Re: [stella] adventure

Subject: Re: [stella] adventure
From: Glenn Saunders <krishna@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 21:16:54 -0800 (PST)
On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Ruffin Bailey wrote:
> Okay, so what is it about Star Raiders on the 2600 that makes it not 
> representative of the 2600's catalog?  I realize few games reached the 

The combat portion of Star Raiders 2600 was nicely done, albeit sans aft
view.  But it really lost it in the ultra-simplistic galactic map. 
Obviously RAM restrictions and lack of CPU bandwidth vs. the Atari8 was
the culprit here. 

> But back to my line of reasoning behind my question:  What exactly about 
> Star Raiders for the 8-bits is it that you see rendered in a way that the 
> 2600 can't?  I'm looking more along the direction of, "What is it that 
> the 8-bit SR had that one should not include in a 2600 programming 
> mindset?"  Does that make sense?  :^P

The 8-bit version is a real time simulation that calculates the moves of
the various enemy squadrons and even mediates far-off conflict between
those squadrons and starbases.  When in combat, it does real-time XYZ
coordinate geometry of all the enemies and you can see fore and aft views
and precisely control speed.

In many ways Adventure is a similar game.  Adventure is cool because it
calculates the XY position of all the objects and enemies whether you see
them or not in realtime.  Adventure's game world, however, is more
in-perportion with what the 2600 can do.  Star Raiders was too much to
pull off on the 2600.  No attempt ever got it all right.  None of them
have aft views or speed control, for instance. 



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