[Coco] 3D Deathchase demo.

[James McKay]

"Roger Taylor" <operator at coco3.com> wrote in 
message news:20090104014817.8F70920A15 at qs281.pair.com...

I'm glad that it worked!

> I see that the color palette changes on every other level.  Is this CoCo 3 
> only?  I also see a tank in level 3.

It's just using the old CoCo multicolor palettes, hence why I've changed the 
"night stage" to an "arctic" one... A bit of artistic licence!  :)

The levels swap between the helicopter and tank in the background for your 
bonus point opportunity.

> What source code did you convert to 6809 assembler?  I'm sure there's 
> quite a few coders out there that would love to hear about this project 
> more.

The reverse engineered Z80 version which can be run on the Spectrum or 
Amstrad CPC (with some macro changes) is located here (a couple of download 
links in this forum post):
http://www.cpczone.net/boards/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1736&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Deathchase&start=45#p13962

It was made by Richard Wilson (aka Executioner), who is the author of the 
Amstrad CPC emulator "WinAPE".
It compiles in WinAPE's own assembler, which is built into the emulator and 
can assemble during emulation (very handy).

I'll be releasing the 6809 source upon completion and I might try a CoCo 3 
version using a 4 bpp mode...

For those considering their own ports, the tree engine is completely 
char-aligned and would probably go quite nicely in a tile-based machine. 
The sprites are also char-aligned, so the only problem there is getting them 
to draw in front of or behind the trees.  Assuming a cartridge based system 
and excluding the bitmap/vram, it might run in under 2K of RAM (I haven't 
checked 100%, but I think it should definitely run in 4K).

bye,
James McKay.