Indie Retro News: Action Biker

Ask anybody concerning the 8bit recreation of Action Biker, and so they’d most likely let you know it was not solely an excellent recreation with an superior soundtrack, however there was nothing extra enjoyable than driving about on a bike, gathering varied gadgets, whereas avoiding all types of obstacles. Properly this well-known recreation hasn’t simply made a particular look on our website, however because of Grue nonetheless, there’s additionally been an enhanced model additional enhancing an already nice recreation.

And here is the newest from the creator through the Lemon64 forums. “Why Motion biker? There may be already a very good variations of it round, however I needed one thing extra, so I made a decision to look into it! Primary stuff: crack the unique, reverse engineer the sport, and generate sources. The sport itself was fairly simple. I did not even trouble utilizing the Ghidra for the reverse engineering half and proceeded straight into the 6502 bench. The sport map is 160 x 80, or 4 screens huge and a pair of tall. The bike makes use of 32 sprites for its animation, and the map tiles suits into one font. The playfield additionally has a Z-axis, so the participant can transfer up or down a number of the options, that are dealt with utilizing distinctive tiles on the map”.

“The gameplay consists of gathering gadgets on the map, which improve your bike so that you’re prepared for the drag race on the finish of the sport. Some gadgets have noticeable modifications, like gathering a gearbox, which lets you change to lo/hello gear utilizing the fireplace button. I added some extra performance for the gadgets; listed here are the modifications I made”:

Petrol gauge – prompts the gasoline bar on the display
Exhaust pipe – change the bike sound
Speedometer – shows the pace
Brake lamp – prompts the brake lamp on the bike
Go sooner stripes – extra max pace for the bike 😉
Water skis – you die should you drive on the water underneath 50
Stopwatch – prompts timing of the drag race

“I additionally added time measurement to the drag race. Time is measured between altering the beginning mild to inexperienced and the end line. You probably have a greater time than earlier than, it will get saved on disk. Additionally, HighScore is saved should you handle to get one. There may be additionally PAL/NTSC detection primarily for the race clock and the display cut up timing. 6581 and 8580 will get additionally detected and filter cutoff is adjusted to suit higher”.

Extra of much less the whole listing of the modifications:

– Begin a brand new recreation with a fireplace button as a substitute of utilizing the keyboard.
– gasoline degree just isn’t proven till the petrol gauge is collected
– Modified “press house to play” textual content to “press fireplace to play”
– Merchandise referred to as “go sooner stripes” modifications max pace $fa -> $ff
– Speedometer on display, prompts when the participant collects the speedometer 🙂
– Border flashing on loss of life tidied up so the raster line colours are modified is $00, not $40
– Modified collision detection with a fence so it will not crash till really touching the fence
– Carried out toggle for F7 – key, music now off and again on
– I added Brake Mild, and the sprite layer was activated after gathering: tadaa! brake lamp
– Added race time show, prompts after gathering stopwatch
– gathering exhaust pipe prompts lowpass filter on channel 3 (sfx devoted)
– depend time from inexperienced mild to complete line. Present the consequence on display when reaching the end line.
– die if shifting underneath 50 on water with waterskis
– repair a bug the place you might journey underneath 50 at massive components of the lake.
– The unique recreation did not need to kill bits on all of the water tiles.
– Construct quantity and a few credentials on the title display.
– added pause key, use run/cease for pause.
– Sid detection and alter filter cutoff worth relying on 6581/8580, have an effect on the exhaust pipe sound
– excessive rating and greatest time save/restore
– NTSC fixes, timer change for 50/60hz refresh charge, and display cut up tidying up relying on the system.
– should you run out of gasoline, flash gasoline textual content on the display with the border.
– repair a bug the place the sport all the time began at time: 10:01 as a substitute of supposed 10:00
– mute sid throughout fileops to keep away from listening to hanging notes
– disable filter on voice3 on recreation over, to allow third voice on the sport over tune.
– mounted a bug: should you crashed in the course of the race, race timer wasnt stopped and reset on retry.
– Unused tables and variables eliminated and gaps in reminiscence optimising
– NMI setup to rti