Outrun Port using Lotus engine? Possible?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by trydowave

US Gold did release a few good games (but only a few). I thought mercs was a pretty good conversion and their best game and one of my faves is Shadow Dancer. Loved that port.

Yes, I agree that both games were pretty good

[vulture]

I'd even go so far and say that they published more than a few good games in absolute numbers. It's just they botched so many high profile conversions (mainly capcom and sega ones) that tarnished their legacy at the 16bits.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by vulture

I'd even go so far and say that they published more than a few good games in absolute numbers. It's just they botched so many high profile conversions (mainly capcom and sega ones) that tarnished their legacy at the 16bits.

They published lots of games that were very good.... but had NOTHING to do with US Gold.

They published all of the Delphine games, and largely they were excellent, buts thats because US Gold didn't have any input into those games other than for them to get into the shops.

The actual content US Gold was responsible for commissioning was largely crap.

[vulture]

that ^^

[kamelito]

I guess on the Amiga you could use modulos to double the pixels while having half the vertical resolution like the dragon scene in Unreal, too blocky? How about drawing half the horizontal lines it would make a scanline like effect?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by kamelito

I guess on the Amiga you could use modulos to double the pixels while having half the vertical resolution like the dragon scene in Unreal, too blocky? How about drawing half the horizontal lines it would make a scanline like effect?

Wow, I had to think for a moment what you were responding too, but you were actually being on-topic

[trydowave]

STE was getting some very good looking ports like outrun and ghouls n ghosts is amazing (not sure where that is in its development).

Surely the Amiga could produce something similar?

couldn't the a500 pull off something like ghouls n ghosts, rastan or strider if programmed by the guys who did lionheart or elfmania? Wouldn't The outrun port looks just as good or even better in the hands of shawn southern?

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by trydowave

STE was getting some very good looking ports like outrun and ghouls n ghosts is amazing (not sure where that is in its development).

Surely the Amiga could produce something similar?

couldn't the a500 pull off something like ghouls n ghosts, rastan or strider if programmed by the guys who did lionheart or elfmania? Wouldn't The outrun port looks just as good or even better in the hands of shawn southern?

If Rastan was handled like Toki was, it could be virtually arcade perfect.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by trydowave

couldn't the a500 pull off something like ghouls n ghosts, rastan or strider if programmed by the guys who did lionheart or elfmania? Wouldn't The outrun port looks just as good or even better in the hands of shawn southern?

A500 could do that and even much more.
Problem is, it takes years, for a single man, to make anything that push A500 to the limits, especially if he only do that in a free time.

We must wait until some of us become multimillionaire, and can just hire full team (or several teams), that would fix all US Gold shit ports.

[saimon69]

Bumping this thread a bit, reading on AtariForum pitifully PeterJ is recovering from an injury so for now the project is on hold

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Sorry to hear that about PeterJ - Hope he recovers soon!

I've just found this thread (Sorry - lots of things going on in my home life right now), and I will read it through with interest.

I'm also going to be cheeky and repost my MOD conversions (ignore lastwave - it's the other three which have got the furthest): http://psychodelicacy.net/modplayer.php

[PeterJ]

Hi and thanks for the encouragement

i think that i had a bulging disc or a herniated disc, and to make thing worse, when i started to get better in my back, i went and attended my sport, and i could not move the day after, i have been in bed for over a week, now my back is starting to get better again, so i hope that i soon can continue on outrun. when i left the work i was trying to add the uphill and downhill sprite to the program (still in the process of drawing the sprite ), I don't know how it will look in game, because its some kind of hack that i have been playing around with. but i hope it will look ok

[vulture]

Get well soon m8 and let your body heal before getting into sports this time

[PeterJ]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Sorry to hear that about PeterJ - Hope he recovers soon!

I've just found this thread (Sorry - lots of things going on in my home life right now), and I will read it through with interest.

I'm also going to be cheeky and repost my MOD conversions (ignore lastwave - it's the other three which have got the furthest): http://psychodelicacy.net/modplayer.php

Hi last wave is also a hard nut to crack
i seem so simple, i have also been struggling with it, but i think you got the right sound and it just need a little more work and you got it

here is my attempt, and yes its Ym and its not finish yet
https://www.dropbox.com/s/opa3cu7c2y...0Wave.mp3?dl=0

[PeterJ]

Originally Posted by vulture

Get well soon m8 and let your body heal before getting into sports this time

thanks, yes that will probably be the smartest thing to do, but it hard to stay home when you feel ok, but i will give it a couple of week more rest before i start up again

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by PeterJ

Hi and thanks for the encouragement

i think that i had a bulging disc or a herniated disc, and to make thing worse, when i started to get better in my back, i went and attended my sport, and i could not move the day after, i have been in bed for over a week, now my back is starting to get better again

Sort of what happened to me last Saturday; I think I must have pinched a nerve or something. In pain for the rest of the day, went to bed, woke up Sunday morning and couldn't even move without massive sharp pains / stiffness all through my lower back

Had to manoeuvre to the side of my bed just to try and stand up; but fell back down in pain.

Was off work as a consequence on Monday, but went back in Tuesday.

My lower back was feeling better by Wednesday but the pain then travelled down to my right hamstring; and it's still there

I usually run 6.5KM twice a week (Wednesday and Saturday) but haven't been able to...

Anyway, sorry for my rant. Hope you get better soon

[PeterJ]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Sort of what happened to me last Saturday; I think I must have pinched a nerve or something. In pain for the rest of the day, went to bed, woke up Sunday morning and couldn't even move without massive sharp pains / stiffness all through my lower back

Had to manoeuvre to the side of my bed just to try and stand up; but fell back down in pain.

Was off work as a consequence on Monday, but went back in Tuesday.

My lower back was feeling better by Wednesday but the pain then travelled down to my right hamstring; and it's still there

I usually run 6.5KM twice a week (Wednesday and Saturday) but haven't been able to...

Anyway, sorry for my rant. Hope you get better soon

sorry to hear about your back
yes when something is wrong with you back you start to feel and look like an 80 years
try searching for "bulging disc / herniated disc " on YT, there is many good videos about the subject, it have help me a lot.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by PeterJ

Hi last wave is also a hard nut to crack
i seem so simple, i have also been struggling with it, but i think you got the right sound and it just need a little more work and you got it

What do you think of the other three (Magical, Breeze and Splash)?

[Click 'load song', then double click any of the four listed on the left, then hit 'play'...]

Your version of Last Wave is nice (and I say this in spite of my natural antipathy to the ST's YM2149...)!

It's not a simple tune by any stretch of the imagination. Three of the four original OutRun tunes use some very sneaky jazz chords, and accurately reproducing those is why the size of my conversions is about 3x what most accepted ingame music was in the ST/Amiga days...

[PeterJ]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

What do you think of the other three (Magical, Breeze and Splash)?

[Click 'load song', then double click any of the four listed on the left, then hit 'play'...]

Your version of Last Wave is nice (and I say this in spite of my natural antipathy to the ST's YM2149...)!

It's not a simple tune by any stretch of the imagination. Three of the four original OutRun tunes use some very sneaky jazz chords, and accurately reproducing those is why the size of my conversions is about 3x what most accepted ingame music was in the ST/Amiga days...

Hi
first i am not very good of making music myself so this is just my opinion

i think that that Magical Sound Shower and Passing Breeze are sounding good would not have a problem playing outrun while listen to your version.

I only think i would change is the drum sound (bass drum and snare drum)
i don't know if you using the original drums samples, if not i can grab them for you, and it can also be that i listen to them using my headphone so all the drums came in the left channel and go to be to dominated.

not so happy about splash wave.
i think it running to slow, also the drum same problem as the other 2 and last one of the lead sound in the beginning don't fit.

but over all i think you have done a really good job, special taking into considerations that you only have 4 channels to work with.
and you have got many more details in the tune then i got.

here is my take on them.
i have been update some of the sound since this demo, but they sound more or less the same.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...kRb3EkG8lXXXw5

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by 005AGIMA

Other threads also mention AGA only, which while I can see "why", I dont 100% agree.

OK, so the reason I suggested my intended project start with AGA and work backwards was in part due to my lack of ASM experience on the Amiga. Thanks to modern emulation tech, it's possible to build the initial work as a single memory-resident executable, and AGA gives the advantage of 2MB Chip RAM. It would also mean that we can start with a "best-case scenario" and work backwards from there.

It's always been my view that without the music being right, it won't feel like OutRun, and my current conversions of the music hover around 150-200k in terms of memory usage (easily 2-3x the size of even the largest in-game music normally accepted) - I can reduce that to some extent, but the quality and fidelity. Plus, looking at the graphics required for each level, we're going to need all the directly addressable RAM we can get.

Before my home situation demanded that I put the project on hold, the notion was less about using the Lotus engine directly than it was about adapting some of the techniques it used (particularly the use of the blitter and 'triple-buffering') for a complete rewrite. Because OutRun's use of colour was much more expansive than that used by Lotus (Lotus's palette restrictions themselves being a clever optimisation), it would be unlikely to achieve the same framerate, a different approach would be required, and that's going to take some experimentation.

For starters, the main Testarossa sprite translates reasonably well to 3 bitplanes :


And the most of the palette entries can likely be used elsewhere.

The BMW and artic sprites can be busted down to 4 colours reasonably well (yes, this is using 8, but the black and dark red can be shared from the main palette) :


And it looks like PeterJ and I am on similar pages sorting the status/text stuff out...