SpritesMind.Net

I had an idea for a pseudo-3D space game for MD a while ago and did a little bit of work on it, only to hear a lot of "cool, that sounds just like Elite". I'd never played this game before, so I decided to check it out, and well... it has almost EXACTLY the kind of gameplay I've been trying to achieve! I still intend to keep working on my game, but now I have to be conscious of not just ripping off Elite, which is proving difficult, heh.

Now, Elite was built for ZX Spectrum if I recall correctly, and there was also a NES version. This makes me think that I should be able to come up with something at least a LITTLE more impressive graphically than Elite on MD. Elite's spaceships are rendered using wireframe 3D, so the logical extension would be to use flat-shaded polygons, which is probably beyond me. I'm thinking I could maybe use sprites for ships instead, but then how would I get them to seem like 3D objects?

If anyone has any ideas, post away!

Do you check the (unofficial?demos?pre-alpha?) version of Elite ?
I know it is 3 binary roms....

Yeah, the unofficial version is very smooth
Weren't the sources available at some point?

Good project Good luck!

skroooagh wrote:Now, Elite was built for ZX Spectrum if I recall correctly, and there was also a NES version.

Versions of Elite exists for ~12 systems, and BBC Micro version was first. On 16-bit systems that game had flat-shaded filled polygons. Later games of series (Elite 2, 3) used textured polygons.

Sprites like 3D objects was used in cosmo-sims, early parts of Wing Commander is one of them.

Does anyone know where I might find this leaked ROM? No luck so far...

Fonzie, I don't think the source was ever officially released, but one of the ealy versions was reverse-engineered and a source code of sorts was compiled that has been used for ports to GBA and such. I don't know how faithful it is to the original game but it's something, I guess.

Shiru, thanks for the info! I checked out Wing Commander and... well... I think polygons are the way to go, heh. The sprites just look awkward.

Can be there:

- War Combats
- Trading
- Multiplayer (split-screen???)
- Nice story /Dune ,Starwars... but original one/

Another 3D space games:
ZERO 5 (Atari STe,Atari Jaguar)
MERCENARY (Atari800 ,C64)

WING COMMANDER is awesome!!!

skrooagh wrote:Shiru, thanks for the info! I checked out Wing Commander and... well... I think polygons are the way to go, heh. The sprites just look awkward.

Yes, space games requires rotation by all axes, so sprites not very suitable for this case. They more suitable to surface-based games like 'Super Battle Tank - War in the Gulf' for SMD, where objects rotates by only one axis.


Speaking about gameplay, I never liked original Elite much. I played it some time, but soon found it boring. All you do in this game is buy stuff, jump to star, shoot some enemies, sell stuff, and repeat that all time. Later games of genre was more interesting because had missions to complete and more clear and interesting goal (compared to simply get higher rank in original Elite) which motivates to continue playing.

I more liked games like Mercenary, Academy (Tau Ceti II) and Star Riders II. But all these games is not space sims, they more surface-based. They all have missions to complete and global goal to reach.

Shiru wrote:
Speaking about gameplay, I never liked original Elite much. I played it some time, but soon found it boring. All you do in this game is buy stuff, jump to star, shoot some enemies, sell stuff, and repeat that all time. Later games of genre was more interesting because had missions to complete and more clear and interesting goal (compared to simply get higher rank in original Elite) which motivates to continue playing.

I kinda agree, the learning curve for Elite is too steep and trading is just boring. What I want to do is combine the space exploration elements with a more traditional 16-bit RPG. The space combat would be kinda similar to Elite, and the universe would be mostly procedurally generated, but there would be no trading system, maybe some simple buy/sell but no huge economy. You will also be able to land on planets and walk around like in a regular RPG, doing RPG-ish things. There will be a story with lots of sidequests and such. Now all I have to do is... make it. Ahem