Carrier Command mp3...

[Paingiver]

I was feeling nostalgic about the old game music on the Amiga and remembered an audio cassette that came with Carrier Command. So I thought I'd try to track it down on the web. Found it on the second link I checked! :)

You can download the mp3 from here...

http://hangar18.campus.luth.se/exotica/tunes/unexotica/games/Carrier_Command.html

Its the 'Lowe_Dave/Carrier_Command_CDDA.lha' you want to download. :)

[nukinetix]

Nice one mate. The memories...

Carrier Command was a fantastic game back then, and still is even now. When it was ported successfully (pretty much 100%) to our little 8bit speccy (128k only mind you) it was a small miracle - I still consider this port to be one of the greatest technological achievements in videogame history (definitely in the top 20 of all time).

[Paingiver]

Well, I owe all my early memories to the 16k Speccy and my younger bro' who one day came home with one!

[nukinetix]

Was there ever a C64, or an amstrad port of Carrier Command? This would be the kind of game that lies beyond what the C64 hardware could do - but the amstrad should be able to pull it off nicely, especially if they just used the speccy code and limited the screen update to a 256x192 sub-area of the screen (sounds like cheating but a full 320x200 update would slow things down).

I just did a search for the C64 version and all screenshots I could find seem to be using a top-down view, using sprites!! Looks like they butchered it then (might as well not have attempted it in the first place -- if that is true).

What was amazing was that the speccy version looked just as good and fast (minus the color) and played almost just as well as the Amiga version.

[Paingiver]

Was there ever a C64, or an amstrad port of Carrier Command? This would be the kind of game that lies beyond what the C64 hardware could do - but the amstrad should be able to pull it off nicely, especially if they just used the speccy code and limited the screen update to a 256x192 sub-area of the screen (sounds like cheating but a full 320x200 update would slow things down).
.There was indeed an Amstrad version...

http://cpczone.emuunlim.com/reviews/index.php?title=375




I just did a search for the C64 version and all screenshots I could find seem to be using a top-down view, using sprites!! Looks like they butchered it then (might as well not have attempted it in the first place -- if that is true).
.You are correct, it was a top-down view, though why, I have no idea! But according to some mini reviews I have read, it was still a very good stratagy game and that was said by Amiga owners!




What was amazing was that the speccy version looked just as good and fast (minus the color) and played almost just as well as the Amiga version.The Speccy, bless its lil' heart, was supprisingly good at 3D, probably due to keeping things simple, not that you could do complex stuff, but you know what I mean. They knew its limits and kept the graphics at a sensible level. Where as with the C64, they often tried to be too clever making it look good and forgetting the all important framerate.

[nukinetix]

You are correct, it was a top-down view, though why, I have no idea!
The C64 is actually a slow machine if you want to calculate anything, but it can be fast if you want to do some predetermined tasks, like shifting certain chunks of pixels around the screen without scaling and rotation (i.e. limited size 2d sprites and some scrolling). You see, it has a 1mhz cpu which simply can't do maths fast enough and there is not a whole lot that can be done about it. You will find out that other 3d games were also generally inferior on the C64 compared to the speccy and sometimes amstrad versions. However, it is possible that in this case, they managed to retain some of the strategic appeal when they ported CC over.

The reason why the speccy is fast at 3d is a combination of a decent cpu (3.5mhz Z80A with a nice instruction set that helps) and a very simple graphics buffer layout that minimises the amount of data that needs to be moved by the cpu. The amstrad has a faster version of the same cpu, at 4mhz, but it has a larger graphics buffer and hence the cpu needs to work harder in order to do the same thing onscreen - and that is what makes amstrad games underperform, in general, compared to the speccy versions. It is also what makes them more colorful (you can't have it all you see).

In any case, the C64 is like a fish out of the water when it tries to do anything other than certain 2d things, whereas the speccy can pull off 2d tasks while being decent at 3d as well - without the color - precisely because its architecture is more flexible and hence more dependent on the software (i.e. programmer skill). Having said that, I think I've seen some impressive looking stuff, like a wolfenstein-style demo, on the C64 - but don't let that fool you; this does NOT require a lot of computation (and it's not even really 3d, though it looks like it is) - it's just a matter of interpolating values vertically and for that the cpu does not need to calculate much (and incidentally, the cpu instructions necessary to do that sort of task, additions and bit shifts basically, are low-cycle on the C64 so I'm not surprised it can pull it off quite well).

[Paingiver]

Thanks for the detailed info, now I understand. I guess that explains why the Speccy had quite a few 3D games, while the C64's where virtually all 2D.

[jonnymorris]

Actually there was one brilliant game that I can think of which used fast 3D on the c64 - Space Rogue. Although the scenes were set in space and very simple, it was all that was needed (e.g. a couple of space ships dog-fighting, or a space station). I can see how they could have done Carrier Command using this, or even vector 3D would have been better than the old 2D approach imo (it was used to great effect in things like Gunship and F19, in fact I think Gunship used solid 3D). But all the same, I owned both the Atari ST and C64 version of CC and enjoyed them both. I'm currently playing through CC on an Atari ST emulator as it happens, a brilliant way to pass the time! That enemy carrier is a cheating scumbag though, I'm sure I destroyed it twice already!!

Oh, and let's not forget Rescue on Fractalus!

[jonnymorris]

You can download the mp3 from here...

I have the tape, and the Outrun tape too ;)