Atari ST to Amiga: Starquake Amiga Conversion

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Oh, seems there is a confusion, Galahad could you please lighten it up?

Hoffman is doing the intro music which is well underway and as expected, awesome.

ADR Design has done some in game stuff, and that is of course awesome.

However, if others want to make contributions, just like WTSS, i will include whatever i can so,long as its good enough.

The only tune that isnt up for debate is Hoffmans intro tune, that is going to be his version and no-one elses.

If someone wants to Amigafy the ingame stuff, then great, but we have limited room, but i may be relocating some stuff to extra ram so those limitations may be lifted.

Please also note that like Hoffman, if you have inspiration to make an ORIGINAL tune and not make a cover of anything that has gone before, then please, feel free to write it.

If its good, it gets in the game, pure and simple guys, if the game ends up being two disks, then that will happen, or maybe a GOLD version gets released at a later date with more extras.

@Saimon, i appreciate your efforts, but im afraid i cant use what you have written, i hope you understand that ADRDesign and Hoffman have provided examples of such good quality, that its something i want to maintain, i hope you understand.

[Galahad/FLT]

Just an update on progress.

I wanted this one done before Christmas Day, alas its not looking likely, dont want to rush it and mess it up so, aiming for either end of the year or really early in 2016.

Intro sequence is done, its nothing special, but its more than the ST got

Now hiscore entry works, also the game over/percentage completed screen works as well.

Ive got it running on A500 and A1200. Needless to say, its plenty fast enough on A1200.

Its noticeably slower on A500 68000, ive reduced the redraw routine for the main game and saved 60 less loops of the main realtime conversion routine which runs every frame, so thats helped somewhat.

Game however is still playable.

Memory is tight, not entirely sure i can get SFX into the game and might just have to stick with music instead.

Need and want to add more to the intro for the simple reason that Hoffman did a stellar intro tune and it easily outlasts the intro sequence.

Thanks also to Mark R Jones for permission to use his Starquake logo, its been utilised in a nice way i think.

Not far off completion now, in the final home stretch

[kamelito]

@Galahad
Thanks for you hard work on that one. As the ST version was released in 1988 I think that we can wait a bit longer.
Kamelito

[Predseda]

Shame if there is no ingame music / sfx switch.

[Amigajay]

Thanks for the update Galahad, ive never played the original, so its a new game for me, hdid you get round to mapping the controls to a CD32 pad ok?

[Bastich]

Can't wait to try this out as it was one of my favourite Speccy games. Thanks for all your amazing work

[Galahad/FLT]

Only thing im missing is title music hint hint ADRDesign

[Shatterhand]

My mother was a big fan of Starquake on the MSX, I bet she will love it to see running on Amiga

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

My mother was a big fan of Starquake on the MSX, I bet she will love it to see running on Amiga

Then this version is dedicated to your mother

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Memory is tight, not entirely sure i can get SFX into the game and might just have to stick with music instead.

That's a shame - it would be sad to have a version on the Amiga that's inferior to the Spectrum version, which was fast, fluid and a riot of sound effects when things got busy. Music is nice and all, but to me Starquake wouldn't be the same without the spot effects

D.

[tomcat666]

Exactly.. Starquake must have the sound effects.... it won't be the same game without them. There aren't that many, but they are essential, much more so then any music

[Galahad/FLT]

Ok, well, heres an offer for someone to get their name in the game,

Provide samples of the ST original sounds, and i will put them in

Or suitable alternatives

[Galahad/FLT]

Ok, started ripping sfx from the ST version, and looks like we are a go.

Game is now definitely 1meg only, because the ST sfx are proper chip generated they take up virtually no memory on the ST, but as I am ripping them as samples, each sample is big ish in size, so, 1meg it is, but the game gets more atmosphere

[Predseda]

What? You planned it for 0,5meg or so? NO ONE should run his amiga with so small memory today.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Predseda

What? You planned it for 0,5meg or so?

It was almost possible to retain it as 512k yes, but as 1meg is standard, we get a more faithful game.

[kamelito]

The NDS port do have small wav files for sound fx. Don't know how they sound compared to the ST. You also may ask Endangermice about it's sounds for it's PC port.

Kamelito

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Predseda

What? You planned it for 0,5meg or so? NO ONE should run his amiga with so small memory today.

If it was doable then why not? I'm sure it was more fun and more of a challenge to do so, rather than here's a PPC and 64mb ram!

[h0ffman]

Really looking forward to this! If you have the SFX samples ripped out, we could look to replace them with something less chippy maybe. If you fire them over I'll see what I've got.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

Really looking forward to this! If you have the SFX samples ripped out, we could look to replace them with something less chippy maybe. If you fire them over I'll see what I've got.

I ideally need to replace them with stuff much smaller.

The player dying sample alone is 63K in size, and realtime screen conversion and realtime sample copying and playing on 68000 is not a fun experience.

So i'm happy to use any raw samples with details of period to play them at, that sound ok but essentially are much smaller so I can fit them all in lower chip ram with no need to copy them from a slow mem buffer.

Will consider any samples.

Probably best if people direct their attention at: [ Show youtube player ]

[Toni Galvez]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

I ideally need to replace them with stuff much smaller.

The player dying sample alone is 63K in size, and realtime screen conversion and realtime sample copying and playing on 68000 is not a fun experience.

So i'm happy to use any raw samples with details of period to play them at, that sound ok but essentially are much smaller so I can fit them all in lower chip ram with no need to copy them from a slow mem buffer.

Will consider any samples.

Probably best if people direct their attention at: [ Show youtube player ]

My recomendation is, make the sounds shorter, maybe you can use a program like Adobe Audition to make the sounds shorter by streching the pitch. No one will complain about it and you will save a lot of space. Try to use less Khz.