Could somebody port Tempest in 3d?

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Now that the 3-d goggles replacements are out, could somebody port
Tempest to the Vectrex in 3-d? Imaine how cool that would be...Is it
even possible without Zektor?

 

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Have a go at coding it yourself - the Vec scene is desperately short of
coders.

AFAIK there's only Alex, George and Mark (Robson) actively Vec coding at the
moment



Richard H.

 

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Richard Hutchinson wrote:
> Have a go at coding it yourself - the Vec scene is desperately short
> of coders.
>
> AFAIK there's only Alex, George and Mark (Robson) actively Vec coding
> at the moment

I think that is probably a lot easier to say than to do. Which is why we
only have those guys doing it.

I've been professionally coding since 1991 and playing with computers for
another 8 years on top (jeez that makes me feel old!). I have written
financial software used by hundreds of companies, database software that is
on every PC in a company that has over 2000 PCs and recently massive
database driven web applications that have many thousands of users.

Even if I had the time I wouldn't have a clue how to begin writing a game in
a high level language of today let alone one for a machine some 20 years
old! I would suspect most Vectrex players have less programming knowledge
than me.

I'd love to be proven wrong of course!

Cheers
Marc

 

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Marc Goldman wrote:
> Richard Hutchinson wrote:
>>Have a go at coding it yourself - the Vec scene is desperately short
>>of coders.

> I think that is probably a lot easier to say than to do.

Certainly true, but all you really need is motivation, and a little bit
of technical know-how. However...

> I've been professionally coding since 1991 and playing with computers for
> another 8 years on top (jeez that makes me feel old!).

> Even if I had the time I wouldn't have a clue how to begin writing a game in
> a high level language of today let alone one for a machine some 20 years
> old!

There a quite a few retro game programmers out there with far less
experience than that. I started with less experiance than you,
althought it may have been slightly different. My total computer
programming classwork was 4 semesters in college. I have never
programmed professionally. The Vectrex is a limited genre, so it is
easier to point to the programmers for the atari 2600, where I got
started in retro game programming. My classwork did have more focus on
assembly language work, but I know others without any prior assembly
experience who have written for the 2600. In fact, there are a couple
with no formal course work who have written for the 2600.(learning
entirely from example, trial and error, and old programming book for
computers from the era) To be completely fair however, I would say that
anyone who has had at least a little assembly level programming in the
past would be able to write for the vectrex. And if you compare the
vectrex to the 2600, it is like comparing hand made bread to using a
bread machine. The Vectrex is _way_ easier than the 2600.

No it's not easy, but a little perserverance and I'm sure you could do it.

Mark

(If you are curious about my programming situation, I programmed VeCaves
just for the sake of doing it.(isn't that a good enough reason?) Near
the end of the doing VeCaves, I came up with the idea for Spike's Spree,
and shot it out in 1 week relying on the experiance from VeCaves. As
for more games, I've been sitting on a couple good ideas for new Vectrex
games, but as it stands, I have way to many hobbies to stay on one for
very long)

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.vectrex (More info?)

Richard Hutchinson wrote:

>AFAIK there's only Alex, George and Mark (Robson) actively Vec coding at the
>moment

Hey, I resemble that remark...

But more to the point of this thread - The big problem with the 3D
glasses is that you effectively need to double the framerate of the
Vectrex. You need to draw both left and right eye versions of the
scene in the same time you would normally only draw 1 version of the
scene.

Given that driving the video hardware take up a huge amount of CPU
time this tends to seriously limit the maximum complexity of the
scene.

Chris...