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#1
avatar_MaV
Demos / Re: 38 years old demo unearthe...
Last post by MaV - Today at 09:44
Quote from: rexbeng on Yesterday at 11:58OH NOES! :o  You changed history! Now Hicks will have to track down and burn all the books he printed!

AND he'll have a good chance to succeed in this endeavour. Think of François Toulour in Ocean's Twelve where he evades the lasers in the high security room. Nobody will be safe! :D
#2
avatar_eto
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Other Video Cards
Last post by eto - Today at 09:19
Quote from: SerErris on Today at 08:23The classic henn and egg problem.
Not necessarily. It was already discussed in other threads and Benedikt also mentioned it: 

With a graphics card that mirrors the lower RAM and mimics/emulates the GateArray/CRTC combo it could be possible to build a perfect DVI/HDMI output. Instead of connecting the CRT to the normal output you would connect the graphics card to a LCD. Slightly enhanced it could even support the Plus graphics features. And from there on it should be possible to implement further graphics modes or add more features like sprites, tiles, bit blitting, drawing graphics primitives and so on. 

I personally would love to have a system that I turn on and I can use in a proper resolution with a nice UI to navigate my collection - and then it smoothly switched into CPC modes where I use the original software as it was supposed to be used. 

The adoption would not result from the "graphics card" feature but from the fact that it makes the CPC more accessible and easy to connect to a modern LCD - and then it becomes interesting for a much bigger audience than if its just a graphics card on its own that you have to connect to a different monitor or where you have to switch cables when you use it. 

It could even be based on something as cheap as a Raspberry Pico - or more likely on a (hopefully coming soon) successor with more GPIO and more RAM. Hardware costs could be as low as 10-20€. 
#3
avatar_SerErris
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Other Video Cards
Last post by SerErris - Today at 08:23
Regarding the Zeal graphics linked above, that might not be the case, as it does support tile graphics. This is one of the major limitations of the CPC design as of today, as it simply does not have tiles nor sprites.

So if you would have tiles and just need to instruct the graphics card on where each tile goes and then can use graphics cards scrolling and tile display, you actually gain a lot of time for doing logic instead of copying graphic data around.

However the question is if that will ever be successful. The point is, that you need to write code specific to that card and if it is not widle adopted, no one will write code for it. The classic henn and egg problem.
#4
N
Games / Re: The Key, a A "full" point ...
Last post by Nadori - Today at 07:56
The game looks wonderful.
I've started playing it on tape on real hardware but there's a problem: the loading of a saving game from tape doesn't work: I can save but when I try to load, the tape doesn't start after pressing PLAY and SPACE as requested. It's just me?
#5
avatar_McArti0
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...
Last post by McArti0 - Yesterday at 22:54
@Benedikt 
and will it be possible to display something like this?

https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?msg=215472

#6
avatar_Jean-Marie
Games / Re: WIP Transversion
Last post by Jean-Marie - Yesterday at 22:51
Nice :) Could you please add the Cursor keys in the list of redefinable keys ?
I noticed that sometimes, when I'm hit by a laser bolt, I remain unscathed. I dunno if that's a bug, or maybe I misunderstood something?
#7
Quote from: McArti0 on Yesterday at 22:13and still only 64kB for CRTC?
Yes. The plan is to give the CRTC an unmodified address space of 64 KiB.
But I also plan to give the pixel generators a 16 bit wide data path to a pair of 64 KiB pages in RAM, which means that the total size of the frame buffer will be up to 128 KiB.
A 128 KiB frame buffer should be sufficient for a well-balanced CPC-like system without an intelligent GPU.
For instance, an interlaced 4-color mode with 640x400 pixels would use 64000 bytes and expanding it to 832x576 pixels would still only fill 119808 bytes and leave 11 KiB free.
#8
avatar_McArti0
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Other Video Cards
Last post by McArti0 - Yesterday at 22:23
only 20-25MHz z80, everything else makes no sense.
But T-rex already exists in FPGA.
#9
avatar_McArti0
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...
Last post by McArti0 - Yesterday at 22:13
and still only 64kB for CRTC?
#10
avatar_Prodatron
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Other Video Cards
Last post by Prodatron - Yesterday at 22:10
I agree to Andy, better graphic only makes sense, if there is a blitter/GPU included in the hardware like with the (VDP9990).
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