8 ms·

If this is indeed a C64 version thats so impressive. It really goes to show how much you can do within the constraints of a machine at any given time. I wonder

If this is indeed a C64 version thats so impressive. It really goes to show how much you can do within the constraints of a machine at any given time. I wonder what we’re totally overlooking today that might be possible with current tech.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kawsper 8y ago
What about a 3D engine using Ncurses that can run in your terminal? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g
- peterkelly 8y ago
  Reminds me of Quake II in text mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA And Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg
vidarh 8y ago
It's actually very understated for a C64 game. The smooth scrolling is easy (hardware support coupled with custom character means you're effectively operating on a tiled display where the tiles only need to be moved every few frames). The parallax (e.g. trees) and enemies requires just some sprites to do smoothly, and tall and narrow is ideal for the sprites (you can manipulate the sprite registers with the raster interrupt to make them arbitrary tall; creating wider sprites is the hard bit) I think on the contrary this is a type of game that was hard to envision at the time because it doesn't really push the limits of what the machine can do. It's an aesthetic for a game that did not seem appealing because people were still predominantly focused on stretching the machine to its limits. If you look at C64 games of the era, there was a race to to cram as big enemies as possible and as many enemies as possible onto each screen, and using as much colour as possible. The evolution year by year was staggering, and few people at the time would "go back" to something simple. The crazy thing is I suspect this would have been slaughtered in reviews of the time for that reason. A lot of these type of games are possible for these platforms now because we're no longer stuck in a race for fitting as many effects as possible in. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt
- jungler 8y ago
  I think the reviews would have had two major issues with it: * Black and white * Too short and easy Although reviewers would talk up raw tech specs, when it came time to assign scores they were and still are more likely to consider the whole art style on a simple "how much representational detail and animation does it have" scale, which allows a lot of room for games with simple rendering techniques. Limbo is spiritually most like Another World, which did have the "too short" complaint. Everyone liked the graphics, though.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Another World was 1991 and Amiga/Ataris ST, though. That was already around the end of the C64 era, and a dramatically different world. And one of the reasons Another World did well was that it was obviously an entirely different beast, with it's rotoscoped vector graphics. It was something entirely new, and on platforms where there was much more tolerance for artistic vision vs. how to fit more enemies on screen. While Limbo as presented here, would have been at risk of ending up as "yet another side-scroller" on the C64 at it's height, when side-scrollers of every variation was everywhere.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  Can you elaborate more on the hardware smooth scrolling? Did the C64 allow you to set global character offset or was it something else?
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    You can set a 0-7 pixel offset horizontally and vertically. Programming smooth scrolling is still really difficult though because the processor is pretty slow, scrolling the screen left one character takes a lot of raster time.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    You'd use custom character sets to get you a tiled display of 8x8 or 4x8 pixels (depending on colour mode; 4x8 used two bits per pixel to specify one of two foreground colour specific to the character, or the global background colour), so the display would usually be text (almost no games used the bitmap modes). So you're copying at most 2000 bytes (40x25 characters + colour) for every 8/4 pixels scrolled. If you're willing to sacrifice a sprite + a raster interrupt every 48 scanlines to cover and narrow the visible area of the screen a bit more, you can reduce the amount of copying even more. Same by not using the full height of the display, as is the case here. After having a C64 growing up it was always painful to see stuttering scroll, as it was inconceivable to not have proper smooth scrolling in most C64 games or demos.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kawsper 8y ago

What about a 3D engine using Ncurses that can run in your terminal? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g

peterkelly 8y ago
Reminds me of Quake II in text mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA And Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg

vidarh 8y ago

It's actually very understated for a C64 game. The smooth scrolling is easy (hardware support coupled with custom character means you're effectively operating on a tiled display where the tiles only need to be moved every few frames). The parallax (e.g. trees) and enemies requires just some sprites to do smoothly, and tall and narrow is ideal for the sprites (you can manipulate the sprite registers with the raster interrupt to make them arbitrary tall; creating wider sprites is the hard bit) I think on the contrary this is a type of game that was hard to envision at the time because it doesn't really push the limits of what the machine can do. It's an aesthetic for a game that did not seem appealing because people were still predominantly focused on stretching the machine to its limits. If you look at C64 games of the era, there was a race to to cram as big enemies as possible and as many enemies as possible onto each screen, and using as much colour as possible. The evolution year by year was staggering, and few people at the time would "go back" to something simple. The crazy thing is I suspect this would have been slaughtered in reviews of the time for that reason. A lot of these type of games are possible for these platforms now because we're no longer stuck in a race for fitting as many effects as possible in. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt

jungler 8y ago
I think the reviews would have had two major issues with it: * Black and white * Too short and easy Although reviewers would talk up raw tech specs, when it came time to assign scores they were and still are more likely to consider the whole art style on a simple "how much representational detail and animation does it have" scale, which allows a lot of room for games with simple rendering techniques. Limbo is spiritually most like Another World, which did have the "too short" complaint. Everyone liked the graphics, though.
- vidarh 8y ago
  Another World was 1991 and Amiga/Ataris ST, though. That was already around the end of the C64 era, and a dramatically different world. And one of the reasons Another World did well was that it was obviously an entirely different beast, with it's rotoscoped vector graphics. It was something entirely new, and on platforms where there was much more tolerance for artistic vision vs. how to fit more enemies on screen. While Limbo as presented here, would have been at risk of ending up as "yet another side-scroller" on the C64 at it's height, when side-scrollers of every variation was everywhere.
zamadatix 8y ago
Can you elaborate more on the hardware smooth scrolling? Did the C64 allow you to set global character offset or was it something else?
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  You can set a 0-7 pixel offset horizontally and vertically. Programming smooth scrolling is still really difficult though because the processor is pretty slow, scrolling the screen left one character takes a lot of raster time.
- vidarh 8y ago
  You'd use custom character sets to get you a tiled display of 8x8 or 4x8 pixels (depending on colour mode; 4x8 used two bits per pixel to specify one of two foreground colour specific to the character, or the global background colour), so the display would usually be text (almost no games used the bitmap modes). So you're copying at most 2000 bytes (40x25 characters + colour) for every 8/4 pixels scrolled. If you're willing to sacrifice a sprite + a raster interrupt every 48 scanlines to cover and narrow the visible area of the screen a bit more, you can reduce the amount of copying even more. Same by not using the full height of the display, as is the case here. After having a C64 growing up it was always painful to see stuttering scroll, as it was inconceivable to not have proper smooth scrolling in most C64 games or demos.