This RTS runs on an 8-Bit Computer!
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- Опубликовано: 5 июн 2024
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Play on Steam - store.steampowered.com/app/27...
Download the game and emulator here:
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Watch playthroughs here:
• Let's Play Planet X16 ...
The 8 bit guy just casually dropping a video about the most complex game he ever made without any prior promotion. Legend.
It's the best strategy he could manage, releasing a demo to public before finishing the work dissipates the energy too early and the final game will never show up
Best kind of RUclips. No hype. No Premier.
I find it fascinating because about 18 years ago I was making all the graphics for a game like this but set in space, 240 colour pallet 2D game and bit graphics but at a larger scale. I made hundreds of spaceships, little plannets, buildings inside and out and all sorts of units from primitive to modern day and futuristic bassed on the level of advancement for the humanoid races. I dont think I'll ever get the time or skills to bring My game to life but if any programmer wants to code My game that ould be cool.
Having written 6502 and 286 assembly, the 286 is much more cycle efficient than a 8088. I could say, closer to 6502, but handling 16 bits in one instruction, so fewer instructions needed. 1 mhz of 286 beats 1 mhz of 6502 any day.
Indeed. Otherwise, I would have compared it to a 32 Mhz 8088.
Tbh old assembly code always intrested me it would be cool to learn how to write and use it
Six day old comment??
lol no it doesn’t
Oh, my... let me just disagree :)
I know a lot of ancient games used to use pre-baked way points into each map, so for long range travel, they knew how to get from A to B without having to do runtime pathfinding.
You could still use any algorithm you wanted (even A*) if you only ran it once at design time in your map editor. That doesn't account for runtime terrain changes (i.e.building structures), but if you look at Warcraft 1 and 2 for example, the AI was programmed not to build in such a way that it couldn't path around it's own structures. And for enemy structures, it could just attack them.
For a way point system, as long as there are 5 to 10 way points in each map and the units can use the "dumb" algorithm to get to a way point and then follow it from there to the macro point it needs. Once it gets to the prebaked macro way point, it can go back to dumb path finding to get to the micro destination.
If you need a lot more way points, you can store them as a b-tree or quad-tree (which can be searched on a slow computer much faster than an array, it's how doom was able to run on such slow hardware).
Under rated comment
It is strange that he made no comment about considering more sophisticated pathfinding solutions like this. Maybe he had reasons for not using pre-baked pathfinding, but it sounds like he never even considered the possibility.
Thanks, I was wondering how it was done. It makes so much sense. You know highway 101 takes you near the destination, so you first look for the ramp, drive down, take the exit, and then look around locally (just translating to my own lanugage :D )
Just remarked regarding waypoints before seeing this post. Your post is much more detailed and takes it a bit further. I played a lot of WC1 and 2 back in the day. I never thought much about that.
What you're describing is a flow field, isn't it?
For those who don’t know what he is talking about by 5 games when he only mentioned 4 in the video: in 2009, he made Planet X1 for the commodore Vic-20. It needs a 32k ram expansion
I don't think he really mentions x1 so I was like wtf did he start with x2 for?
@@bland9876 He probably doesn't mention X1 because he never quite finished it. I kind of hope he will one day, but I doubt it.
@@jokkemursula8731 oh he just left it as a tech demo?
@@bland9876 It's fully playable, but he had planned to add stuff like 2 player mode and the ability to build defenses for your base. You can find an old video of him showing how the game works.
Your productivity never ceases to amaze me. Is there a moment when you're not doing stuff? Congrats on yet another amazing project
He's obsessed and will burn out
@@Iliek Dont you have somewhere else to whine? Edit: Nope, only your antisemitism and fake news you share. Nothing that makes you wonder.
@@Iliek Nice projection
@@Iliek Or maybe he just has focus, good time management skills, self-control, and doesn't burn all his time doing moronic things like watching TikTok videos.
@@Iliek well aren't you a lovely little prickly thorn. adorable!
I was just playing Warcraft II and I gotta say your pathfinding looks way better. In WC when you try to send a squad of units across a bridge, one guy will block it and the rest will run in the opposite direction. So... great work!
You're amazing!! So proud of you!!! Just incredible to watch you over the years and follow your journey through development as well as the upgrades to the studio, etc! Hope you have nothing but great success with all you do and have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for all you do. 😁
As a longtime RTS fan, I'm always happy to see the genre getting some love.
Yeah Starcraft forever 🌟🌟🌟
While it's not exactly akin to the type of RTS games you are likely referring to, a modern rts game that I think is absolutely head and shoulders above the standard of today is "Gates of Hell: Ostfront". The game is a spiritual successor to the "Men of War" or "Soldiers" of the past and as such feature the "direct control" feature that made those previously mentioned games stand out from the crowd.
The quality of everything from the models and sound design is exemplary and has recently been upgraded massively as part of the free content patch they've released in conjunction with the second full expansion to the game, "Liberation", which shifts the focus from the eastern front to the western front and includes America as a playable faction. The previous expansion was focused on the very seldom featured in video games, winter and continuation wars that took place in Finland and as such includes Finland as a playable faction.
One thing to note is that each faction (where contextually appropriate) not only has differing armies for the early, mid and late periods of the war, but there are different load outs of troops, vehicles and equipment depending on the focus of your forces, be it "offensive", "defensive" or "irregulars" and in some instances/combinations a fourth option for "support" is availability.
The game has a very healthy multiplayer scene and supports up to eight players in a 4 Vs 4 setup. This is also achievable in a singleplayer setup utilising bots.
Speaking of singleplayer, each faction has a campaign to play through and a myriad of so called "skirmish" like missions to play.
This is further expanded by the exceptional modding scene for the game. Which runs the gambit of entire campaigns, mods that add new factions (the best known likely being "Valour" which adds the UK, Japan, Hungary, Italy, France and Poland into the mix, all of which are supported for single player by further mods.
Anyways I have been talking for too long. All that's left to say is that I highly recommend it. The developers are highly active with the support of the game, frequently releasing patches and listening to community feedback, in addition to their work towards the production of further expansions. It is imho fairly priced (as are the expansions, relative to the content they contain) and most certainly value for money.
Sorry for the essay I ended up writing, but if you do check it out I don't think that you are going to regret it! All the best to you and have a great day!
@@ens8502 been watching professional broodwar off and on since 2009. Also excited to see what StormGate brings to the table.
What is RTS? (Return from subroutine?)
@@herrbonk3635 real time strategy
I am impressed by the bridge route finding. C&C I think was way worse in such situations.
David, this is fantastic work, I’m so impressed. I love following your channel.
Offering an in house emulator is just absolutely huge for indie and even more professional content production, having tools that are designed with the actual creator of the system to be machine accurate is an immeasurable aide to people who have access to a computer but may not have the funds to acquire the real x16 hardware. I know you do a LOT of work to make sure these are available for people who want them but having seen many of your update videos I understand why there may also be times when they simply aren't available. You knocked it out of the park with a modern micro with user developed content as a primary feature that also has power us nerds could only dream of having at home back in the 80's. Your effort and care for this niche is definitely apparent and I can't speak for everyone but I'm sure most would agree, it is very noticed and appreciated.
This game looks awesome! You should be proud of all the hard work and problem solving you put into it.
This looks really great David! Congrats on finishing it!
for an idea of how hard a problem pathfinding is, the whole reason "actions per second" is an important metric in esports RTS games is that Starcraft had pathfinding no better than this in 1998 and the best players got around this by clicking move many times a second to force a recalculation of the pathfinding each time so units wouldn't get stuck or head off in the wrong direction.
So you mean apm **was** important. 👍
@@Loki- i haven't watched esports for a few years but last i checked LOL and SC2, people still care in modern titles even though it's not necessary for pathfinding any more. people will still click a spot on the ground to move 10 times a second to keep their apm high
I did the same with Warcraft/Starcraft. If I wanted my unit to go a specific path, I kept clicking 🫢
Great games 😬
2023 playing OpenRA, still playing harder to play smarter with pathfinding.:)
@@KX36 : If I recall correctly, at least in SC1 there was also a minor speed improvement with each click. Perhaps that continued into SC2?
Wow this is so awesome!! I love the graphics are so great, Love your sprites and nice choices for cutscenes too. This is more of a challenging project that modern coders could understand with memory, cpu and code limits for these older system. Keep doing what you do, and happy holidays to you and your family!
This is incredibly made, I wish more modern games had smart design like this. Sadly its harder with differing computer architectures but ive always wondered how far a modern pc could go with old school style techniques like this
Cool to see your games on steam, I'll be sure to pick them up in the future!
im very happy you've decided to keep posting videos about your games.
i love watching people create stuff and how they done it.
and your game is 'unique' (in that other people make their games), and your desicions are unique too, so it's always interesting.
your experince is educational and inspiring for people, even if they make games or not.
Been following this channel & the CX16 project for awhile now. Just preordered the dev edition of the x16 a few days ago, really looking forward to Feb 2024 to get engrossed in the world of 8bit computers, as I was born in the days of Win2000.
Man, I love these gamedev-focused videos. So interesting!
Good job David. Cheers and Merry Christmas to you and your entire family.
Thank you David excellent skills. Merry Christmas .
Well done David!! Very fun and interesting to watch.
I didn't think there would be a new game so quickly! Great work!
I can't stop being amazed by you! I am especially pleased with your attention to small details, so that people would enjoy playing your game. I think this is how all games should be done :)
Thank you!
What a fantastic video! The units asking the player for help also adds some nice charm to the game
I can't imagine what goes into creating a game-wow! That looks so cool-congratulations! Thanks for another great video!
Where did I miss that your games were on Steam? For some reason i've never even thought to look there. Well thank you for saying so and X16 is already on my wishlist!
Awesome! Love all the details about the game design philosophy. Very cool video
I just started learning about how computers work and this stuff is amazing. Awesome video :)
The pathfinding discussion reminds me of the Dune series, where it was frequently possible to trap both enemy units and your own by simply building a really long wall with multiple curves. A human player could just direct their units to intermediate points to bypass the pathing limitations, but enemy units would drive into a corner and get stuck or repeatedly drive back and forth along the same section of wall, removing the need to actually do anything to defend your base.
Totally awesome! I love both demakes and rts games. It's cool to see "new-retro" games!
love the thumbnail and “catchy” title. hope it brings you more attention because you definitely deserve it ❤
The first clip of moving units and the sound was sweet. Blew my mind.
you're an absolute legend. i look forward to future releases of this game. the plane and boat look neat! networking support when?
Great to see another of your videos David.
An unexpected treat. Thanks, David.
An aside: I can't help wondering why we almost never see him in his actual studio these days. He's almost always in the room next door when we see him now. Not that I'm complaining! I just think it's curious.
I think the studio was intended for working on hardware, and here it wasn't needed.
Nicely done man.. I really enjoy watching people keep 8bit alive. I love seeing how people do so much with so little in terms of hardware.
You always impress me, good job!
I'm a physicist and I have knowledge in CS. I watched all your videos even though I didn't live the time of 8 bit computers (I played the NS clone in Brazil master system). I just wanna say your videos are awesome.
Great ob david. Cant wait to play it
Thanks for the Steam love!
cant wait for the full release! waiting to buy my own!
Looking forward to getting a x16, hopefully next year once I finally get moved and have some free time again. Also loved the song at the end which sounds very similiar to the chess scene in the 'Triton- Crystal Dream 2' scene.
Thank you for clarifying. I have heard so many other meanings of PCB on that other channel, I'd forgotten the true meaning.
Not gonna lie, these videos are kinda giving me ideas and making me want to get ahold of one of these old computers and try my own hand at making my own projects.
You should - I always wished to could make games for older systems, the Evercade Home Heroes is particularly great. New games for old systems is such a genius idea I love them all :)
its not easy these guys got a lot of experience
You do fantastic work, everything always looks way better than it should for the hardware its running on.
You should leave the black and white version in as a little eater egg.
Congratulations for the game! It looks great!
I gotta get me one o dem x16's so's I can do my Metroidvania...
Love what you're doing David - can't express enough how much a nerd king trophy this machine has earned you!
This looks fantastic! Happy to see a Commander X16-specific "killer app" become available, and an RTS at that!
Love what you do, mate. Ye gods, imagine if we'd had this game back in 1990 or so. I'd have flunked out of middle school.
What a dude. Thanks, I can't wait to play with this
I am very interested, I'll take a look at running the game with the emulator. Might buy an X16 at some point since I am interested to see all the work you guys have done.
The touch of a unit calling out for help when they get stuck is cute, loving that!
12:32 As mentioned by some other commenters (including @fungo6631 ), the PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 was 65xx-based, and is broadly comparable to the Commander X16 in terms of performance, so it could be a port target. Its small 8 KB of general-purpose RAM could be a challenge, though its CD add-on the CD-ROM² System was fairly common and could supply what's required in addition to allowing a Red Book audio soundtrack. And if that couldn't do it, it has 2 additional (though rarer) RAM upgrades, the Super CD-ROM² System and the Arcade Card. (The latter two when combined with its failed high-end variant the Supergrafx form the most powerful "period" 8-bit computer.)
Looking forward to play it on Steam, good job Dave.
Planet X2, X3 and PetSCII robots are on Steam too.
@@Someitguy-97 did not know that, thanks!
There were a few 8-bit RTS games back in the day. I remember Carrier Command was downconverted from 16-bit and actually worked really well on a 128k Spectrum. One game worth retro-ing over is 1987's Nether Earth, released on the Spectrum 48, the Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC 464. It was a 3-D isometric game taking place over a strip of land, some 8 character squares wide. You had to build robots that went forth to capture and take over neutral and enemy robot factories, as well as battle the enemy robots. Of course the enemy was doing this at the same time. You had various types of robots to construct, and you had to balance time, resources and combat. It was way ahead of its time back then.
Looks like your projects are coming along swimmingly. All the best, and Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Thanks for the almost year end update. It is an amazing amount of work that has gone in to developing the game. The cycle counts of instructions between processors is interesting. I'm implementing a Forth like language for a 6809 processor. I think the 6809 at 2MHz would run faster than an equivalent implementation on a 68000 running at 10MHz. BTW, @11:52 the title of the guide in the rectangular box has a typo. "Refernce" should be "Reference". @11:55 in the answer to the second question "Therefor" should be "Therefore".
Excellent work mate. Wow. 👌🏼
So good been playing it a lot very well dun sir !!!
Yo, I'm psyched with the Steam release. Finally will be able to play this here in Australia!
It is up. Also a discount bundle for the Planet X Trilogy.
Hey David, regarding the path finding algorithm, three different techniques come to mind:
1 - Main highway path: Predefine a "main highway path" across the level. Then, entities only have to "on-ramp" and "off-ramp" from/out of it by using the simpler greedy pathfinding algorithm you currently use.
2 - Sector&portal based: Dissect the map into convex regions (sectors) and store the connections between them (portals). Then, entites can A* on the sector graph and use the simpler greedy pathfind algorithm inside each sector (which is always convex, so the greedy pathfinding method always works). The main idea is that the number of sectors is way lower than the tiles on the map so you don't have to A* on the entire tile set.
3 - The fancy one, use a quadtree: precompute the quadtree of the walkable area of the map. To long to explain here, but you can search it online. This one is really fast. :-)
Awesome work!
That's really nice the path finding algorithm.
During my university, my solution for an efficient path finding algorithm was calculating a single very accurate path finding and then using an efficient solution, like yours, to reach some part of the accurate path. Kind the best of both worlds.
ooo this is very exciting, i LOVE planet X3 and the whole series :)
Amazing work.
EDIT: some old games would harcode in the map default paths units could follow for problematic areas where pathfinding wasn't enough.
Fantastic work!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍
As some one who has followed all the games you made and bought the snes and genesis copys of Petscii robots, i have to say thanks , you gotten me interested in game development on 80s and 90s tech , even though im only good with the music( ive done music for 9+ years now )and color side for now ( as a 21 year old gen z kid , you have inspired me and a others ) hope more people make games as complex as what youve made in the future
This game reminds me of Modem Wars on the C64 (back 1989) where you can play RTS with a friend with a modem. I think that would be a nice idea for the next update for this game and even have it work thru an emulator for us that don't have an X16. I guess you could downgrade the version to work for many old 8bit systems. Would be fun if there was a server and you can have duel matches sort of like those Command N Conquer... I liked Dune 2 RTS more honestly.... keep up the good work, impressed....
As always, thanks for making the video!
congratulations looks amazing.
Awesome work!👍
Amazing work!
I actually really appreciate you putting it on Steam, as it makes it much easier to run through something like a Steam Deck.
That's cool as hell. I would like to give it a try even tho I have an extreme issue committing time to RTS games
Every time I'm scrolling through my recommendations and see an 8-bit guy video, I literally say "oooh"
I really love your videos and all the work you have done it's amazing I never miss any video. I have noticed that the sound in the video is like there's no low frequencies, and I really don't like it 😅, the quality is very good but to hear every high pitched sound is too much for me 😂 maybe it's just me.
Seeing your text file manual I was taken back to the first time I saw the Civipedia in Civ1. It could be fun if your manual could be accessed from a pull-down menu (Planepedia), saving the game state and switching to the Manual application freeing resources.
It's such a wonderful day when The 8-Bit Guy, Perifractic, Adrian Black, and danooct1 all post on the same day!
Love your videos!
Happy holidays to you and your family and a safe in 2024.
I’m messaging you from Newfoundland Canada 🇨🇦
Love the Techmoan map tile!
I was looking for someone who spotted that. There is an LGR one too.
It's probably been mentioned, but the BBC master turbo has a 4mhz 65c102 copro and up to 512kb of ram. But the gfx would be 160x256 in 16 colours but you could use an early 80s palette extender or a modern video nula to choose them from up to 4k colours. The original 2mhz 65sc02 would have to do the gfx and sound. There were also several mice available for it as it was marketed as a business machine.
Mega! I would give 1000 thumbs. Thank you!
This is beyond impressive. Really amazing that you've pulled this off!
Are we suuuuure that’s what PCB stands for? 😂 looks like an awesome project!
Well done it looks great!
Crazy what people have managed to do on old 8bit systems over the years. Awesome work!!
This is a new 8bit system running at 8mhz.
The X16 is actually a brand new system!
There is just so much better tooling nowadays. Better compilers/assemblers, emulators, proper image editing software, ...
Black Raven was a whole Warcraft clone with 32 levels (+many user levels) running on ZX Spectrum 128K (and colour version running on ATM-Turbo 2 from 1992), made in 1997 (colour version later). Its pathfinding was simple: a unit moves by the direction until it hits an obstacle. it tests which way it's shorter to get to the other side, and does so many steps in this way. then it again moves by the direction. its opensource.
It should be ported to the PC Engine, it also uses a 6502 based CPU and it runs at 7.16 MHz.
And has great sound and graphics.
pc engine homebrew is an unexplored frontier. that would be neat
Agreed!
It gets better, looks like NEC even released an official mouse for the PC Engine back in 1992! (it's used by the Super CD-ROM² addon's UI and a few games including the transport management game A.III and the PC Engine port of Lemings) It's a ball mouse with 2 regular and 2 side buttons. I bet it's super rare so a PS/2 adapter would be needed, but it's at least plausible.
@@rustkitty Might not be an issue if playing on MiSTer.
9 Bit Guy strikes back! :)
Wonderful to see that others are still using Paintshop Pro 6!
Nice! I hope someone ports this to MSDOS or some other systems, especially the Mega65 as you mentioned as that platform does seem to lack any specific software. Also it's just nice to see someone make a strategy game for these old computers. You see so many platformers or bullet hell arcade style games but very rarely does anyone ever make strategy games.
I really doubt there will be any Mega65 ports coming from Dave, this comes from the old days where a bunch of retrocomputer projects came thru his hands to be chosen as his "dream computer".
In the very end he decided to build his own.
I think that may give out the source code for whoever wants to do it, but I think that he prefers finishing other software for the Commander X16 or making other ports for real legacy hardware.
@@henriqueseganfredo1166 Note that I said "someone".
Looks phenomenal. 👍
Epic work man!
Thank you for helping billy out with his apple 2 plus
Impressive to see how far you made since the ibook days =)
Pathfinding: one solution could be to have the ability to click out waypoints. If you hold down ctrl you get into multi-waypoint-mode.
Nice work David!
Fans of a certain age - always enthusiastic on that enhanced colour pallet and related bit depth etc
Inspiring. I want to write a turn-based game for the NES someday, but I have a long way to go. I've messed around a little with programming for the Atari 2600, and boy this stuff is daunting.
Awesome!!!!!!!!!! looks great