About
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge is a 1990 racing game published by Gremlin Graphics, originally created for the Amiga by Shaun Southern and Andrew Morris of Magnetic Fields and later ported to several other computers and consoles. Lotus STE is a binary patch project that adds Atari STE-specific hardware enhancements to the existing Atari ST version of Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, patching the original game rather than reimplementing it. Building it requires a specific "Empire" crack disk image of the original ST release.
How it differs from the original
On STE hardware, or ST models with a Blitter chip, the patch adds Blitter-rendered roads and scenery at single-pixel accuracy (versus the original's coarser 16-pixel and 4-pixel intervals), an Amiga-style raster-bar sky gradient, a refined STE color palette, and sampled sound effects and engine noise; non-STE Blitter-equipped machines get a reduced version of these enhancements without the sampled audio.
Getting started
Requires obtaining the original "Empire" crack disk image of Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge separately, extracting its contents into the build folders, and running the project's Makefile (Linux and macOS supported) with several external tools installed (vasm, vlink, lz4, upx, and others). The result is a bootable .st disk image playable in the Hatari emulator, or on real STE hardware with 1MB or more of memory.
Known limitations
- compatibility: Sky gradient features fewer colors on non-STE models with Blitter chip than on true STE hardware.
- audio: Sampled sound effects and engine noise are not available on non-STE models even with Blitter chip fitted.
- graphics: Road and roadside colors are less refined on non-STE models with Blitter chip compared to true STE.
Additional notes
- Roadmap
- Planned future work mentioned in the README includes a fullscreen mode for player 1 and new or modified tracks.