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Started by Joseman, 20:27, 12 June 17

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ivarf

Quote from: AxelStone on 09:59, 18 June 17

Perhaps not 16bit, but CPC is much better than seen during comercial life. Look for example what can do:

https://youtu.be/HwN9PrsbVMg?t=57


And compare with the commercial game:

https://youtu.be/-GS-rTr1j08?t=152


A speccy port!!! There is a lot of homebrew examples where you can see that CPC was really a very advanced machine with a powerful VDP, but this VDP never was used, CPC was programed as a simple Z80 machine (like Speccy).

Not the best example as the commercial release use colour quite well. There are a lot of Spectrum ports that do a very much worse.

ivarf

Quote from: AxelStone on 15:13, 19 June 17

You mean this



against this



>:( >:( >:(

You can't show these two without showing the fan rewrite of the original Speccy port. And it is still a Spectrum port on our Amstrad


Joseman

Quote from: tjohnson on 20:43, 19 June 17
Does that mean that the ink is changed after a specific scanline of part section of the screen is drawn?   In that way it is possible to have more colours visible than would otherwise be possible?

Yes, but it has disadvantages, it can be see on unpredictaball clearly, the ball is changing his color when it goes across the raster  :laugh:

It's a pseudo induced "color clash" caused for the rasters...

this means that in some games, the use of rasters has to be limited to the sections on the screen where the main sprites don't cross between rasters or we will have a "color clash" party!!

AxelStone

Quote from: ivarf on 21:02, 19 June 17
You can't show these two without showing the fan rewrite of the original Speccy port. And it is still a Spectrum port on our Amstrad




CPC is a great machine! Unfortunately C64 users think that its machine was better, but simply C64 didn't have Speccy ports and had specially designed software.


andycadley


Quote from: AxelStone on 21:50, 19 June 17

CPC is a great machine! Unfortunately C64 users think that its machine was better, but simply C64 didn't have Speccy ports and had specially designed software.
Honestly, all three are great machines in their own ways and each has certain limitations where it tends to fall down. I think that R-Type 128 shows off how much the CPC benefits from having extra RAM available, the breathing room it gives a developer over the 64K config can really make all the difference. You have to wonder whether the machine might have had more success if it had started off with the extra RAM in it, so that developers weren't tied to that base limitation quite so much.

AxelStone

Quote from: andycadley on 22:10, 19 June 17
Honestly, all three are great machines in their own ways and each has certain limitations where it tends to fall down. I think that R-Type 128 shows off how much the CPC benefits from having extra RAM available, the breathing room it gives a developer over the 64K config can really make all the difference. You have to wonder whether the machine might have had more success if it had started off with the extra RAM in it, so that developers weren't tied to that base limitation quite so much.


Compared to CPC, Speccy and C64 were lucky since they had specially designed software. I mean, CPC couldn't show it's real capabilities, the other 2 could.

dlfrsilver

Quote from: tjohnson on 20:43, 19 June 17
Does that mean that the ink is changed after a specific scanline of part section of the screen is drawn?   In that way it is possible to have more colours visible than would otherwise be possible?

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk


the Amstrad is able to do things that even the Amiga can't do (it's a planar machine). the Amiga with the copper can apply colors on specific area of a screen, and that's it.




[size=78%]The CPC being a chunky machine, some games display a lot more colors that possible basically, and everywhere on the screen[/size]


Strider 2 is one of them. I tried to make the maps of this game, and it's not possible to do due to the use of rasters.

AxelStone

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 10:12, 21 June 17
the Amstrad is able to do things that even the Amiga can't do (it's a planar machine). the Amiga with the copper can apply colors on specific area of a screen, and that's it.


Very interesting this, could you explain it a bit more?

roudoudou

Quote from: AxelStone on 10:21, 21 June 17

Very interesting this, could you explain it a bit more?


With an Amstrad (like every 8bits machine?) every bits of a pixel are on a single byte


With an Atari, an Amiga, every bits of a pixel are dispatched on many bytes


This is very usefull to fill/erase faster a group of colors and you do not have to manage sprite mask BUT


BUT when you want to make a "linear" effect like a rotozoom with all colors, it's pain in the ass
My pronouns are RASM and ACE

Cholo

Quote from: roudoudou on 13:37, 19 June 17

In my heart it's the best but honnestly it lacks a textmode to get a super-speed refresh


Always wonder why the "all importent for business" mode 2 was used so little on the amstrad. The 80 columns being compatible-ish with IBM, terminal systems & the rest of the "serious business" machines i always wondered why so little business software was made for it. I mean i know the c64 had hardware dongles to give them 80 column modes as well so they knew it was importent. The Amstrad having it natively it oddly never really "took off".

BSC

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 10:12, 21 June 17

the Amstrad is able to do things that even the Amiga can't do (it's a planar machine). the Amiga with the copper can apply colors on specific area of a screen, and that's it.




I am sorry to disagree strongly, but this sounds like fellow OAS, who for years insisted that neither the C64 nor the Amiga had better musical capabilities just for the sheer fact that the CPC could basically play the same tunes. He completely failed to understand (and maybe even recognize) the different qualities of sound and how sound can make a song - ehm - sound different, richer, more appealing to our "hearing system". Melody =! sound in particular.


Stating that "the Amiga .. can apply colors .. and that's it" makes you sound like a CPC fan boy (at least to me) who prefers his alternative facts to ... yeah, to what, actually? Sure, the CPC was most likely under rated in it's so-called commercial era and we are seeing things, we wouldn't have imagined even 10 years ago, BUT - come on! The Amiga is technically on a completely different level. And - I had my try with assembly and copper programming on the Amiga long ago - the copper can do more than just switch colors. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Chip_Set#Copper


And with statements like this you foment the out-of-time platform wars.

** My SID player/tracker AYAY Kaeppttn! on github **  Some CPC music and experiments ** Other music ** More music on scenestream (former nectarine) ** Some shaders ** Some Soundtrakker tunes ** Some tunes in Javascript

My hardware: ** Schneider CPC 464 with colour screen, 64k extension, 3" and 5,25 drives and more ** Amstrad CPC 6128 with M4 board, GreaseWeazle.

Sykobee (Briggsy)

The Copper, and the Amiga chipset, are extremely clever things.


The Copper is really just a simple fixed function hardware running a copperlist (simple program) that performs chipset register updating. It has access to all the chipset registers (on different chips). The obvious example is changing the colour registers (which IIRC it can do every 8 or 16 pixels), but it can also update sprite registers (see games with repeating background sprites like Risky Woods), and others.


So you would use the CPU to write a copperlist every frame, and that's how you got copperbar effects that move, and so on.

Rhino

I have added some elements to simulate a Mario style game with pixel precise scroll. I think it can be done at 50 fps (test attached, use cursor to move).

In this test some things are missing, like sound and scoreboard, but I think there's time for that, and it is possible to save speed by optimizing things like compiling tiles. Alternatively, it is also possible to save CPU by using byte precision instead of pixel precision for the scroll (it could use the stack to draw sprites and tiles then, and save memory from sprites).

After all the buffers and screen areas, there are about 24kb free in the first 64kb of ram, so simple games for 64kb are also feasible with this "engine".

Hwikaa


ervin

Very, very impressive!
The inertia on the scroll is particularly cool.
8)

Morri

Wow, amazing. Smooth, great collision detection and fast scroll. I hope the experts are able to take advantage of this new engine and produce some sweet games.
Keeping it Kiwi since 1977

Carnivius

#66
Quote from: Rhino on 14:14, 18 July 17
I have added some elements to simulate a Mario style game with pixel precise scroll. I think it can be done at 50 fps (test attached, use cursor to move).

In this test some things are missing, like sound and scoreboard, but I think there's time for that, and it is possible to save speed by optimizing things like compiling tiles. Alternatively, it is also possible to save CPU by using byte precision instead of pixel precision for the scroll (it could use the stack to draw sprites and tiles then, and save memory from sprites).

After all the buffers and screen areas, there are about 24kb free in the first 64kb of ram, so simple games for 64kb are also feasible with this "engine".


This is crazy smooth and in overscan width too!   I have a project that could make good use of this if you ever wanted to make a game with graphics I've done.
Favorite CPC games: Count Duckula 3, Oh Mummy Returns, RoboCop Resurrection, Tankbusters Afterlife

ervin

Quote from: Carnivius on 06:26, 19 July 17

This is crazy smooth and in overscan width too!   I have a project that could make good use of this if you ever wanted to make a game with graphics I've done.

Rhino's code + Carnivius' graphics = match made in heaven!

Sykobee (Briggsy)

Decent inertia could make for a good Uridium style game, if the engine can change directions.


And yes, definitely do that!

Neil79

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Sykobee (Briggsy)

http://retromaniacmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/la-impresionante-rutina-de-scroll.html?m=1


Includes a nice video for those of us who haven't been able to run it on the real thing or emulator. Impressive.


Kitty

Fantastic Progress, really impressed  ;)

Quote from: JosemanI was going to post the news too!!!

Thanks for sharing the News Joseman! Great stuff and Sourced direct to this thread and the Twitter post :)
http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/batman-group-shows-off-horizontal-scrolling-with-a-new-mario-demo-on-the-amstrad-cpc/

Retro Gaming News since '2011'. Vintage is the New Old C.I.A Group


Neil79

Quote from: Joseman on 13:04, 19 July 17
I was going to post the news too!!!


:o :o :o :o :o :o
https://twitter.com/octopusjig/status/887612127036526593


Good man, you were already mentioned earlier as other sites just found out  8)
The latest in Indie & Retro News!!! IndieRetroNews - Indie Retro News on twitter

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