Atari ST conversion: Super Stario Land

[Galahad/FLT]

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So Alexh has given some info on what this is.

Its basically a Super Mario Bros rip off (as if that even needed saying!!) written in 1995 and was actually a commercial product!

I saw it a few years ago and was suitably impressed because it was 320x200 on an Atari ST and it was 50frames per second with smooth scrolling, which obviously isn't the usual thing. No massive scoreboard running vertically to give the ST an easier time, just a full screen horizontal scroller.

So initially I thought it was an STe game, using the blitter and hardware scroll, but it didn't.

What it does need is 1meg of memory which this tiny little game almost fills completely.

The programmer has cleverly designed certain parts of the game so he only has to copy 3 bitplanes worth of data instead of 4, and every block in the level, every enemy is entirely preshifted before the Super Stario Land picture appears onscreen.

All done so that the CPU can bang the graphics onto the screen as fast as possible, but this comes at the cost of needing more memory to operate than the usual game on ST, because each level is made of sections which repeat a couple of times, and all of these block setups are preshifted as well.

What this means is that at this moment, this game might have to be A1200 minimum. Yes I can get this working on A500 1meg chip but there is very little room for 2x mods and sound effects and Amiga screen as well as Amiga code to drive it all.

On A500 512k/512k, this is even harder because i'm then going to have to dynamically copy samples to very limited chip ram on demand, whilst trying to keep the frame rate up and smooth.

I did toy with the idea of simply recoding the game, but it literally took me 2 hours to get this game running on Amiga, and whilst its nice little homage to Mario, personally, its one people might tire of easily because there are so many Mario clones and alternatives on a host of systems.

So I might well finish this off, but for A1200 so I don't have to concern myself with the memory requirements.



That deres effect at the end of the level is also predone.

[ransom1122]

Very nice saw it on YT

[-Acid-]

Cool... are you gonna make it into a complete game with all levels and music/sfx etc?

[amiman99]

Nice, Very smooth scrolling.
What programming language was used?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by amiman99

What programming language was used?

Assembler. This is an Atari ST game from 1995 adapted to run on the Amiga. Galahad has done some incredible ST adaptions over the last few years.

It's quite interesting that the graphics were by Richard Davey who went on to be a legend in the Atari scene creating LGD (little green desktop) one of the first dedicated Atari ST websites.

[malko]

Cool

[Asman]

Great!

[fryguy]

cool!

[dreamkatcha]

Great stuff. I'd rather play this than Giana. It looks a lot closer to that Nintendo thingy than anything else I've seen on the Amiga.

[Galahad/FLT]

First post edited

[Anubis]

That looks awesome!

[Retro1234]

What about Stario Test version
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The Pixelation effect is pre-done?

[Viceroy]

Nice one ;-)

[apex]

Very nice.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

What about Stario Test version
[ Show youtube player ]

The Pixelation effect is pre-done?

Yes it precalcs the screen and the next start screen to speed it up

[jotd]

I just love those conversions. Gotta know the ST even more than the miggy to be able to do that.

A friend of mine never could make Colonial Conquest run on a ST emu on the amiga. Is that planned? (note that kroah did an excellent Windows version by reverse engineering the ST version, but still no amiga version)

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by jotd

I just love those conversions. Gotta know the ST even more than the miggy to be able to do that.

A friend of mine never could make Colonial Conquest run on a ST emu on the amiga. Is that planned? (note that kroah did an excellent Windows version by reverse engineering the ST version, but still no amiga version)

Can't harm to have a look

EDIT: I have something in the pipeline that I can't talk about right now, but this particular game if what I want to do is achieved will likely run with no problems on Amiga

[Retro1234]

The calculations are pre calculated? but the effect is created by overlapping the tiles? i.e the pixalated graphics aren't pre done?

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

The calculations are pre calculated? but the effect is created by overlapping the tiles? i.e the pixalated graphics aren't pre done?

At the end of the level when it does the deres effect (i.e. the pixels get bigger), it processes these frames after the counters have gone down to zero, and then just copies the now anim frames over the screen.

It doesn't do it in realtime.

[jotd]

don't do "Colonial Conquest" for me. It's just that I remember my friend in the 90's not able to play it and raging. Probably a good game.