Denial

Hi all,

it has been a while, but - I come bearing gifts (sort of).. I put this together over this weekend while recovering from a minor bout of illness.

This is a straight-up conversion of the C16 Mastertronic classic 'Kikstart', or 'Kikstart Offroad Simulator' if you prefer. One of my all-time favourite games written by Shaun Southern. This conversion is intended for PAL machines with 16K, however I intend to enable it to run on NTSC as well when it is finished. **** Edit 1 March 2021, I have now created an NTSC version, both PAL and NTSC versions are within the attachment here.

The C16 game is not the same as the C64 'Kikstart', much simpler to control, but fun in it's own way.

I'd attempted to 're-write' this game a couple of times before, using various 'bit-banging' methods, but in the end, decided to disassemble the original, and leave the code intact (similar to the Cosine conversion for the C64 some 11 years ago, I guess). Despite the superior graphics of the C16 (including soft scroll), I was pleasantly surprised how playable this turned out.


EDIT : This game is finished now. Sound effects now fixed, clouds fixed, redesigned score line to accomodate high score.

Great game! You put together something like this over the weekend?

Never played the C16-version, just the C64 oder C128 one. Do you have instructions for the game? What I found out/remembered:

- fire = jump
- right = speed up
- left = speed down

Do up or down do anything?

While I think the scrolling of 2-multicolor-pixels at a time is absolutely fine, you might have a look at "Cheese & Onion", which does 1 multicolor-pixel-scrolling. As far as I could analyze it does so by keeping a complete second set of chars im memory that has everything shifted by 1 multicolor-pixel. Then you can switch between the two charsets for 1-pixel-multicolor-scrolling and use the $9000-scrolling for the 2-multicolor-scrolling as usual.

Instead of the clouds turning grey, you could just have them flicker between white and black, maybe? I must admit I did not get that far ahead in the game yet.

And while I got your attention... did you ever get around to completing "Blazer"? Your final post back in 2015 said you were gonna bring back the stabe-raster-version.

Also, I still start your "Galaxy Renegade" from time to time. Really fantastic game for the VIC. Looks 95% finished apart from sound. You did not find the your source-code for it in the meantime?

That's a really great little game. Thanks for you efforts!

As for the scrolling I think 1/2 char is acceptable. If you go for the shifted char-set approach, you loose a lot of available UDCs for sprites and the sprite rendering is much more complicated. Also you need copies not just of each char but every unqiue adjacent pair combination*.The jumpiness isn't really noticeable unless the scrolling speed is very low.

[*] my map and tile designer will auto generate these for anyone that needs them.

Left, Right, Fire - that's it really. Avoid the spikey propellers (apart from red ones) and catch balloons.

Yes, smooth scrolling is nicer but would require a complete overhaul - I enjoyed this being a conversion rather than rewrite. I had started a version which shifted the bits twice each frame, and had contemplated using the method you stated, however there are too many possible character combinations to map out, and doing it on the fly sacrifices speed..

The C16 and Vic screens work in exactly the same way in this game. It is divided in three - the text at the top and bottom, which uses char memory from $1800 (on both machines). The track scrolls, anduses char memory from $1000. The Sky, which scrolls at a different speed from the track, toggles between $1000 and $1800 char memory. All I had to do was emulate the raster interrupt through a timer, which was surprisingly easy.

As for other projects, I never found the galaxy renegade code.. I may disassemble it 'sometime' in the future, As for Blazer, from memory I was just backtracking on an update, I'll have a look in my folders soon.

Tried the game a little more. Sadly, there seems to be a bug where you loose all your lives at once and seem to hit a "black wall". I think this is connected to loosing a live and holding your joystick right, but I cannot put my finger at it. I just notice all lives being deducted at once and then "Game Over".

EDIT: D'oh! That is just the timer running out, stupid me

tokra wrote:
EDIT: D'oh! That is just the timer running out, stupid me

Yeah, the first level in particular is brutal for the time.. blame Mr Southern for that one..

Wow! I only knew the C64 game when I was a kid but this C16 version plays very well, and looks and sounds great. Love the title tune and the graphics makes me think of what a mini Ghosts 'n Goblins could look like on the Vic

Great conversion! I love the sound.

I always wanted to play C16 Kikstart so thanks for this, I like it a lot!
Not very good at it though, only 2570 points.
Update: Now I at least up to 6346 points...

Kakemoms wrote:Great conversion! I love the sound.

Thanks! I confess though the 'modulation' effect of the music was an accident that became a 'feature', ha.

Snarko wrote:I always wanted to play C16 Kikstart so thanks for this, I like it a lot!
Not very good at it though, only 2570 points.
Update: Now I at least up to 6346 points...

Glad you enjoy it!

It's one of those games that involves learning the track.. and straight-up luck in places.

Ola H wrote:Wow! I only knew the C64 game when I was a kid but this C16 version plays very well, and looks and sounds great. Love the title tune and the graphics makes me think of what a mini Ghosts 'n Goblins could look like on the Vic

Definitely G'nG would be achievable.. not enough side scrollers on the Vic, in my opinion.

Agree about side scrollers. There are some very fine Scramble clones for the Vic, but all have 1 char scrolling I think. Same with Wunda Walter, which looks really good but would look much better and play even better with smoother scrolling.

Pixel's Pulse is one excellent side scroller though

Ola H wrote:Agree about side scrollers. There are some very fine Scramble clones for the Vic, but all have 1 char scrolling I think. Same with Wunda Walter, which looks really good but would look much better and play even better with smoother scrolling.

Pixel's Pulse is one excellent side scroller though

Pulse is an achievement, and would have sold well for the Vic back in its heyday. I only just recently saw Wunda Walter for the first time and it looks solid too, fast enough that the char scrolling doesn't matter too much.

Come to think of it, character scrolling only bothered me once I had seen smooth scrolling on a C64. Before that I was quite happy to play 'Raid on Isram', but it lost its appeal when I'd seen 'Blue Max' on my friend's 64.

'Raid on Isram is superb! (Especially for an unexpanded game.) It was sold as "Skramble!" in Sweden and had slightly different colors and graphics. I think there are even more versions out there from different publishers in Europe and the US. I remmber Tial Trading, who had the publishing rights in Sweden, used to push it as their best seller in marketing brochures.

The char scrolling didn't bother me either, but it bothered me in other Scramble variants like Martian Raider. I think it works partly because the objects all are 2 chars wide in Raid on Isram. But so are the objects in Kingsoft's 16K Fire Galaxy and Anirogs 16K "Skramble" and the jerky scrolling in those two used to bother me. OTOH I played those two games later, when I too had been exposed to C64 games like Blue Max.

And interestingly, one of the very first C64 games I played was Anirog's "Skramble" which I found mesmerizing in its beauty and "arcade quality" graphics. It was only much later that I noticed that it had jerky scrolling, so it might have been the "Blue Max factor" in play there too!

Anyhow, the 1/2 char scrolling in your Kikstart conversion would have seen unusually smooth to me if I had bought it from Tial Trading's catalogue. They would probably have been selling it as one of their "luxury games" like Shamus, Spiders of Mars and Choplifter at thrice the price of their regular games I would have been amazed at the largeness and would have played it to death to find explore every pixel of its scrolling world

It surprises me how easy it is to get into the same mindset and expectations I had as a kid when I play a new Vic 20 game today. The same for all other computers and consoles: you transport yourself to a specific time and place for each system and enjoy the games as you would have enjoyed them in 83, 86 or 88. But it is a two way process - the new games are also vehicles back to that time and place. That's what makes the new games for old machiens so rewarding, I guess. It is a different kind of nostalgia than the one you get when loading up your old favorites, it is the nostalgia of the anticpiations and fantasies that was created by trade catalogues, magazines ads, store windows and Christmas unwrapping. A wonderful feeling to relive!