Could somebody tell me what the limitations of the Lotus II engine are?

[CCCP alert]

Specifically things like bitplanes blitted for the roadside blitter objects, why all the cars are the same and about 3 colours only in total, khz limit for engine samples etc etc.

[CCRider]

All adversary cars being the same colour is something boring as hell on Lotus II...

[Reynolds]

Originally Posted by CCRider

All adversary cars being the same colour is something boring as hell on Lotus II...

Interesting, it never really disturbed me...

[DanielAllsopp]

There's not a lot wrong with Lotus 2 for me, not a lot at all.

Originally Posted by CCRider

All adversary cars being the same colour is something boring as hell on Lotus II...

Are you sure?



I see green, white, brown and blue colours here.

[alexh]

Are they are mistaking it for the original Lotus Turbo Challenge 1 where all cars were white?

[CCRider]

Oh, sorry... My bad indeed.

All cars the same colour was on Lotus I.

Lotus II got a bit better, but it was still all cars of the same model. I liked Jaguar XJ220 more for its variety of cars.

[CCCP alert]

I wouldn't say it bothers me they are the same cars, there are road races like the Porsche Cup with identical cars. I would guess it's a licensing thing, they only had the license to do Lotus cars for the game.

The original demo they showed Gremlin for Lotus I had Porsche cars and it was Gremlin who already had/almost had the deal to do a game based on the Lotus cars so the cars were changed.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by CCRider

Oh, sorry... My bad indeed.

All cars the same colour was on Lotus I.

Lotus II got a bit better, but it was still all cars of the same model. I liked Jaguar XJ220 more for its variety of cars.

The Jaguar XJ220 vs Lotus II battles were as epic as the Kick Off vs Sensi Soccer ones back then.

[Megalomaniac]

The Lotus II engine had no support for Outrun-style Checkpoints, and there aren't actually that many colours on the screen at a time (not that you really notice in play), but beyond that I'd say it's the best 2.5D racing game engine on the A500. Not sure if it could be hacked to add much else without compromising on the frame rate. Whether it's the best game in that genre is another question.

[CCRider]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

The Jaguar XJ220 vs Lotus II battles were as epic as the Kick Off vs Sensi Soccer ones back then.

Sure... and on that another battle I'm Team Sensi all the way!

[gimbal]

What game is the best is not a question but an opinion. One that tends to create those EAB threads where when it hits page 3, people start slinging mud. At some point we have to learn from our mistakes. There is no best, only a favorite. That discussion is so much more pleasant to have.

[saimon69]

Is the question related on where to reuse the engine or just curiosity?

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Is the question related on where to reuse the engine or just curiosity?

I would like to know what limitations it has really, because there must be a downside for the sort of speed it extracts from even OCS machines. I am guessing it is not 5 bitplane blitter objects everywhere etc but really it's beyond me to examine the code running, way over my head.

I have only seen one game that did a graphic hack for it, forget the name but it had an F1 style car instead and it was around 2007 when the coder uploaded some footage to youtube but never responded to comments on the video. Exhaust something or other IIRC was the title of the game.

[Megalomaniac]

Not working on the A1200 (or, more exactly, on faster processors if there was no fast RAM) was one limitation, though fixed later (I think the GBH budget release, and the one in the Lotus Trilogy collection, did work?). That wasn't caused by copy protection like some incompatibilities, but by the game engine's smooth-scrolling trickery trying to redraw the screen too quickly, I think? That aside, it's a fine achievement. I'm not sure if reworking the engine into a racing-against-other-cars-for-position system would significantly impact the speed?

[dlfrsilver]

crazy cars III is even better than lotus II in term of speed.

If someone wanted to hack outrun on Amiga 500, using CC3 engine would be awesome !

[CCCP alert]

CC3 is smooth enough, just checked out a video on an actual A500, but the amount of pixels being pushed around for roadside objects is significantly less than Lotus II, which has much larger trees on Lotus forest stage and they are closer together s vs tall slim cactus objects on the video I just watched. But it may have much more room for improvement so it may well be a better fit for OutRun. Like I say I am not sure what the compromises/restrictions needed for L2 are to get that sort of pixel pushing performance out of an A500.

The fog level on Lotus 2 isn't really using the copper palette swap options as much as it could potentially, must be a DMA bandwidth issue possibly with blitter time? Would be nice if something like Enduro for the Amiga was made that hammered the copper palette swap abilities to the max for a great fog effect.

There was also a bike racing game that looked very similar to CC3 look and feel, think the publisher was Neo and possibly called Black Viper?

[saimon69]

I can also propose the Outrun Europa engine, that seem fast and versatile (yeah, probe did really polish the original outrun turd) and has also forks

[CCCP alert]

My interest is not really in OutRun as such, although would be interesting to see what type of OutRun you could do with it back then, maybe just being on the left/right of the road at the finish line and then it loads up the required next level. It's more for if you wanted to do an arcade rally game.

I wonder if Shaun or Andy still have their original "Porsche Challenge" demo they showed to Gremlin.

[Megalomaniac]

Porsche Challenge was a demo for Lotus 1 presumably? Was it any different other than the car sprite looking different?

Sega Rally has a lot that Lotus 2 doesn't have - varyingly sharp courses, fixed circuit edges, racing for position as well as against the clock, and a proportion-completed gauge. Lotus 3 has some of this, but are these things impacting that game's slower speed?

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Porsche Challenge was a demo for Lotus 1 presumably? Was it any different other than the car sprite looking different?

Sega Rally has a lot that Lotus 2 doesn't have - varyingly sharp courses, fixed circuit edges, racing for position as well as against the clock, and a proportion-completed gauge. Lotus 3 has some of this, but are these things impacting that game's slower speed?

I don't remember what magazine I read it in but it had identical cars I would imagine as Lotus 1 also has identical cars and there were Porsche only official races, sometimes for a single model too. Whether it's a restriction on the game engine in L2 or inherited design I don't know.

Naturally 2.5D version of a polygonal game like Sega Rally would be different so it's more about putting rally cars on rally type stages but keeping the super responsive controller input of L2. The engine allows different handling so that's really all you need for some sort of 2.5D super fast rally game was the thought, I said Sega Rally as it's quite an arcade style rally game vs Colin McRae 1 from PS1 which is on another level for WRC nutjobs like me. Some of the things you mention are in the Lotus III engine but not even Shaun could get the RECS system in there and keep the 7mhz OCS Amiga framerate identical.

Maybe just a sector editor to replace the 3 lotus car graphics frames with a Lancia Delta, Audi Quattro and Subaru Imprezza and playing with those cars on the mud/dirt rally style tracks is all I am thinking, not really anything beyond that as I am not a coder and never ever will be. But if all the cars had to be a max of # colours and #/# colours had to be shared by all cars on screen as a limitation that would help somebody do just a graphic hack.