A mario kart clone on the OCS/ECS: how feasible?

[saimon69]

Well i know there are games on the 1200 that use the pseudo chunky to create the floor in 3d, however after seen two (still in progress) homebrew for megadrive that use a pseudo mode 7 too, i wonder how feasible is to create a mario kart clone on OCS/ECS 68000, even with strong limitations, like 4x4 chunky street, at the end if the game is funny i think would not be that bad...

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thread on Sega-16

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[Amiga1992]

The original Mario Kart is super bad, I never understood how that franchise lived on after that, but I am glad it did because newer games are great.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by Akira

The original Mario Kart is super bad, I never understood how that franchise lived on after that, but I am glad it did because newer games are great.

Personal opinion, I think it's one of the best. The N64 version is so overrated by comparison, but it's down to the individual.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Akira

The original Mario Kart is super bad, I never understood how that franchise lived on after that

Because it was actually awesome? How old are you? I was a teenager at the time it came out and it was a ground breaking game in terms of gameplay. A genre defining classic. The four player split screen game was so much fun. Three of your mates round duking it out in the battle mode. Or racing for the cups. Do you dare risk a short cut by hopping walls with a feather and possibly falling off the circuit which would mean you came last... But if it works you'd certainly be first. Holding on to your red shell until the last lap.... A great game which in our house succeed lotus turbo challenge as the game to play with mates. It wasn't until GoldenEye on the N64 that another game came along that had all your mates being so competitive.

[trixster]

Akira could not be more wrong. The original Mario Kart is utterly brilliant.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by trixster

Akira could not be more wrong. The original Mario Kart is utterly brilliant.

+ 1 +1 +1


The original is totally awesome and as was said it was a genre creating game. I love most of the Mario kart franchise to be honest. Been a few not so great version but the last two 7 on the 3ds and 8 on the wii u still have the magic and then some.

I think double dash on cube is one of my least favs

Onto the original question, I really don't think you would have much hope of reproducing mode 7 on A500 and have a game running as well.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Well i know there are games on the 1200 that use the pseudo chunky to create the floor in 3d, however after seen two (still in progress) homebrew for megadrive that use a pseudo mode 7 too, i wonder how feasible is to create a mario kart clone on OCS/ECS 68000, even with strong limitations, like 4x4 chunky street, at the end if the game is funny i think would not be that bad...

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thread on Sega-16

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This is a question I have also been asking myself since I saw the work of gasega68k (the Brazilian coder who invented and coded the MegaDrive/Genesi technique which allows to emulate the perspective texture mapped effect of Mode7) but what I thought of cloning was F-Zero, not Mario Kart.

Copper chunky is more limited on OCS than gasega68k's technique because one can only do 8 pixel wide blocks border to border with the copper while he manages something like 4 pixel wide blocks thanks to the tiled graphic of the console. But this said, this could probably still be nice enough. Moreover, copper chunky has the advantage of using the full 4096 color while the console is limited to 64 colors.

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

Onto the original question, I really don't think you would have much hope of reproducing mode 7 on A500 and have a game running as well.

If the MegaDrive can project a texture mapped floor with 4 pixel blocks then the A500 can do 8 pixel blocks without problem since they have a very similar CPU and writing copper chunky pixel is likely as efficient as preparing the corresponding tile on the console.

It is technically doable. Will it look good enough to play a game with?
I would say yes, but the proof is in the final game.

If you guys are patient enough, F-Zero is in my list of projects as I said above.
Once it is written I will gladly license the engine to anyone who wants but do not hold your breath for now.

[eXeler0]

@ReadOnlyCat how was the roto-zoom in Brian the Lion done, and is the technique related to faking mode 7? (Then again I'm unsure if the A1200 and 500 versions were different.)
Games like Xtreme racing didn't really fly until you played it on a 1200 with a fast 030 or better..

[s2325]

Maybe Street Racer is possible with some modification.

[Amiga1992]

As I said, yes, my opinion, but how was it genre defining? It was a racing game, still is.
I love the Mario Kart franchise, but I never found the original to be too great.
And no, I am not 70 years old, I also was young when it came out but I failed to see what made it so great. I didn't have a SNES back then but my cousin did, and we ended up playing F-zero a lot more, although that sadly misses multiplayer.. Also i don't think SNES had 4 player alexh, wasn't that the N64 version? Totally different game.

I can understand how the multiplayer features could be interesting, but I couldn't call this genre defining. I never considered "kart racer" a genre, I just saw lots of shitty Mario Kart clones after it. Fron everything said in this thread it seems the nivel feature of Mario Kart is the display mode, and that isn't enough for me to call it genre defining. Aren't there other elements that make Mario Kart what it is? What are they? How bad a try at this type of game was Bump n Burn and why?

[Shatterhand]

The SNES game has no 4 players option for sure. I don't think Super Mario Kart is INCREDIBLY great.. it was a fun game, but I really think the series begun to shine with the 4 players multiplayer mode, that was introduced with the N64.

The best Mario Kart-type game is Blur.. it had a brilliant advert that explains well what the game is about:

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Also no fucking rubber-band or better items for last player. You want to win, fight for it and be good at the game, don't just hold on until last lap to get the best power-up and overtake everyone that was racing way better than you

IMO it's one of the best games released on its generation. Sadly, is also the last game from Bizarre Creations before Actvision decided to shut it down.

[Retro-Nerd]

Street Racer has 4-player support (Mario Kart not). I like the Amiga version but the Sega Saturn is by far the best.

[Shatterhand]

Street Racer on Sega Saturn is pretty cool... it supposedly supports 8 players split-screen, but I have never seen it.

[Amiga1992]

Honestly I fell in love with Mario Kart starting with Mario Kart Advance. What's that, the 3rd in the series? N64 was cool (especially 4 players) but the 2.5D in Mario Kart Advance feels like "this is how Mario kart originally should have been if there weren't more hardware limits".

Shatterhand, I had never heard of Blur. Looks really awesome! What platforms was it released on?

And that Street Racer, I had never seen, what hardware does it run on? It looks exactly like Mario Kart.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Copper chunky is more limited on OCS than gasega68k's technique because one can only do 8 pixel wide blocks border to border with the copper while he manages something like 4 pixel wide blocks thanks to the tiled graphic of the console. But this said, this could probably still be nice enough. Moreover, copper chunky has the advantage of using the full 4096 color while the console is limited to 64 colors.

If the MegaDrive can project a texture mapped floor with 4 pixel blocks then the A500 can do 8 pixel blocks without problem since they have a very similar CPU and writing copper chunky pixel is likely as efficient as preparing the corresponding tile on the console.

Have the feeling that the engine could run in hi-res no interlace to reduce the visible chunkiness, a bit like the unreal phase 1 and Big Run, but should look nice enough with a witty palette choice and a split between rotating and non-rotating areas

[Simmo76]

Originally Posted by Akira

Honestly I fell in love with Mario Kart starting with Mario Kart Advance. What's that, the 3rd in the series? N64 was cool (especially 4 players) but the 2.5D in Mario Kart Advance feels like "this is how Mario kart originally should have been if there weren't more hardware limits".

Akira, your description of Mario Kart Advance fits my opinion of it exactly!
The only difference for me is that I absolutely adored the SNES original. I couldn't put my finger on why exactly - it just had that 'something', that just-one-more-go-I'll-do-it-this-time about it...
Ah well, each to their own, eh?!

[Shatterhand]

Shatterhand, I had never heard of Blur. Looks really awesome! What platforms was it released on?

X360, PS3 and PC.

The PC version does not have the split screen multiplayer AFAIK, only the console versions. I have it for my X360. I honestly think it's one of the best games on the system.

Street Racer was released for a lot of system (even for Amiga), each system got a different version. I think it was released for SNES, Mega-Drive, Sega Saturn, PC and Amiga. Each one is different. The Saturn version is the one I know better...it does feel a lot like Mario Kart indeed, but it's faster and you can punch people. Punching is unlimited. This alone makes it a lot different from Mario Kart. There are some cool power ups, like timed dynamited that you can pass around by punching other cars. It was made by Vivid Image, of First Samurai and Second Samurai fame.


The racing engine is pretty solid. It's a fun game.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Have the feeling that the engine could run in hi-res no interlace to reduce the visible chunkiness, a bit like the unreal phase 1 and Big Run, but should look nice enough with a witty palette choice and a split between rotating and non-rotating areas

Ah. I think you might want to revise your knowledge of the hardware.

Copper chunky blocks are smallest when in low resolution. Only then has the Copper enough DMA bandwidth available to change colors at maximum speed.

In hires 16 colors Copper chunky is simply impossible because there is zero DMA available for anything else than the display. Hires with 4 colors is equivalent in terms of DMA bandwidth to lowres 16 colors so in this mode you could have copper chunky but it would still be limited to 8 pixel blocks.

All in all, the best mods for Copper chunky is lowres 4 or 8 colors since they give max DMA capacity to the Copper and still allow for some blitter time.

The MegaDrive is advantaged there because displaying its sprites on top of the "mode7" road costs it almost no CPU at all.

[Amigajay]

As much as i never was a fan of the Super Nintendo, the two most played games in 6th form were SMK and SFII, great multiplayer fun, sure the original still hurts your eyes a little! imo only MKDS betters the original.

[LuMan]

I seem to recall a bit of shareware on an Amiga mag cover disk from w-a-y back that effectively took a 256x256 tile and expanded it to make a flat plane that you could 'drive' about on. There was no actual game, but the demo did include a track with tarmac, grass and that red/white kerb that always gets added to driving games

I'll try to rack my brains and dig around t'internet to see if I can find it, as it ran quite well on an A500 and does work as a proof-of-concept.

I suppose the real issue would be getting the effect to run at a good speed, while also taking care of the rest of the game code/logic...

WRT MarioKart on the SNES - I remember playing 2-player back in the day and totally loving it. Each to their own, I suppose