Ghostbusters

theSmiths · Post by **theSmiths** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 9:40 am

Ghostbusters on the spectrum

Yeah that was rubbish.

But then again alot of the spectrum games in my opinion were not all that fantastic...
The Vic-20 didn't try to be what it wasn't ....In my eyes the spectrum tried to be better than it was(even though i loved my old spectrum)

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:50 am

You're talking with Commodorians, so we all agree with you

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A bit OT in the "VIC games" section, I'm afraid

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Moved to "Other systems".

Ivanhoe76 · Post by **Ivanhoe76** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 2:22 pm

I think that "old days" vic programmer followed a "kind" of pattern when converting games from other platforms and this made them seem too "viccy" (if I can use this term)... if they tried to learn vic deeply a lot of conversion would have been done much better, and maybe almost everything could have been ported to vic, as it was made on spectrum some years after... what do you think about that?

English Invader · Post by **English Invader** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 4:15 pm

From what I've seen, there aren't many games on the Spectrum that couldn't have been made for the VIC. The problem with the VIC was limited memory -- a problem that has largely been solved with the Mega Cart.

I have a zx32 emulator, but my only acquaintance with the real thing was when I was in hospital with Asthma as a kid. They had a Spectrum in the children's ward and I spent hours trying to get a crappy tennis game to work. The Spectrum has always looked rather cheap and ugly to me.

If you think Ghostbusters on the Spectrum is bad, see the Atari 2600 version. For me, the best version of this game is on the Sega Master System (run on a Z80 processor instead of a 6502).

jdxpolygon · Post by **jdxpolygon** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:44 am

At the risk of going full circle and making this thread OT again, wouldn't Ghostbusters be a great game for the (possibly unexpanded) VIC-20? I think it's a really fun game and it's made up of some very simple parts. In fact it could almost be done in BASIC.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:17 am

WOW! That would be GREAT! It's got to be one in the to-do list.

jdxpolygon · Post by **jdxpolygon** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:14 am

orion70 wrote:WOW! That would be GREAT! It's got to be one in the to-do list.

Having a quick think about it, I've got a reasonable amount of what I'd need sprite-code-wise wrapped up in Carling The Spider, it might not be such a huge undertaking. I'll have a think about it as a side project, it would be nice to stay in touch with the VIC side of things seeing as Carling II is going to the C64

In terms of memory, I think it would depend what sort of conversion people want. If you can make do with coarse sprite movement I think an unexpanded version is viable (and it wouldn't play THAT differently would it?) If you want free moving sprites it might be a bit of a squash to have that code and all the logic code for the various parts of the game in unexpanded memory. Maybe my soft-sprite code is just ridiculously fat on the other hand

Post by **Jeff-20** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:57 pm

jdxpolygon wrote: In fact it could almost be done in BASIC.

anything can be done in basic.

English Invader · Post by **English Invader** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:27 pm

I'm no expert, but I would probably go for 8K and machine language. Ghostbusters can be a pretty fast game when all the action builds up.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:24 pm

Jeff-20 wrote:anything can be done in basic.

I'm going to make an all BASIC, unexpanded version of Omega Race for you guys just to prove it's possible. Of course, the game play will need to be modified, but it's possible.

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:50 pm

That sounds like a challenge...I'm up for it...maybe even make it 20 lines if I can.

(And just when I perfected the Universal BASIC stub, too.)

jdxpolygon · Post by **jdxpolygon** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 3:20 am

Jeff-20 wrote:
jdxpolygon wrote: In fact it could almost be done in BASIC.
anything can be done in basic.

I suppose what I should have said is, it could almost be done justice in BASIC on an unexpanded machine, you couldn't say that of every game.

I'd love to see it done unexpanded, but the benefit of say 16k or even 8k expansion would be to provide (nearly) the same experience as on the C64. I suspect the music would be missing from an unexpanded version which would be a big loss...

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 4:13 am

jdxpolygon wrote:I suspect the music would be missing from an unexpanded version which would be a big loss...

And for the music...

...Who you gonna call? ...

...Carlsson!

rhurst · Post by **rhurst** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 5:02 am

... Who you gonna call? ...

But without the music, what's the point? The game would be utterly boring.

I agree that any "derivative" can be written in BASIC, if that is the objective. The end result cannot stack up against Omega Race (or any other arcade-like video game) game play -- any such claim is false bravado. But I like seeing all the creative attempts -- go for it!

A little OT, but why is unexpanded so important? Back in the day, it was deemed important, but that was short-sighted thinking too. C128 and Amiga suffered terribly for publishers promoting software for the "lowest common denominator" in stock C64 and Amiga 500 configurations.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 5:50 am

rhurst wrote:A little OT, but why is unexpanded so important?

Maybe because programmers much prefer coding to design?