Metal Slug clone on Atari STE - First big attempt

[masteries]

 

Greetings mates, lovers of Atari,

 

Some years ago I acquired a never used, a brand new (non opened box), Atari STE computer. That is really a great machine, heavily underrated machine.

Quickly I update it with 4 MB SIMM RAM modules... and I started on the search about how to program for it using C language...

some time after I reached this state:

 

 

This demonstration illustrates many of AGT libraries features, such fast sprite drawing routines, frame slipping, smooth scrolling and dualfield colouring technique, in order to increase the number of colours far beyond 16 usual ones.

It is designed and running on a standard 8 MHz Atari STE with 4 MB RAM at 50 frames per second. Loading from diskette is granted, but hard drive or new sd card reader for extended joystick port is easier and recommended. Due to games developed on this way requires plenty disk space; this demo loads up to 3.1 MB of data, 512 KB of them are used for music and fx effects, other 512 KB are needed to store the extremely detailed NeoGeo quality level map graphics; the rest of them are for sprites; where many animations are not yet programmed, but these frames are being loaded.

Sound is completely based on digital sound samples, mixed in a Real-Time manner; 3 voices at 12,5 KHz, arcade sound quality. The Yamaha YM2149 is not used in this example.

 

Original game code is not used here. Game code is programmed on C language using STE oriented libraries, the digital audio mixer is written on 68k assembly.

 

Original Metal Slug name, graphics and sounds/musics are property of their respective owners.

 

 

Edited October 17, 2020 by masteries

[twilitezoner]

This looks great. Any chance you release a demo for us to play with? 

[masteries]

9 hours ago, twilitezoner said:

This looks great. Any chance you release a demo for us to play with? 

Released, enjoy it!

 

Download and follow the instructions at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgW6Fc5Jli0

 

[Paul Westphal]

I subscribed to your youtube channel and now you're here 🙂 . Thanks for the work you are doing on our beloved STe. I picked up one of those Micro SD card readers from Gossuin. It seems like a cheaper version of the Ultra-satan :), so thanks for keying us on to that gizmo. I must have overseen that when I got my Eiffel3 from him a few months back. I look forward to your progress on this, and will check back here on a regular basis.

I have been doing some ghetto MOD vids : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAVWgxXEerFi51JI8SWDP5w?view_as=subscriber

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Paul Westphal

[Atari 5200 Guy]

Would love to try this on my 1040 STe also maxed at 4 MB.  But the only way my STe can get anything is with floppies as it has no other options.  It does have a second disk drive though.  And, yes, it is very underrated.  I would have liked to see what more it is capable of.

[masteries]

On 5/27/2022 at 8:15 AM, Atari 5200 Guy said:

Would love to try this on my 1040 STe also maxed at 4 MB.  But the only way my STe can get anything is with floppies as it has no other options.  It does have a second disk drive though.  And, yes, it is very underrated.  I would have liked to see what more it is capable of.

 

Greetings,

 

The complete demo of stage 1 is availabe there:

https://masteries.itch.io/

for Atari STE and MegaDrive/Genesis (Genesis version is more "beta" than STE, its very difficult to deal with the very size limited video RAM of the console, when you put on screen a very high detailed scenario and many sprites).

 

As well, for modern STE times, you will need a low cost high performance hard disk device.

Edited September 23, 2022 by masteries

[Jinroh]

Very great work! I will want to check this out. 🙂

I would love to get one of your good controllers for this too when I can afford one.

 

Really cool to see you pushing the STe. I will never be able to get a Falcon now 😢, so glad the STe can still play with the big brothers. 😄

Edited September 27, 2022 by Jinroh