Commander X16 ports of existing games and software

[xanthrou]

So, we've got Tetris, Invaderz and Brixx. 

How difficult would be porting from a 16-bit system to X16, say, like from MS-DOS of VGA era, Amiga and Sega Genesis? 

 

[AndyMt]

That probably depends on the game genre. Platform / Jump&Run games like "Giana Sisters", "Prince of Persia" or even "Sonic the Hedgehog" etc should be quite in reach. I'm thinking about doing one of those next ?.

Also horizontal or vertical shooters should be fine, considering Vera's capabilities.

3D stuff like "Starglider" might be a challenge. But hey - Elite ran on the C64, so why not...

All of this limited to 320x240 pixel resolution. I think VGA res would be a real challenge. For "Brixx" I considered it, because it would have been feasible. But decided against it - 320x240 is more retro, it just feels right.

[desertfish]

I made a totally not optimized 3d line animation program demo that shows the Elite's Cobra Mk3 spinning....  Optimized line vector animation should allow for pretty nice framerates but I don't think filled 3d surfaces is realistic for general application... Even the Amiga struggled with that and it had a blitter chip

[xanthrou]

48 minutes ago, AndyMt said:

That probably depends on the game genre. Platform / Jump&Run games like "Giana Sisters", "Prince of Persia" or even "Sonic the Hedgehog" etc should be quite in reach. I'm thinking about doing one of those next ?.



Also horizontal or vertical shooters should be fine, considering Vera's capabilities.



3D stuff like "Starglider" might be a challenge. But hey - Elite ran on the C64, so why not...



All of this limited to 320x240 pixel resolution. I think VGA res would be a real challenge. For "Brixx" I considered it, because it would have been feasible. But decided against it - 320x240 is more retro, it just feels right.

I would also guess that DOOM would be ported, consindering the meme and VERA capabilities. (especially the 128KB RAM and 256 colors).

[AndyMt]

20 minutes ago, xanthrou said:

I would also guess that DOOM would be ported, consindering the meme and VERA capabilities.

I highly doubt that. It was tried for the C64 SuperCPU which runs at 20MHz and even that didn't achieve reasonable frame rates.

VERA doesn't help in this case, as the CPU needs to do all the work. And VRAM access is slightly slower with VERA, compared to directly memory mapped architectures like the C64.

[BruceMcF]

13 minutes ago, AndyMt said:

I highly doubt that. It was tried for the C64 SuperCPU which runs at 20MHz and even that didn't achieve reasonable frame rates.



VERA doesn't help in this case, as the CPU needs to do all the work. And VRAM access is slightly slower with VERA, compared to directly memory mapped architectures like the C64.

I am expecting if there is a playable "Doom Port", it will be more like an upgraded version of the VIV-20 " Doom port" than something that can actually execute a WAD ... IOW a port of a WAD rather than a port of an engine.

[paulscottrobson]

4 hours ago, AndyMt said:

3D stuff like "Starglider" might be a challenge. But hey - Elite ran on the C64, so why not...

Because on a C64 you have direct read/write to the pixel data and on the X16 you don't.

[paulscottrobson]

2 hours ago, BruceMcF said:

I am expecting if there is a playable "Doom Port", it will be more like an upgraded version of the VIV-20 " Doom port" than something that can actually execute a WAD ... IOW a port of a WAD rather than a port of an engine.

It's likely to be about the same. The processor might be quicker but the pipe to the graphics data is slower.

[BruceMcF]

1 hour ago, paulscottrobson said:

It's likely to be about the same. The processor might be quicker but the pipe to the graphics data is slower.

Not slower than updating graphics on the Vic-20.

[paulscottrobson]

18 hours ago, BruceMcF said:

Not slower than updating graphics on the Vic-20.

Probably not far off the same I would think. Maybe a little quicker,