Substation

Graphics
Features up to 54 colours on-screen simultaneously (introduction screen)
Features up to 22 colours on-screen simultaneously (in-game)
Features digitized graphics (introduction screen)
Features overscan (options or static screen)

Sound
Features digitized title soundtrack at 25KHz (stereo)
Features digitized menu soundtrack at 25KHz (stereo)
Features digitized static screen soundtrack at 25KHz (stereo)
Features digitized sound fx at 12.5KHz (stereo)

Hardware
Supports Blitter
Supports STe DMA sound
Supports STe palette
Supports STe hardware scrolling
Supports MIDI for multiplayer action

Origins
From Atari-Forum September 3rd 2025:

UDS was basically formed around the creation of Obsession. Substation was started as the next project halfway through Obsessions development and a new team was formed for that consisting of Mikael "Empa" Emtinger and Oskar Burman (members of Zeal and Anatomica respectively). A bit later they were joined by Olov Lassus, who I think was 14 at the time. I think also Carl Lundqvist (who did most programming on Obsession) joined in after Obsession was completed.

They wanted to do "Doom for Atari" and discussed the project with Peter Zetterberg (our Managing Director) who gave them the green light and involved himself in designing the game. It was very much their project - but me, Hans Härröd (Shrimp/New Core) and Jimmy Gustavsson got involved in doing sound playback, sprite zooming and some graphics respectively, but we were hardly involved beyond that. A number of outside people were also commissioned to do graphics and sound.

Olov was still in elementary school, Empa was doing his last year in "gymnasium" (~High School) and Oskar was doing his military service more than 1.000 kilometers away from the rest. He somehow got a special room in the barracks where he could put up his Atari and do some development. Almost everybody was living in different cities so communication was over phone calls and exchanging code and graphics through a BBS. We all gathered together in copy-party-esque meetings over weekends and holidays as regularly as we could to crunch through things together, sometimes all night long. I remember Empa had an incident in chemistry class on a Monday after such a meeting where he could have lost his eyes, caused by his sleep deprivation.

Development through phone calls, BBS and irregular copy-party-style meetings was also a big part of Obsessions development, but there the three members of the core team lived in the same town and met regularly which made things easier.

Substation didn't use any C2P routine. I don't think anyone had made fast C2P routines for the Atari when development started, at least we were not aware of any and assumed it wasn't feasible. As far as I remember the walls were drawn using something best described as a custom gouraud shaded polygon renderer written by Empa that was optimized for just doing rectangular wall segments. That it got white up front was just a result of how light setting was configured as far as I understand.

It could probably have been quite much faster, Empa didn't write the fastest code, but he was very productive, had great ideas and a Jack of all trades that could both code, design and do 3D modelling.

The sprite zooming was done by Hans and was very fast. I did the sound system which was a simple but quite fast 2 channel, fixed frequency 12.5 kHz sound engine with volume and panning control.

The image at the end of the game was drawn by some Amiga artist not part of the team that was hired specifically to make that. The weapon sounds were actually real guns being fired at a shooting range sampled specifically for the game, done by a friend of Excellence In Art who also made the main menu music (with some help from Excellene In Art).

The photo of the diver is actually Peter who did scuba diving back then and had (or had access to) diving equipment. The picture was actually taken under water by a friend of his who was a professional photographer who was paid with a bottle of whiskey. Peter was good at keeping costs down. :)

Of the programming, I know that Olov did the AI, networking and (I think) the mini-map. I remember that we were quite amazed that he being just 14 did what we considered to be the hardest parts of the game. I also think he was quite new to programming, only having coded for half a year or so before he started but I might be wrong on that one. How the rest of the coding was divided between Empa and Oskar I don't know, except for Empa doing the maze rendering.

While Obsession was pushed hard towards technical brilliance with demo technology throughout the game, the same was never really done for Substation, except for the sprite zoomer. There was certainly room for improvements. I think the main reason was that me and Hans were the ones who strived for technical and visual perfection and lobbied and worked for that in Obsession and we were not as involved in Substation. Empa, Oskar and Peter were more focused on story, gameplay and actually getting the game done in a reasonable time.

As an example of what could have been improved, the in-game screen was first cleared by copying a whole 4 bitplane image containing the floor and ceiling gradients, taking most of a full vsync. This could have been done better looking and almost twice as fast by simply using rasters and just clearing the screen. In the end the background was cut in half and mirrored, a slight improvement. Another example is that the walls are drawn as displayed while they could have been drawn half the height and mirrored before adding the sprites. Numerous other simple things could have been done, like using rasters to give the status bar a separate palette, but those things were never a priority.

Oskar and Empa were close friends and they made a great duo. I think that really showed in their next game, which was Ignition for the PC. :)

User: tord, Norrköping, Sweden