Why is there no "new" games using a hacked Lotus II game engine?

[ImmortalA1000]

Seems really odd, we all know the Lotus II engine is the best in the world and yet I never see "OutRun WIP using Lotus II engine?"

2.5D full screen racing games that have zero frame drops on OCS only happened once. There was some weird F1 style graphic reskin of Lotus II engine (sfx are a dead giveaway) but that's it. It's also the same story for the Atari ST racing games too.

(OutRun may be a bad choice).

[Predseda]

Why there should be? We already have 3x Lotus. You want to play the same game, with different sprites?

[gimbal]

Because contrary to what people like to believe, game development cannot be trivialised like this.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Because contrary to what people like to believe, game development cannot be trivialised like this.

this.

[jotd]

there's no such thing as an engine. If you want to reuse code you have to strip the specific parts and reinsert specific parts of your new game.

Take Supercars 2 AGA conversion, I added the AGA bitplanes, but had to reverse the graphics to add bitplanes too, everything was hardcoded.

If you don't have the constraint of genericity you just don't go generic.

Plus for Supercars 2 I had the source code. The source code of Lotus 2 has been lost. We only have Lotus 1 and 3.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Seems really odd, we all know the Lotus II engine is the best in the world and yet I never see "OutRun WIP using Lotus II engine?"

2.5D full screen racing games that have zero frame drops on OCS only happened once. There was some weird F1 style graphic reskin of Lotus II engine (sfx are a dead giveaway) but that's it. It's also the same story for the Atari ST racing games too.

(OutRun may be a bad choice).

The only real thing you can take from the Lotus games is the redraw technique for the road which is pretty much as fast as its going to get on a base A500.

But everything else is tailored to what Magnetic Fields required with regards use of colours etc which another person might find too constraining.

It won't be a case of just change the graphics and hey presto new game, there is going to be design choices that require complete recoding to implement your changes.

Lotus 2 is best used as inspiration for your own endeavours, isn't that how Colin Vellas new racing game evolved from learning how to do the road routine and then the rest followed after?

Because he has done it from scratch means the only limitations on his game is whatever he has decided from the outset, not what another programmer has decided for him

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Seems really odd, we all know the Lotus II engine is the best in the world and yet I never see "OutRun WIP using Lotus II engine?"

2.5D full screen racing games that have zero frame drops on OCS only happened once. There was some weird F1 style graphic reskin of Lotus II engine (sfx are a dead giveaway) but that's it. It's also the same story for the Atari ST racing games too.

(OutRun may be a bad choice).

Go for it!!! I'm sure you'll find it an absolute breeze to reverse engineer the Lotus engine and create the ultimate Amiga racing game! We are all looking forward to it with great anticipation!

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Why there should be? We already have 3x Lotus. You want to play the same game, with different sprites?

Do I really need to spell it out for you? Every other 2.5D racing game apart from Lotus II is not full screen (NTSC) with update every frame/field displayed lol

If you have written a better game engine than Lotus II please share, I doubt it as you can't even tell the problems of Lotus 1 and Lotus 3 engine on OCS A500 spec

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by DanScott

Go for it!!! I'm sure you'll find it an absolute breeze to reverse engineer the Lotus engine and create the ultimate Amiga racing game! We are all looking forward to it with great anticipation!

[Insult removed by CodyJarrett]

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The only real thing you can take from the Lotus games is the redraw technique for the road which is pretty much as fast as its going to get on a base A500.

But everything else is tailored to what Magnetic Fields required with regards use of colours etc which another person might find too constraining.

It won't be a case of just change the graphics and hey presto new game, there is going to be design choices that require complete recoding to implement your changes.

Lotus 2 is best used as inspiration for your own endeavours, isn't that how Colin Vellas new racing game evolved from learning how to do the road routine and then the rest followed after?

Because he has done it from scratch means the only limitations on his game is whatever he has decided from the outset, not what another programmer has decided for him

I totally accept there is massive constraints with hacking in new graphics. Lotus III famously uses too much resource, specifically RECS data I think, hence the lower framerate on A500 vs Lotus II.

Still would be nice if we could do something with it, even just changing the graphics of the cars/roadside objects/backgrounds without needing to learn how to crack a game and edit the sectors on disk images individually.

It's not like it would be completely useless for every racing game idea possible though.

I have seen one game demo which is pretty much a reskin of Lotus II but the author refused to release it or even comment on it when it surfaced in a youtube video about a decade ago. It had an F1 car and the SFX were unchanged.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

^%!@(*#%*&*(@!

I had my suspicions this is a troll account, now pretty much confirmed. Nobody can be that much of a rabid fanboi caricature.

[roondar]

IIRC Lotus 2 on Amiga tops out at 25FPS and it does lose frames in busy sections. It's still an awesome game though, I loved playing it back in the day and still occasionaly boot it back up

Other than that, I'm pretty sure jotd (who has experience with reverse engineering Amiga projects) hits the nail on the head: it's probably not so much an 'engine' as a custom build program with hardcoded limits, which will make altering it quite hard to do effectively.

[jotd]

We have modern tools, we have talented coders, so it would be possible to create a new Lotus-like game that is blazingly fast, from scratch.

If I had to reuse one of the Lotus source code base, that would be to add more colors/bitplanes, better sounds, ... while not touching to the logic (which was beyond me for Supercars 2 even with the source, I was close to find the circuit logic layout but I pretty much gave it up). And that would be either on 1 or 3, because without the source code, it's pretty much impossible... All constants like sizes and all are "resolved" and if you change one size, you have to track down all the bugs due to the non updated size in other size computation formulas. You have to reverse the function/variables labels (long & painful but possible) but also those size formulas. Anyone who tried to change a size in a C program generated with f2c (fortran to C) knows that too...

That's just one of the bugs that you can encounter when you decide to go solo without the source ...

[sean_sk]

TBH, I think time would be better spent reskinning the "DUX" engine.

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

[Insult removed by CodyJarrett]

Shame.... I missed that

[Retro1234]

Was there a Lotus 2 editor?

Reusing/hacking a game engine is fairly common? In the retro console world. I'm not saying the results are fantastic!!! but there have been some fun games made.

Didn't someone hack Outrun on the ST. So stuff like this is possible but ............

I personally wouldn't say these are the best but you get the idea

SNES - https://www.fandomspot.com/best-snes-rom-hacks/

MegaDrive - https://retrododo.com/best-sega-rom-hacks/

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by DanScott

Shame.... I missed that

You were the son of a mother hubbard and your graphics are rubbish was the general gist of things.

But I don't think he actually knew you used to be a graphics artist so, double the "WOW" factor when considering the original missive lol

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Was there a Lotus 2 editor?

Reusing/hacking a game engine is fairly common? In the retro console world. I'm not saying the results are fantastic!!! but there have been some fun games made.

Didn't someone hack Outrun on the ST. So stuff like this is possible but

Unfortunately fedepede04 still has back problems so progress is definitely slow - and despite not having had a surgery i know where he comes from, especially when my own back start to act -_-

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Do I really need to spell it out for you?

No, I'd use interactions that are more tailored towards friendliness. You make more friends that way.

[defor]

Why is there no "new" games using a hacked Lotus II game engine?

Because programming your own system/game is more fun? :-)
P.S.: Also, I like Vroom better ;-)