A few days ago I fell in love with the CPC+

[Leonie]

There are no action games like "R-Type" or "Hybris" for the CPC+.
My dearest wish to all the brilliant programmers out there:
Please make a BIG, FAT, MAGNIFICENT shooter for the CPC+.
4096 colours, Hardwarescrolling & sprites, DMA-Sound...make it in a big way!
The CPC+ wants to flex its muscles!
Surely everyone would pay for that and so would I.
Please do that.
PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEE! 

[MacDeath]

 A few days ago I fell in love with the Léonie+...

Mystical : a vertical shooter.
Copter 271 : a vertical shooter...


But yeah, Copter sucks asses (unfinished rushed production) and Mystical is great for a CPC game, unfit as a PLUS production...
And none are Horizontal shooterz...

Burger Party is also some sort of unfinished buzness.

Just too bad the StarSabre maker is not interested in PLUS... prefering good old CPC464 specs...(yet he is great at it)


To be honest, I'm doing some Hardware stuff with my brother just to see if we can emulate the ACID chip properly, results are not guaranted yet.
Timing and clocking of the ACID still remaining a bit unknow and un-documented ATM.... but we'll see.

If by a great miracle this works, Fano will be the first to be supplied with this.
As all the kool PLUS stuffs need a 6128 config or a ROM format to be fully effective.


But perhaps we are a bit to ambitious for the PLUS, while simpler yet great productions may still be done.
After all, a few Hardsprites, some Scroll and just the better palette are enough for a Zynaps style game looking better than CPC...and remaining smooth and playable.

While many may seek for a R-Type like, i have fond memory of Gates of Zendocon on Atari Lynx colour portable console.
it was a freaking great game and may actually not be that hard to get.
After all Atari Lynx was a 8 bit console despite with 16 bit video processor...

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Some say this game is not that good but seriously, I liked it.

In another style, I liked SlimeWorld too... (more like sperm world lol... )
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May be a neat Amstrad PLUS game perhaps.
It existed on Sega MegaDrive too if I remember well...
It has a Rick dangerous feeling, added with a Strider or Gryzor felling too...
and technically may not be that difficult...or is it ?


It is to notice that many games that existed both on Amstrad and Atari Lynx used to be quite good on Amstrad.
Klax, chip's challenge, APB, Sqweek...
Of course Lynx has many additionnal stuff Amstrad don't (zooms...more sprites perhaps) and Lynx has a small resolution...

But both (Amstrad PLUS and Lynx) are in 16 colours from 4096... and the smaller resolution from lynx is quite comparable to the Mode0.

[fano]

Me too , but after seen what the beast is really able to do , i was a bit disapointed.

Anyway :
http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Wildfire
wip 

[arnoldemu]

Me too , but after seen what the beast is really able to do , i was a bit disapointed.

Anyway :
http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Wildfire
wip 

Same here.. the sprites are disapointing, the rest is ok.

[MacDeath]

IMO we don't have to/must not ask greatly more to a PLUS than to a CPC.

Just better graphics of course (which are natural then thx to the extra palette and raster interrupt   facilities, and also Hardsprites patches...), and a few tricks that may enable less codes/CPU-process as slightly more hardware-supported : some Scrolls, interruptions, some Hardsprites Patches...perhaps a bit of more sounds...

But this is not an excuse to put more stuff, just to do them betterly so the Gameplay may be better.

Good gameplay + good graphics is enough, many amstrad productions had great Graphics but poor gameplay (slow...).


OCEAN's cartridges games such as Robocop2 are Fully Hardsprited (almost ?)...
And, well... it doesn't works that well actually.. IMO.

Just see :
not a lot of enemies on screen, the game is then just a platform, with few actual bad guys shootings..and the Robocop is actually badly animated (he jumps without mouving his legs...) despite being well moved..

Of course the Scrolling is flawless... and animation fast, doesn't even seem to slow down (or is it ?).

But it probably stretches the 64K RAM to the limits and fill the full 128k ROM, as the Hardsprites Datas are quite heavy..

Certainly even no place to add a bit more Software sprites...

but a monoscrolling (only horizontal) engine should not be that difficult, and "airplane" shooterz may not need that level of sprite animation as walking humanoids shooting in many directions do...


Fano perhaps did an error in aiming at a too much heavy Hardsprite engine...
But hey, WIP and his experience on Rick 128+ and R-Type deciphering may help a lot too.

Speccy/CPC's R-Type is using a Player sprite of only 24x8 pixels...quite small actually. yet with 3 frames...and a lot of shields/extra sprites that are often incredibly animated (6 frames, sometimes even more...)

But using a Hardsprite in "Mode0" mode, it covers naturally the equivalent of 32x16  mode1 pixels...
And  can need only 1 frame...

[Leonie]

Do you remember "Navy Seals" for the CPC+?
It looks and feels like an Amiga-Game.
I´m sure we can achieve a really fast, smooth, colourful and playable shooter for the CPC+, much better than the best shooters for the C64.

[Leonie]

@ MacDeath:

"Gates Of Zendocon" is an nice example, another great game for the Atari Lynx is called "Zarlor Mercenary", a vertical shooter like "Battle Squadron" for the Amiga.
Do you know that game?

[MacDeath]

Yeah, I remember it too...

I had a friend with a Lynx and lot of games...
Zarlor mercenary was like Raptor on PC...

Lynx used to get good graphics actually...(EPYX was not that bad company).
the kind of stuff an Atari STE or an Amstrad PLUS may easily produce...

But this console was deserved by the Screen...
At tis time, the colours/LCD was shit stuff... blurred to death (remember the original Game boy ?)

Also "bad resolution" because small screen.

   
• MOS 65SC02 processor running at up to 4 MHz (~3.6 MHz   average) 
  
        
  • 8-bit CPU, 16-bit address space
  • Sound engine 
    
             
    • 4 channel sound (Lynx II with panning)
    • 8-bit DAC for each channel (4 channels × 8-bits/channel = 32 bits   commonly quoted)
  • Video DMA driver for liquid-crystal display 
    
             
    • 4,096 color (12-bit) palette
    • 16 simultaneous colors (4 bits) from palette per scanline (more than   16 colors can be displayed by changing palettes after each scanline)
  • 8 System timers (2 reserved for LCD timing, one for UART)
  • Interrupt controller
  • UART (for ComLynx) (fixed format 8E1, up to 62500Bd)
  • 512 bytes of bootstrap and game-card loading ROM
• Suzy (16-bit custom CMOS chip running at 16 MHz) 
  
        
  • Graphics engine 
    
             
    • Hardware drawing support
    • Unlimited number of high-speed sprites with collision detection
    • Hardware high-speed sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects
    • Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data
    • Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling
    • Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second)
    • 160 x 102 standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels)
  • Math co-processor 
    
             
    • Hardware 16-bit × 16-bit → 32-bit multiply with optional   accumulation; 32-bit ÷ 16-bit → 16-bit divide
    • Parallel processing of CPU and a single multiply or a divide   instruction
• RAM: 64 KB   120ns DRAM
• Storage: Cartridge - 128, 256 and 512 KB exist, up to 2 MB is   possible with bank-switching logic.

Some (homebrew) carts with EEPROM to save hi-scores.

   
• Ports: 
  
        
  • Headphone port (3.5 mm stereo; wired for mono on the original Lynx)
  • ComLynx (multiple unit communications, serial)
• LCD Screen: 3.5" diagonal

Basically a mundane 8 bit 65xx computer with oversized video chip...

Sound engine a bit better than Amstrad's...

Video : except for the DMA, that basically as a CPC plus : 160x102... while the Amstrad is 160x200... in 16 colours from 4096.

64K ram.

Of course shittons of additionnal HardSprites stuff : 3D options, more sprites... but because of the small display not that always well used.

Ouch arithmetic co-processor, lol...
and a neat Network system...

Cartridges the same size as GX4000 ones (theorically)



Most of earlier/non zoom-3d  games are GX4000 do-able... In term of finition.

Exemple : Klax, Rampage, chip's challenge...which were CPC old games actually.

But yeah, games weren't alway that great on Lynx and too few developpers.

[Leonie]

Atari Lynx...
Sound engine a bit better than Amstrad's...

You´re right. Lots of Lynx-games offers digitzed soundeffects in solid quality.
"Klax" offers a nice Amiga-style titelsound.
But funnily all the Lynx-Chiptunes that I know sounds not as good as the best Amstrad-Tunes.
Do you know what sort of waveforms the Lynx-Soundchip can generate?

[ukmarkh]

I had a Lynx, and also bought the upgraded model when I was a kid. Back then it was great, the games were brilliant from memory, and I didn't have a problem with the backlit screen. I did struggle to get games for it though, but they were available. As far as I'm concerned the battery life and the lack of games were the only two things stopping this from walloping Nintendo.


Good memories were had on my Lynx 

[MacDeath]

Yeah, the batteries weres fastly emptied...

But you could get cigar-lighter powersupply or stuff like this.
And, well...games were great... to play in bed for exemple was the kind of application for this.

Do you know if some games are still produced ? some of them were released late after the end of its commercial era...

[Gryzor]

I remember the first time I saw the Gameboy: "ohhh that's so sweet, let me play this Tetris for a few hours!". When I first saw the Lynx, in a shop, demo'ing Blue Lightning (am I correct?): ".......!!!". Simply amazing!