have seen Raptor in arcades, and still few have it...you should buy it!

Isn't Tyrian freeware?

Yes, it is. You can find more info and downloads for Tyrian here.

Ah, I remember playing the demo levels afterschool so long the walls looked like they were scrolling when it quit. There is an ASM clone of the game, but I recall it getting terrible reviews about the game speed and bad controls. If someone did a genuine clone (bring back all the original weapons & upgrades that made it famous) it would take off. Puncount++. Likewise, there was another game called Alpha-10 that I thought was good (still got a bad review) that mixed scrolling with fast-moving cloud sprites to give a nice illusion of height. Something to look into if grayscale becomes a problem.