In converting Battle Squadron to iPhone/Android we from the beginning wanted to make an exact “copy”, conserving the highly praised game-play of the original Amiga version. Although all coding is redone manually, we have succeeded in this.
After setting up basic OpenGL for displaying graphics, the general game technology platform was completely re-designed and implemented, including for example background scroll and printing of sprites. On the Amiga the co-processors were pushed to the limit to allow updating every frame (50 frames per second) for fast moving objects – as it should be for any great shoot’em up 😉 The highly optimized 68000 assembler source code to do this was “untangled” and converted to C/C++ in a more generally applicable format.
It has surely been a challenge to make this and in particular the “enemy logic” exactly like in the original. In keeping with the theme of making an exact replica, the outstanding graphics of the original has naturally also been preserved. The result is a game-play that is 100% identical to the original Amiga version. In fact, the movements of the space-ships in the clip are taken from the originally recorded demo-play, playing when the game is in “idle mode”.
If you are lucky to own the original, please feel free to compare to two 😉
Hi there,
Thanks for the feedback and support 🙂 Yes, controls is something that we will pay particular attention to as it is a challenge on the iPhone.