#1987 RASTAN ARCADE CODE#

Some big developments for this earlier version.Your current IP address has been blocked due to bad behavior, which generally means one of the following: Sadly John does not have anything of the earlier version, but then Jane or Martin could yet hold the key.

So now we know the story behind this earlier version.

#1987 RASTAN ARCADE CODE#

I donвЂ™t have any code from the games either as I didnвЂ™t believe there would be any need or interest later.вЂќ Storage was unreliable and once youвЂ™ve move house once or twice you canвЂ™t be arsed keeping all the old stuff. I just found the core gameplay monotonous and with the restrictions knew I could not do the title any justice. But I know she found the experience just as painful as I did.ДЄnd while the c64 Rastan was a pretty poor interpretation the arcade game, it was superior to the Spectrum and Amstrad versions. She left shortly after Rastan finished which was a shame as she definitely had the talent. And the game needed an artist who was very technically minded. Triggering the baddies was a real pain as we only had 32 control characters in the character set to select what type of baddy came in, their behavior type or whether these were deadly blocks etcвЂ¦Д«TW вЂ“ Jane was an excellent artist, but this was her first game and she didnвЂ™t understand technical restrictions. I didnвЂ™t like the arcade game to start with, scrolling aside it was not suited to the C64 hardware and the maps were so huge. I hate to say it but Rastan was by far my least enjoyable project for Ocean Software. You will notice there are no monsters or projectiles on either screenshot! The game was very rough then as it had only been in development for 10 weeks and we were at an impasse due the inability to display more than two monsters or projectiles at the same time without horrendous tearing or drop out. During an open day then, I had an extremely cringing interview with Commodore International who could see the development was in deep trouble.

I now remember the day the demo screenshots were taken. So for technical reasons, this was not viable. The problem was when the sword / chain was in attack, that used 3 horizontal sprites and our multiplexer made the sprites tear horribly. The original was also too greedy on sprite usage using a combo of five and 4 sprites depending on the animation frame. So whereas the first Rastan looked great, everything other NCP looked nothing like that in the arcade game. The problem was you only had three colours for all the sprites, and two of these were fixed for all sprites displayed. The change of palette was an technical choice. вЂњI believe Jane Lowe did one version and Martin McDonald. Well, we found out from the man himself, John Meegan, who had the following recollections: Recently added in 2013 was another large shot discovered in ACE magazine issue 4. What can only be assumed was that they hit problems with colour selection and character data, and had to have a rework. The preview shot in CCI and also on the main advert from Ocean (The differing sprites are clear to be seen) additionally shows some vastly different mountain peaks вЂ“ generally looking slightly better than the final version. Indeed after some comparisons вЂ“ we seem to have got a rather different looking Rastan conversion than we could have done. The eventual C64 release had a character which looked like an animating turd in comparison (Although it still looked a good sprite). Hold onвЂ¦ that main character looks a heck of a lot more like the arcade character вЂ“ with all the gear and long black hair. After flicking through some old C64 magazines, Commodore Computing International (January 1988) highlighted a rather strange preview shot of Rastan on the C64.

1987 rastan arcade