About
The original "Frontier" was created by David Braben and others for the Atari ST, according to the project's own credits. GLFrontier is a reimplementation of the Atari ST game Frontier, built on reverse-engineered code (credited to David Braben and others) plus code borrowed from the Hatari Atari ST emulator. It includes an experimental, largely non-functional OpenGL renderer alongside the original software renderer.
How it differs from the original
This port raises the color palette from the original ST version's 512 colors to 4096 with full dynamic color allocation, adds a Scale2x display mode, fixes an original bug where the milky way wasn't visible until after a hyperspace jump, and replaces the original sound code with 8/16-bit WAV effects (music is not yet implemented). Save files remain compatible with the original Atari ST version.
Getting started
Building requires supplying your own disassembly of the original Atari ST binary, which isn't distributed with the project for copyright reasons. Once built, Ctrl-E toggles between the original software renderer and the experimental (largely unfinished) OpenGL renderer, F11 toggles fullscreen, and Ctrl-M toggles mouse grabbing.
Known limitations
- graphics: The experimental OpenGL renderer has most primitives not yet rendered and is not playable.
Additional notes
- Known limitation
- The experimental OpenGL renderer doesn't yet render most primitives and isn't really playable.