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The sequel to one of the biggest 16-bit vector games was started on the C64 way back in 1989, trying to improve on the original version.
Way back in August 1988, the 16-bit versions were reviewed. In the interview with Jez San that followed, he says:
“In the end we found some good Commodore 64 programmers and they are going to be working with us. We’re going to supply our routines and lots of help, and they’re going to be programming the 6502… everyone in our company is a 16-bit programmer, no-one wanted to go back to 8-bit.”
Additionally worthy of note, but the Amstrad and Spectrum versions actually surfaced... so no doubt this was no impossible conversion.
An official conversion in the making, which seems to be what we have here. Similar to Mercenary, but nowhere near as good, the game was scrapped due to speed issues, a shame as it was starting to develop nicely and take shape. With the preview which has been out there for a while, you can actually leave the planet, and go into 'Elite' mode and hunt around. Quite an impressive preview, it's not known how complete this preview actually is - though it actually seems to be we believe practically the complete game.
Recently in 2009, we had an email from Pete Baron who said that this was his game!.... Whilst working on Myth, Pete was offered to do the C64 conversion. In total, 6 months was spent on actual coding whilst doing Myth, and Pete spent a lot of time trying to get up on the 3D side of things on the C64. He had never done any 3D work on the C64 before, but had been promised by Jez Sans to get any resources possible from their team to help. He had some info, but had to do a lot of working out himself. He managed to get some routines and got to work. A bit through the project, Pete demonstrated things to Jez who felt the game was far too slow. Pete then tried to improve things, and did manage to... but then Space Rogue happened...
Space Rogue featured solid filled vectors on the C64 and was very very fast for a 0.98mhz machine. It blew Pete's work out of the water and Jez had seen it too. They now had to try and match Space Rogue, so Pete now had the impossible mission of getting a solid version working. He did just that, but the frame rate was just too poor filled in. In the end, the project was canned and no more. (You can read more detail from Pete in the Creator Speaks section)
Just how the game sneaked out in its current form is unknown, but the fantastic news was that Pete did actually do a complete conversion of the game in the end that never got released, and in two flavours... the wireframe edition, and potentially a filled vector version too.
Pete in late 2010 dug out all the remains he had of Starglider 2, which was believed to be the very last build of the game.
Jani Tahvanainen very kindly spent a lot of time digging through and reconstructing the game. Unfortunately though it seems that once compiled, that even though the date suggests it was a last build - the preview seems far more complete in comparison.
The version salvaged does not feature a complete game panel area, and starts with a test screen with Pete's name mentioned and a date of 1988. You can use the F1 key to start moving around, and going into space just gives you a black screen. Unfortunately although the Solid 3D flags were present in the source code, the actual implementation doesn't seem to be present.
It is believed that an additional block of work was done to get the panels in and starfields, and the solid 3D work was completed. It seems very much so that the preview which we already had may well be a build from the very final version of the source code. Just sadly we won't be able to unlock the solid 3D version without the source. As a result, this could be a complete version of Starglider 2, though it may need playing through to clarify.
However, as well as getting a build of the game which has elements not in the preview, a long lost piece of work by Bob Stevenson has been salvaged, and would have been the game's loading screen. Also Pete has very kindly allowed us to release the source code that was recovered, which you can now download to check out for yourself. There are two versions, Pete's original supplied source code, and a tweaked/fixed up version by Jani.
So we have to now close the case for this one (Unless the supplier of the old preview to GP has the sources?), as what Pete recovered was all that Pete had and could still be read from disk. Every physical piece of media was dumped after digitally preserving what could be preserved, and before Pete left the UK to travel the world.
Have an explore around and see what you can uncover. Maybe there is more to the old "preview" than we all first thought?
Space
exploration going a step further on the C64... Case closed!
Frank and Andrew.
(Additional
source credits - Glenn Rune Gallefois, Pete Baron, Bob Stevenson, Patrick Furlong, Jazzcat, Jani Tahvanainen) |
