QSTAR 1

[bwinkel67]

Having a little summer fun. Just replace the original sprite_dat file in QStar 1 with this one and get a completely new game. I recently bought a SEGA cartridge with that theme so that's why I wanted to give it a try for the QL. Animation with small set of pixels is difficult, but you see when the character moves up and down, it's actually pretty good (slow it down by 10 on a BBQL and you'll see). The side-to-side doesn't look good when it's slow.

sprites_dat.zip

(1.63 KiB) Downloaded 157 times

[Note: zipped using 7-zip not the QL's zip routine...assuming it should still unzip on a QL but if not, use your favorite PC since it's just a data file]

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

The zip file unzipped okay with infounzip and ACP. S no need to worfy about ZIP Archiver incompatibilties.

The new "sprites_dat" works great, giving diiferrnt sprite, though the game play is the same.

[bwinkel67]

The zip file unzipped okay with infounzip and ACP. S no need to worfy about ZIP Archiver incompatibilties.

Oh thanks, that's great.

The new "sprites_dat" works great, giving different sprite, though the game play is the same.

Yup, all I did is change the sprites so still the same 25 levels. I think level 6 is the coolest with the new sprites, makes you think of the game slightly differently. Plus, this is my favorite comic book growing up as a kid, so I always wanted a QL game with those characters.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

Maybe you could write a level ecitor, so that the user could customise the game levels.

[bwinkel67]

Here is level 6 with new sprites. Gives it a bit of a different meaning since Obelix needs to get through all the Romans.

If I wrote a plot for the game, I'd say something like "Help Obelix get through 25 levels to save his friend Asterix" or something like that. Call it "QStar: Obelix's Great Rescue"...Sega has "Asterix and the Great Rescue" but I always associated with Obelix as a kid as I was overweight when young, until I got into running at school.

[Edit: I'll post some of my tools and source material later as it was fun using the QL to create these alternate sprites. This was just a fun "see if I can do it" diversion as I always wanted an Asterix game on the QL. It also demonstrated to me how hard small sprite animation is and how much better Andrew's sprites move than mine :-/ Btw, anyone heard of a game hack like this on other platforms?]

[tofro]

Call it "Obelix and the Great Rescue"...Sega has "Asterix and the Great Rescue" but I always associated with Obelix as a kid as I was overweight when young, until I got into running at school.

I think "QStar" is just fine. Carries a lot less risk of being sued

[bwinkel67]

I think "QStar" is just fine. Carries a lot less risk of being sued

Oh absolutely, I would not recommend creating an official Asterix game as that would require licensing. As I said, this was just a fun attempt to see if I could do it and how it would look.

[bwinkel67]

I wanted to share how I managed to change the sprites for QStar 1. Full credit to Andrew, as his work has been invaluable for me to better understand how to do sprites.

I was working on creating Asterix and Obelix sprites for an animation I was planning to create for a 2024 Christmas card. Since my last Christmas card was based off of Andrew's method, I decided to change his QStar 1 sprites to see my animation through his code. I had to shrink the sprites to fit into QStar 1 and create them for all directions.

I used Paint in Windows, max'ed at 800% focus. The image here is what it looked like though it has been enlarged 800% (i.e. if you max focus in paint at 800%, pixels are still the square size, just easier to see -- have to download to see what I mean).

I used the first three rows of large icons of Obelix and the Roman Soldier as templates. I got these sprites off of Sega's various Asterix games (The Great Rescue, Power of the Gods). I saved them in 16-bit bmp format and only had to re-color the skin tone from grey to yellow. You'll note that I didn't have an authentic sprite of Obelix walking forward, so I created it with pasting his face on top of his torso walking backwards...that's why the feet look funky. Also note that I stuck with Obelix having his two arms folded behind his back for all directions since he walks that way frequently in the comics.

Here is the actual file at normal size.

I then flattened out the new icons and used paint.net to generate a 100% jpeg file (i.e. no compression to avoid artifacts).

sprites.jpg (43.98 KiB) Viewed 3730 times

Then I wrote some code that uses photon to convert to a screen file, and then step through it to generate Andrew's format. I first thought about doing this in Windows (maybe using Python), but the QL, with SuperBASIC, makes this so easy, especially since the screen file format is raw with no header.

Code: Select all

10 REMark Convert screen file to sprites
15 EW win1_photon;"win1_sprites_jpg\m8\d0\r"
20 DELETE win1_sprites_tmp
25 SBYTES win1_sprites_tmp,131072,6912
30 src=RESPR(6912):LBYTES win1_sprites_tmp,src:
35 dest=RESPR(4992): pos=0: ptr=dest
40 :
45 FOR i=1 TO 3: scrToSprite 16,18
50 FOR i=1 TO 16: scrToSprite 20,18
55 FOR i=1 TO 10: scrToSprite 16,18
60 FOR i=1 TO 2: scrToSprite 16,15
65 :
70 DELETE win1_sprites_dat
75 SBYTES win1_sprites_dat,dest,4992
80 MODE 8: LBYTES win1_sprites_dat,131072
85 STOP
90 :
95 DEFine PROCedure scrToSprite (col, row)
100   LOCal i, j, k, l, blk
105   PRINT #0,"Processing sprite: ";row;",";col
110   FOR i=1 TO row
115     l=pos: blk=0
120     FOR j=1 TO (col/2)
125       IF l=128 THEN blk=2176: l=0
130       k=src+(i-1)*128+(j-1)+blk
135       POKE ptr, PEEK (k)
140       ptr=ptr+1: l=l+1
145     NEXT j
150   NEXT i
155   src=src+(col/2)+blk: pos=l
160 END DEFine scrToSprite

Here is a small routine I wrote that allowed me to unwind the sprite_dat file into images so I could check how mine looked (helped me debug the above code).

Code: Select all

10 INPUT "Enter sprite filename: ";f$
15 src=RESPR(4992): LBYTES f$,src
20 MODE 8: dst=131072: src=src+1872
25 FOR i=1TO 8
30   FOR j=1 TO 18
35      FOR k=1 TO 10
40         POKE dst+(k-1),PEEK (src)
45         src=src+1
50      NEXT k
55      dst=dst+128
60    NEXT j
65  NEXT i

[napsternds]

Today I have been testing how to use a 3.5" disk drive with QDOSCLassic (ROM) in WinUAE emulator, with GreaseWeazle and the FloppyBridge driver for WinUAE. I know it's a bit pointless setup, but getting weird things working is kind of funny......

One of my tests has been running Qstar1, and I can confirm it runs great on QDOSClassic!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K8wWm9kzgU