Birth of a new website : Homebrew.AmstradToday

[mr_lou]

As already answered, it is possible to detect 64K or 128K CPC and use bank switching for making a double buffer display to avoid flickering.
We can only hope that peoples will do like that in the future, because 464 with DK-Tronics/X-MEM boards can benefit of that!

Agreed!
In fact, I think it should be added to the general guidelines / advice regarding CPC game development.
There's a page on the wiki somewhere, that includes all kinds of best practices, regarding game-development on the CPC.

[TotO]

Yes. I'm going to try to find this topic.

[AMSDOS]

As already answered, it is possible to detect 64K or 128K CPC and use bank switching for making a double buffer display to avoid flickering.

I don't think anyone has shown me how to detect a 128k system, I guess going into the extra 64k poking a byte there and going to another area and determining if the information is different there is a legit way to test if a system has 128k.


Is it easy to acquire extra 64k for unexpanded 464/664?



I could see some flicker in BB4CPC, though perhaps Emulation is minimising some of it?? It's not the worst flickering I've ever seen though, I didn't want to name programs or persons though.

[TotO]

Hello AMSDOS,

Yes, poking bytes to the $7Fxx port is the usual way to know if an expansion RAM is connected.
Doing that, if your result is different each 16K pages, then you can count the amount of RAM available.

DK'Tronics boards are not easy to find and expensive, but you can got an X-MEM that is 100% compatible and work on any CPC.
The board add 512K RAM and 512K ROM and allow to boot from it.
Sure it's a bunch a memory, but the IC costs are the same as 64K !

About the flickering, it's more visible on a real CPC with CTM.

[Carnivius]

I could see some flicker in BB4CPC, though perhaps Emulation is minimising some of it?? It's not the worst flickering I've ever seen though, I didn't want to name programs or persons though.

I play it mostly on my real 464 and while I can see the flickering I don't really notice it that badly and it doesn't hamper my enjoyment of the game. 

[TotO]

Sure, the game is great and that not affect the gameplay.

[mr_lou]

Sure, the game is great and that not affect the gameplay.

I feel that it does affect the gameplay.

[Carnivius]

I feel that it does affect the gameplay.

It doesn't really.  There's never been a point where I stopped playing it cos I thought 'oh god the sprite flicker is making this not fun'.  Usually I stop playing it just cos I want to do something else or have to go.  As I said before I may be used to a bit of the flicker from owning a NES which had far, far worse problems with it even though it was actually a sort of feature to get around the maximum eight 8x8 sprites per horizontal limitation of the NES and was exploited by companies like Capcom particularly in Mega Man games.  Used with care it was tolerable enough but overdone it became a problem and yet even then it still didn't hurt some of the games too badly (Airman stage on Mega Man 2 has some terrible sprite flicker but the game is still regarded as a classic and arguably the best in the series).  If I can play through that (which I have cos I used to own the real cartridge and finished the game) then a bit of minor flicker on Bubble Bobble is almost non-existent to me. 

[mr_lou]

It doesn't really.  There's never been a point where I stopped playing it cos I thought 'oh god the sprite flicker is making this not fun'.  Usually I stop playing it just cos I want to do something else or have to go.  As I said before I may be used to a bit of the flicker from owning a NES which had far, far worse problems with it even though it was actually a sort of feature to get around the maximum eight 8x8 sprites per horizontal limitation of the NES and was exploited by companies like Capcom particularly in Mega Man games.  Used with care it was tolerable enough but overdone it became a problem and yet even then it still didn't hurt some of the games too badly (Airman stage on Mega Man 2 has some terrible sprite flicker but the game is still regarded as a classic and arguably the best in the series).  If I can play through that (which I have cos I used to own the real cartridge and finished the game) then a bit of minor flicker on Bubble Bobble is almost non-existent to me. 

I didn't say it made the game bad.
I just said that I feel it does affect the gameplay.
Gameplay to me, includes the quality of the picture (i.e. flickering) among many other things.
I definitely feel that flickering affects the gameplay in a game.