Thrust

dulsi

Back in college I played a remake of Thrust under svgalib. Svgalib required you to run as root without X windows or Wayland. It is apparently still available on Fedora. I don't know if it works. Instead I ported the Thrust remake to SDL2. Unfortunately I have not figured out how to get the autoconf/automake setup to build it. I hacked the generated makefile to get it running.

It looks like the main screen is taken directly from the original game so I'd like to replace that. Perhaps rename it as well. There is Thrust 30 online and in app stores. It's open source but the levels aren't. They have a really nice ship which I've thought of using and maybe some other graphics although they are at a higher resolution.

ffaf

dulsi nice job, I would really love to play this. I have filed a bug.

dulsi

In case anyone else wants to try it. I haven't figured out how to modify the autoconf scripts to work. The solution right now is:

./configure
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

The configure step is just needed for the config.h file. I'd like to get rid of the need to do that in the future.

dulsi

I'm thinking of renaming the game. A clone of a game should have a unique name. I've tried various synonyms of thrust but none really appealed to me. I've thought of using gravity in name. The one I like the best so far is Gravstruggle but I'm not sure of it. Maybe it should be Gravity Struggle or maybe I should go with something else entirely.

poVoq

"Turboboost"

"Newton"?

Peter

An important part of the game is inertia (both moving and still). So maybe "inertia"? But I really like "Newton"!

dulsi

There is already a game named Newton. Turboboost seems more like a racing game not to mention people might wonder where the turbo boost button is. Inertia is an interesting word. "Inertia Counter"? Thurst seems move active maybe I should go with something like "Inertia Blast".

poVoq

"Inertia Blast" sounds good to me 🙂

Peter

Or maybe "Impulse" or "Impetus"?

dulsi

Here is the original title screen copied from the C64 version I believe.
Thrust Title Screen
Here is a mockup of a Inertia Blast title screen.

I think it could use a starfield in the background. I'm not entirely pleased with it but I have limited art skills. The ship was created with leocad. I did some tweaking afterward to remove a little of the Lego feel.

Peter

Yes some star background wouldn't hurt. (BTW There are several assets at opengameart.org with the search-word "starfield".)

I think the look of the starship and the ball are not optimal, but it is not bad. Unfortunately the ship and the ball don't have a matching drawing style.

dulsi

They are both rendered by leocad but they are different scale which causes the different look. I built a new orb with similar size to the ship and added a starfield.
Inertia Blast Title Screen

Peter

That looks good! But ship and orb should have the same "colour" (brightness/grey-scale).

dulsi

I decided to see how it would look with a less dense starfield used in game. Also noticed the ship and engine flame layers were incorrect.
Inertial Blast Title Screen

Peter

To me the first starfield looks better (but only slightly, so I don't care much). I can't see any mistake in the flame. Again: This looks already quite good to me. :)

dulsi

Ok. I hacked the title screen in. The palette setup is weird in the game which made it much harder than it should have been. I replaced the story text as well since it seems like it may have been copied as well. Next goal is probably the ship. Not sure if I should fix the palette handling or hack that in as well. Autoconf has been ripped out. You should be able to build with just cmake now.

dulsi

Replaced the ship game image.
Inertia Blast New Ship

dulsi

Replaced the fuel image and the power plant image. Initial Gamerzilla support has also been added. I only added two achievements for the moment.
Inertia Blast Screenshot

dulsi

The latest Open Game Source article covers Inertia Blast.