NEW GAME for 68k based Macs - VergeWorld: Icarus

[Kwahu]

Hi guys,

just wanted to let you all know that we are extending the development of our Amiga & Atari game to also include 68k base Macintosh systems

Would love your input 

VergeWorld devlog update - ADDED ship model (with shadow) and intergrated music

 

[PowerPup]

That's insanely incredible! 8-o You've really got something in the making here!

I'll happily buy a copy when it's released!

Do you have any plans on recording Programming sessions? (I love watching/learning the process of coding for these old machines.)

 

[Byte Knight]

Sweet!  The game looks great so far - love to see new games for older systems.

 

[Jinnai]

That looks incredible! Considering a Mac has weaker graphics for games than an Amiga, what kind of hardware would we need for it to run like in the video?

 

[Byte Knight]

That looks incredible! Considering a Mac has weaker graphics for games than an Amiga, what kind of hardware would we need for it to run like in the video?

I'm guessing that you would need at least a 68040 to run those 3D graphics...

 

[Kwahu]

I'm guessing that you would need at least a 68040 to run those 3D graphics...

Currently it's playable on a 68020, and we want to have it working on 68000 after rewriting it from C to asm

 

[cheesestraws]

That's really, really impressive.

 

[LaPorta]

This would be the perfect thing to try on my new IIfx!

 

[Crutch]

That’s awesome.  Would be interested to know your approach.  My first reaction was “there’s no way to do full-screen blitting fast enough on a 68k Mac” but either (1) I’m wrong (but I don’t think I’m wrong) or (2) you are only double-buffering the area around the ship, and the rest of the background is being drawn direct to screen with hidden surface elimination, which is pretty clever.

I’m not sure how much of a perf boost you will get moving from C to asm, though, depending on where the code is slow and assuming you’ve already done all the obvious things like loop unrolling, which I’m sure you have.  (And of course, no color Macs had a 68000 anyway.)

 

[dr.diesel]

Wow that is great!  I'd love to hear more about your Dev environment, shared code base between Amiga/Atari/Mac, how you achieved it etc.

 

[Kwahu]

That’s awesome.  Would be interested to know your approach.  My first reaction was “there’s no way to do full-screen blitting fast enough on a 68k Mac” but either (1) I’m wrong (but I don’t think I’m wrong) or (2) you are only double-buffering the area around the ship, and the rest of the background is being drawn direct to screen with hidden surface elimination, which is pretty clever.

I’m not sure how much of a perf boost you will get moving from C to asm, though, depending on where the code is slow and assuming you’ve already done all the obvious things like loop unrolling, which I’m sure you have.  (And of course, no color Macs had a 68000 anyway.)

Currently we only have Amiga and Atari versions, I have just bought Macintosh Performa 475 and will start porting like next month. We don't use any custom chips so I assume that porting is doable. 

We are using 2 environments right now, one is Cygwin and the other is Ubuntu on Docker

 

[Kwahu]

BTW. The whole engine code will remain open source

Link to github

 

[Kwahu]

Full disclosure, we do not expect to achieve more than 12 fps on pure 68k, we will try to adjust the game play so that 12fps is enough to play and beat the game

 

[adespoton]

So do you have plans to support dithered B&W output?  That'll run on a 512x342 display?  That'd be amazing if you could, even at 12fps!

 

[dan.dem]

Your demo looks very promising. Some thoughts: A monochrome variant for the original 68000 is a completely different beast than colour games for the later models. However considering the original Flight Sim ran on an Apple II a game like yours is surely doable on a 68000.

The demo seems to require only 16 colours - on a Mac freely picked out of a 24bit palette. This helps with the original LC's slower system bus.

Your screen size seems also quite moderate. It may fit on the original monochrome's 512x342 pixels, and the popular Macintosh 12" RGB display (512 or 560 x 384).

For me the flight scene looks so attractive, I would want to see it embedded in a full game story.

 

[John_A]

+1.

With some modification to the color palette, the flight scene could be the sequel to Another World, after the ending scene, perhaps?

Rewriting the horrible Heart of the Alien, that fortunately never made it to the Mac.

 

[Nightmonkeyii]

Looks fantastic. Multiplayer would make this one of the best 68k games available (pod racer type races)

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I don't know how I missed this but this is pure gold! Keep up the good work!

Can't wait to fix the Q950 to play this!

 

[snes1423]

did this ever get released???