Exile Tribute: The CD32 version

The artwork from the A1200 and CD32 version>

I have very little information regarding this version of the game so any further facts, comments or even files would be welcome. I understand that the game would be very similar to the A1200 version as essentially, this was the Amiga architecture which was used for the console. Certain differences did exist in the game and its development of which I am aware, so please read on...

The CD32 was a console in contrast to the computers to which all other versions had been ported. I am told the probable reason for the release of Exile on this platform was that the CD32 was essentially an Amiga 1200 in console form and probably it was deemed that this could extend the potential market for the game without too much effort (although in reality there was quite a challenge re-configuring the graphics). The CD32 ran games on compact disc and as might be expected required minimal user input apart from the game playing devices ˜ joysticks etc. Audiogenic inform me that the CD32 version is no longer available unfortunately.

However, Peter and Jeremy enlisted the help of an Exile fan, Tony Cox, in order to convert to this platform as they had done with William Reeve for the 16-bit conversions.

I have as yet been unable to contact Tony Cox and I would be interested to speak to him for the purposes of this page as I am not conversant with the process involved in writing games for a console (e.g where does one get the programming information etc?).

Moreover, the CD32 version is apparantly quite distinct from any other version in that the graphics were intentionally made 50% larger and the process of implementing this proved to be tricky. Peter recalls the difficult process of performing double compressions of the game data:

the CD32 version was 50% zoomed in because, being a console, the player was further from the screen and it was deemed that they couldn't make out details easily enough. This caused unpredicted programming problems mainly to do with dividing coordinates by 3, and thus smooth motion became a problem to solve! Also the game save had to be highly compressed to fit in the limited ram store of the CD32. We had to manually consider each piece of data that had to be saved, work out how many bits were significant, and store this in a bit stream to a buffer, then compress that with further algorithms - doing the reverse for loading from game store.