RASTAN Apple IIGS conversion from source. Possible?

[trydowave]

Hi. Always was a big fan of Rastan and was sad that it never made it to the Amiga. Always thought the Amiga could of handled it nicely in the right hands.

I knew that a semi decent port existed on the Apple IIGS

[ Show youtube player ]

but wasnt aware until recently that the source is available to download.

https://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=10698

As a non programmer I wanted to ask the community if this could be ported to the Amiga and if at all, improved? (smooth scrolling for instance). How much of a task is it if it is even possible?

Thanks

[phx]

IMHO an A500 should easily handle that. There is no parallax scrolling. Not many moving objects. I didn't even see any tile animations or foreground tiles. Would be quite boring to implement.

[trydowave]

Originally Posted by phx

IMHO an A500 should easily handle that. There is no parallax scrolling. Not many moving objects. I didn't even see any tile animations or foreground tiles. Would be quite boring to implement.

Do you know if its something that could be ported (even in its current state) or would it have to be redone completely?

I heard somewhere that Super Street Fighter Turbo on the CD32 was unmodified code straight from the PC game? not sure if thats accurate or not?

[kamelito]

I looked at the code there is very little comments. As you know this is 65c02 code and the Amiga is 68k. It will be easier to write it from scratch imo.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by trydowave

Hi. Always was a big fan of Rastan and was sad that it never made it to the Amiga. Always thought the Amiga could of handled it nicely in the right hands.

Yeah me too

Luckily there is MAME

...but would be cool to have an Amiga version.

Originally Posted by trydowave

I knew that a semi decent port existed on the Apple IIGS

Wow, that is indeed a pretty faithful port created in 1990

[touko]

Originally Posted by phx

IMHO an A500 should easily handle that. There is no parallax scrolling. Not many moving objects. I didn't even see any tile animations or foreground tiles. Would be quite boring to implement.

If the 2gs version is too boring to port for you, you can port the arcade version instead.
[ Show youtube player ]

[trydowave]

I know this wont be ported but just out of curiosity. Could an ECS/OCS amiga handle this. OR would the parallax be a major problem?

I would like to think EHB mode could be used and TFMX for music and fx. Full screen 50fps.

I can dream

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by trydowave

I know this wont be ported but just out of curiosity. Could an ECS/OCS amiga handle this. OR would the parallax be a major problem?

I would like to think EHB mode could be used and TFMX for music and fx. Full screen 50fps.

I can dream

I think the closest you'd get to this is Lionheart which is a technical feat in itself for an A500.

Without the parallax an OCS machine could do it easily.

I never liked Rastan in the arcades... much preferred Rygar.

[Twiggy]

That or Torvak.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by trydowave

I knew that a semi decent port existed on the Apple IIGS
but wasnt aware until recently that the source is available to download.
https://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=10698
As a non programmer I wanted to ask the community if this could be ported to the Amiga and if at all, improved? (smooth scrolling for instance). How much of a task is it if it is even possible?

Originally Posted by phx

IMHO an A500 should easily handle that. There is no parallax scrolling. Not many moving objects. I didn't even see any tile animations or foreground tiles. Would be quite boring to implement.

Phx is right, the A500 is more powerful graphically and CPU wise than an Apple II GS so it would have no trouble replicating the II version pixel for pixel. But it has to be noted that this version is quite cut down from the arcade (even if it looks really nice, aside from the choppy scrolling).

The arcade version boasts many more colors, parallax scrolling of the background mountains, better music (FM synthesis) than the II GS and would actually be a more interesting target.

Also, there would be little to be gained from the source code alas since it is machine code and the II GS does not use a 68000 CPU but a 16 bit version of the C64/VIC20/Atari-8bit/Oric's 6502 so conversion would actually be quite tedious.

As others have said, it would probably be simpler to start from scratch.
Note that Rastan is on my (long) list of arcade games to (re)port to the Amiga, you will just have to believe me that I will eventually get to it. (Do not hold your breath! )

Originally Posted by trydowave

I know this wont be ported but just out of curiosity. Could an ECS/OCS amiga handle this. OR would the parallax be a major problem?

I would like to think EHB mode could be used and TFMX for music and fx. Full screen 50fps.

I can dream

EHB or 32 colors should be fine, the sprites are big but there are not that many of them and they seem to be within the capabilities of the OCS blitter.
The parallax scrolling is obviously more of an issue but there might be ways around that.

[Tigerskunk]

If you are not keeping the parallax this is extremely doable on an OCS-Amiga. Maybe even with 32 colours.

Seems to be there are no more than 4 objects on screen usually, and most of them are around 32px width to 64 px height.

Problem with the parallax would be that sometimes the background is displayed on the whole screen height, so that would take almost all of your DMA time if done with a repeating Sprite sheet.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Steril707

If you are not keeping the parallax this is extremely doable on an OCS-Amiga. Maybe even with 32 colours.

Seems to be there are no more than 4 objects on screen usually, and most of them are around 32px width to 64 px height.

Problem with the parallax would be that sometimes the background is displayed on the whole screen height, so that would take almost all of your DMA time if done with a repeating Sprite sheet.

Correct.
However, Rastan's foreground and background are quite precisely delimited which opens the way for other avenues. I would not be surprised if it was possible to blit the background layer by splitting the screen vertically in sections and blitting only the layer which occupies less pixels on screen.
And if that is not possible, I have an intuition that even other tricks are possible.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Correct.
However, Rastan's foreground and background are quite precisely delimited which opens the way for other avenues. I would not be surprised if it was possible to blit the background layer by splitting the screen vertically in sections and blitting only the layer which occupies less pixels on screen.
And if that is not possible, I have an intuition that even other tricks are possible.

Sounds interesting, but would need more information what you would exactly do here..

There are some levels, though, where these section change midlevel, unfortunately...
At least that#s what I have seen on Youtube on some playthrough.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Sounds interesting, but would need more information what you would exactly do here..

There are some levels, though, where these section change midlevel, unfortunately...
At least that#s what I have seen on Youtube on some playthrough.

Dont they only change pallete throughout the level?

[DanScott]

Why all this obsession about preserving parallax... it's just fluff... what made these games great is the fluid gameplay.. and that can easily be recreated on an A500...easily

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by DanScott

Why all this obsession about preserving parallax... it's just fluff... what made these games great is the fluid gameplay.. and that can easily be recreated on an A500...easily

It separates the men from the boys though.

[haynor666]

It's pointless IMO to port AppleIIGS version while artcade one was better and it was written using motorola 68000.