Pole Position arcade game remake using reverse engineering

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Pole Position arcade game remake using reverse engineering

Postby chicane » 04 Jan 2014, 03:36

Hi all,

I've just uploaded a video to Youtube showcasing my new project currently named "ppengine". This is a remake of Pole Position, the 1983 Atari/Namco arcade game, with the game logic having been derived through reverse engineering of the Z8002 code in the original arcade roms. The somewhat dated graphics of the original have been replaced with a polygon-based 3D engine featuring texture mapping and shadowing effects.

There's a lot more information in the description accompanying the Youtube video, the link for which is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_rbL6dtxs

Feel free to post any feedback/questions either here or on the Youtube video - I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.
chicane
 
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Re: Pole Position arcade game remake using reverse engineeri

Postby Kroah » 05 Jan 2014, 22:16

Hello Chicane,

Having read your first attempt with Grid Leader, i understand your feeling and the reason you started again from scratch but this time with the soul of the game.
Imho, even if the graphics give the first impression of a remake ("ho, it uses those old graphics, seems to be a good remake !"), as soon as the player starts the game, the real feeling comes up : the soul is all the internal mechanics of the game that are not directly visible to the player, but, when put together, gives the gameplay of the original game, with or without the old gfx.

It seems you did a great job getting those mechanics from your disassembled code and the video reflects this.
The new graphics are slick and the blocky polygons of the car remind me the blocky pixels, i like that.

Keep up the good work and please, keep us informed of any playable alpha release :).
Kroah
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Re: Pole Position arcade game remake using reverse engineeri

Postby chicane » 09 Jan 2014, 22:39

Thanks for your kind words Kroah.

I know what you mean about the "soul" of the game. I think the "woah" moment for me was when I got to the point where the demo mode was working correctly in the remake, and I ran the original game in MAME alongside the remake. On one side of the screen was a primitive and block 80's view of the race, and on the other side was a high-definition view of exactly the same cars in exactly the same positions, but running in high-resolution 3D polygons! It definitely felt like a landmark moment.

I'll keep you posted on the initial release of the game - it should be sometime on or before March.
chicane
 
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Re: Pole Position arcade game remake using reverse engineeri

Postby chicane » 22 Jan 2017, 13:25

I've now released the C/C++ source code for this remake - hopefully it'll be of interest to readers of the forum:

https://github.com/jonathanopalise/ppengine

Feel free to fire any questions my way.
chicane
 
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