Pinball Dreams, new game from Batman Group!!

[TotO]

One more true CPC masterpiece! 

[Rhino]

Bloody fantastic news! Does this mean a physical release??

We can't anticipate much info yet, as there's nothing closed yet, but if all goes well, seeing a current industry giant like Rebellion licensing a current release for CPC could be news that transcends not only the CPC scene, but the whole retro scene.

[robcfg]

Fingers crossed! 

[LambdaMikel]

Looking much forward to it!!! The demo was already fantastic.
Played Pinball Dreams for hours on my Amiga 500 in the late 80s / early 90s.

[tastefulmrship]

Played Pinball Dreams for hours on my Amiga 500 in the late 80s / early 90s.

Wow! Were you a beta tester for the Amiga game? That must've been just so awesome!






EDIT: I am guessing the "downvote" on YOOTOOB is from the USA... from a German "banned from this forum" CPCer perhaps!

[kawickboy]

Great teaser.


21st Century was founded by former hewson members, wasn't it ?

[TotO]

Anyway, here's the soundtrack for PD-CPC... if you're interested...
soundcloud.com/jonah-tasteful-mr-ship/sets/pinball-dreams-cpc

Tasteful sound chip mister! 

[Rhino]

EDIT: I am guessing the "downvote" on YOOTOOB is from the USA... from a German "banned from this forum" CPCer perhaps!

I rather think that it is a C64 user

[Rhino]

Great teaser.


21st Century was founded by former hewson members, wasn't it ?

Thanks!
That's right.

[VincentGR]

Pure A.Y porn 

[tastefulmrship]

I rather think that it is a C64 user

Ha! Yeah! You're probably right! ^_^

It's a shame that the other platforms have to hate on each other! Surely they can see if WE can get the license for an official Pinball Dreams, then it will open-up for C64, ZX, MSX, Xl./XE versions, too! Such short-sighted-ness-ess shows that a lot of us (me included) have not grown-up and moved on! Retro Forever!

[LambdaMikel]

Wow! Were you a beta tester for the Amiga game? That must've been just so awesome!


Anyway, here's the soundtrack for PD-CPC... if you're interested...
soundcloud.com/jonah-tasteful-mr-ship/sets/pinball-dreams-cpc


EDIT: I am guessing the "downvote" on YOOTOOB is from the USA... from a German "banned from this forum" CPCer perhaps!

No, I just forgot when I played it. I think it was probably mid 90s. I think maybe it was not before 1993 or so that I played the game.When was it released for the Amiga?

Why are you bringing up that "EDIT:" with some Anti-German / Anti-US / banned member comment in the context of my post?  Is that something I should relate to?

[andycadley]

I don't really like pinball, either simulated or the real thing, and I'm excited about this. Share the love people. And yes, getting some level of authenticity to retro remakes on classic hardware has the potential for changing the landscape far and wide, so petty platform/scene arguments really have no place in the discussion.

[roudoudou]

the game is going to reach perfection, that's great! 

[Gryzor]

Booh, the Soundcloud link is down

[Rhino]

the game is going to reach perfection, that's great! 

Thanks!
If I had to do it again there are some things I would change, but I think the result will not disappoint anyone.

Very important to play it in the real hardware, it is incredible the difference in emulators, not only visually but in the gameplay.
To make the game as the original was necessary an immediate keyboard response, which requires not only that the game runs at 50 fps, but not to use techniques such as double buffer and that the time between reading the keyboard status and the user sees the response on screen is the minimum possible. But the response of the keyboard usually has a delay in emulators that does not occur in the real hardware (either by the management of the keyboard itself or if the emulator includes an internal double buffer), in others games this is hardly appreciated because fewer fps disguise the issue and it only involves moving 1 pixel more or less or a frame before or after, but, in PD hit the ball a frame before/after supposes that the ball angles are different and affect the aim.

[mr_lou]

But the response of the keyboard usually has a delay in emulators that does not occur in the real hardware

Well, you can't expect a PC to be as fast as the CPC. 

[cpcitor]

To make the game as the original was necessary an immediate keyboard response, which requires not only that the game runs at 50 fps, but not to use techniques such as double buffer and that the time between reading the keyboard status and the user sees the response on screen is the minimum possible. But the response of the keyboard usually has a delay in emulators that does not occur in the real hardware (either by the management of the keyboard itself or if the emulator includes an internal double buffer), in others games this is hardly appreciated because fewer fps disguise the issue and it only involves moving 1 pixel more or less or a frame before or after, but, in PD hit the ball a frame before/after supposes that the ball angles are different and affect the aim.

You nail it. One can be fully unaware of latency for years, and only understand it when seeing a paint-with-fingers application on a tablet.

This video shows practically importance of latency from 100ms (typical modern device) down to 1ms :

See https://danluu.com/input-lag/ for all details. The Apple 2e has hardware-based debouncing (capacitor,resistor) see https://danluu.com/input-lag/#appendix-apple-2-keyboard .
I would expect the Amstrad CPC to appear in the table roughly at the same spot as the Commodore 64.

It would be very interesting if someone could measure the actual latency on the CPC (in ms), in Basic and with optimized routines.

[roudoudou]

It would be very interesting if someone could measure the actual latency on the CPC (in ms), in Basic and with optimized routines.

2 cases with games with low fps:
- 10 fps for game but 50fps for keyboard (AFAIK this does not exist) -> response is 20ms but display is delayed anyway

- 10 fps for game AND 10 fps for keyboard (dragon ninja, chaseHQ, ...) -> response is 100ms
high-fps game like pinball
- 50 fps for game and 50 fps for keyboard -> response is 20ms

[cpcitor]

Has anyone got a high speed camera?

From https://danluu.com/input-lag/#appendix-experimental-setup :

Most measurements were taken with the 240fps camera (4.167 ms resolution) in the iPhone SE. Devices with response times below 40 ms were re-measured with a 1000fps camera (1 ms resolution), the Sony RX100 V in PAL mode. Results in the tables are the results of multiple runs and are rounded to the nearest 10 ms to avoid the impression of false precision. For desktop results, results are measured from when the key started moving until the screen finished updating.

[Rhino]

You nail it. One can be fully unaware of latency for years, and only understand it when seeing a paint-with-fingers application on a tablet.

This video shows practically importance of latency from 100ms (typical modern device) down to 1ms :

See https://danluu.com/input-lag/ for all details. The Apple 2e has hardware-based debouncing (capacitor,resistor) see https://danluu.com/input-lag/#appendix-apple-2-keyboard .
I would expect the Amstrad CPC to appear in the table roughly at the same spot as the Commodore 64.

It would be very interesting if someone could measure the actual latency on the CPC (in ms), in Basic and with optimized routines.

A very interesting article, thanks!

[Rhino]

2 cases with games with low fps:
- 10 fps for game but 50fps for keyboard (AFAIK this does not exist) -> response is 20ms but display is delayed anyway

- 10 fps for game AND 10 fps for keyboard (dragon ninja, chaseHQ, ...) -> response is 100ms
high-fps game like pinball
- 50 fps for game and 50 fps for keyboard -> response is 20ms

Also note that fps is not the only variable, if a game runs at 50 fps but uses double buffer, the keyboard response is applied first to the working screen buffer that will be visible in the next frame, so there is a delay of an additional frame in that case. Without double buffer the time between checking keys and visualization is, in theory, less than 20ms depending on which moment of the frame the keyboard status is read.

[tastefulmrship]

Booh, the Soundcloud link is down

It was a "teaser"! ^_^You will have to wait until the full game is released to hear the other tables' musics!
Bwha! Ha! Ha! ha!

[Gryzor]

Aw come on!I listen to his music on my commute from work (seriously)!

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6000 using Tapatalk

[mr_lou]

That's why the internet sucks. Can't trust it. Gotta have everything offline.

Luckily I downloaded everything. Wanna buy a Blu-ray edition?