Alien 8 MSX2 remake

Great! Where can i buy it?
(BTW I would have mapped the controls differently and added some touches e.g. optional music).
Isometric 3D on z80 is quite unknown and very interesting for me.
Would it be possible to expand this 3D engine to have light/shadow and larger rooms with some sort of scroll ?

I accounted on your bank account 100€ by mistake, please could you return me the rest ?
;-)

IIRC in the alien 8 original code each room takes about 400 bytes

Great game and great remake!

What would be better present for us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Good work Manuel!

>Guillian did you start from the original ASM or from some other source?

I started from the original code. It is similar to what I did with La Abadía del Crimen

>Can you tell something of the development you did?

In sort, I disassembled the original, examined the code, rewrote the graphic part, changed a bit here and there and contacted LordFred to make the new graphics. That's all ^^!

Outstanding!!! Great work, Manuel!!

@Guillian: IMPRESSIVE and SUPERB! At the same level of gfx of amiga isometric games....

Anyway a curiosity: have you found problems of slowness considering that the gfx animations does not use sprites and have 4 times the number of bytes to manage?

Congratulations Manuel & Daniel!! a really great job!!

Keep those nice remakes coming!!

>have you found problems of slowness considering that the gfx animations does not use sprites and have 4 times the number of bytes to manage?

There are some speed problems when it is needed to redraw several objects. But the original game was also quite slow in some parts.

@saeba: I have no plans about releasing the game on cartridge. But perhaps in a future compilation...

Great work Manuel!

Great work indeed! You guys should really consider to release it as Shockware, it's more than worth it!

Also... can I dream about the same being done to Knightlore?

Impressive work, Manuel Pazos!

I want to suggest only one minor improvement: can you implement a timing routine, so it do not run too fast on turbo machines? I tried it on a MSX Turbo-R and it gets very fast on some small rooms. The intro music is also played in a breeze.

I know I can play using Z80, but allowing the turbos will allow the players to have a much more constant frame-rate. On an OCM with the turbo-blitter activated the frame-rate could be always constant.
(BTW, the frame-rate runs like hell if I activate both 10MHz and the turbo-blitter on the OCM currently )

LBNL, I believe you should submit this game to the MSXDEV'08! It is a great work and deserves to participate.

That's strange... on a turbo R the game switchs to Z80 mode at start up.

Yep. I had to put some NOPs over that part. I was just curious for testing, you know.

Anyway, the code is asynchronous and should be played at about 3.5MHz ^^!

By "asynchronous" you mean it just runs without never syncinc to VBLANK?

If that is the case, you just need to insert your own sync at the end of the main-loop. Every game have to run on a loop, right?

On the end of the main-loop, check JIFFY (*1). If the game should at most at, say, 20 fps, your game just needs to HALT the Z80 and wait until JIFFY turns 2. Then zero it and return to process the main-loop again. If at the point of the check JIFF is bigger than 2, your are behind the schedule (loosing frames), just hurry, zero JIFFY and process the main loop again.

*1: If JIFFY is not being updated because the BIOS is disabled, you have to implement your own on the VDP INT handler.

Thanks, but MSXDEV is for MSX1 games

I'm always forgetting about that, since IMHO it's a restriction that brings no advantage to the MSX community...

I'm always forgetting about that, since IMHO it's a restriction that brings no advantage to the MSX community...
Thats utter bull!!!

But there is an MSX2 competition (Passion MSX). Did everyone forget its there?
Quit nagging about MSXdev and support that MSX2 competition.

It got me a while to get used to MSX2 presentation after monochrome original games (except colourful amstrad conversion) but it looks nice!

But it looks strange to see that "JALECO" word in title screen. I know Jaleco published it in Japan as cartridge, but as game originally is european production, there should be read "A.C.G" instead of "JALECO".

Shame that there is badly misleading information even in generation-msx. As it claims game´s original title is japanese... that´s bullshit... there weren´t so many japan worshipers in mid-80s britain who would have wanted to give their game a japanese name....! And it shows japanese release as the first and original one.... and screenshot only shows jaleco as only one publisher... hopefully someone can submit original Ultimate screenshot to generation-msx!

Also it´s a pity that in MSX2 remake original game over animation animation has been simplified a lot, lots of feeling is now lost... originally that poor robot had cartoon style facial expressions during re-programming, MSX2 remake robot just stands still like dead. Of course it´s more realistic this way, but as I said, that re-programming screen has lost a lot now.

In that hires picture, maybe that "remake" text can be put to some other place, I feel it spoils that picture a lot as it is placed on top of the planet.

Sorry that I am so nostalgic.

Otherwise, good looking game!! Congratulations!

Also it´s a pity that in MSX2 remake original game over animation animation has been simplified a lot, lots of feeling is now lost... originally that poor robot had cartoon style facial expressions during re-programming, MSX2 remake robot just stands still like dead.

I would prefer a smooth animation instead of a almost un-noticeable facial expressions.... honestly

By "asynchronous" you mean it just runs without never syncinc to VBLANK?
That's right.

If that is the case, you just need to insert your own sync at the end of the main-loop. Every game have to run on a loop, right?

That is not right at all. Several parts of the game run on their own loops.
With the interrupts enabled the game runs noticiable slower. I would need to use a 48K ROM -or put RAM in page 0-, just to have my own interrupt rutine in #38, or switch to IM2 mode.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

*1: If JIFFY is not being updated because the BIOS is disabled, you have to implement your own on the VDP INT handler.

BIOS is not disabled, but interrupts. The original game, and this remake, run in DI mode. In the remake I just enable them in the fades to sync with the VBLANK and keep a constant framerate.
In the original game, most of the system variable area is used by the game, so the BIOS can't call to the interrupts hooks.

Great, but now go and do some serious thing like converting Nemesis 2 to MSX2 or so.

Great work, congratulations!
I never liked this game when I was a kid, but your remake is so nice that it makes me want to play it now.

About enhancing other non-action games, I still hope to see someday a MSX2 version of Simcity (maybe a port of the ZX Spectrum with enhanced graphics).

One suggestions: it would be quite straight to produce an MSX2 version of Knight Lore using the same engine, 'cause they are almost identical (Ultimate's Filmation). And it would be quite fast indeed because the game has been already coloured here: http://www.emulatronia.com/emusdaqui/spec256/juego-knightlore.htm

Of course, a 256->16 colours adaptation is required, but it can be easier than 2->16 colours. So, hallowed be thy name, Pazos :D

The site in announcement is down

A GREAT remake. I love it. Also love the video of the Knight Lore remake ;-)
Just for the record - Ultimate Play the Game (Rare) denies the distribution of their works (even the 8bit games) so you will likely get into trouble if you want to sell the remakes of their games on cartridges, tapes, etc.

Manuel,

Since Knight Lore MSX2 uses the same engine and do support running the game in R800 mode, what about an update to Alien-8 to allow the R800 too? Since you already programmed the routines for Knight Lore it should not be that hard to reuse those on Alien-8 too. :D