Retro Video Gamer

Yes, that's right, a brand new Homebrew port of the classic Atari / Namco racer : Pole Position will shortly be making it's way to an Atari ST near you and it's around half-complete at the moment. No downloads at the moment, but there's a Youtube video (along with some detail on the history of the project) that you can watch here :

QuoteThis video is a work-in-progress preview of my conversion of the Pole Position arcade coin-op for the Atari ST computer. I always felt it to be a bit of a shame that only the 8-bit machines received (somewhat mediocre) conversions of this classic arcade game and so recently decided to do something about it. If you're familiar with the arcade game, you might recognise the sequence in the video as being the demo mode from the arcade game.

The conversion is based upon my "ppengine" library - a library containing the reverse-engineered logic from the original arcade game. This library is also used in my as-yet-unnamed Pole Position remake for modern computers - which in contrast to this version, runs in fully hardware-accelerated 3D.

The work on this conversion is around half-way complete - I still have a fair bit of work to do in the following areas:

- Sound - there's none yet! If anybody knows about ST sound programming and wants to get on board, I'd be glad of the help.
- Graphics - I haven't implemented all of the billboard types yet, and there's no starting line, gantry or puddles on the track. No car explosions, no clouds in the sky yet, and there's no title screen.
- Performance - you'll be able to see from the video that the frame rate is somewhat lacking - I think it's around 8-10fps for the most part on a standard 8Mhz ST. Most of the graphics code is currently in C, apart from the car and billboard realtime scaling routine which has been written in moderately optimized 68000. I'm not yet sure how much more performance I can gain without either losing graphical quality or doing things that are likely to take forever. If you're familiar with 68000 optimization I'd be glad of a hand in this area.
- Memory optimization - it's currently running on a 1 meg machine only. I hope to have it running on a 520 at some point.

I don't intend to implement a high score table or the spinning "game over" screen on this conversion (neither are particularly interesting things to work on) but I'm hoping that all other sequences from the arcade game will make it over intact.

I'm hoping to release the code as open source once it's finished and I've had a chance to tidy it up. Perhaps somebody might like to convert to the Amiga.

screenies of this beauty


regular updates on his Twitter feed can be found here : https://twitter.com/RetroRacing. (https://twitter.com/RetroRacing)

Source: Atari Forums <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smiley.gif" alt=":)" title="Smiley" />

p.s. here is his Windows port in production also, I'm soo hot for this port!!

I have to say that looks bloody awesome.

yeah..it's very impressive, and one of those Games that got ported to every platform and never to the Atari ST or Amiga, yet no body cop'ed it before or attempted a port of this before till now, if this does make it across in perfect form, I'll make sure it gets the Amiga Port treatment, I have friends in high places now..lol...

Wow! This is really damn cool!  :63:

have a look at the new video I tagged on the bottom..fucking epic!!....

I don't like how that new version looks personally 

Wow that ST port looks awesome! 

looks great. What kind of library are you using to port them quickly to other platforms? In 1980 I used my own to port games from Amiga to PC and Atari ST and vica versa. 2 Weeks per game to port to C, 1 day for each target system. The Atari ST with 8Mhz outperformed a 80486 in memory copy operation and even the Amiga with blitter was only a few clock cycles faster than the Atari ST.

For sound it is quite easy: directly program the sound chip for engine and brake sound. digitize a sound in .WAV and convert to MOD or format the Atari ST is able to handle directly.

Does the Atari ST version run on monochrome as well?

No fella it's not me porting this  :).

but thanks, for giving me a big head for a brief period of time lol..I don't actually know who the guy is or have a name for him, but he can be contacted via his you tube channel and @ Atari Forums.

Just an update on this port with a new gameplay video

[align=center:1bm0gqtf]www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8_UpVO9qng&feature=youtu.be (//http)[/align:1bm0gqtf]

Coming along nicely!

Now they need to make the wheels move and add some sound!

Yeah, he has allot of work still to do with it, but has openly admitted he is no sound guru and reckons this is going to be his biggest challenge getting good engine sound in here, I think he should just rip one from another game, Continetial Circus comes to mind for it.

There are tons of great ST musicians out there, shouldn't really be a problem.

That's really looking nice.

LOL, This Pole Position kicks 7800 butt! 

Quote from: &quot;walter_j64bit&quot;LOL, This Pole Position kicks 7800 butt! 

It certainly does! Great to see you here Walter!!!!

That's a sexy reincarnation Greyfox

Greyfox can this Pole Position be ran from a hard drive? 

The port is being done on Floppy as far as I know, but it's some time away from completion, secondly I'm not involved in this project other than to create awareness for the it here at RVG, lol..that's twice now I've been associated to been attached to it.. but I'm sure when it's done, it will be very straight forward to put this on a HD for loading.. it's some feat none the less, he also has a PC port happening as well, but this will be a handy port to the Amiga when it's completed 

Well its exactly a month since the last update, today has had a new demo video added with lots of bug fixes

http://youtu.be/q7CkJvXRi-0 (//http)

Here's what's new

Here's another work in progress video for Atari ST Pole Position, showing progress made in the last month. The video firstly shows the demo mode, after which a player-controlled qualifying session and race is completed.

New features/improvements shown in this video include:

- Starting lights
- Puddles in track during race session
- 'Game Over' caption during demo mode
- Better frame rate
- Checkered road markings at start line
- Less glitchy opponent car rendering
- Less glitchy background scrolling
- Correct colours on title screen
- Exploding cars
- Correct flashing of colours during post qualifying/race report

There are still lots of incomplete features and glitches, but I hope to iron many of these out before the next update.

This keeps looking better and better.

Quote from: &quot;TrekMD&quot;This keeps looking better and better.

Ditto

Hi everyone,

I'm the author of this conversion and just wanted to reassure you all that work is ongoing, if a little slower than I'd hoped. I've just posted up a new video representing progress in the last couple of months - most of which has been in the performance department. The frame rate of the game is now about 50-60% better than in the previous video - it makes a big difference!
[align=center:2hmb662g]so here's a link to the video:[/align:2hmb662g]
[align=center:2hmb662g]www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLKrqcY88aU (//http)&[/align:2hmb662g]

Welcome Chicane to RVG delighted you've joined us here, yes I'm a big follower of yours over at Atari Forums and have been keeping everyone up to date over here with the great progress of this wonderful arcade conversion your working on, sop please don't be a stranger and keep us all in the loop

I've fixed your post , to embed you tube videos you simply paste the link without "http://" at the beginning of the address..e.g. "www.youtube.com/yourvideoclip" highlight it and click on the center alignment button to make it nice and centered on the post.

Have a good one fella

Welcome to RVG Chicane!  Thanks for joining and updating us about the game.  Great job so far!

Yeah welcome and thanks for taking the time to update us.

Quote from: &quot;zapiy&quot;Yeah wecome and thanks for taking the time to update us.

Ditto.

Wow forgot all about this one, its been e543'ely quite of late, so I'm really hoping he hasn't abandoned the project as it's so good so far, I will resurrect the original threat on the forum he first posted this on and see if he has any updates.

:63:

I have posted an enquiry on what the status on this and hopefully Chicane will get the Time to let us know how it is progressing

Nice one GF.. Keep us posted.

Okay you wanted to be kept posted , so here it is..there has been an update to what has being happening and what the status is..so here it is folks...

QuoteI can only apologise to the fans of this project that have been waiting for news for the last 18 months.

I've spent much of this time trying to carve out some spare time to work on this project, with very little success. So rather than drag things on for a further unknown period of time, I've made the difficult decision to publicly release the work-in-progress version of the game immediately. Even though it's unfinished and a bit buggy, I'm hoping people will gain some kind of interest and enjoyment from

So here's what's in the disk image:

Auto-booting STE conversion of Atari/Namco's Pole Position arcade game (just insert disk and boot machine);Requires STE, 1 Meg and joystick (only tested on Steem, assumed to work on real STE but tell me if not!)Game mechanics are virtually complete - rolling demo, qualifying session and race session are all in;Uses reverse-engineered game logic from original arcade game;However, high score table, some graphical niceties and all sampled sound from the arcade version are missing;Basic YM engine sound and some other beeps are present;Makes use of STE blitter chip to provide a smoother frame rate;Over 16 colours on screen (probably around 24-28);Uses software sprite scaling (uncommon in ST games) to draw cars and roadside objects.
Controls - press fire on joystick to start game, up to accelerate, down to brake, left/right to steer and fire to toggle lo/hi gear.

Ignore the "August 2014" date on the booting screen - this build is representative of much more recent progress.

Feel free to play the game, distribute/upload the disk image, write reviews, reverse engineer, capture videos/screenshots, ask technical questions - whatever really. As with most ST stuff nowadays, this has been a hobby project with no commercial value, so I can't really think of any type of usage that I'd object to!

Pole Position beta Atari STe can be downloaded here  (http://www.atari-forum.com/download/file.php?id=30000)

So it seems the ST has being getting some amazing attention of late and is o ly the beginning,  there will be a special Atari ST related  announcement nearing the end of the month, so yep a great time to get into this wonderful machine and see all it has to offer.

I've just seen the 2015 build and it looked great then. Anyone tried it yet? I've not had an ST for years, my last one would of run this as it was a late 1mb STE I bought for peanuts from Dixons (£45 brand new), I sold it a year later for £150 to a guy wanting it it for midi work.

I loved Pole Position in the arcade. And the music and audio was emense.

I will be playing it 2moro , will give my full verdict, and yes like yourself I was an avid fan of the arcade original. Such great times and great memories of that era back in 1982..nothing can match those days