Release Game & Watch Simulators 0.3

[Prometheus]

I bet that you guys don't have the incredibly rare UK-localised Starwing Game Watch, though. (I own the only one I've ever seen.)

Anyway, great release, this - I'm looking forward to trying it out when I get my Pandora back. It's always refreshing to see other folks who don't say "LCD games aren't proper games." - I think that they often don't get the credit they deserve as part of the fabric of gaming history.

 

[Asmo]

OT, but I wonder if anyone will ever get round to re-imaging those classic FL display games (like the Grandstand series) for 3D. Don't laugh - I'm serious. With slightly offset L/R images rather than a single head-on one, the games would look even more authentic, as the screens were usually quite recessed, and the cases more sculpted than LCD ones.

 

[tony11]

I found two on ebay

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=starwing+game+watch&_sacat=0&_odkw=starwing+game+and+watch&_osacat=0&bkBtn=&_trksid=p3286.m270.l1313

Lcd games are great, i think they are going to be perfect on the Pandora, i love what nintendo have done as well releasing there back catalogue of lcd games on the ds and dsi and the more i play them the more i want them. Do you remember the old table top games like astro wars, scramble cave man etc they we pretty good as well i have quite a few of them. If you look at the picture i posted of my collection of lcd games there is a triple screen game called rabbit hop by vtech (it was released in england and was called battling bunny by innovation electronics) that was quite a rare find not seen another on ebay since i got that one.

Edit: i got a reply from the guy who runs Madrigal website he said:

Hello Tony,

thanks for your kind offer. I do have a Zelda G&W but I'm not coding
simulators anytime soon, due to very little spare time for my hobby.

By the way, scans alone are not enough for accurate simulations: I need to
have the real game in my hand to play and test it vastly.

Best regards.

Luca

 

[tony11]

OT, but I wonder if anyone will ever get round to re-imaging those classic FL display games (like the Grandstand series) for 3D. Don't laugh - I'm serious. With slightly offset L/R images rather than a single head-on one, the games would look even more authentic, as the screens were usually quite recessed, and the cases more sculpted than LCD ones.

oh man i really liked those 3D games, i have a sky attack, it reminded me of tron. And you had to be in either direct sunlight or a bright light to play the game

 

[Asmo]

OT, but I wonder if anyone will ever get round to re-imaging those classic FL display games (like the Grandstand series) for 3D. Don't laugh - I'm serious. With slightly offset L/R images rather than a single head-on one, the games would look even more authentic, as the screens were usually quite recessed, and the cases more sculpted than LCD ones.

oh man i really liked those 3D games, i have a sky attack, it reminded me of tron. And you had to be in either direct sunlight or a bright light to play the game

Oh yes, those too! - What I'm getting at though was the existing simulations of them from the likes of Madrigal (Astro Wars for example) use a single 2D photo of the device, so the simulated FL screen appears to be flat on the surface of the thing, whereas in reality the screens were deeply recessed, sometimes with an overlay on the surface of the window - if the person scanning or photographing it for the simulation (or just posterity!) took two slightly offset images, then at some point probably not too far away we could end up playing them on a 3D representation with the FL screen more accurately recreated, for very little additional effort!

 

[zx-81]

Hmm but I would have to do this to each and every surface then? Each game sprite is a different SDL surface, that is exactly positioned by pixel on the screen.

If you want to give a shot, the source is at sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gameandwatch/).

Here is a vertical/fit version : http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/public/pandora/gamewatch/gameandwatch-0.3.1.pnd

 

[gaterooze]

I'm *certain* I had that monkey game...

 

[Prometheus]

I found two on ebay

Unbelievable! :blink: Those are the first two I've seen since 1994! I tip my hat to you, sir! Now I feel incredibly nostalgic.

[/off-topic]

 

[Hitnrun]

Hmm but I would have to do this to each and every surface then? Each game sprite is a different SDL surface, that is exactly positioned by pixel on the screen.

If you want to give a shot, the source is at sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gameandwatch/).

Here is a vertical/fit version : http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/public/pandora/gamewatch/gameandwatch-0.3.1.pnd

Wow it worked pretty well, care to share your patch? Also all simulators have a "game window" configuration, so I can make a zoom for the game area only.

 

[zx-81]

Wow it worked pretty well, care to share your patch? Also all simulators have a "game window" configuration, so I can make a zoom for the game area only.

Source code is on my blog :
http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/public/pandora/gamewatch/gameandwatch-0.3.1-src.zip

btw, i've modified the pnd and remove zzip lib stuff (there is no need, since the pnd is already gzipped, and it's smaller and easier to launch this way, no need to have a dedicated script to modify LD_LIBRARY_PATH etc ...).
There is a Makefile-pnd that should compile and work properly. i took the trunk version from svn.

 

[tony11]

great job guys, i really like what you both have done here