It's time the Amstrad community fixed Outrun!

[ukmarkh]

When I see what has been achieved on the Amstrad CPC of late, what with Green Beret, Renegade and Fire Tyre. Surely it's time that the entire community came together, with all of its experience to finally fix Outrun! 

This has to be the single biggest stone left unturned, a blight on the Amstrad CPC. 

How would we get this off the ground, is anyone already considering this and if so how can this community help? 

[Gryzor]

+1... 

[eto]

I have my doubts that it's possible to "fix" Outrun. That would require a full rewrite.

[Jean-Marie]

A few months ago, I had a look at the collision and sprites display routines, to see if I could optimize some instructions. There are definitely some ugly things in the code that can be changed.
Curiously, the programmer didn't seem to understand how the sign flag works. For example, he kept on writing :

Code Select Expand

sub l
sub l
bit 7,a
jp nz,l0def

instead of :

Code Select Expand

sub l
sub l
jp m,l0def

Or worse :

Code Select Expand

l1c88:
ld hl,(&2bf4)
sla l
rl h
rather than:
add hl,hl

I changed a few instructions in the collision routines, but the thing is it won't be enough to have a visual impact. Even if you turn off the whole routine (poke &19C4,&C9), it will still be slow.
It would be simpler to recode the whole thing IMO, using  for example the stunning code of CNG's Fire Tyre as a model.
Anyway, I leave you my Excel notes if someone is interested. For the moment, I'm working on implementing the Spectrum 128 Spellbound music on the CPC version. 

[roudoudou]

The Arcade version of outrun is doing color cycling for the road whereas CPC version is drawing it slowly
With 128K you may enhance the road (and change colors ) and there is "only" tress and cars left
Anyway it's not that simple, i agree with eto for a full rewrite
Vespertino?

[andycadley]

Yeah, I can't imagine there is much salvageable in there. Maybe the car sprite and title screen. It'd be a gargantuan task and probably still not live up to the name. Making something Outrun-like without being tied to the arcade game design would probably be more fun for a developer unless they were incredibly passionate about it.

[ukmarkh]

Yeah, I can't imagine there is much salvageable in there. Maybe the car sprite and title screen. It'd be a gargantuan task and probably still not live up to the name. Making something Outrun-like without being tied to the arcade game design would probably be more fun for a developer unless they were incredibly passionate about it.

I understand that, but we have all the sprites don't we, publicly available from a PC attempt at Outrun using CPC sprites. Apparently Fire tyre was put together in a week, so what am I missing?  

[ukmarkh]

The Arcade version of outrun is doing color cycling for the road whereas CPC version is drawing it slowly
With 128K you may enhance the road (and change colors ) and there is "only" tress and cars left
Anyway it's not that simple, i agree with eto for a full rewrite
Vespertino?

Outrun is the ultimate driving game, if done correctly. What I'm not sure about is if the CPC could actually do it well. 

[rexbeng]

how can this community help?

I'd say, raise a substantial amount of money that will make it worthwhile for developers to spent valuable time on a commissioned project.

[andycadley]

Yeah, I can't imagine there is much salvageable in there. Maybe the car sprite and title screen. It'd be a gargantuan task and probably still not live up to the name. Making something Outrun-like without being tied to the arcade game design would probably be more fun for a developer unless they were incredibly passionate about it.

I understand that, but we have all the sprites don't we, publicly available from a PC attempt at Outrun using CPC sprites. Apparently Fire tyre was put together in a week, so what am I missing? 

"Put together in a week" is, I suspect, one of those programmer boasts which actually means "Had a bunch of previously written routines for things like sprite scaling and road drawing that took months to perfect and then assembled all the constituent parts into a game in considerably less time"

And Fire Tyre, whilst good, is a considerably simpler game than OutRun. I mean, someone might be able to sprite hack the vehicles in Fire Tyre to look like the OutRun ones, but you wouldn't really call the end result a good port of OutRun, would you?

[ukmarkh]

Yeah, I can't imagine there is much salvageable in there. Maybe the car sprite and title screen. It'd be a gargantuan task and probably still not live up to the name. Making something Outrun-like without being tied to the arcade game design would probably be more fun for a developer unless they were incredibly passionate about it.

I understand that, but we have all the sprites don't we, publicly available from a PC attempt at Outrun using CPC sprites. Apparently Fire tyre was put together in a week, so what am I missing? 

"Put together in a week" is, I suspect, one of those programmer boasts which actually means "Had a bunch of previously written routines for things like sprite scaling and road drawing that took months to perfect and then assembled all the constituent parts into a game in considerably less time"

And Fire Tyre, whilst good, is a considerably simpler game than OutRun. I mean, someone might be able to sprite hack the vehicles in Fire Tyre to look like the OutRun ones, but you wouldn't really call the end result a good port of OutRun, would you?

I guess, but impressive even if it took three months. If the road split at the end, then it could work. Lorry's and VW Beetle's instead of F1 cars. All I'm stating is the engine appears good. But I wonder if Chevy Chase can be looked at, that was basically Outrun. 

[GUNHED]

When I see what has been achieved on the Amstrad CPC of late, what with Green Beret, Renegade and Fire Tyre. Surely it's time that the entire community came together, with all of its experience to finally fix Outrun!

This has to be the single biggest stone left unturned, a blight on the Amstrad CPC.

How would we get this off the ground, is anyone already considering this and if so how can this community help?

You could get a fundraiser started.

[ukmarkh]

I've never done that before, looks easy enough, but I'd probably mess it up and not get the backers needed. We would need to draw on someone's experience here as we'd probably only get one shot. 

There might be another way. It looks like enough people are quite passionate about it. I think those that aren't feeling it is due to the belief that the Amstrad can't do Outrun, but I dunno it's probably true. 

[Anthony Flack]

There's a lot of background objects in Outrun that makes it the game it is. Two roads. Dozens of large, scaling sprites.

A lot of cars on the road, too. Not just cars but big trucks. It would be hard to make something that manages to look like Outrun and still play like Outrun.

I was idly wondering if the Plus machine was up for doing a version of Super Hang-On similar to the Amiga version, with all bikes drawn with sprites and the road done with line-by-line scrolling in hardware. But I haven't done any messing around with Plus programming yet.

The best Super Scaler game on the CPC might currently be Space Harrier!

[dthrone]

I was idly wondering if the Plus machine was up for doing a version of Super Hang-On similar to the Amiga version, with all bikes drawn with sprites and the road done with line-by-line scrolling in hardware. But I haven't done any messing around with Plus programming yet.

Yes, completely, using the DMA interrupts to colour cycle and scroll by scanline in overscan at 50fps.  I know because I have it running here right now   Just ensure A13=1

[ZbyniuR]

I wish rather see new Last Ninja. It's shame how bad it look on CPC compare to C64 or even on BBC.
Similar story with Lotus.

[GUNHED]

The eternal problem with quick ports...