The 8 bit guy just casually dropping a video about the most complex game he ever made without any prior promotion. Legend.

@andiback

4 ай бұрын

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

@jonasthemovie

4 ай бұрын

Best kind of KZread. No hype. No Premier.

@HOLLASOUNDS

10 күн бұрын

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.

@The8BitGuy

5 ай бұрын

Indeed. Otherwise, I would have compared it to a 32 Mhz 8088.

@exactingbirdy2601

5 ай бұрын

Tbh old assembly code always intrested me it would be cool to learn how to write and use it

@johnnylongfeather3086

5 ай бұрын

Six day old comment??

@jhoughjr1

5 ай бұрын

lol no it doesn’t

@alextrusty2585

5 ай бұрын

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).

@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330

5 ай бұрын

Under rated comment

@Ansatz66

5 ай бұрын

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.

@tsuikagura

5 ай бұрын

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 )

@RobKMusic

5 ай бұрын

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.

@JaguarPanda

4 ай бұрын

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

@bland9876

5 ай бұрын

I don't think he really mentions x1 so I was like wtf did he start with x2 for?

@jokkemursula8731

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@bland9876

4 ай бұрын

@@jokkemursula8731 oh he just left it as a tech demo?

@jokkemursula8731

4 ай бұрын

@@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

@Iliek

5 ай бұрын

He's obsessed and will burn out

@FTfilm

5 ай бұрын

@@Iliek Dont you have somewhere else to whine? Edit: Nope, only your antisemitism and fake news you share. Nothing that makes you wonder.

@jayocaine2946

5 ай бұрын

@@Iliek Nice projection

@andywest5773

5 ай бұрын

@@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.

@onedeadsaint

5 ай бұрын

@@Iliek well aren't you a lovely little prickly thorn. adorable!

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.

@Loki-

5 ай бұрын

So you mean apm **was** important. 👍

@KX36

5 ай бұрын

@@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

@ch33rfulness

5 ай бұрын

I did the same with Warcraft/Starcraft. If I wanted my unit to go a specific path, I kept clicking 🫢 Great games 😬

@dparks256

5 ай бұрын

2023 playing OpenRA, still playing harder to play smarter with pathfinding.:)

@absalomdraconis

4 ай бұрын

​@@KX36 : If I recall correctly, at least in SC1 there was also a minor speed improvement with each click. Perhaps that continued into SC2?

As a longtime RTS fan, I'm always happy to see the genre getting some love.

@ens8502

5 ай бұрын

Yeah Starcraft forever 🌟🌟🌟

@WeWillAlwaysHaveVALIS

5 ай бұрын

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!

@Bobbias

5 ай бұрын

@@ens8502 been watching professional broodwar off and on since 2009. Also excited to see what StormGate brings to the table.

@herrbonk3635

4 ай бұрын

What is RTS? (Return from subroutine?)

@ens8502

4 ай бұрын

@@herrbonk3635 real time strategy

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 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

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. 😁

This looks really great David! Congrats on finishing it!

David, this is fantastic work, I’m so impressed. I love following your channel.

This game looks awesome! You should be proud of all the hard work and problem solving you put into it.

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!

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.

Cool to see your games on steam, I'll be sure to pick them up in the future!

Good job David. Cheers and Merry Christmas to you and your entire family.

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.

What a fantastic video! The units asking the player for help also adds some nice charm to the game

Man, I love these gamedev-focused videos. So interesting!

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!

Thank you David excellent skills. Merry Christmas .

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.

I am impressed by the bridge route finding. C&C I think was way worse in such situations.

I can't imagine what goes into creating a game-wow! That looks so cool-congratulations! Thanks for another great video!

I didn't think there would be a new game so quickly! Great work!

Well done David!! Very fun and interesting to watch.

Awesome! Love all the details about the game design philosophy. Very cool video

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.

@Starchface

5 ай бұрын

I think the studio was intended for working on hardware, and here it wasn't needed.

The first clip of moving units and the sound was sweet. Blew my mind.

Totally awesome! I love both demakes and rts games. It's cool to see "new-retro" games!

I just started learning about how computers work and this stuff is amazing. Awesome video :)

Great to see another of your videos David.

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!

you're an absolute legend. i look forward to future releases of this game. the plane and boat look neat! networking support when?

Thanks for the Steam love!

You always impress me, good job!

So good been playing it a lot very well dun sir !!!

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.

cant wait for the full release! waiting to buy my own!

This looks fantastic! Happy to see a Commander X16-specific "killer app" become available, and an RTS at that!

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.

Excellent work mate. Wow. 👌🏼

What a dude. Thanks, I can't wait to play with this

love the thumbnail and “catchy” title. hope it brings you more attention because you definitely deserve it ❤

congratulations looks amazing.

Great ob david. Cant wait to play it

Epic work man!

Love the Techmoan map tile!

@volvo09

Ай бұрын

I was looking for someone who spotted that. There is an LGR one too.

Awesome work!👍

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!

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.

@DailyCorvid

5 ай бұрын

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 :)

@belstar1128

5 ай бұрын

its not easy these guys got a lot of experience

Congratulations for the game! It looks great!

Awesome work!

Thank you for clarifying. I have heard so many other meanings of PCB on that other channel, I'd forgotten the true meaning.

Looking forward to play it on Steam, good job Dave.

@Someitguy-97

4 ай бұрын

Planet X2, X3 and PetSCII robots are on Steam too.

@KeMeEscupaUnPollo

4 ай бұрын

@@Someitguy-97 did not know that, thanks!

Amazing work. EDIT: some old games would harcode in the map default paths units could follow for problematic areas where pathfinding wasn't enough.

As always, thanks for making the video!

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!

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.)

Amazing work!

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.

Fantastic work!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍

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....

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.

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!

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.

Yo, I'm psyched with the Steam release. Finally will be able to play this here in Australia!

@Someitguy-97

4 ай бұрын

It is up. Also a discount bundle for the Planet X Trilogy.

Nice work David!

Sick AF, bro! 🐐😎🎉

ooo this is very exciting, i LOVE planet X3 and the whole series :)

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.

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 phenomenal. 👍

Looks like your projects are coming along swimmingly. All the best, and Merry Christmas to you and yours.

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.

@henriqueseganfredo1166

5 ай бұрын

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.

@TranscendentalAirwaves

5 ай бұрын

@@henriqueseganfredo1166 Note that I said "someone".

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".

Thank you for helping billy out with his apple 2 plus

Every time I'm scrolling through my recommendations and see an 8-bit guy video, I literally say "oooh"

Brilliant ❤🔥

Well done it looks great!

"the most complex game ever created on a 6502 processor" Right on Commander.

9 Bit Guy strikes back! :)

LOL and that subtle dig (in great fun of course) at Christian Simpson LOL

Mega! I would give 1000 thumbs. Thank you!

There are several thousands of ZX Spectrum NEXT users after their second Kickstarter campaign. And there are talks about the third one. That machine would run that game for sure (FPGA implemented up to 28 MHz Z80, 256 colour graphics, at least 768k of RAM). I know it runs another CPU but there was a ZX Spectrum conversion of your PETSCII Robots, maybe they could help. I've got my ZX Spectrum NEXT recently and as far as I enjoy the machine and the old software I think the native games for the platform are not that impressive. The RTS would be a hit in my opinion.

@TheBroz

5 ай бұрын

Beat me to this comment, 100% agreed. There’s almost 10,000 Spectrum Nexts out there. Would love to see a port of this to the Next.

@TrollSuperStar

5 ай бұрын

Another upvote for the Spectrum Next. It definitely has the power to run this game.

@j.tann1970

5 ай бұрын

All the new KS2 Nexts are 2MB of RAM thanks to the stretch goals of the campaign being met but even KS1 models not upgraded should have no problems with a port of this game 🙂

@TheBroz

5 ай бұрын

The problem is the Next uses the Z80N processor. To port a 6502 game would require a ground up re-write. If some one is out there to do this then maybe David would be willing to support.

@j.tann1970

5 ай бұрын

@@TheBroz The game has been ported to the 8086 processors which are very similar to the Z80 as the Z80 was an alternative to the 8080. The Z80N is a modified version of the Z80 with extra functionality that the Next makes use of.

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.

Nice work!

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

Fans of a certain age - always enthusiastic on that enhanced colour pallet and related bit depth etc

I was stoked to see that a lot of your games made it to Steam, why not mention it earlier or have i missed it?

I actually really appreciate you putting it on Steam, as it makes it much easier to run through something like a Steam Deck.

Impressive to see how far you made since the ibook days =)

Crazy what people have managed to do on old 8bit systems over the years. Awesome work!!

@thorham1346

5 ай бұрын

This is a new 8bit system running at 8mhz.

@cnr_0778

5 ай бұрын

The X16 is actually a brand new system!

@SturmFlut

5 ай бұрын

There is just so much better tooling nowadays. Better compilers/assemblers, emulators, proper image editing software, ...

@alonecoder600

5 ай бұрын

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.

I really enjoyed the pathfinding explanation

Love your videos! Happy holidays to you and your family and a safe in 2024. I’m messaging you from Newfoundland Canada 🇨🇦

Wonderful to see that others are still using Paintshop Pro 6!

Bringing the game to the X16 is most definitely a great achievement and proof of the impressive functionality of such a great 8-bit platform.

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.

Woah, that put the bar so high now ! Next time, I hope for a game where you can play the Protoids for once (or as an "opposing force" extension to this current game ?). Maybe multiplayer Head 2 Head could be the next challenge !