haynor's contributions

[haynor666]

For a start

PC Engine conversion of Mega Twins (Chiki Chiki Boys) DONE

[TCD]

Thanks, added.

[haynor666]

Another conversion - Jim Power for NEC PC Engine CD DONE

and

Baby Jo for NEC PC Engine CD DONE

[lilalurl]

Thanks, both added.

[haynor666]

Another game - TFX PSX version (japan only release) DONE

Also Pinball Fantasies Deluxe (exactly the same game as AGA version but with speech, again japan only release) DONE

[TCD]

Thanks, both added.

[haynor666]

Another:

Shadow of the Beast II (mega CD version, different than Genesis/Megadrive) DONE
Eye of the Beholder (Mega CD version) DONE
Worms (Saturn version) DONE
Theme Park (Saturn version) DONE


also worth to mention is Jaguar XJ220 Atari ST unreleased version: [ Show youtube player ] DONE

[haynor666]

Sim City 2000 (saturn version) DONE
Another World (3DO version) DONE
Robinson's Requiem (3DO version) DONE
Space Ace (3DO version) DONE

and that's all for today

[lilalurl]

Thanks, all added.


Regarding Jaguar XJ220 for ST:
- First you can blame Cody for mentioning it but not touching the HOL entry :
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=527095

- For anyone interested to get it, check this thread and especially the 6th post, because other links I could find no longer worked:
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=25549

- I don't really know what to mention because a) the downloadable file clearly states "demo" b) I don't have much background info. on it.
The best I could do would be to paraphrase the Joy of Sticks article:
http://thejoyofsticks.wordpress.com/.../jaguar-xj220/

Edit: I could find back the article on Guardian of the Past thanks to the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/201111040...Version_ID=413

Most relevant parts:

The Amiga version of the game used 1mb of memory and 32 colour graphics mode. The Amiga’s custom chips were utilised to get as much speed as possible, the blitter being used to draw all the roadside objects, tunnels, flyovers, road graphics, and opponent cars. The copper chip was used to draw the road markings and sky graduations. For these reasons the ST version was going to be a big challenge. There were no custom chips to rely on and the screen would have to be reduced to 16 colours. Reducing the colours would actually help the framerate but the biggest impact was the lack of blitter which standard ST’s didn’t have. It was clear the ST was going to have to do everything the hard way.

In June 1992 Core Design handed the conversion over to Andrew Buchanan a very talented programmer who was a member of the demo group Fingerbobs. He had previously worked as part of the team that brought Rubicon to the ST. The game was written on a PC running PDS that connected to a 1040STE via a parallel cable. The PC was a 33MHz 386DX with 2MB of memory, 80MB hard drive, and VGA graphics. Core would provide the ST audio & any additional gfx work that Andrew couldn't get via the direct conversion of Amiga assets.

The Amiga code provided for the conversion was not very well documented and Andrew was not even provided with an Amiga development kit. He was confident however that he could get close to the framerate achieved in the Amiga version, one thing was for sure, it was going to be a real test of his code reading skills and his Amiga and ST knowledge.

The first task was the construction of the sprite engine. Even on a 1mb ST (same as Amiga) memory was too tight to preshift anything much. A routine was therefore written that could blit 1, 2, 3 or 4 plane sprites to a 4 plane screen, all of these needed masking against any arbitrary (rectangular) boundary. Considering how much work this routine had to do it proved to be very fast, there were even fast paths through the code for every specific situation that warranted it. Furthermore the sprite routine internally worked with 32 or 16 pixel strips to minimise any code bloat, with only minimal runtime overhead.

Since the ST version used 16 colours many of the game graphics had to be remapped or colour reduced. The tunnels and flyovers in the game were drawn using custom rectangle fills that utilised jump tables and big blocks of code. Line drawing was done using a simple bresenham routine. The road itself proved to be a challenge since it took more than 50% of the screen and was 2 plane. Since it could not be preshifted Andrew wrote the fastest realtime shifting code he could manage and hoped for the best.

For the displaying of the rasters the original Amiga copperlist creation code was kept. Another routine would then parse the final list to create directly executable Timer B interrupt routines. Andrew explained that he never got this to work 100% due to various weird things that could be in the copperlists. The rasters themselves were also slightly unstable since the sprite routines were moving so much data around that sometimes interrupts would be a little late. However, these glitches were minimal and not at all noticeable during play.

Despite all the above it was still necessary to reduce the number of screen objects and the screen area by 16 pixels from each side of the screen, thankfully the arbitrary clipped sprite routine didn't need recoding for the new sizes. The end result of all this was a very playable game even at this stage of developmeny, although Andrew noted that there was still scope for even more optimisation.

Cancellation The cancellation of Jaguar XJ220 occurred in August 1992 approximately three months after it was started. Andrew was reassigned to the Amiga game 'Darkmere: The Nightmare's Begun' since it was badly behind scedule, in fact that game would not be published for another two years.

To this day the reason for the cancellation remains a mystery and no official announcement was ever made by Core. It can be speculated that a rapidly declining ST market was the main reason, however, the games disappointing moderate success on the Amiga may have also have been contributing factor. It could also be that Core needed all the resources possible to get Darkmere finished and so cancelled Jaguar so they could assign Andrew to the project.

Andrew found the source of the development version of Jaguar on an old almost perished CD-ROM, it contained only the source and the final data files. Purely for his own amusement he resolved to make some working disk images to run on an emulator.

As the game remains just a development demo, comparing the final Amiga-version, there's still lot of things that are not implemented.

Championship mode
You can access all the tracks and drive races against 20 other cars but after you finish the race, there's no points or money awarded.

Car tuning
Original Amiga-version allowed to tune the car for better perfomance between the races.

Track-editor
Only about 20% of it was completed when the game was cancelled.

Two player mode
Due to a complex game-engine, the two-player mode wasn't working as good as expected so it's missing from the development version.

Audio
All music and sound FX are missing. It is unknown if it was going to use sampled effects or music in the intro.

So I would go with something such as "an ST version was in development, but was cancelled for unknown reasons 3 months after it was started. In 2009, a demo version of this ST conversion was made available by the conversion author".

Any suggestions?

[haynor666]

Magic Boy (DOS VGA,EGA (Tandy version is the same as EGA)) DONE
Thexder (CD/VGA edition, tricky because it is windows game that opens many windows, I added extra screen from win7 with all windows) NOT NEEDED

[haynor666]

Rise of the Robots (3DO) DONE
Dragon's Lair (3DO) DONE
Flink (Mega CD) DONE
Whizz (Saturn) DONE

that is all for now

[haynor666]

Whizz (this time PSX version, released only in Japan (only Saturn version was also released in EU)) DONE
Lemmings (Philips CD-i) DONE
Dark Castle (Philips CD-i) DONE
Defender of the Crown (Philips CD-i) DONE


about Philips CD-i. Screens taken using MESS. They have overscan area that's why 310 pixels high.

[haynor666]

Flashback (Philips CD-i) 2 titles one from the end of intro, second with menu DONE
Lords of the Rising Sun (Philips CD-i) it has digitized characters instead of original hand drawn. DONE
MicroMachines (Philips CD-i) DONE

[haynor666]

Myst (Philips CD-i) DONE
Striker Pro (Philips Cd-i) more like second edition rather port/conversion NOT NEEDED

[haynor666]

That's all for now.

EDIT. I forget Microcosm (3DO) DONE

[lilalurl]

Thanks, most of them added.

1) Regarding Striker Pro, you states "more like second edition rather port/conversion"
also, MG have it as a separate entry:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/cd-i/striker-pro

Right now, we do not have this CD-i version listed as a conversion in the HOL entry for Striker.


I don't know the game (Amiga and CD-i) so I don't have much of an opinion. However I see no reason to add it as a conversion (and therefore no reason to add the conversion shots).


Do you (or anyone else) have reasons to list that would be in favour of considering it as a conversion?



2) Regarding Thexder I think I will go with the full screenshot (the one with the windows).


I would not mind feedback from other HOL members (or EAB members).

It seems like this version is a remake for Windows of the original game:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/thexder_

Right now, we don't have it listed in the HOL entry as a conversion (only the DOS version is there):
http://hol.abime.net/1376

So in theory, it should not be added.

On the other hand, for Defender of the Crown, we have both the Windows Digitally Remastered version (2002) and Robin Hood: DOTC (2003) listed (and screenshots for Robin Hood):
http://hol.abime.net/305

Therefore, I am quite inclined to add the Windows version of Dexter (with a conversion).


Then regarding the issue of the windows displayed during the game, I believe that showing them is the best solution.

I thought that we would have had an example with the Windows version of Civilization but we don't have conversion shots (yet).
But in the end I guess it would be just like wondering if Colonization (Amiga) should be only screenshot from the main window which would be a bit silly.

[haynor666]

In my opinion Striker Pro is different game just like Striker 96 so better would be not to add in HOL.

Thexder is enchanted edition/remake and I really don't know how much original content is in this version. Gameplay at least is the same. I added this because (as you already stated) some other remakes are also in HOL database. Personally Iwould remove all remakes screens and leave only note about those.
BTW. More faithfull would be make whole screen in Windows 95 because game is from that era but I don't have Win95 install, it would also req. some Virtual PC.


Totally forgot about PS1 version of Intenrational Karate +

[haynor666]

Guys, let me know what will you do with remaining screen beacuse I'm deleting my files.

Striker Pro should be omitted

Thexder might be added just like Defender of the Crown remakes was added

IK+ PS1 should be (straight conversion)

[lilalurl]

IK+ PSX added (probably missed it last time).

I have made a local copy of the other screenshots so you can delete them from here.
Still waiting for feedback from other HOL members to decide what to do in the entries.

[haynor666]

OK but this might take quite long time