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What?

Since when is the CPC not as powefull as the C64 or the Speccy??????

Did I miss something??  :o

/Ygdrazil

Quote from: ukmarkh on 17:58, 08 June 09
It's not as powerful as the C64 or Speccy 128K, but it's still a worthy contender and actually does some things better. Most games are really colourful, but can sometimes lack smooth scrolling, use a small playing area or feature a flick screen. However; there are literally hundreds of classics on this system, and some games like Operation wolf and Chase HQ even rival the same games of the other two machines. The 6128 model with 128K memory, disk drive and colour screen would be my personal choice, and the 6128 Plus (90's Model) packs a serious punch. I wouldn't say the CPC was a remarkable machine, just that it was the machine I grew up with, and several programmers, especially from the 'Ocean' stable, produced remarkable results.

It just has a few flaws, the 16K screen being one of them, especially with a 64K model. The equivalent speccy games nearly always tend to run a bit faster and smoother... run 'Lotus Esprit turbo' from Gremlin side by side to see what I'm on about. Then there's the whole side scrolling issue.

Er, yes. But if you mention the 16k screen size on the CPC, how can you ommit the horrible (HORRIBLE I say!) colour clashing?

Your comment did strike me as awfully strange...

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:29, 14 June 09
Er, yes. But if you mention the 16k screen size on the CPC, how can you ommit the horrible (HORRIBLE I say!) colour clashing?

Your comment did strike me as awfully strange...

Because colour clash doesn't cripple the system, or make the game slower, the 16k screen on a CPC kinda does. Look, I love the CPC to bits - play the game I mentioned earlier if you don't beleive me... it takes a lot longer to complete a lap, and isn't as smooth. I too used to think the same way until I did a shed load of comparisons. That 16k heavy screen seriously crippled the CPC, if they'd have added more memory to compensate, then that might have helped. That's not to say it's incapable of great games, because there are many, but the CPC 464 with 64k of memory is just not as powerful as either the C64 or Speccy.

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:29, 14 June 09Welcome, dear daznic. The CPC was certainly more powerful than the poor Speccy. If you compare it to the c64 then it depends on what you look at. the c64 did have great scrolling and fantastic sound* but the colours and resolution were not up to the CPC's standards.

The C64 could match the CPC's resolution, although your spot on about the colour, but the C64 could run a side scroller full screen with hardly any borders showing, and so could the Speccy. The CPC nine times out of ten would use a much reduced screen. I love the CPC as much as you, but facts are facts, and as hard as it is to swallow - these shouldn't be cemented over, or instill otherwise when a newbie asks a question. Especially when on a techy level the claims just don't add up.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 20:17, 14 June 09
Especially when on a techy level the claims just don't add up.

That's almost entirely a matter of opinion. Although many of the games from the '80s and '90s weren't as good as their Spectrum or C64 counterparts, that was mainly down to poor programming, lack of effort and lack of knowledge. Almost all the scrolling games of the time used software scrolling for a start. There are games (including the recent ones such as Star Sabre) in almost all genres which are at least equal with their Spectrum and C64 equivalents, and in many cases, much better. Increased border sizes are usually due to reducing the screen resolution down to Spectrum levels (256x192). This provides a screen memory usage of 12K as opposed to the Spectrum's 7K or so if you include attribute RAM.

Technically the CPC464 has 64K, not 48K, a greater screen resolution with more colours available, better sound, and a faster, more flexible CPU than the C64.

Quote from: Executioner on 07:55, 15 June 09
That's almost entirely a matter of opinion. Although many of the games from the '80s and '90s weren't as good as their Spectrum or C64 counterparts, that was mainly down to poor programming, lack of effort and lack of knowledge.

Well I did make the comparisons based on the games from the 80's and 90's... and was just simply highlighting the factual results. I'd also like to add that it might not have been solely down to poor programming, but time constraints, as the CPC rarely got the same development time the other two received, I imagine this is why we had so many Speccy ports?   

Quote from: Executioner on 07:55, 15 June 09Almost all the scrolling games of the time used software scrolling for a start. There are games (including the recent ones such as Star Sabre) in almost all genres which are at least equal with their Spectrum and C64 equivalents, and in many cases, much better.

Well, Star sabre runs at 25fps, most C64 shooters run at 50FPs, as do the Speccy equivelents... but yes I understand what you mean, although the letterbox view in Star Sabre is a right pain, would have preffered full screen. The 464 version ran out of memory and didn't feature any music... the equivalent on the C64 could easily have included music, and from the majority of games I tested, they did. due to the memory savings and the way the screen and sprites were handled.     

Quote from: Executioner on 07:55, 15 June 09Increased border sizes are usually due to reducing the screen resolution down to Spectrum levels (256x192). This provides a screen memory usage of 12K as opposed to the Spectrum's 7K or so if you include attribute RAM.

But on the CPC 464, (64k - 16k screen = 48k) the same as the Speccy, then there is the issue that the sprites take up more memory to draw than the equivelent on the Speccy... All the in-game graphics take up twice the RAM because 2 bits were required for every pixel, rather than 1 bit on the Spectrum. This doubled the size of all the graphics, using a similar amount of free RAM, and an Amstrad version of a Spectrum game seems to always require drastic cuts to fit into RAM. This perception that the two machines were more or less the same, doesn't hold true when you do the maths, so when people state the Amstrad was slightly better, at the moment, unless I'm missing something - this statement simply doesn't stack up.   

I firmly believe that saying that the CPC was below the Speccy in thechnical terms is way too much. Saying that "colour clashing does not make the game slower" is like saying "the bullet did not make the victim any deader". For me colour clashing always was a deal breaker, and combined with the (non-) palette of the Speccy it made games painful to watch.

Also, in any case, I think you should add that the CPC was inferior only when it comes to games - because with everything else the CPC blows the competition dead out of the water...

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:43, 15 June 09
I firmly believe that saying that the CPC was below the Speccy in thechnical terms is way too much. Saying that "colour clashing does not make the game slower" is like saying "the bullet did not make the victim any deader". For me colour clashing always was a deal breaker, and combined with the (non-) palette of the Speccy it made games painful to watch.

Well, it doesn't matter what you or I think, the facts are facts... and we can't hide from them. R-Type, Chase HQ, Renegade, Target Renegade, Narc and many more, are they really that painful to watch? I think you're doing the Speccy an injustice by saying this - especially considering the sum of its parts. The Amstrad is my favourite machine, the one I grew up with... and I love a lot of the games produced for it, Renegade, Gryzor, Wec-le mans, Operation Wolf, Prince of persia, all excellent games. So it's not all bad.     

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:43, 15 June 09Also, in any case, I think you should add that the CPC was inferior only when it comes to games - because with everything else the CPC blows the competition dead out of the water...

Maybe...but do you really know enough about the other 8-bits out there to back that up? Writing this CPC book has taught me that you have to back up what you say, comments like 'blown out the water' have to have some weight behind them.

QuoteWell, it doesn't matter what you or I think, the facts are facts... and we can't hide from them. R-Type, Chase HQ, Renegade, Target Renegade, Narc and many more, are they really that painful to watch?

You've forgotten Batman, Head over Heals, Elite, Mercenary, Starstrike or some 3D games like Total Eclipse. You cannot compare these versions to the speccy or c64 ones. Juste because (due to the 16 k or more video ram), each pixel can have its own color. And the isometric monochrom games on speccy are really poor comparatively to the cpc.

The speccy owners were fighting with the oric owners in the early 80's. Don't forget it has juste a "buzzer" instead of the ay-3-8912 of the oric. The cpc outsider was the c64. It's just history. (you cannot speak about speccy 128 and omit cpc 6128 or amstrad plus, btw)

A very few games were using hardware splitting technics for scrolling (genocide is smooth for example. one of the first splitscreen on cpc) and using dual playfield technic gives a smooth games but graphically bad as the c64 or speccy ones. And was a 50 fps game more playable than a slower game ? I don't think it was such important for cpc owners when they played to green beret or ghost'n goblins...

Depending of domain application, each computer have his advantages.
The c64 sid was really great for example.
The cpc was harware-designed on an an ibm-pc basis (crtc 6845, ppi 8255, fdc 765). It was cp/m compatible and this computer was used by lot of little companies, able to run very early turbo pascal, forth, fortran, cobol, ..., used in professionnal domain. It was the victim of bad-port of lot of monochrom speccy games.

So this subject is just a long old fellow now called troll.  ;D

I have no idea what you're talking about  ??? very broken English. The comments seem a bit random. 

Quote from: ukmarkh on 19:16, 15 June 09
Well, it doesn't matter what you or I think, the facts are facts... and we can't hide from them. R-Type, Chase HQ, Renegade, Target Renegade, Narc and many more, are they really that painful to watch?

Well, it's funny, because I didn't understand your point, precisely because the game syou mentioned were so awesome on the CPC that a comparison is really unjust (ok, I know CPC R-Type has taken a beating over time, but I never understood why - I still love it to bits, and its gfx are just great).

Quote from: ukmarkh on 19:16, 15 June 09
I think you're doing the Speccy an injustice by saying this - especially considering the sum of its parts. The Amstrad is my favourite machine, the one I grew up with... and I love a lot of the games produced for it, Renegade, Gryzor, Wec-le mans, Operation Wolf, Prince of persia, all excellent games. So it's not all bad.    

I didn't say it's "all bad", but precisely the games you mention (and many more) are so advanced that just prove the point that the CPC was much more advanced than the speccy. Only yesterday I was playing North and South on WinCPC - just try transferring THAT over to the Spectrum... the difference will be as big as it is from the original 16-bitters to the CPC.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 19:16, 15 June 09
Maybe...but do you really know enough about the other 8-bits out there to back that up? Writing this CPC book has taught me that you have to back up what you say, comments like 'blown out the water' have to have some weight behind them.

I do know quite a bit. the Enterprise64/128 was arguably better, and the later MSX versions too. But neither much of a foothold (at least in the west, in the case of the MSX). Incidentally, I do have a few MSXs, an E64 and a SAM Coupe (lovely lovely machine) and have seen first hand what they can do...

But, let's get back to the CPC/Speccy issue. Just try running CP/M, or a decent word-processor, or a WIMP system on Speccy - oh, wait.... :D

Longshot's post, btw, is quite clear, I think, He may have confused what you meant by the games you mentioned, as I was :D

Well this is an Amstrad site... not sure what I was thinking trying to state facts, should have know I'd get a biased view on things.

I suppose It'd be like buying a commodore mag back in the day, writing in and asking what they thought about the amstrad CPC.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 18:01, 17 June 09
Well this is an Amstrad site... not sure what I was thinking trying to state facts, should have know I'd get a biased view on things.

I suppose It'd be like buying a commodore mag back in the day, writing in and asking what they thought about the amstrad CPC.

Well, I'm sorry, but before accusing us of being partial and biased you could just explain what makes the Spectrum more powerful than the Amstrad. I *know* we are biased, like everybody when it comes to thinks they like (duh), but I did mention computers better and stronger than the CPC. The ZX... well, let's just say it's the absolute first time that I've heard someone claiming it's more powerful than the CPC... Usually the discussion revolves around which system's games *play better*, not which one is more powerful. That's a non-issue, really... Unless you believe Sinclair and try to run a nuclear plant with a chiclet keyboard and a beeper for sound, and at a resolution of... wait, is that 32x24 or something? I must be wrong, this actually sounds WAY too low...

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:08, 17 June 09
Usually the discussion revolves around which system's games *play better*, not which one is more powerful.

Ok, on the whole and as part of my experiment - 80% of all the classic games produced on both the CPC and Speccy play better, or faster than the Amstrad CPC 464 equivalent. Everyone on here knows I'm a CPC geek, and it's really hard for me to accept this, but unfortunately it's the truth. And R-Type on the amstrad runs really slow compared to the 48K Speccy version, looks worse and the scrolling flicks onto the screen. A good game, but again... better on the Speccy.   

Quote from: ukmarkh on 18:37, 17 June 09
Ok, on the whole and as part of my experiment - 80% of all the classic games produced on both the CPC and Speccy play better, or faster than the Amstrad CPC 464 equivalent. Everyone on here knows I'm a CPC geek, and it's really hard for me to accept this, but unfortunately it's the truth. And R-Type on the amstrad runs really slow compared to the 48K Speccy version, looks worse and the scrolling flicks onto the screen. A good game, but again... better on the Speccy.  

But now you shift the issue. That's totally different than what you said before...

Ok, as far as games go; I think this has been discussed so many times before that it's kinda moot, but anyway, the Speccy had lots of great games (and a shitload of crappy ones, but most seem to forget that!), and Amstrad had the potential that was rarely exploited due to the programmers and producers involved. For every game that is arguably better on the Speccy, though, I can probably show you another that is better on the CPC.

And, besides, for me (and lots of others) colourful games with a decent resolution and some troubles in other aspects are much better than  awful colour clashing, terribly limited palette and speccy's <irony>high-res</irony> gfx that speed along nicely... If that were the case then let's all play 2600 games, shall we? Perfect scrolling and animation! And, hey, even the colours were so much better than the Spectrum's :D

Quote from: ukmarkh on 18:01, 17 June 09
Well this is an Amstrad site... not sure what I was thinking trying to state facts, should have know I'd get a biased view on things.

I suppose It'd be like buying a commodore mag back in the day, writing in and asking what they thought about the amstrad CPC.

Well, actually, what you originally posted was:

QuoteIt's not as powerful as the C64 or Speccy 128K, but it's still a worthy contender and actually does some things better.

Which is not technically correct, simply a matter of opinion. It's like writing a letter to a C64 magazine (or forum) saying the C64 is not as powerful as the CPC464 or Speccy 128K. Go try that at Lemon64 and see what the responses are like.  :)

About the only thing technically I may concede is that the SID is better than the AY, and I'm not even totally convinced of that. As for the Speccy, I don't think it's possible to soft-scroll 6K of screen RAM at 50 frames per second with a 3.5MHz Z80, the maximum is about 4K.

Quote from: Gryzor on 19:27, 17 June 09
But now you shift the issue. That's totally different than what you said before...

How am I shifting the issue, I was simply replying to your analogy of 'which system's games *play better*'. My original comment still stands, set in stone if you like. And I don't subscribe to this idea that colourful graphics make a great game.   

Amstrad Action reviewed and raved about 'Lotus Turbo Esprit' I gave this as an example, but still you choose to ignore the basics of what I'm trying to highlight? The game is choppier and slower on the CPC, it's as smooth as a babies arse on the Speccy... why is this? Super Hangon is also slower, Chase HQ that recieved the same development time is slightly slower, and many many more games follow this suite? I'm after an explanation, not a slanging match.

I'm also aware of the good games that are available on the CPC, so no need to recycle info in an attempt at teaching me to suck eggs... after playing many games on both systems, there are several games on the CPC, that deliver a better gaming experience on the CPC than their counterparts. This should be celebrated, as these few programmers acheived truely remarkable results, considering the CPC wasn't that remarkable.

Man, it's really not that hard. You shifted the issue the moment you went from "the CPC is underpowered compared to the Speccy" to "Speccy games play better", can't you see it????? Two totally different issues.

I don't basically disagree with you on the games issue, since it's subjective more or less, but the argument about the 2600 is relevant and valid. There *are* games that play better on the Speccy, but:

a. there are LOTS and LOTS of crappy titles for the platform
b. I'd take the CPC Chase HQ any day over any other version (yes, I do prefer it slightly more slow but full of colour brilliance and nice voice)
c. relevant to b., smoother animation and/or scrolling do not make a better game,
d. the speccy came earlier and had a larger user and developer base, so chances are it was much better exploited over its lifecycle.

But, really, really, I can't stand the bland (non-)palette and awful colour characteristics of the Spectrum. It just ruins it for me, even if it runs at 200 fps. I think Gryzor is scrolling on the Spectrum, but really, is it better than the CPC's flip-screen?

I haven't really played Lotus on the CPC, as I had moved on to the ST by then, so I don't have an opinion. I might try it though.

Quote from: Executioner on 07:50, 18 June 09
Well, actually, what you originally posted was:Which is not technically correct, simply a matter of opinion. It's like writing a letter to a C64 magazine (or forum) saying the C64 is not as powerful as the CPC464 or Speccy 128K. Go try that at Lemon64 and see what the responses are like.  :)

There is a post on Lemon64; not from me, but someone asking a similar line of questioning. In the main apart from one or two idiots - the conversation went quite well.

About the only thing technically I may concede is that the SID is better than the AY, and I'm not even totally convinced of that. As for the Speccy, I don't think it's possible to soft-scroll 6K of screen RAM at 50 frames per second with a 3.5MHz Z80, the maximum is about 4K.


This is more like it, how come you're not technically convinced the SID chip isn't better?

Ok, I just compared Lotus on Speccy 128 and CPC. Although the CPC version looks like a speccy conversion (not a good use of the resolution chosen), it runs a bit smoother here. NOT smooth, but smoother compared to the Spectrum version. And, sound...???

Quote from: Gryzor on 12:18, 18 June 09
Ok, I just compared Lotus on Speccy 128 and CPC. Although the CPC version looks like a speccy conversion (not a good use of the resolution chosen), it runs a bit smoother here. NOT smooth, but smoother compared to the Spectrum version. And, sound... ???

Are you stating that Lotus on the CPC is smoother and faster than the Speccy version, or just smoother?

You're splitting hair here. I didn't notice any speed difference but I may be wrong; the fact is that it's so choppy on the Spectrum it's almost unbearable...

The point here is, it's easy to make a game 'faster' this way: the Lotus could be travelling at a blistering 300MPH - and at 2FPS. Wouldn't it be better if it had a top speed of 150MPH and a framerate of 15fps?

Quote from: Gryzor on 12:51, 18 June 09
You're splitting hair here. I didn't notice any speed difference but I may be wrong; the fact is that it's so choppy on the Spectrum it's almost unbearable...

The CPC version is missing frames compared to the Speccy version, isn't as smooth when cornering, thus choppier. The fact that you can cross the finish line on the Speccy a whole two seconds before you can on the CPC should surely show the clues are there and it's slower on the CPC. You can record both games and then break them down into frames, this'll show that the CPC version not only runs slower, but misses frames in order to keep up.  ???

Two whole seconds? Wow, that must be a bad game then :p

As for missing frames - I don't need to record videos; how can you not *see* with your eyes that the Spectrum version is shoppy as hell? Especially when the car is jumping in the air, you have no clue what's going to happen next because the speed ir a few frames per second!

The only thing I can think of that you may mean is that the Spectrum is supposed to run at x fps, the CPC at z fps, with x<z, and Spectrum manages to keep up with x while CPC falls under z. But even the eventual z with dropped frames is smoother than the constant x!

The bottom line is, the CPC is a crappy little game and the Spectrum is an awful one :D

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:12, 18 June 09
Two whole seconds? Wow, that must be a bad game then :p

Just slightly inferior...  ;)

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:12, 18 June 09
As for missing frames - I don't need to record videos; how can you not *see* with your eyes that the Spectrum version is shoppy as hell?

Complete balls mate...

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:12, 18 June 09
The only thing I can think of that you may mean is that the Spectrum is supposed to run at x fps, the CPC at z fps, with x<z, and Spectrum manages to keep up with x while CPC falls under z. But even the eventual z with dropped frames is smoother than the constant x!

Spaghetti  ;D

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:12, 18 June 09The bottom line is, the CPC is a crappy little game and the Spectrum is an awful one :D

Not according to Amstrad Action or Sinclair User.

Is this about SU and AA supposed to be an argument? By then people were desperate to have such titles on their machines and they'd give it a high score no matter what... Amstrad has much better racers at any rate; and if you really think that Lotus is an example of "baby smooth" animation on the Spectrum, then I rest my case...

Quote from: Gryzor on 15:59, 18 June 09
Is this about SU and AA supposed to be an argument? By then people were desperate to have such titles on their machines and they'd give it a high score no matter what... Amstrad has much better racers at any rate; and if you really think that Lotus is an example of "baby smooth" animation on the Spectrum, then I rest my case...

The games not bad, you must have a dodgy emulator or crappy PC  :D

Quad-core Phenom @ 64 bit, and emus running at a silky smooth 50fps - waaay higher than the games. Sorry.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 12:01, 18 June 09
This is more like it, how come you're not technically convinced the SID chip isn't better?

Technically, it's better. More voices, more output levels etc, but, every tune sounds like a synthesiser playing guitar. Then again, the AY almost always sounds the same too.

Quote from: Executioner on 03:21, 19 June 09
Technically, it's better. More voices, more output levels etc, but, every tune sounds like a synthesiser playing guitar. Then again, the AY almost always sounds the same too.

I've always thought the CPC music in IK+ and a few other games was actually better on the CPC ???

Also, Turbo Outrun on the C64 has a rap song at the begining on the C64 version, how come the CPC never had anything similar in any of its games???

Quote from: ukmarkh on 09:56, 19 June 09
I've always thought the CPC music in IK+ and a few other games was actually better on the CPC ???

Also, Turbo Outrun on the C64 has a rap song at the begining on the C64 version, how come the CPC never had anything similar in any of its games???

Ok, the CPC can do the same or at least give a very good approximation.

But to do it on the CPC is different than on the c64.

In terms of coding, doing these things on the c64 may have been easier compared to the Amstrad, but they are still possible on cpc.
Even SID like tunes are possible on the CPC. Yes I am talking about CPC here compared to CPC+. These sid sounds are still possible on CPC, just not as easy.

The problem is that on the CPC it can be more complex and take more time to develop the routines to do this.

Remember that when it comes to games, there are lots of deadlines and in addition it also depends on if the programmer liked the platform.
A lot of old games were made by one man or made by small teams. Some of these didn't have enough knowledge, or maybe didn't have the time to learn the knowledge, to push the cpc.

In addition the cpc market was smaller than the other markets, also add that converting from the spectrum was much easier (3 days to convert the game)... this explains why often cpc games were not always as good.

But then look at the games where the programmers knew what they were doing, or actually cared.
Savage, Chase HQ, Gryzor (a small list because there are more).

These are all good games, where the programmer/team cared and produced a really nice game.

So it is not necessarily this machine is better than this machine, it is more that on the CPC, some people didn't take as much time to polish the cpc version.

Take bubble bobble, I think the main code for doing sprites etc was re-used in lots of games, the same code as used in Ghosts and Goblins. If they "got it right" the first time, Bubble Bobble and Ghosts and Goblins could have been far more colourful and a much nicer game.
I also think they could have put more into Ghost and Goblins (intros etc).. but they didn't want to because it wasn't really that important to them.

I think they just coded it and just left it. Their boss probably said "just make it work for the cpc, don't spend too much time" and they did it, got paid, and went home happy.

But now, look at some CPC demos, they show that with knowledge and time you can create very nice things on the cpc, and you CAN give the c64 and spectrum a run.

   

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
Ok, the CPC can do the same or at least give a very good approximation.

But to do it on the CPC is different than on the c64.

In terms of coding, doing these things on the c64 may have been easier compared to the Amstrad, but they are still possible on cpc.
Even SID like tunes are possible on the CPC. Yes I am talking about CPC here compared to CPC+. These sid sounds are still possible on CPC, just not as easy.

Cool... could these SID like tunes be included into a mainstream CPC game, or are we talking for demo purposes because of memory restrictions?

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09The problem is that on the CPC it can be more complex and take more time to develop the routines to do this.

Would it use more memory than doing it on the C64???

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
Remember that when it comes to games, there are lots of deadlines and in addition it also depends on if the programmer liked the platform.
A lot of old games were made by one man or made by small teams. Some of these didn't have enough knowledge, or maybe didn't have the time to learn the knowledge, to push the cpc.

I think on the whole, and from what I've read previous, it was pretty much down to development time.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
In addition the cpc market was smaller than the other markets, also add that converting from the spectrum was much easier (3 days to convert the game)... this explains why often cpc games were not always as good.

I'm not sure about three days, but I know a guy that did similar in around 3 weeks. They still have to do lots of testing.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
But then look at the games where the programmers knew what they were doing, or actually cared.
Savage, Chase HQ, Gryzor (a small list because there are more).

These are all good games, where the programmer/team cared and produced a really nice game.

I'll never dispute that, some quality games on the CPC... and because of the CPC's limitations; these remarkable achievements should be celebrated.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
So it is not necessarily this machine is better than this machine, it is more that on the CPC, some people didn't take as much time to polish the cpc version.

I'd like to think as you do, but the math's just don't add up... Steve Pickford actually talks about his experience of programming on the CPC, to program 'Zub' on the CPC, he had to leave of lot of the characters animations out, just fit the game into 64k.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
Take bubble bobble, I think the main code for doing sprites etc was re-used in lots of games, the same code as used in Ghosts and Goblins. If they "got it right" the first time, Bubble Bobble and Ghosts and Goblins could have been far more colourful and a much nicer game.
I also think they could have put more into Ghost and Goblins (intros etc).. but they didn't want to because it wasn't really that important to them.

The programmer worked out that the only way to get CPC to handle full screen scrolling plus sprites was to use a 16 colour screen mode (4 bits per pixel), but only use 4 colours each (2 bits) for background and sprites, in order to avoid having to do any masking of sprites. The result was a very ugly game as the number of colours was so massively restricted, even though it ran fairly fast.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 12:44, 19 June 09
But now, look at some CPC demos, they show that with knowledge and time you can create very nice things on the cpc, and you CAN give the c64 and spectrum a run.

I'm not sure about demo's, the stuff you can do in them isn't necessarily possible in a game.   

Quote from: ukmarkh on 15:37, 19 June 09
     
Cool... could these SID like tunes be included into a mainstream CPC game, or are we talking for demo purposes because of memory restrictions?

demos more because of the timing and cpu use, not so much memory.

Part of the discussion here is which computer is better?
I think you are also saying that the games are better on Spectrum than CPC? and then saying that is down to the computer itself.

I am saying that the cpc can do some of these things that the other machines do.. can it do them in a game.. depends on the game and how much each of these effects takes cpu wise.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 15:37, 19 June 09

 
Would it use more memory than doing it on the C64???

not really, but more cpu time.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 15:37, 19 June 09
I think on the whole, and from what I've read previous, it was pretty much down to development time.

 
I'm not sure about three days, but I know a guy that did similar in around 3 weeks. They still have to do lots of testing.

I was told, from a reliable source, that a cpc game could be converted in 3 days. The guy who told me said that they would work solidly, and this was possible because they were young and didn't have commitments.
As far as testing was concerned, he never mentioned this.

Quote from: ukmarkh on 15:37, 19 June 09
I'd like to think as you do, but the math's just don't add up... Steve Pickford actually talks about his experience of programming on the CPC, to program 'Zub' on the CPC, he had to leave of lot of the characters animations out, just fit the game into 64k.

I agree with you here, but things are more possible now because of better compressors. So it may be possible to fit more in now because we have better ways of squeezing stuff in.
Or alternatively, this extra stuff could have been loaded for 128k version. I know lots of 128k versions existed for speccy, so why not cpc too?

Some parts could be loaded seperately (intro bits possibly).

 

Quote from: ukmarkh on 15:37, 19 June 09
The programmer worked out that the only way to get CPC to handle full screen scrolling plus sprites was to use a 16 colour screen mode (4 bits per pixel), but only use 4 colours each (2 bits) for background and sprites, in order to avoid having to do any masking of sprites. The result was a very ugly game as the number of colours was so massively restricted, even though it ran fairly fast.

 
I'm not sure about demo's, the stuff you can do in them isn't necessarily possible in a game.

I am not completely in agreement with you here.
True it is one way to achieve faster sprites and scrolling, but it is still possible to have full-colour sprites and nice scrolling. Other games demonstrate this.
But have you noticed that some games, by particular developers, (software creations), just used the same engine over and over. I know it makes sense econimically and time wise, but in terms of games there are some where they could have used a different engine and used full colour sprites.
Look at LED storm etc for example. not a lot going on, so they could have easily made this more colourful but they couldn't be bothered. I believe Ghosts and Goblins could have been better on cpc.

We *did* get the original Outrun soundtrack, albeit on audio cassette :D

         

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09
demos more because of the timing and cpu use, not so much memory.

I thought as much, real shame.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09
Part of the discussion here is which computer is better?

Gaming is what I mostly used my CPC for, I didn't actually own a Speccy until recently, and I'm gob smacked at how much faster, more detailed the majority of games on the Speccy are. 

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09I think you are also saying that the games are better on Spectrum than CPC? and then saying that is down to the computer itself.

For years I always thought the CPC was miles more powerful, until I dug a bit deeper... now I'm not sure what to think.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09I am saying that the cpc can do some of these things that the other machines do.. can it do them in a game.. depends on the game and how much each of these effects takes cpu wise.
not really, but more cpu time.

I agree fully with this comment, and when looking at a certain style of game, the likes of Head over Heals and Wec-le-mans these games deliver.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09I was told, from a reliable source, that a cpc game could be converted in 3 days. The guy who told me said that they would work solidly, and this was possible because they were young and didn't have commitments. As far as testing was concerned, he never mentioned this.

I wasn't suggesting it isn't possible, but surely this can't be good for their health. 

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09I agree with you here, but things are more possible now because of better compressors. So it may be possible to fit more in now because we have better ways of squeezing stuff in.
Or alternatively, this extra stuff could have been loaded for 128k version. I know lots of 128k versions existed for speccy, so why not cpc too?

Isn't the compression stuff, and other newer techniques the same for the Speccy?

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09
I am not completely in agreement with you here. True it is one way to achieve faster sprites and scrolling, but it is still possible to have full-colour sprites and nice scrolling. Other games demonstrate this.

That's true, Robocop and Batman being good examples. Although surely not with a full screen on a 64k system?

Quote from: arnoldemu on 18:24, 19 June 09But have you noticed that some games, by particular developers, (software creations), just used the same engine over and over. I know it makes sense econimically and time wise, but in terms of games there are some where they could have used a different engine and used full colour sprites. Look at LED storm etc for example. not a lot going on, so they could have easily made this more colourful but they couldn't be bothered. I believe Ghosts and Goblins could have been better on cpc.

I can think of a few where this has happened, Hi-tec would use the same engine for a lot of their games, and Ocean also. LED Storm is the vertical car racer style shoot-em-up, great scroll once you hit top speed, but the timing is all over the shop, and I reckon they used a shed load of memory just getting it to move the way it did... very similar to the technique Paul Shirley used known as Rotovision, although he wasn't the first to use it.   

Quote from: ukmarkh on 14:36, 15 June 09
But on the CPC 464, (64k - 16k screen = 48k) the same as the Speccy, then there is the issue that the sprites take up more memory to draw than the equivelent on the Speccy... All the in-game graphics take up twice the RAM because 2 bits were required for every pixel, rather than 1 bit on the Spectrum. This doubled the size of all the graphics, using a similar amount of free RAM, and an Amstrad version of a Spectrum game seems to always require drastic cuts to fit into RAM. This perception that the two machines were more or less the same, doesn't hold true when you do the maths, so when people state the Amstrad was slightly better, at the moment, unless I'm missing something - this statement simply doesn't stack up.

Well the Spectrum has a 7KB screen, so therefore has 41KB of RAM, compared to the 48KB the CPC has, going by your logic. In addition shrinking the CPC screen size to that of the Spectrum frees up another 4KB, so it is 41KB vs 52KB. In addition Spectrum games often had to include a mask graphic alongside the definition, so the graphical memory requirement was just as high, whereas the CPC would use a specific ink as transparent.

However in terms of CPU work, the Spectrum had far less to do to update a screen, which for a 4MHz Z80 was a major aspect of why Spectrum games ran smoother if they had a lot of on-screen action (e.g., scrolling). Single-screen CPC games did compare very well however.

Using off the shelf components certainly saved in the design stages of the CPC, but omitting hardware scrolling and/or hardware sprites and/or tiled graphics modes certainly had a negative effect on the games side of things. Better and more colours was good however, the Spectrum suffered here from a limited primary colour selection, the C64 from a muddy selection.

Quote from: Briggsy on 18:44, 21 June 09
Using off the shelf components certainly saved in the design stages of the CPC, but omitting hardware scrolling and/or hardware sprites and/or tiled graphics modes certainly had a negative effect on the games side of things. Better and more colours was good however, the Spectrum suffered here from a limited primary colour selection, the C64 from a muddy selection.

Did the Speccy have hardware sprites?? I think it was just a conscious decision - more colours and graphical capabilities versus increase speed. Both manufacturers made their decision...

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:48, 21 June 09
Did the Speccy have hardware sprites?? I think it was just a conscious decision - more colours and graphical capabilities versus increase speed. Both manufacturers made their decision...

No, it just had a 6KB bitmapped screen and a 1KB attribute map on top of it all. That was a comparison with the C64 which had character mapped modes and sprites (and an attribute map for the character mapped modes). The C64 was a really well designed computer with colour palette and hi-res fail.

Quote from: Briggsy on 19:16, 21 June 09The C64 was a really well designed computer with colour palette and hi-res fail.

Except some idiot decided they should run the CPU at 1MHz! Good job it had the SID and some hardware for scrolling and sprites, 'cause it wouldn't have been much without it.

Quote from: Executioner on 06:13, 22 June 09
Except some idiot decided they should run the CPU at 1MHz! Good job it had the SID and some hardware for scrolling and sprites, 'cause it wouldn't have been much without it.

In the main, you'd never know the CPU was running at 1mhz, Turrican, Turrican 2, Mayhem in Monsterland, Turbo outrun, Power Drift and Flimbo's quest are simply brilliant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the 1mhz CPU only ever reach boiling point when doing pseudo style 3D games. For me games like Driller, or any freescape games on the C64 are like watching a slide show.

Quote from: Executioner on 06:13, 22 June 09
Except some idiot decided they should run the CPU at 1MHz! Good job it had the SID and some hardware for scrolling and sprites, 'cause it wouldn't have been much without it.

It was a more efficient CPU in many ways, but yes, 1MHz in 1982 was quite poor when they could have had 2MHz, as used by other computers that used the same chip family. It does demonstrate how powerful even a little bit of custom hardware can be, when utilised well, even if the CPU is poor. The SNES is another example.
The CPC was an 8-bit equivalent of the Atari ST, the C64 was an Amiga 500. This comparison falls apart in many many places, so don't analyse it too deeply!

Quote from: Gryzor on 12:18, 18 June 09
Ok, I just compared Lotus on Speccy 128 and CPC. Although the CPC version looks like a speccy conversion (not a good use of the resolution chosen), it runs a bit smoother here. NOT smooth, but smoother compared to the Spectrum version. And, sound... ???

Interesting post. I've actually heard people in the past say a similar thing about Revs on the C64 vs Revs on the BBC. The fact is the frame rate is much higher on the BBC. It combines a 2MHz 6502 with an 8K screen mode, and only draws a small portion of the display. The C64 version has roughly the same screen memory usage, but the processor is half the speed. It does have a few optimisations in the maths routines though.

Quote from: Gryzor on 12:18, 18 June 09
Ok, I just compared Lotus on Speccy 128 and CPC. Although the CPC version looks like a speccy conversion (not a good use of the resolution chosen), it runs a bit smoother here. NOT smooth, but smoother compared to the Spectrum version. And, sound... ???

Can someone else please confirm this, as on real hardware I'm finding the spectrum version superior in smoothness, speed and controls. The CPC version seems to miss frames, has a choppy chug like frame rate, and the controls are delayed compared to the speccy version?

QuoteI have no idea what you're talking about  ??? very broken English. The comments seem a bit random.

None so deaf as those that won't hear.
(have you understood this ?  ::))
I think you can understand that english is not the native language for some people here...I'm not expecting from you a french speaking level as bad as my poor english

I took a look at YouTube and on a video I saw it runs much smoother, which makes me wonder why and how.

But, in any case, we're still talking about a game that has been superseded in terms of quality by other racers on the Amstrad, so I really don't see th point in this... Lotus still looks and plays like a Speccy port on the CPC which means => awful.

Quote from: Gryzor on 16:04, 24 June 09
Lotus still looks and plays like a Speccy port on the CPC which means => awful.

In the one hand you say Lotus looks and plays like a Speccy port, and that = awful, but that doesn't make any sense and is contradictory, as you've said in the past that you love R-Type, and that is a blatant Speccy port if ever I've seen one? Please explain, my head hurts now?   

Oh man, not this argument/discussion again! Mark it seems like you've 'ported' (*cough*!) this argument over from the Retro Gamer forums! Listen, whatever people say on there isn't necessarily gospel truth, even coming from knowledgeable people like CMR and Emperor Fossil etc. Actually I wish Jason (TMR) would come and post on here and give his views, that would be nice... but whilst he does have a great deal of knowledge about the CPCs architecture and programming techniques you have to remember hes predominantly a C64 coder (and a very good one at that) and more acustomed to routines and working with that machine than the CPC. Its a bit like saying a PHP programmer will be great at Perl because they share a lot of structural similarities, yet looking at it from the other angle they're completely different languages! Plus also 90% of people on there immediately favour the Speccy/C64 blindly. ALL the machines are limited in one way or another, its knowing the tricks and the ways to optimise and get the most out of them. You can't judge the CPC in terms of it being 'less powerful' purely on the basis of the vast majority of games that were released as its well lamented the CPC was nearly always the last in line.

The discussion about 'who is more powerful' is completely pointless. There's too many variables involved to reach any kind of conclusion, and where one machine has strength in one area it suffers in another. I think that's already been made clear earlier.

It's funny, I was having a very similar arguement with a friend over cars recently - was his or mine 'more powerful'? Both are from 1990 with 16v DOHC 1.8Li engines - mines a Mazda 323F his is a Toyato MR2. So the argument rumbles... my Mazda's 0-60 is clocked around 6.8secs, his Toyato 7.2secs, yet my BHP is 131 but his is 155... the torque at 4800RPM is apparently 160 for mine, 155 for his (figures could be wrong here) ... but then my top speed is 130MPH yet his 140MPH roughly... yikes! Who wins? Whats better on a straight line, or handling on bends? Who cares if you have a higher top speed when the national speed limit is 70? And then, like here the argument progresses/digresses onto 'what looks better'! Of course I reckon mine (http://www.mazdaclub.cz/graphics/owners/full/1821_294_ob260036.jpg) looks better but then I'm sure many would argue his (http://www.edmunds.com/pictures/VEHICLE/1993/Toyota/8888/1993.toyota.mr2.10142-396x249.jpg) does, but then I prefer my chunkier more interesting and original design  ;D So argument deviates over time and by the end its resulted in 'whats better' from the original 'what's more powerful'. If we put it to a vote on a car general forum, I believe far more people owned an MR2 than a 323F and we probably know who the winner would be. Put it to the Club323 forums and the tiny minority would be for the MR2, with 323 owners chirping up with further reasons/arguments that ous is a far more reliable car and far more mods both cosmetically and under the bonnet can be done as another argument/reason why. That's probably subjective though. Anyway I'm rambling but you can draw many parralels between bits of the above with 'faster CPU', 'more memory,' 'hardware sprites', 'operating systems', 'pallettes', etc!!

So here, questions are not just about games, but about the serious side of things like business applications etc ... remember the CPC was designed and geared more so than the other 8bit machines to this side of things. I did all my school and then later college work on my 6128! I don't know *anyone* at school/college that used their Speccy/C64 for this. But you say that on the Retro Gamer forums and they'll rather unpolitely inform you that 'this is Retro GAMER ... I couldn't give a flying one if it can draw nice graphs and has an awesome CPM' etc. Its all in the eye of the beholder and the hands of the user with what application they want it for.

Ask me 10 years ago when I hadn't played many Speccy games and even less C64 games and I would have immediately proclaimed something like 'Speccys 4 colours and colour clash = AWFUL .... C64's pallette? VOMIT INDUCING... ALL SHIT COMPARED TO THE AMSTRAD!!'. Now with the benefit of emulaters and YouTube I love all 3 machines and what they achieved, hell it was only yesterday I fired up Repton and Action Force 2 on the Speccy and was loving it!

But you want smooth multidirection scrolling on the Amstrad? Fire up Shinobi, Prehistorik 2, Batman The Movie, Trantor, etc! Just because not many games had it doesn't mean its not as powerful. Even Shinobi which is ancient managed smooth/fast 4 way scrolling with a full screen, plenty of sprites and even MUSIC!

I couldn't give a chuff if something on the Amstrads running at 25fps compared to the speccys 27.5fps the difference is extremely negligable and probably not even noticable. Maybe Chase HQ on the Speccy does run very very slightly faster... jeez I'll damned if I can even notice it, in fact I'm not convinced it even does! Then you compare graphics and we have a hands down winner for the CPC. And you know with the C64's muddy brown/washed up pallete if I'm being harsh, they'll often come back with CPC graphics are chunky and blocky!

...but then I prefer nice colourful chunky graphics and sprites (as long as its not detrimental for being able to determine what's happening on the screen), because thats what I grew up with and grew to love. I can't grow to love colour clash and muddy browns now, but I'm not going to make sweeping statements now either.

Conclusion? There isn't one for which is more powerful or better. Just that, I'll always prefer the Amstrad over the 2 machines.


ps Here's one sweeping statement tho for ya! The '6128 Plus' wipes the floor with 'em, even the DMA sound (see Prehistorik 2 title music for reference) kicks the SID chip between the balls  ;D

pps Lotus Esprit sucked and is highly overrated IMHO, that tiny window and playing area? I wouldn't even put the game in my top 10 racing games by a long shot....

I don't really care about the 8bits battle, but you should hear the C64 demo "Vicious Sid (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=51993)" (there's some MP3 recordings in the comments if you can't run it on a real breadbox). I wouldn't say that the Plus DMA sound kicks the SID that much :)


ps: sorry, his car looks better imo =)

         

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
Oh man, not this argument/discussion again! Mark it seems like you've 'ported' (*cough*!) this argument over from the Retro Gamer forums! Listen, whatever people say on there isn't necessarily gospel truth, even coming from knowledgeable people like CMR and Emperor Fossil etc. Actually I wish Jason (TMR) would come and post on here and give his views, that would be nice... but whilst he does have a great deal of knowledge about the CPCs architecture and programming techniques you have to remember hes predominantly a C64 coder (and a very good one at that) and more acustomed to routines and working with that machine than the CPC. Its a bit like saying a PHP programmer will be great at Perl because they share a lot of structural similarities, yet looking at it from the other angle they're completely different languages! Plus also 90% of people on there immediately favour the Speccy/C64 blindly. ALL the machines are limited in one way or another, its knowing the tricks and the ways to optimise and get the most out of them. You can't judge the CPC in terms of it being 'less powerful' purely on the basis of the vast majority of games that were released as its well lamented the CPC was nearly always the last in line.

You didn't need to post here or get involved... and I'm not sure if you're in some way insinuating that I'm just here to recite posts and comments from RetroGamer, in order to cause some sort of trouble. I don't appreciate how you've aimed the 'how to suck eggs story' at me, using your car as an analogy. I have my own mind, just as everyone else on here, and naturally along with having a brain people form opinions about certain things. I also think that TMR is a long time admirer of the CPC, by all means he loves the C64 to bits, but that doesn't mean his opinion is any less valid or untruthful. He comes across as an experienced and level headed sort of guy, maybe on par with executioner in some respects. How you can say you can't compare a machines technical ability by looking and comparing its back catalogue of game software searches me... games are what make and sell a machine, they push the hardware to its boundaries, hardware is nothing without the sum of its software, and this is what all tech comparisons should be based on. If Amstrad didn't intend the CPC as a games computer, why on earth did they fall over themselves to release Amsoft, and package the machine with ten free games? As for favouring one machine over another, well I'm certainly guilty of that, It's Amstrad CPC 6128 all the way for me, and always will be... but that doesn't mean my investigation or opinions should be distorted or corrupt in regards to the other machines. I'm sorry, but you've just come across as very patronising. 

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
The discussion about 'who is more powerful' is completely pointless. There's too many variables involved to reach any kind of conclusion, and where one machine has strength in one area it suffers in another. I think that's already been made clear earlier.

I personally like talking about this age old topic, I find the 8-bit computer really fascinating, and when people start talking technical about such things, I'm in my element. And no! I don't really wanna stop talking about such things either. It's a technical forum, I'd like to improve my knowledge of the CPC, and other 8-bit and 16-bit computers, no matter how subjective you believe a topic of conversion to be.

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
So here, questions are not just about games, but about the serious side of things like business applications etc ...

I've no idea about that, Everyone I knew that owned an Amstrad only played games on it, including myself... my brother used a PCW for his homework. From a quick search on the tinternet, and looking at the popular apps of the time, i.e. Mini Office II and a few more that escape me... all pretty much saw a commercial release on the C64 and Speccy. 

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
Ask me 10 years ago when I hadn't played many Speccy games and even less C64 games and I would have immediately proclaimed something like 'Speccys 4 colours and colour clash = AWFUL .... C64's pallette? VOMIT INDUCING... ALL SHIT COMPARED TO THE AMSTRAD!!'. Now with the benefit of emulaters and YouTube I love all 3 machines and what they achieved, hell it was only yesterday I fired up Repton and Action Force 2 on the Speccy and was loving it!

Good on you, and it's the same with me... but some of the closed minded comments on here, are unbelievable and unfounded towards the C64 and Speccy.

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
But you want smooth multidirection scrolling on the Amstrad? Fire up Shinobi, Prehistorik 2, Batman The Movie, Trantor, etc! Just because not many games had it doesn't mean its not as powerful. Even Shinobi which is ancient managed smooth/fast 4 way scrolling with a full screen, plenty of sprites and even MUSIC!

I'd hardly call the scrolling in those games smooth, acceptable yes... but did Shinobi feature music in the 64K version?

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
I couldn't give a chuff if something on the Amstrads running at 25fps compared to the speccys 27.5fps the difference is extremely negligable and probably not even noticable. Maybe Chase HQ on the Speccy does run very very slightly faster... jeez I'll damned if I can even notice it, in fact I'm not convinced it even does! Then you compare graphics and we have a hands down winner for the CPC. And you know with the C64's muddy brown/washed up pallete if I'm being harsh, they'll often come back with CPC graphics are chunky and blocky!

25fps? The average according to tests I've ran, are around 12fps. You can use any video capture software out there to see this for yourself. Not many games ran at 25fps.

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
ps Here's one sweeping statement tho for ya! The '6128 Plus' wipes the floor with 'em, even the DMA sound (see Prehistorik 2 title music for reference) kicks the SID chip between the balls  (http://smileys/default/grin.gif)

The Plus machine is a different matter altogether... it has a bunch of problems we can leave for another day.

Quote from: Xyphoe on 14:40, 25 June 09
pps Lotus Esprit sucked and is highly overrated IMHO, that tiny window and playing area? I wouldn't even put the game in my top 10 racing games by a long shot....

I'd disagree... as did Amstrad Action back in the day.   

Okay, time for the other argument: The CPC came with a monitor, and thus you didn't have to get off the 'pooter at 6pm for Dad to watch the six o'clock news.
12fps > 0fps. :p

Hey man thanks for your reply, I'll reply to each bit below like you did to clear anything up. Lets keep this friendly and nice, we're not attacking each other here :)

Quote from: ukmarkh on 19:15, 25 June 09
You didn't need to post here or get involved...

Sorry, what do you mean by that? I'm not someone who's come across from Retro Gamer forums just to post here on this topic.. I've been on cpczone forums for years! And that TACGR forums before that! As for getting involved, this is an open forum right?

Quote from: ukmarkh
and I'm not sure if you're in some way insinuating that I'm just here to recite posts and comments from RetroGamer, in order to cause some sort of trouble.

No but I'm concerned that you *may* be doing this. I don't mean this as any slight or attack on you, but from reading RG forums too for a long time I'm sure I remember a long time ago you posting on there saying that the Amstrad WAS the most powerful (although, this was a long time ago and apologies in advance if that wasn't you or it was a different comment, but you did post that dreadful Amstrad Action 'trendsetter' article that claimed such stuff like 'Shadow Of The Beast was developed on the CPC'...in the 10 things you didn't know about the CPC topic) and it appears if so you're now saying the opposite after being involved with much discussion about the merits of the machines over there. I was just a little puzzled and curious about this, and just concerned that you're taking for gospel truth words that have been written that may not be true or at least the full picture especially if you're taking up the mantle and huge responsibility of finishing the CPC book. So that's no disrespect intended to you or anyone else on other forums etc but that you may find 'better' answers on here from the people really developing hardcore stuff like Executioner, Longshot, Arnoldemu, etc.

Quote from: ukmarkh
I don't appreciate how you've aimed the 'how to suck eggs story' at me, using your car as an analogy. I have my own mind, just as everyone else on here, and naturally along with having a brain people form opinions about certain things.

Well, if I'm being honest .. yes the first paragraph of my reply was aimed towards you and the tone deliberately slightly patronising because frankly I was annoyed at how you replied to Longshot which I thought was very rude (I could understand what he was saying despite not being perfect English) and how it appeared to me you put your statements across and changing your tune from a while back. Plus dude with all due respect you can't tell me some of your own posts in the past haven't been taken badly by people. It confused and annoyed me slightly, but thats maybe because I'm just passionate about the CPC and will 'defend its honour' perhaps sometimes a little too strongly (the original post I changed because I thought it was too angry and attacking you) - its just a little more shocking seeing statements from someone who's really supported and contributed to the CPC (dont get me wrong - I think you're really cool for doing all the YouTube vids, the hard work into the CPC book etc).

The car analogy wasn't specifically aimed at you at all, but a general comment on how people as a whole get into these discussions about things not just about retro computers about 'what is the best' and more often than not completely pointless.

The discussion tho *is* fun, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be talked about but that we should be careful what we lay down as 'fact' and how it is presented.

Quote from: ukmarkhI also think that TMR is a long time admirer of the CPC, by all means he loves the C64 to bits, but that doesn't mean his opinion is any less valid or untruthful. He comes across as an experienced and level headed sort of guy, maybe on par with executioner in some respects.

Probably begrudgingly so  ;) But yes, I don't necessarily disagree with 95% of what he's said.

Quote from: ukmarkhHow you can say you can't compare a machines technical ability by looking and comparing its back catalogue of game software searches me... games are what make and sell a machine, they push the hardware to its boundaries, hardware is nothing without the sum of its software, and this is what all tech comparisons should be based on. If Amstrad didn't intend the CPC as a games computer, why on earth did they fall over themselves to release Amsoft, and package the machine with ten free games?

I'm sorry but just how is that relevant? It's only relevant if you're talking about the 'popularity' of the machine. Isn't the discussion originally about what is more powerful? OK if we're talking specifically 8-bit home computers technically the Sam Coupe is more powerful than the CPC, but only had about 30 games ever realeased for it! Compare its version of Lemmings to the CPCs. Just because it had less games doesn't make it less powerful, indeed for any machine that had 1000 games released but only 10 of which were 'awesome'.

Quote from: ukmarkhAs for favouring one machine over another, well I'm certainly guilty of that, It's Amstrad CPC 6128 all the way for me, and always will be... but that doesn't mean my investigation or opinions should be distorted or corrupt in regards to the other machines.

Good man  ;D And yep, I hope it doesn't - I just want to clarify that with you  :)

Quote from: ukmarkhI personally like talking about this age old topic, I find the 8-bit computer really fascinating, and when people start talking technical about such things, I'm in my element. And no! I don't really wanna stop talking about such things either. It's a technical forum, I'd like to improve my knowledge of the CPC, and other 8-bit and 16-bit computers, no matter how subjective you believe a topic of conversion to be.

Cool! And I'm enjoying this discussion too! We're all passionate about these things, and I certainly dont want to turn our discussion into something personal. No no, not at all.

Quote from: ukmarkhI've no idea about that, Everyone I knew that owned an Amstrad only played games on it, including myself... my brother used a PCW for his homework. From a quick search on the tinternet, and looking at the popular apps of the time, i.e. Mini Office II and a few more that escape me... all pretty much saw a commercial release on the C64 and Speccy.

Furry muff. There was probably 3 or 4 us at secondary school that had disk based CPC's who used them for doing homework etc - I handed in all my essays for school and college printed from my DMP  ;D I knew about the same amount of people for both Speccy and C64 who didn't. In fact my primary school has 6128s there ... indeed my first 6128 came from my music teacher!

Quote from: ukmarkhGood on you, and it's the same with me... but some of the closed minded comments on here, are unbelievable and unfounded towards the C64 and Speccy.

Yea man, we can't all help being a little biased. I have to admit I'm jealous sometimes of seeing the C64 conversion and getting a little angry at Mr Sugar inside! heh

Quote from: ukmarkhI'd hardly call the scrolling in those games smooth, acceptable yes... but did Shinobi feature music in the 64K version?

Ohh, fair enough - I've probably only been playing the 128k version. But there's probably other examples out there.

Quote from: ukmarkh25fps? The average according to tests I've ran, are around 12fps. You can use any video capture software out there to see this for yourself. Not many games ran at 25fps.

Aye, yea thats why I mentioned Emperor Fossil earlier who did all those tests initially. It was illuminating, but to be honest didn't change the fact the most of the games were still hugely enjoyable and 'other factors' put them ahead of the conversions that ran with more fps.

Quote from: ukmarkhI'd disagree... as did Amstrad Action back in the day.

Heh, I wouldn't always trust Amstrad Action  ;) j/k!

Ohhh-kay....

Quote from: ukmarkh on 00:41, 25 June 09
In the one hand you say Lotus looks and plays like a Speccy port, and that = awful, but that doesn't make any sense and is contradictory, as you've said in the past that you love R-Type, and that is a blatant Speccy port if ever I've seen one? Please explain, my head hurts now?  

Well,
(http://www.news-source.org/ACAAI/Graphics/2008/March/aspirin.jpg).

R-Type, despite looking speccy-like, is a sublime, very playable, and full of character game. That one spectrum port plays awesome does not mean that an awful-looking, slow, tiny-playing-area and with bad gameplay title should follow. Check out the other CPC racers...

Quote from: Xyphoe
I did all my school and then later college work on my 6128!

And not only you. My neighbor did his entire PhD on a 6128+DMP.

Quote from: ukmarkh
You didn't need to post here or get involved...

I'm sorry, didn't get that. Maybe you'd like to withdraw that comment?

Quote from: ukmarkh
Everyone I knew that owned an Amstrad only played games on it, including myself.[...]all pretty much saw a commercial release on the C64 and Speccy.

That's because we were young boys. I've seen lots of people *working* with the 6128, and back in the day the neighborhood video club and soccer betting office used CPCs to run the business... As for the Speccy and c64 releases, do you really imagine yourself working with THOSE versions after seeing the CPC ones?

Quote from: ukmarkh
I'd disagree... as did Amstrad Action back in the day.

Logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html). Proves nothing.

Please, guys, no matter what, leave personal accusations and attacks out of this. I'm serious.

QuoteThere was probably 3 or 4 us at secondary school that had disk based CPC's who used them for doing homework etc - I handed in all my essays for school and college printed from my DMP

Yes. And that was my case too. At university school, we worked on IMS5000 systems based on CP/M and one project had to be coded in Turbo Pascal. We had two 5"1/4 drives to save our work. Unfortunately, these drives were so old that they destroy the disk (and the files) after some write operations. I'd adjusted the disk format of cpc to the Ims standard (easy with Amsdos) and so, i was able to work my Turbo Pascal project on the Cpc (i'd more ram with CPM+ that on IMS system... :P) . Lot of friends had used my Cpc to create backup of their precious files...About me , the cpc was one of the first 8bit reliable with storage. And that was a very good reason to buy it when you had experimented before some other systems... ::)
[ hope to be understood... :'( ]

Quote from: ukmarkh on 19:15, 25 June 09
I also think that TMR is a long time admirer of the CPC         

Haha, NO!

From the Retrogamer forum

TMR wrote:
Did it need mentioning yet again? Especially considering the C64 has a slightly higher resolution than the CPC in that mode...

Ivarf wrote:
Whats the resolution and colourmode the Commodore 64 is using here? I have always thought the c64 is using 160x200 in 16 colour mode with atributes which limits the placement of the colours

TMR wrote:
Colour placement depends on the mode, Flimbo's Quest is running in multicolour character mode so one colour per 4x8 pixel character and three shared that can be split during the display (not including the sprite colours which are independent).

The resolution is 160x200 pixels (well, strictly speaking 152x200 since the hardware scrolling is enabled and the movement resolution is still 320x200 since that's a constant) and the pixel ratio is about the same as mode 0 on the CPC, but since the C64 has larger borders around that area, a direct comparison on the same monitor would see the C64 pixels being pushed into less space on screen, meaning they're at a higher resolution overall.


Ivarf wrote:
I didn't know the C64s border were that large. Thanks for the detailed description of how the graphics works on the C64 

When and if I will be playing one of my C64 or Zx Spectrums again I will be playing on a 28" PAL TV. My CPC uses a 14" RGB monitor. MY Spectrum surely is lowres compared to MY CPC 

I don't believe in Speccy
I don't believe in Atari 8-Bit
I don't believe in C64


I just believe in me
My CPC and me
And that's reality.  :)



Thank you John for inspiring.
Have a good time in heaven.

Quote from: Leonie on 20:04, 14 May 10
I don't believe in Speccy
I don't believe in Atari 8-Bit
I don't believe in C64


I just believe in me
My CPC and me
And that's reality.  :)



Thank you John for inspiring.
Have a good time in heaven.

This is a massive Delorean post, but fcuk yeah! Go Leonie... CPC forever!

Quote from: ukmarkh on 20:27, 14 May 10
This is a massive Delorean post, but fuck yeah! Go Leonie... CPC forever!

Pardon my asking, but what´s "Delorean post"?  ???

Quote from: Leonie on 20:40, 14 May 10

Pardon my asking, but what´s "Delorean post"?  ???

Just means this is an old topic I haven't seen in a while.

@ ukmarkh:

There is a default in your quotation of my post.
Please correct it, it spoils my art!

Quote from: Leonie on 21:11, 14 May 10
@ ukmarkh:

There is a default in your quotation of my post.
Please correct it, it draggles my art!

To remove it, just press the any key?

We also use the term threadomancy...
like Necromancy's Raise Dead spells but on threads...

On another way, the Amstrad is far more powerfull than the speccy in term of video and graphicall capability.

A CPC6128 remains far more powerfull  than a Speccy 48k in many aspects... (Video, sound...even Datastorage...).

And the best car is not always the one that win the Race : it's the best pilot that wins the race.

CPC was mostly poorly piloted.

Also Speccy was for Geeks, CPC was for artists. 8)

Ok Clive married Angie Bowness.

But this girl would look ugly pictured on a Speccy...
While a rastered Mode1 or Mode0 full screen on CPC or PLUS would simply put the Bowner in Bowness... :P

You can't compare two machines by the games they run like this.  It makes no sense.  That would be like me writing an application in Java with code optimised for the PC and then comparing performance between the PC and the MAC.  With the number of Speccy ports we used to get, that is the only real accurate analogy. 

The only way you can really compare them is to compare the hardware and then benchmark the machines in a number of tasks optimised to their specific strengths.

Personally, I feel that if the Speccy was the 'better machine' they'd have written code for the Amstrad and ported to the Spectrum, not vice versa. Since the Amstrad was the better machine, they wrote the code for the Speccy and ported it over with minimal changes to the Amstrad. Of course many ports didn't perform as well as the Speccy equivalent.  The original code was written to take advantage of the Speccy hardware! :)

QuoteThe only way you can really compare them is to compare the hardware and   then benchmark the machines in a number of tasks optimised to their   specific strengths.

To be fair, on purely "serious application" matter... both have the same Z80...
I don't think there would be a great difference in.. say... a mathematic resolution ?

Actually... the Amstrad's Spectrum are quite compairable to Amstrad's CPC in term of Hardware offer...

Same kind of casing, Same disk/Tape drives...

Same sort of keyboard...CPC only having the Extrra F0-F9 keys ?

Perhaps even almost the same amount of RAM if you take the 6128 into account...



So the Games are quite the stuff it is at.


But, well...
To me, Monocolour games or colourclashing games is no better than slow game.

And I like the fact CPC have a decent palette and proper modes to use it.

Sounds ?
not that different too.
OK AY on speccy is faster... and perhaps a MIDI port on Speccy ?


Yet as you told, the CPC can actually "run" Speccy programs with only few alterations (despite doing this badly) while speccy can't do shit with Amstrad stuff...

Sounds : Many speccy 48 have no AY sound.
Video : A speccy is actually half a Mode2 screen in display... and yyou caan't get coloured sprites with decent mask and so on unless colour clashes on speccy... or sqimply run monocolour game area...

Every time I read about the Speccy's "high-res graphics"... it just cracks me up.

To add to the injury and madness, speccy fans also often tell that most speccy ports have a smaller screen on CPC so it have a poor resolution...
While speccy is so "HighRez" and Awesome large screen with so few border...


Well...
Even a full screen Mode0 is actually more detailed than a speccy IMO...
Considering the vertical additions... and the extra colours...

Fact is, if you actually compare speccy and CPC on same-size screen...
both speccy in its only graphic "mode" and a CPC in real 320x200x4 mode...

The CPC is quite better.
Ok, only 4 colours instead of "8"...
But fine 3 or even 4 levels ditherings, detailed stuff not character bond... and so on...

And the pixels are actually smallers on CPC.

No wonder the Eastern Scene had to customize clones with extra stuff in it...

Oh, and simply display the orange on screen... Speccyfags cannot do this... ;)

I wonder if the CPC would have existed if it was not for the Spectrum really kickstarting the UK home owning scene?  Amstrad have always been opportunistic parasites and saw the rapid succes of the Speccy and the market it helped create, so Mr Sugar waded in to try and make a killing.  I got a CPC464 in 1987, a few years after my Spectrum 48K in 1983 and I love them both dearly.  Sure we all know which has the better technical spec, but let us not forget the contribution the Spectrum gave to the creation of the CPC.

Nobody quite forgets that... in my view Sugar would probably have made something sooner or later even if it weren't for the Speccy. I mean, there *were* other producers in the UK and, most importantly, abroad, so the micro was sure to catch on at some point. At which point Sugar would probably reiterate his recipe for simplicity and price.

Sugar's philosophy was "don't give more than what is needed".

This explains why the CPC don't have some "extra cool features".

Such as Sprites and scrolls...

Stuff like MSX per exemples, included a lot of funny stuffs...
But did it helps betterly ?

Nope really, too much different specs...
You had a MSX2 to play MSX1 games ? pfeww...

But ok, I had an amstrad CPC to play Spectrum games, lol...

Amstrad CPC was quite regular in it's specifications.

Ok, my CPC6128 could have used a bit more its extra 64k.
But hey, I didn't have to wait half an hour  to load ghames.

If the CPC range had included more varied specs... this just wouldn't have worked.
Just see the PLUS...

special case of course, but.

The good point was that the CPC was costdown... yet had the minimum good features to be proper.
Colours of course, and Sound... in a complete bundle.

The only point we could really critisize is the lack of RAM.
By 1985 all the CPC range should have switched to 128K RAM and be bundled with a proper mouse...

This could also enable the "same motherboard" philosophy... as was done on PLUS range.


Also perhaps the use of some "not as good" CRTC on some series... but this is a Demomaker stuff...


It is to notice that the CPC464's keyboard is simply excellent.
(I used mine as a model for the pixart rendition...)

Large, comfortable, colourfull... I think this is the reason why the 464 wasn't turned into a 4128 with a more compact design, as the 6128 or the Spectrums from Amstrad (+2 and +3)...

You simply have the same comfort as on a PC keyboard (same dimensions...).
And it is just too perfect for children or even coders despite the bad placement of the arrow keys.

CPC6128 should have retained the Blue keys of the 664...

Quote from: MacDeath on 10:37, 07 April 11
The only point we could really critisize is the lack of RAM.
By 1985 all the CPC range should have switched to 128K RAM and be bundled with a proper mouse...

Wow... 128k+mouse as "default" configuration in early 1985... that's called Macintosh.
RAM was the most costly component in that years, and proper mouse environment based on Z80 and 3" disks...yup!
CPC6128 was too much expensive for a lot of us, so making 128k as a default "entry" level, could kill Amstrad.
And 1985 was "the year" of CPC464 in a lot of countries (i.e. Spain). CPC6128 was the "I'm better than you" option here that year!

Quoteso making 128k as a default "entry" level, could kill Amstrad.

But they did it with their spectrums... :'( :'( :'(

Quote from: MacDeath on 10:37, 07 April 11
Sugar's philosophy was "don't give more than what is needed".

I am sure it is more about price than what is needed.

I read somewhere that people were asking for 128k machines, and also seperately asking for disc machines.
The CPC6128 ended up being both, and of course was more expensive.

The market in France pushed more towards people getting a cpc6128.

80's were a very fast years! +2 sucess was reached 1986, one year later.
Anyway, the history could be slightly different in each country, but IMHO, Amstrad do it very well in that EARLY years.
They failed when DOCUMENTING their hardware (perhaps CRTC variants are the guilty ones)
And, of course, they avoid jumping to M68000 at late 80s, a must if you want to survive.
And then we meet Amiga. And Spectrum ones meet ST (only trolling!  :laugh: )

Quote from: FatAgnus on 12:01, 07 April 11
They failed when DOCUMENTING their hardware (perhaps CRTC variants are the guilty ones)

Generally their documentation was quite good if you were interested in the firmware, AMSDOS or CPM. Of course, the documentation on the hardware was not so exact.

In the UK at least, the problem was that the best documentation manual "SOFT968" became hard to find and was in short supply.

It is a pity they didn't document that they used different crtc, and other information, otherwise we could have had more games that utilised demo like techniques.

Right, and you are from UK. Could you imagine to obtain it from Spain in 1985?  :'(
Here you could only buy 2 books, mainly z80+firmware.
Magazines throw you a few bits about CRTC (very very very few bits)


But UNDOCUMENTED MACHINES were a common here, I IMPORTED FROM USA all my Amiga books (Amiga System Developer's Guide, Amiga Hardware Reference Manual... with them I learned English... that explains a lot of things!  :D )


Until "PC INTERNO", i386+VESA times, you can't learn to work at hardware-level in Spanish! (Michael Tischer's book translation, sorry)

Quote from: FatAgnus on 10:57, 07 April 11
And 1985 was "the year" of CPC464 in a lot of countries (i.e. Spain). CPC6128 was the "I'm better than you" option here that year!

I don't like the 464, it's an ugly CPC.
The CPC6128 is the love of my life.

Quote from: einoeL on 12:20, 07 April 11

I don't like the 464, it's an ugly CPC.
The CPC6128 is the love of my life.

It's because you're better than me!  :laugh:

Quote from: FatAgnus on 10:57, 07 April 11

Wow... 128k+mouse as "default" configuration in early 1985... that's called Macintosh.
RAM was the most costly component in that years, and proper mouse environment based on Z80 and 3" disks...yup!
CPC6128 was too much expensive for a lot of us, so making 128k as a default "entry" level, could kill Amstrad.
And 1985 was "the year" of CPC464 in a lot of countries (i.e. Spain). CPC6128 was the "I'm better than you" option here that year!

Well, the Commodore 128 did come out in Jan 1985...

So is Speccy more similar to the CPC than the MSX2 is to the CPC? I'm wondering, because I think there may have been a few Speccy ports to the MSX, but not sure if there were any CPC ports to the MSX2 (due to it having more available colours and similar modes like the CPC I think?)

Yes, and Spectrum 128... but how many units they sold that year? Has it mouse?
I was only a little bit surprised when MacDeath asked for 128k+MOUSE as default config for a home-computer in 1985... and to take advantage and troll a little bit against Atari ST.

Thomson's TO8 came with Mouse and 256k RAM...  ???
around 1986 I think...
So the same could have been great feature with the PLUS range...
Imagine an Amstrad 6256Plus with a Mouse to plug dirctly into the analog port and an extra GUI OS cartridge... :)

Anyway, the 16bit computers used the mouse... because it was available directly with the computer, not optionnal.
A proper Mouse on CPC/PLUS could have impose the thing...

Imagine : Pirates!, Heroquest... using mouse.

And many more Musicians or Graphists could have spawned from the CPC scene due to the trivial use of the mouse...
And we would have had real point and click games...

Quote from: MacDeath on 14:18, 07 April 11
Thomson's TO8 came with Mouse and 256k RAM...  ???
around 1986 I think...
So the same could have been great feature with the PLUS range...
Imagine an Amstrad 6256Plus with a Mouse to plug dirctly into the analog port and an extra GUI OS cartridge... :)

Anyway, the 16bit computers used the mouse... because it was available directly with the computer, not optionnal.
A proper Mouse on CPC/PLUS could have impose the thing...

Imagine : Pirates!, Heroquest... using mouse.

And many more Musicians or Graphists could have spawned from the CPC scene due to the trivial use of the mouse...
And we would have had real point and click games...

I agree, the step to Amiga was very hard to me, I really loved my CPC, and waited and waited hopping reactions from Amstrad side... such features could do it very hard to leave Amstrad.
We are saying more or less the same thing, they did things very nice until they did things very bad!
(excuse my english, I learnt it while trying to build a copper list)
Regards.

Quote from: MacDeath on 14:18, 07 April 11
Thomson's TO8 came with Mouse and 256k RAM...  ???
around 1986 I think...
So the same could have been great feature with the PLUS range...

So how much was the Thomson and how much was the PLUS at this time?
Also, how much was the CPC6128?

Quote from: FatAgnus on 14:50, 07 April 11

I agree, the step to Amiga was very hard to me, I really loved my CPC

Yeah. Hard step. Then three weeks later you had to dust the poor old CPC down - and that was because you'd got an Amiga RGB -> CPC Monitor cable!


We can dream all we want about how the CPC could have been better, or how it could have been enhanced sooner, but it wasn't. Sad. Amiga fans have the same, but offset by six years. But it's great to talk about!


So, yeah, the 464 was great. Great keyboard, great price. CPC664 is a treasure - lovely blues on that keyboard. 6128 was where it was at ultimately. My poor parents bought me one from a catalogue - and then months later Amstrad came out with the CPC + desk + printer + tv tuner + the world pack for even less money. But ... without it where would I be?


The CPC was a cost-down - off the shelf components when cheap, and the ULA to bind them all. Luckily the geeks at Amstrad got the graphics better than they could have been.


But 1986 onwards was the great stagnancy. Damn Spectrum acquisition. The plus was too late - but a good design. What we needed in 1987 was all CPCs to become 128KB (this was when it became viable*). Amstrad should have moved to a single motherboard for the 464 and 6128. 128KB for all. I don't know if this would have been an opportunity to enhance anything technically - faster CPUs weren't easy to fit in, the CRTC .. well, hard scrolling would have been nice.


As for the Plus... CPC Plus Sprites relied on a large internal memory (well, 2KB), to avoid the bandwidth issue. I think they should have stuck another DRAM bus on the Plus ASIC and had a 16KB Sprite Bank (128 sprites) and the 16 sprites could just have selected from this bank. I don't know how the Plus hardware raster colour switching worked - was it like the Amiga copper in any way?


Anyway, enough wibbling and merging of 1987 dream-specs and 1991 Plus specs.


* And to think I bought a 2GB DDR3 ECC DIMM this week for £18. That's 10x the size of my first hard drive, which cost £200...

@Briggsy:
a) Yes, it was hard for me.
b) Did you read the thread?
c) Regards.

Quote from: MacDeath on 14:18, 07 April 11
A proper Mouse on CPC/PLUS could have impose the thing...

I remember my Genius mouse fondly. I did many a thing with that, especially in Advanced OCP Art Studio. I got a tenner from Amstrad Action, although they liked my Savage inspired graphics more than the others I did that I thought were far more ... arty. Who knows, I can barely draw a box these days.

Quote from: FatAgnus on 20:54, 07 April 11
@Briggsy:
a) Yes, it was hard for me.
b) Did you read the thread?
c) Regards.

Hey, I foudn it hard too! I had a great CPC set up (IMO, at the time), and I would spend all my time on it, messing with various software, playing games, a bit of assembler, doing games, playing with sprites alive! ordering maxam 2 instead of maxam 1, ... for a long time my primary assembler was one printed in CWTA that dredged RAM for BASIC comments that were your assembler mnemonics!

Warning : Heavy video content !!!

QuoteSo how much was the Thomson and how much was the PLUS at this time?
Also, how much was the CPC6128?
                           

have a look there...

http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php/topic,2141.15.html (http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php/topic,2141.15.html)

but here is the real comparison :

Boring and the shittiest keyboard ever produced (even poor speccy48 had better one...)

:(
Biblical figures  ???


Boring old TV-News Host Léon Zitrone...

:'(
(Extra guest : the Orange TGV...)

Funky Crocodiles :

;D

Also a latter one...

8)

Also : notice the Overscan Fullscreen ... a fully supported feature on amstrad CPCs... unless with speccy ports.


Back to topic ...



(colour clashes featured...)


Finally amstrad's computer were sold in Italia...

erf....

BTW we all know who won...

Hahaha! Le Thomson avait la Baah-seek! Hillarious :D

The french Amstrad-Crocodiles are so charming!  :)
Really funny and cute.

http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html (http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html)

Fun... and completely retarded...
"oh yeah speccy is far better concerning graphics..."
Because of the pixel size and number of colour per screen...

WTF ?
So blocky Mode0 pixels is a handicap and colour clashes a sweet feature that greatly improuve the game  ???
Monocolour graphics are superior because it has fine and square pixels hence more details ?

WTF am I reading right now...
Nedless to say, shittons of speccyports there...




Thomson :
One of the obvious problem with Thomson Range was that MO and TO weren't actually compatible...
Yeah, this is pure suckness...

While we may see MO6 and TO8D like CPC464 and CPC6128 (Tape and half memory for the firsts)

Just imagine the CPC464 weren't compatible with the 6128...

Actually it is not a great uncompatibility... possible to get some Assembly routines to pass through this... but still...

BTW with a proper Soundchip the MO6 was quite a good competitor to ZX Spectrum +2.
Perhaps not even...

QuoteThe french Amstrad-Crocodiles are so charming!  (http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/Smileys/akyhne/smiley.gif)
Really funny and cute.

To be fair, if British, German and Spanish marketing campaign did feature those Crocodiles, I guess the CPC could have sold +1 million unit...
No kidding...

Also if Spain, Germany and other country had someone like Marion Vannier (Amstrad France's boss)...
There would easily be 5 millions CPC around here in Europe...

There's a story in Marion Vannier's interview telling how the Amstrad's Spain Manager got himself a luxurious fancy expensive car with the company's cash...
When Sugar saw this, he took back the car from this spanish scum (he must have been italian... ::) ) and gave it to Marion Vannier... because she hada far better results (and was less of a scroodge).

... >:( ...


Nahhh, only jocking!
Jose Luis Domizguez was... Jose Luis Dominguez. Yes, we all know the "BMW" chronicles...
But one thing must be said: he pushed up Amstrad not so bad, Spain was a Speccy monopoly, and with him, Speccy-Amstrad frighted bravely for years.
But, of course, the real heroes were the Spanish coders making it best for Amstrad, we are very proud of them.
...are you french, MacDeath?  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:


But plz, no "country wars" here, we are only a bunch of "frikis"-"freaks", and we all love CPC, and we all speak bad English (including UK ones  :laugh: )
"Be water my friend"

QuoteBut plz, no "country wars" here,

Well well, Italian are well know to be unknown in 8bit scene so I can tell things on them...
"Spanish scum" wasn't aiming at spanish but at this one especially...

And yes, Amstrad Spain  worked quite well actually...


Me ? French ?
But I speak english like a spanish cow...


And to be fair... the last "country war" here ended with an awesome score in Godwin Points... Never...ever...again...

I'm a Snail's predator who smell Frog and Garlic and I speak english like a spanish cow.

Greekzors are  sertakis stuffed wineleafs with a lot of bodyhair even inside their CPCs.

Britons are rosbeefs who only eat boiled water and whose eyes can't even see colour clashes.. and lazy speccyporters and speak English like cows.

Spaniards...like a choriso brained bunch of siestas addicts who speak english like french cows..

Germans...Have no food, only beer... they have Hardware in place of a heart...(and a centronic plug instead of an...) but they actually speak english very well.

Aussies... get frequent flood on the internet and speak english like Kangaroos.. And they eat nothing, they are just Sea Crocodile's prey...

And so on...
That's why I love Europa. :laugh:

Please I wasn't meant to be mean and serious about this.

(i smell a banhammer incoming...)

Yes, you are right. Like a cow.
Amstrad hardware was great. (...I don't want Gryzor-Devil moving this thread to "off-topic"...)

EDIT: BEER IS FOOD!
EDIT AGAIN: shhhhhhhh... be quiet boys... I saw Gryzor looking around... and he was holding the hammer... "there is nothing to see here"...

Anyway...
I was thinking about setting the infamous list of the evil speccyports that "killed" the CPC...Most of them have to be not Speccy original games of course (Jet Set willy per exemple is ok...) but more like Arcade ports of death...

Some of them are also to be put into an "honorable" category as they managed to be quite decent games actually...(R-Type comes into mind)let's try...

=Computer originals Hits (most of them ended up being decent) :
H.A.T.E
Highway encounter
Lotus turbo Esprit challenge
Wec Le Man (not really sure this counts as a speccy port...)
(those 4 were good indeed...)
Fighting Warrior
Vendetta
Hard Drivin' (wasn't it Arcade ?)

I wouldn't count the numerous CodeMaster or Hewson games... Many of them were cheap budget Speccy games to start with, and where quite well ported... or not ?
So yeah, this category is not that important after all...
Also pre-1987 games are not to be considered that important too... this was the early CPC era.

=Well known franchises :
Scooby Doo (scooby Poo IMO...)
Thundercats.
Venom Strike Back (not that bad...)
Sabrina (bouzboyzboyz, boingboingboing...)
Samantha fox strip poker.
Airwolf 2

=Movie Franchises :
Indianna Jones 3 action game.
Back to the future 2 (half parts were straight speccyporked)

Perhaps even more ? those 2 categories were quite important because of the commercial impact of the Franchise in itself...

=Arcade hits :
R-Type 
PacMania
Salamander
Dragon Breed
Scramble spirit
Black Tiger
Strider
Bionic Commando
SuperWonderboy
Double Dragon3
Super Hang-On
Enduro Racer
Toobin
Xybots
Pit fighter
Cabal
Street Fighter ?

Special Category of Death :
Shadow of the beast
Myth, history in the making (grrrrr).
Gauntlet 3
SWIV 

( Flying Shark doesn't really count because it is good and graphics were fully redone into Mode1. 

The Blue games of Death :
Blues Brother (captain Obvious...)
The untouchablesHeroquest
Hudson Hawk

=Are there More ?
The Arcade hit category is te most important factor in the Failnes of speccyports...
Because those were Arcade Games = best format available at the time, and hits : ported on every machines...And great games too...

They are the most commonly used games to compare between computers/systems...
And most of them were really great games...turned into mandatory shitty speccy ports, so all the retro-computer community argue that the CPC is an inferior Speccyclone...


So from this...

The infamous killer list of the shamefull  30 speccy porks of death :

Shadow of the beast
Myth, history in the making (grrrrr).
Gauntlet 3
SWIV 
R-Type 
PacMania
Salamander
Dragon Breed
Scramble spirit
Black Tiger
Strider
Bionic Commando
SuperWonderboy
Double Dragon3
Super Hang-On
Enduro Racer
Toobin
Xybots
Pit fighter
Cabal
Street Fighter
Scooby Doo
Thundercats.
Venom Strike Back
Sabrina
Samantha fox strip poker.
Airwolf 2
ndianna Jones 3 action game.
Back to the future 2
Vendetta


Any suggestion are welcomed.

...better graphics?
 

http://www.gamestage.net/english/test-renegade1.html (http://www.gamestage.net/english/test-renegade1.html)


Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but seriously..

Terrible speccy ports to cpc:

- R-Type (to call this decent you have to stay oblivious to C64 version)
- Big Trouble In Little China (one of the worst scrolls)
- Last Ninja 2 (I hated monochrome Last Ninja. Check again the C64 version)
- All isometric "ultimate play the game" games (Knight Lore, Alien8 etc). Monochrome sucked.
- Saboteur II - If I remember correctly, this one even implemented the color clash, such an exact port :)
- Enduro Racer - turn based racing?

Basically almost any port which kept the "chracter/attribute based" screen management sucked. Some managed to remain playable (Wec Le mans?)

Quote...better graphics?

Yeah, sort of like telling Hercules is better than EGA 320x200x16 beause it has better resolution (truely...)
Look carefully concerning Renegade especially...
CPC version even have the worst "Graphics" notation...

???
WTFAMIreading ?

http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html (http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html)
I see no Gryzor... No Barbarian or Antiriad ?
Commando ? Barbarian 2 ?
Navy moves ?
Silkworm ?
Arkanoids ?

a good proportion of those games there are Speccyports or even "C64 ports" (Dan Dare ?) but a few exceptions...



Big Trouble In Little China
Last Ninja2 
Saboteur II (& I)

nice I forgot those...First because a famous movie franchise (loved the movie) and the others because... OK "computer" games but hey... such a great computer hit that it is like Shadow of the beast port in deception...

Kharnov
then... (Arcade)

also...

Quote
Enduro Racer - turn based racing?

:laugh:

QuoteAll isometric "ultimate play the game" games (Knight Lore, Alien8 etc). Monochrome sucked.

All Mode1 isometric sucked in comparison to head over Heels.

Also it is to notice that Speccy cannot properly into colour Isometric...
Because attributes clashes cannot become diagonals...

Every "Mode1 isometrics" should have looked (and sounded) like Head Over Heels.

Or at least like Heroquest...

Wec le Mans :
I don't really know if this can be considered a Speccy port...
It was more probably a mode1 games with some Cross dev features...

Just like Deflektor...

In some cases, having some common stuff with speccy could be logical and Graphic on CPC got a more than proper treatment...

The difference ?

Lotus turbo esprit chalenge : shamefull speccy pork (not that "porked" actually)
Wec le Man : Amstrad hit.

The good hit is the Monocolour stuff in Lotus...
When you had "1bpp" graphics in Pastel Cyan and small window screen...
You knew you got scfrewed somewhere...

Quote from: MacDeath on 18:04, 08 April 11

To be fair, if British, German and Spanish marketing campaign did feature those Crocodiles, I guess the CPC could have sold +1 million unit...
No kidding...

From Wikipedia

"During its lifetime, the CPC series sold approximately three million units"

I meant 1 more million... Europewise.

.

Well, children would have loved those even english ones...I guess...

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h7FF3dSe1LI/SoNSectvt2I/AAAAAAAAAHI/A3rUc3QYals/s400/Fuckin_crocodile.jpg)

how can't you love this ? :D

Perhaps Aussie have a different opinion on crocodiles due to the giant Sea specimen that lurk everywhere there...

The crocodile worked in French advertisements, but we can never know if it would have worked anywhere else, we english do not pay much attention to adverts so we would not care if they had used a crocodile in this country.

Quote from: MacDeath on 22:20, 08 April 11
WTFAMIreading ?

http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html (http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html)

I think the only game which he gave the CPC a higher score for graphics was Deliverance. Obviously the reviewer is near blind, and he's also comparing Spectrum AY with CPC AY when 99% of Spectrum games don't even use the AY. Just love the blurb at the bottom of the list about how the ZX is better :)

Quote from: sigh on 21:40, 08 April 11
...better graphics?
 

http://www.gamestage.net/english/test-renegade1.html (http://www.gamestage.net/english/test-renegade1.html)


Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but seriously..

If it was Speccy vs CPC alone and he gave the Speccy a higher grade I'd say he's really partial. But giving the c64 port, one probably drawn by an 8-year old with Asperger's, a higher mark means he's probably missing a screw or two :D

Quote from: Gryzor on 15:49, 10 April 11
If it was Speccy vs CPC alone and he gave the Speccy a higher grade I'd say he's really partial. But giving the c64 port, one probably drawn by an 8-year old with Asperger's, a higher mark means he's probably missing a screw or two :D

Heh heh.  The speccy 128k version does have the "throw" move and the boss characters waiting at the top of the screen like in the arcade. Would of been nice to have had these on the CPC 128K version.

...and I definitely prefered the C64 version of rolling thunder.

Quote
http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html (http://www.gamestage.net/english/test.html)

OMFG: Does he really believe that a fake percentage value gives the scores any credibility or objectivity? Come on!

His explanations are ridiculous at best. Sure he's going to propagate the fixed "high-resolution" of Spectrum games vis-a-vis the 160x200 16-color modes of the CPC and C64. Sure he's going to downplay color clashing and color palette. He's owned a Spectrum in his teenage years! I like to read reviews about games of any 8-bitter, but he shouldn't fake an unbiased opinion.


And there I thought people have grown up enough to stand by our machines' shortcomings and strengths.

MaV

The "8bit wars" series of videos, by "realocomaniac"...(and others)

Although he tested a lot of games from the infamous Speccyports of death list...
But hey, as those were important games from the era... he had no choice.

Yet in his comments he was quite honnest on CPC, telling it is a well rounded machine that could be so great when it gets a proper coded games.

Well, you only need to read the closing statement:

QuoteOur machine is internally "better" than the others' machines. Our machine will forever be the best of all. The top of any others. And we do not discuss that. We have analysed these three "sweet" computers and tried to go through anything to find out the good and bad of them. We have looked at these machines with neutral eyes, heart and mind, so what results from our tests are ONLY our neutral and humble opinions.

This is just plain ridiculous :D I mean, the web is full of fanboys, of course, and on top of that it's full of silly people, but openly being a fanboy AND trying to convince others that you're "neutral" is just stupid...

I suppose this was some kind of irony, if not douchery. ;D

I do enjoy those 8 bit wars reviews. What's interesting is that on the Chase HQ 8 bit wars, one of the comments written was that apparently in an old ACE magazine interview with Ocean, they said that the CPC version was 100% speccy code with added colour.

Quote from: MacDeath on 09:19, 11 April 11
I suppose this was some kind of irony, if not douchery. ;D

irony ... hm, I like that. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and call his page a lecture in irony. ;)


I just watched the Youtube-Video of Enduro Racer. Honestly the Spectrum version is better than Amstrad's ... because the latter one suffered from a speccy port.
The Spectrum version is even more colorful, look at the info bar at the top and compare it to the CPC's version. It's a shame.

MaV

Quote from: sigh on 22:51, 12 April 11
I do enjoy those 8 bit wars reviews. What's interesting is that on the Chase HQ 8 bit wars, one of the comments written was that apparently in an old ACE magazine interview with Ocean, they said that the CPC version was 100% speccy code with added colour.

I wouldn't be at all surprised, there shouldn't have been a need to rewrite the majority of the code and the Speccy version is exceptionally well done. It just goes to show what can be acheived with a little effort.

QuoteI just watched the Youtube-Video of Enduro Racer. Honestly the Spectrum   version is better than Amstrad's ... because the latter one suffered   from a speccy port.
The Spectrum version is even more colorful, look at the info bar at the top and compare it to the CPC's version. It's a shame.

one week rushed job.

This would have needed a proper Graphist job...

=recode the graphics in real Mode1.
=Re-address a bit all this...

Bam, the thing is perhaps not that better, but looks better... ad may also be faster because the CPU don't have to convert 1bpp graphics into 2bpp graphics nor "emulate" the colours attributes.

But hey, why pay another guy when the job was already done on speccy
It is well know that Speccies graphics are better because "they are more detailed" ...

Also why get the graphics recoded by a human ? The CPU can do this while running the game...

>:( :'(


There are chances that when a game is mode0 per exemple, getting a speccy code to start with may not be that problematic...
Graphics are well redone because you cannot convert on the fly 1bpp into Mode0...
So you clearly have to readdress stuffs...

So the CPU don't have to do this stupid job...
that just enough for the CPC because the Graphics are in his language.

Quote from: ssg on 21:46, 08 April 11
Basically almost any port which kept the "chracter/attribute based" screen management sucked. Some managed to remain playable (Wec Le mans?)

I've heard others mention WEC Le Mans as a Speccy port, but as far as I can see the graphics are all true 4 colour, drawn for the CPC.

@Executioner: Yes I had no idea until MacDeath mentioned it. So no speccy ports remained playable then :)

Ocean at the time were coding on Atari ST's and PC's - I remember seeing footage of them coding Untouchables on Atari ST then porting it over to the Amstrad. It helps that architecture wise the ST wasn't a great deal different to the CPC (ie no real dedicated hardware scrolling/sprite support)

When you have racing games like Chase HQ and WEC Le Mans you don't necessarily have to worry about the abilities and how you get both machines scrolling large amounts of data vertically or horizontally because that's not what is happening in these games. The bulk of it surely is complex mathematical stuff plotting the course and placement of the road, horizon, and where sprites would be in relation to the coordinates - I then conclude that probably a large amount of the game engine for the Z80 was done along with the graphics on the ST/PC then cross ported onto both the Speccy and CPC.

Which makes a lot of sense, rather than slowly writing the core Z80 code on either the Speccy or CPC then getting the other to play ball.

That's what I'm guessing anyway.

Yes, the Wec le Mans graphics must be ported from ST version.
Or not...
At mobygames I see no 16bit versions...

Anyway, basically having a large amount of code being the same on ZX and CPC (or MSX) is not the problem, because this is the shared (and compatible) part of those computers.
Even concerning sounds/AY... this is also the same stuff

The only faulty part is the graphics management.

Memory mapping and Video management are the only unique stuffs on this generation computer.
And on CPC this is actually quite a huge difference with speccy..

So having direct ZX speccy graphics Datas used by a CPC just can't be right.


Also as wde know, the Speccy being the cheap piece of...it is...
You simply can get a fast animated thing with a poorly executed code, because the Video part is soooooo light...

You don't have to really bother with colours and detailed backgrounds (all those just produce horrible colourclashes...)
Nor smooth animation (character based animation is often good enough).

But on CPC all those stuff are not that good.
CPC can actually produce graphics with the complexity of a 16bit computer, after all it is an "Half Atari ST"...

And because all this is heavy, you need shitton of RAM, and a tight and precise code.

Spanish companies were also quite into 464.
They skipped the RAM and tape problem with games in 2 parts.
Actually a clever move.

They also used a largely reduced screen...
That's another problem.
While Dinamic used reduced screen to get awesome graphics and the stuff working on a CPC464...
Most british speccy ports used a reduced screen just because this enabled to use directly the speccy's specs...

French companies were more into 6128... so perhaps did better use of the DiskDrive...(not a lot)
But mostly had no Speccy culture "background".

The French market was quite into CPC-PC-ST in the late 80's (85-90).

all being "Software" machines.

So got into perhaps more adapted kind of games.


A lot of "adventure" games  were produced by french companies...

And while this is somewhat easier to produce than action games, this still make good use of graphists and musicians... and Disk Drives.

(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_jeu3/1140.png)
(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_jeu1/427.png)
(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_jeu1/340.png)

Guess what ?those games are largely superior to their speccy counterparts...But, you know ? those kind of games are quite never used but guys who go into "8bit wars" videos...

Mostly because those games (in before Europe united in trades) were quite not exported/translated...
Also because an 8 year old kid don't really play thoses.

Which is such a shame.

La Abbadia del Crima....
why no "l'Abbaye du Crime" version ???
Nor "the Abbey of the Crime" ?
;D

Actually a shame because the CPC game catalogue features a lot of those.


ZX spectrum ? a great machine ?But it does not even have a version of  Pirates! (sid Meiers) or Defender of the Crown.


How dare you call this a great machine ?

Just a snotling's toy for nippers with colour perception problems.
;D

(http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/7b00e6b43a92eb3fd4e0ca08b439f30afb4a914c5fa421117f27ed44779c6e1f2g.jpg)

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Speccy_Port (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Speccy_Port)

edited heavily in order to implement my recent newly found discoveries on the matter...

Not always stricktly accurate and some mis-spellings or mistakes, sorry for this...

English is not my native tongue.

Concerning Wec Le Mans...
The game was good, but perhaps a few bits of speed wouldn't hurt.
On the other hand it features some raster colour changes, which may means it is slowlier than it could have been if it simply looked like this :
(http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=238.0;attach=1528;image)

But hey, the game was good anyway... :laugh:

Also, getting a game in mode0 was a good way to not use those rasters... because you already have more colours than needed (well, never enough actually)...
But this would have needed twice "graphics to be worked" time...

erf...

Some games on that list are not Speccy ports.

I already mentioned Untouchables, this was coded on PC/Atari ST for the Z80 code. There's a YouTube vid somewhere of the programmer doing this! (if I can now find it)

I think a "Speccy port" game must be a game coded on or directly for the Spectrum intentionally, THEN later ported across to the Amstrad.

Just because the graphics are 4 colours or similar to the Speccy doesn't mean it's a 'speccy port'

In my opinion anyway, dont mean to offend anyone/MacDeath :D

Yes you are right...

Especially concerning this one, but I felt it fit the "monoblue games of death" theme...

On the other hand, Heroquest is more like a crossdev than a speccy port...well... sort of.
Many speccy features remains (256x192 screen...)... ok ...


I will remove Untouchables if you insist...

The problem is that the line between Speccy port (pork) and crossdev is so thin...

Yet having the CPC version formated alongside Spectrum (ex : 256x192...) may be some Handicap for CPC which could have done better without this limitation per exemple... (or not).



Anyway, some of those games are quite even more terrible and add an extra layer of butthurting insults due to the fact the franchises used to be good on CPC...

SWIV is Silkworm2 actually... >:(
Gauntlet 3... :'(
Double Dragon3... ???

ouch, this hurts !

Quote from: MacDeath on 07:54, 14 April 11
Also, getting a game in mode0 was a good way to not use those rasters... because you already have more colours than needed (well, never enough actually)...
But this would have needed twice "graphics to be worked" time...

Burnin' Rubber...?  ;)

I can't locate the post, but I read "Knight Lore" at one list.
Perhaps it could be considered a port, but that game was so great...
I love Ultimate games, they could be better-faster on Amstrad, anyway, its concept was a revolution IMHO.


"Head over Hells" was amazing, they did it better, but Ultimate simply "did it"

The many isometric speccy ports with monocolours...
I gotta check this but if those are masked, then they could have gone Head Over Heels quite easily actually.

Despite less colours on screen (4 inbstead of 8) the CPC was simply jsut better than speccy on isometric.

**Square attributes just don't make it well concerning isometric design+colours.
**masked graphics = 2x1bpp = 2bpp = Amstrad's Mode1.

http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=jeux&lenom=3D%20iso (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=jeux&lettre=all&astuce=&soluce=&lightgun=&year=&signe=1&test2=&compagnie=&unplan=&others=&unefin=&ungoodies=&unepub=&uncover=&desnotices=&internautes=&dskori=&cassette=&alias=&bugs=&lenom=3d%20iso&cats=&flipbook=&unezic2=&gx4000=&cpcplus=&patchplus=&emuweb=&pokes=&virer=&video=&unprix=&xplayx=&position=2)

lots of potential speccy porks here...

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes
Bomb Scare
Bubbler
Chain Reaction
Crystal Castles
Danger Mouse In Double Trouble
El Cid
Fairlight - A Prelude
Fairlight - A Trail Of Darkness
Firetrap
Frontiers
Gauntlet III - Final Quest
Glider Rider
Greyfell
Gunfright
Hate - Hostile All Terrain Encounter
Highway Encounter
Hydrofool
ISS - Incredible Shrinking Sphere (this one is OK... concerning graphics...)
Jahangir Khan World Championship Squash (lol attributes...)
Knight Lore (not bad for such an old one actually...)
Last Ninja 2 (shame shame shame shame on You !)
Marble Madness Deluxe Edition (deluxe ?)
Martianoids The Game
Molecule Man ( I bought the tape, and never used it more than once... shitfest all the way...)
Nether Earth
Nexor (this one seems legit and well ported...)
Nosferatu The Vampyre (this one is OK...)
Pac-Mania (obviously well commented already)
Phantom Club (Ocean could also screw us a lot )
Poli Diaz (lol a CGA port actually...)
Pro Skateboard Simulator (Code master ? more liek code shiters on this one...)
Prodigy
Rasputin
Sepulcri (this one is OK)
Strike Force Cobra (Shyte !)
Super Hero (Ok one....)
Super Trolley (not sure...)
Sweevo's World
The Great Escape (ouch...)
Vector Ball (could do better IMO...)

and so on...
That an awnfull lot...

And don't forget the Mastertronic games: Knight Tyme, Spellbound, Stormbringer.

While these didn't suffer from color clash, as far as I can see, they definitely could have been done better.

MaV

Do you think a "complete" list of speccy ports would be usefull ?

This is gonna start to make a lot of stuff...perhaps.
And would need some sort of classification.

Also :

The great Escape : ouch this game... i did played it... I have forgot about it, it was such a great game actually...
just too bad it wasn't a bit more properly done graphically...


Also :

Duet : a shame as this game was fun and could be played in co-op...

Airborn Ranger : this one was not so bad actually... And got "properly ported" after all...

Microprose Soccer : more liek Sucker than soccer...
A lot of footies games were shamefull speccy ports after all...

Also :


According to these, one of the main problem with speccy games and colours clash(it)es was that the attribute was far too often attributed (d'oh) on priority to backgrounds...
While the most proper way (other to simply get a CPC and proper CPC games... :D ) was to set the attribute priority onto sprites !

Clashes remains but the game is far more good looking and playable.

Once again the spanish did it right... sometimes...

Quote from: MacDeath on 07:54, 14 April 11
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Speccy_Port (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Speccy_Port)

edited heavily in order to implement my recent newly found discoveries on the matter...

Not always stricktly accurate and some mis-spellings or mistakes, sorry for this...

You are so kind with the spanish games  :laugh: we enjoyed some of the worst speccy ports  :'( or the best sperriums emulators  :laugh:

Take a look at Spirits (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2030) (one of the best color attributes emulator  :laugh: ), the best of Positive (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=search) (Amo del Mundo (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=271), Dimension Omega (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1559), Enchanted (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=809) [attention to the loading screen  :laugh: ], Mambo (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1341) [Arrghhh, my eyes!!!  :laugh: ], Mountain Bike Racer (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1468) [My eyes hurt Part II  :laugh: ], or Rath-Tha (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1767)), the best of Diabolic (Oberon 69 (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2537) [see the first game picture, even the game knows "what horror" is this game  :laugh: ], The Brick (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=859), Star Bowls (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2048) or Drakkar (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=768) [famous for let you choose Kempston in the controls screen  :laugh: ], Time-Out (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2237) ... and of course, it's impossible talking about this and not mention "la creme de la creme" ... Xortrapa  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: with Mr. Gas (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=74) and their masterpiece Triple Commando (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=20), you can enjoy my adventure (http://www.amstrad.es/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2054) trying to fix it the last summer, much more terrifying that "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"  :laugh:

Hollier shyte, you are damn right actually...
Well, I didn't knew that much about al those spanish games after all.

In France we more focused on dinamic "good" productions...

"El Cid"...
Juliet Software (Spanish criminals under a French name)
Please, could this one be the absolute winner? I spent money buying that! 22 years ago, and I still want my money back!


Lots of Juliet Software... "creations".
http://lnx.webxprs.com/blog/2007/09/05/los-patitos-feos-del-software-espanol-5-juliet-software/ (http://lnx.webxprs.com/blog/2007/09/05/los-patitos-feos-del-software-espanol-5-juliet-software/)

Damn... so "el magnificos ostro pais del Amstrad" was actually "e muchos bastardos del speccyporcos analos"... :laugh:


Wasn't "Sabrina" a spanish screwjob too ?

I mean this game was supposed to give mighty glorious boner to us young CPC joystick wankers...
And all it did was a massive tear spree...


Lorna was so much better in all purposes though...

QuoteI spent money buying that!

Reminds me Xybots and Blacktiger...
My heart is still hurt. :(

Yet Xybots is even actually the best 8bit port, compaired to C64 and Speccy...  ::)

Yep! Our "spiki minds" are fuzzy about them... but Dinamic-Opera-Topo-Made In Spain were not the only ones here... what a pitty!


But, to be fair, Juliet were not the only ones here that "speak assembler like a French cow"  ;) ... what a pitty again!

"Sabrina"... well, actually we buy that game because... you know... we were childs... how to say it...


I don't get the point with "Game Over" and "Nonamed" vids few post ago... these are not vids from Amstrad versions...?¿?

Speccy ports are criticised because the programmers made little or no attempt to use CPC's better hardware, some of MacDeath's list may not literally be Speccy ports, but the programmers are just as guilty of underusing the CPC's features and deserve to be judged as such and their programs classified as "speccy ports" because they are so badly conceived and/or programmed.

One game that I do wish was ported from the spectrum to the CPC is "Rodland". Despite the lack of colour, it looks like the arcade and plays very quickly. I might try a mode 1 mock up if I can find a pic of the speccy version.

QuoteI don't get the point with "Game Over" and "Nonamed" vids few post ago... these are not vids from Amstrad versions...?¿?

It was just to point that so many speccy games on speccy were badly written as they coloured the backgrounds and the srpites would just take the backgrounds colours...
While the proper way is to assign a colour to the sprite that have priority over the background's tile colour...

With this, you still have colourclashes but the game is far more "playable" because you can actually see the sprites...


I mean, as it is a Speccy Vs CPC topic, I can sometimes find some good point on the speccy part...
I was surprised to see somethimes they midned to get the colour clashes the right way (= sprite have it's own colour)...
Which was far to rarely the case IMO.

RodLand :
it looks good on CPC.
The only problem it has is that it is quite a little be too sluggish/slow.

Which may be due to it being a "64K RAM" only version...
a 128k RAM version could probably be faster and better.
Also perhaps some PLUS Hardware sprites may be helpfull... :D

Quotesome of MacDeath's list may not literally be Speccy ports, but   the programmers are just as guilty of underusing the CPC's features and   deserve to be judged as such and their programs classified as "speccy   ports" because they are so badly conceived and/or programmed.

Just compare Speccy version and CPC's version...
I both lookalike, and CPC is in mode1... tends to be sluggish and also if you manage to find 1bpp datas into it...then this games obviously still have far too much speccy bits.

Heroquest per example still have some stuffs in 1bpp...
the text widows and font characters (letters...).
having to get 1bpp into 2bpp when displayed, while enabling less Data place in RAM... is still a pain in the @$$ for the CPU.


Anyway :
The infamous killer list of the shamefull 30 speccy porks of death that killed the Amstrad CPC*

*copyright MacDeath inc.
I dare you to find one non speccy port inside this one...
Ok perhaps back to future 2 as it had some proper CPC parts... yet some other parts are still straight monocolour speccy parts.

(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_jeu1/344.png)(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_jeu3/344.png)
But what is this then if not speccy ported ?

Ok. Sorry, I read that post too fast, now I get it (you already explained it at bottom of that vids)

Quote from: MacDeath on 14:27, 14 April 11

RodLand :
it looks good on CPC.
The only problem it has is that it is quite a little be too sluggish/slow.

Which may be due to it being a "64K RAM" only version...
a 128k RAM version could probably be faster and better.
Also perhaps some PLUS Hardware sprites may be helpfull... :D
Just compare Speccy version and CPC's version...
I both lookalike, and CPC is in mode1... tends to be sluggish and also if you manage to find 1bpp datas into it...then this games obviously still have far too much speccy bits.

Did a half finished mock up in mode 0 (probably not going to finish it)

(http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/22d25adfbc.gif)

Decided to use the arcade and amiga versions to pixel over rather than do a mode 1 version of the speccy.

Quote from: sigh on 01:47, 15 April 11
Did a half finished mock up in mode 0 (probably not going to finish it)

(http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/22d25adfbc.gif)

Decided to use the arcade and amiga versions to pixel over rather than do a mode 1 version of the speccy.

Very, very nice.  :)

MaV

Quote from: sigh on 01:47, 15 April 11
Did a half finished mock up in mode 0 (probably not going to finish it)
Decided to use the arcade and amiga versions to pixel over rather than do a mode 1 version of the speccy.

That looks really nice, especially as it's classic CPC.

Quote from: MacDeath on 11:22, 14 April 11
Do you think a "complete" list of speccy ports would be usefull ?

Definitely!

I suggest three categories:

1) Obvious speccy ports: emulated color clashes, lack of color, painfully slow graphics, lack of sound; comparison to speccy version shows no differences or - madre de dios! ;) - plays even worse.

2) Polished speccy ports: the two versions have many things in common, graphics do not show color clash and may even have been "refurbished" to use more than one color, but is not used to the CPC's full potential. Sound and music are more common.

3) Probable speccy ports: the cpc and speccy version show more similarities in gameplay and graphics than their counterparts on other systems, i.e. mostly c64 games. Routines may arguably be the same. Probable ports include games where gameplay and graphics match the game so well that there's not much room for enhancements in the cpc version.


The distinction cannot always be easily made, I guess. I would go so far as to say that Deflektor may fall into the 3rd category - if it has a common code base with the spectrum. That I don't know.

MaV

ok so :

=Rushed speccy ports : the changes are just too slight and the game plays badly...
The hint ? monocolor stuffs in play...
ex : black tiger (the villest...) or even Super wonderboy, despite having the sprites in 2bpp and different colour, the game remains badly playable on CPC...

=Average speccy port : the games remains playable and features a bit more stuffs like actually recoded and redrawn graphics (not just only the intro page...).
ex : Heroquest, shadow of the beast : quite straight port but completely recoded graphics

=crossdev "speccy port"... :
Is not to be considered an infamous speccy port.
the game plays well and having some speccybits is not that much of an handicap.
ex : Deflektor... while being quite straight at first glance, shows some interesting features (Tape loader) and the gameplay in itself doesn't suffer from being somewhat ported (no scrollings so...)
Ex : Robocop : ok, the gameplay is the same but proper graphics in Mode2 means that the game was actually worked and have quite no Speccy video.

Well, the third category would be actual crossdev...
I mean, C64 ports or even Atari ST ports also exist,.
Wonderboy, Rick Dangerous...Pirates!... they use the same C64 graphics...
or Iron lord use Atari St graphics...

in case of the C64 port, it is notable that this was somewhat of a handicap...
as the 160x200mode on C64 had some character limitation that sometimes shows on CPC...
Wonderboy perhaps ? or rick dangerous rushed and poorly designed sprites ?
Even games like Bard's Tales or Pirates could actually benefit from superrior graphics if those were really designed on CPC.


So...
The overall quality of the finished product, despite being somewhat subjective, is quite important...


Also it is to notice that games such as Back to the future2 are mixed speccyports, as only some sequances are fully straight lazy ports...

Also :
Robocop : i managed to find the letters characters used in the menu, they are in 1bpp... (mode2)

So a question :

Is this actually a normal way to have fonts used on CPC to get them in 1bpp for a Mode1 display ?
Does Locomotive basic use this technic for its letters/characters/font too ?

Possible as those are monocolour letters/characters...

on the other hand, the characters used in-games (numbers, letters) are in Mode0 code because they use more colours...

Quote from: MacDeath on 10:29, 15 April 11Also :
Is this actually a normal way to have fonts used on CPC to get them in 1bpp for a Mode1 display ?

Does Locomotive basic use this technic for its letters/characters/font too ?

Possible as those are monocolour letters/characters...

Yes, yes and that is the reason, the same monocolour font in mode 1 is double size in bytes that in mode 2, and of course the same monocolour font in modo 0 would be quadruple size.

Quote from: MacDeath on 10:29, 15 April 11on the other hand, the characters used in-games (numbers, letters) are in Mode0 code because they use more colours...

And it's faster to print, too. Because you don't have to "convert" the chars in realtime from mode 2 to the screen mode that you are using.

I think those categories are a good idea and very useful too. What does bbp stand for?

(I think I may as well finish that Rodland mock up today.)

Not BBP but BPP as Bit Per Pixel...

This is the real power of CPC...

Speccy : 256x192x1bpp (+attribute grid...)

This means that if you don't care about "colours" the screen is approx 49152 bits... = 6144bytes (4Ko ??...sort of).
add to this a grid of characters attributes, so 32x24 characters (8x8 pixels)

this make up for 768 characters... that enable to set 8inks from the 15 colour palette, with 2 colours from those 8 per character...
This is the actual "Colour resolution" of spectrum... 32x24...

which may be something like +2ko... (don't know the details here...)

Speccy total "VRAM" (the displayed screen in RAM) is 6Ko (perhaps 7...)
Which is nothing... and cheap...
But hey, you get what you paid for : colour clashes.

While CPC mundane screen is : 640x200x1bpp = 128000bits (=16Ko...)

bpp is a way to code colours per pixels.

1bit per pixel = 2 colours (ink0 and ink1...Mode2)
2bits per pixel= 4 colours (4 inks... Mode1)
4bits  per pixel= 16 colours (inks...mode0)

As the Bit stream is constant, to "display" one byte (8bits) takes the same "time"...
Hence wider pixels in Mode0 than mode1 and so on.

Of course there is the fullscreen/overscan trick on CPC... which enable the 32K VRAM setting so a total resolution even bigger than the actual screen (monitor).



Well, attributes can be good...
Many Arcade or consoles actually use this kind of "logic"...(philosophy)
When you get a tiles grid and HardSrpites with a choice of 16 palette of 16 colours, this is quite similar to Colour attributes... but not as basic as on speccy.

So... considering a "monocolour game"
Graphic datas (tiles, sprites) "weight" on speccy per 8x8 pixels characters is 8x8bits per characters = 64bits (8bytes...)

on a CPC in mode1... (same pixels shapes/size...sort of, as CPC have actually smaller pixels...anyway...)

well, this is exactly twice...
16bytes per character.

To get it actually equal, you would need to run this in mode2... and have an Half screen...
Yet the VRAM is still 16K used but the Video.

In a way the CPC is a speccy with a real video system...
This is were modernity is on CPC...
C64 can cheat thx to its hardsprites... but its conceptions is really oldschool...
Attributes, very limited palette... it's even less "powerfull" than a CGA (sort of) if you don't account for the sprites.
Or just slightly above speccy (because of the 160x200x4/16 mode...)


C64 demoscene got a bit annoyed by Batman demo...
Mostly because of the spinning batsymbol...


There on CPC :
(http://cpcrulez.fr/img/3/batmanfH.png)

and the "Merde in china" copy :
(http://cpcrulez.fr/im4/ccs92.png)
(http://cpcrulez.fr/im4/ccs90.png)

Animooted :


While CPC version is fine pixels (Mode1) and each sides are 2 different blues... Fullscreen display... and fast as hell...



C64 version (no HardSprites can be used here) is not full screen, uses wide pixels (Mode0 equivalent) and cannot even display "no grey"...
(ok CPC cannot display greys...lol...)
Why ? because Hardwired sprites are no use there... C64 returns to it piece of junk Shitfest status.

To be fair, a clever choice to actually "mimic" the CPc's version would have been to use the cyan or purple in place of this grey, but you know, C64scene ... They must be colour blind too as their Pre-1984 machine was a black and white era computer... (sort of)

read this :
(http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/upload/features/05_arne/c64pal.png)
"look, i can get a nice smooth monochromatic gradiants of something like 7-8 shades because I use greys between colours..."
Well, actually this is not a monochromatic gradiants...
But they keep on believing it is...
Its like getting some Amiga graphics on a CGA and pretending this is the same... ;D



And to be fair, ZX spectrum can not even dream to achieve such a spinning symbol...


Also, want to know a trick a speccy (a real, not the cheated Russian clones) cannot achieve ?

simple...
Put 4 colours in the same 8x8 character...

Another one ?
Just diplay some Orange.

:laugh:

(http://cpcrulez.fr/forum/download/file.php?id=426)

A perfect equilibrium...
(http://cpcrulez.fr/forum/download/file.php?id=427)

Quote from: MacDeath on 18:55, 15 April 11
Speccy : 256x192x1bpp (+attribute grid...)

This means that if you don't care about "colours" the screen is approx 49152 bits... = 6144bytes (4Ko ??...sort of).
add to this a grid of characters attributes, so 32x24 characters (8x8 pixels)

this make up for 768 characters... that enable to set 8inks from the 15 colour palette, with 2 colours from those 8 per character...
This is the actual "Colour resolution" of spectrum... 32x24...

which may be something like +2ko... (don't know the details here...)

6K for the bitmap, 768 bytes for the attribute map coming to a grand total of 6912 bytes, just a little under 7K

Quote from: MacDeath on 18:55, 15 April 11
Also, want to know a trick a speccy (a real, not the cheated Russian clones) cannot achieve ?

simple...
Put 4 colours in the same 8x8 character...

Actually it's trivial to put all 15 colours in a single 8x8 character (2 per scanline, both with the same BRIGHTness). Doing so is too processor intensive for the entire display though but there are some demo tricks for displaying pictures in more colours than normal by either dividing a character into 1x8 or 2x4 "chunky pixels" across the whole screen area.

Too lazy to clean this up, but the Bubble Bobble remake was the initial inspiration;

(http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/675c2b798f.gif)

More motivated to work on my own project :P

Back on topic:

Quote from: MacDeath on 18:55, 15 April 11
Also, want to know a trick a speccy (a real, not the cheated Russian clones) cannot achieve ?

simple...
Put 4 colours in the same 8x8 character...

The spectrum version of Shadow Warriors managed to have the sprites in muliple coulours without any colour clash. It seemed to have been solved with some sort of black line around the sprites.

Warning : heavy video content !!!


Yeah, full character based graphics (and animation)...









The trick is to get this black Halo/aura so the characters from sprites and tiles simply never cross...

Of course this is heavily unmasked... a clever design is needed,...

If well done you only see some character's corners.

To get some nice thing, it is also better to get large sprites...


If you look at AMC on CPC it actually uses the same technic, but in Mode0...
Also the sweet "paralax multiscroll" effect...

Yet the extra colours from Mode0 (and wide pixels) enable to soften the square characters feeling...
Also the character effect is seriously neutered because of all those sweet gradiants.

lets compare then...



R-Type : lol...


Space Gun : couldn't find video for Amstrad version on youtube...

AMC :



One last perhaps ?
Altered Beast :


Anyway, this was actually a nice method to get a bit rid of Colourclashes...
Let's say they tried something... (not often the case in so many games)...

Yet the limitations are still quite severe and the design really need to be brilliant.
Also not every games could use this...


Pick N' Piles :
(http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/157212-pick-n-pile-zx-spectrum-screenshot-making-progress.png)
(http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/200424-pick-n-pile-amstrad-cpc-screenshot-a-fire-burning-on-the-second.png)


Yet I have to admit coders really tried hard on Speccy to get something of it, and quite managed to succeed...

But i just simply prefer.. nice graphics...

Shadow Warriors on the Speccy was a technical masterpiece, graphically. Shame that the whole thing was let down by the stupid control mechanism. I remember it being described in the mag previews as something along the lines 'pressing fire will automatically do the best kind of move based on where your opponent is', which translated in reality to 'pressing fire will cause your character to have some kind of seziure where he attempts every possible attack in some sort of bizarre combet dance ritual'

For really impressive multicolour Speccy graphics, you have to go to Popeye and Trapdoor really, which were jaw dropping at the time.

AMC is really what Shadow of the Beast engine should have been on speccy (and perhaps also on CPC...).

Quote from: MacDeath on 08:40, 16 April 11
AMC is really what Shadow of the beast should have been on speccy (and perhaps also on CPC...).

Well I've always thought of Shadow of the Beast as an Amiga graphics demo that somebody actually mistook for a game.  :P

SOTB... the best interactive Amiga Demo...

Anyway... this was not an excuse to get us such a big failure of a speccyport on CPC... :'(


Those stupid snakes...I hate them...
They don't even have the Psygnosis flavour at all... >:(

Guys, a bit off-topic, but I didn't want to open a new thread; the article needs some nice cleaning-up. Remember, these are the *articles*, not the discussion pages, so they should be kep at as serious and objective as possible. Phrases like "let the butthurt begin" just make us sound like adolescent fanboys.

Please (contributors), try to edit those phrases out and tone down the sentiment. Or I could do it.

Done.

Hehehehe thanks :)

Quote from: MacDeath on 18:55, 15 April 11
C64 demoscene got a bit annoyed by Batman demo...
Mostly because of the spinning batsymbol...

Ah, that explains a lot. Thanks for that.

Rhino hinted at it, but I didn't have any idea where to look.

MaV

Anyone else seen that c64 joke of a spinning Batman logo on YT? :D

As I told a few post earlier, they tried their best, but to be honest, when SD and sprites are not needed/usefull... CPC can be more powerfull there.


Ok, 128K version, they shouldtry on a C128 perhaps...

C64 had to cheat with the Hardwired sprites to get bigger pictures (full screen) while CPC "just" need more RAM and actually have a real fullscreen.

Also, Hardwired sprites are heavily needed to display in "Hi-Res" with more colours than a speccy.
Hence the low res... which, in soft, only enable 4 colours per character.

And by the way, CPC version is awesomly faster...

Pic related.

PS : A starWar themed demo could be sweet...

@Gryzor :

QuoteIf this is supposed to be an answer to the CPC version then it's a joke   - lame colors, very aliased edges, not as smooth... If it was just an   experiment then ok.

;D
Yes, it is more a try than a finished product...
Nice Troll though... ::)

Was it possible for the speccy to also use split rasters? I've been reading on this a little but not really up to speed. I've noticed that games like "Striker In The Crypts Of Trogan" manages to display 5 colours in the game area in mode 1.

Quote from: sigh on 14:17, 18 April 11
Was it possible for the speccy to also use split rasters? I've been reading on this a little but not really up to speed. I've noticed that games like "Striker In The Crypts Of Trogan" manages to display 5 colours in the game area in mode 1.

It can't do raster in the sense the CPC can since it doesn't have a palettized display, though you can do something similar by quickly changing the values of the attribute ram but it's rather cpu intensive to get the timing right.

Things like Stryker are far more simple though, since it's not doing anything clever at all. The spectrums display allows you to use any 2 colours (well not strictly any, they must have the same BRIGHT value) in each character cell of the display with no restriction on the total number of colours in the display. This gives you the potential to display much more colour than Mode 1 on the CPC, albeit with much greater restrictions on how those colours can be used.

Anyway, the hardware is only a part of the equation, how you use it is also very important.


I think that the difference between a 6128 and a +3 would be the display management, and that's far better on the CPC. But credit where it's due, there are people capable of doing very nice things on Spectrum too:

"Large" plasmas are a typical Speccydemo feature...

32x24 is the actual colour resolution on speccy, yet a few tricks enable to get this slightly superior...
Of course with ditherings inside the characters, there is a possibility to get this resolution better.

On the other hand, a CPC in Mode0 may do better stuff with an artificial 160x100 resolution (1x2 "pixels"= square pixels...).
But this is also far Heavier...


Character attributes is something like a cross between vertical and horizontal "raster" matrix...
  Not that a bad system but just imagine CPC had such an attribute grid with its Mode1...
  4 colours per characters... with a choice from a few pre-set palettes...
  Would be even heavier, yet quite usefull too...
 

This is where Thomsons 2nd generation MO6/TO8 are good, they have an extra Attributed mode compared to a CPC/Plus.

But still a far heavier attribute mode than on speccy ... the same as MSX actually (attributes are 8x1 pixels instead of 8x8... and you can display 16 colours per screen...)

I modified the Speccy port page.

I added a machine comparison section.

I modified the reasons a little.

I mentioned the slowness and less colours.

So now there is some more reasoning to the argument.

I plan to add info about how quick it is to convert, and the consequence.

and then explain the anger because they didn't use the machines capabilities as they could have.

The examples are good to show what the result was, what they did and what they could have done.

EDIT: I am updating the consequences with the choices that can be made on Spectrum, what the result for the CPC is, and what they should do on CPC. I will also move the bits about techniques into this section, so people can understand what was done when a conversion was made.

At the end I think should be a list of games and comparisons. I'm taking the info that MacDeath wrote and moving it around to give more technical detail... the argument is the same.

Nice edit...

But telling speccy can display 16 colours, while true, is not completely accurate...the official display is 8 colours, and you have to trick a little bit to have the 16 colours, which are actually 15 because speccy has only 15 colours (yet 16 inks).

Also when you tell that CPC can display more colours thx to rester, you shuld tell that tthe limitation is still 4 colours per raster zone... hence the Speccy cannot be really that well emulated.

Concerning souinds... Some videos on youtube seems to display that the ZX speccy tunes were sometimes actually Higher pitch, While CPC is a lot into basses...
So they may have ported the tunes directly and unaltered...sometimes.

I don't think you can really say it's a 'trick' to display 15 colours on the Spectrum. Each attribute square contains a BRIGHT bit which selects whether to use the ordinary 8 colours or the brighter versions (which is really only 7 extra since BRIGHT black is still black). It's a completely designed in feature of the hardware and is entirely accesible even from things like BASIC (via the stunningly well named BRIGHT command). The attribute also contains a FLASH bit, which periodically alternates INK and PAPER colours within the attribute square without CPU intervention.
It does place an additional limitation on the use of colour, since it means you can't mix dark and bright colours in the same attribute square.

Well, it's been always the case that when a machine uses variations of luminance it is mentioned as having x colours (+y variations), not x+y colors...

I did some light editing (couple of spelling mistakes, 15 colours instead of 16, added a speccy screen to show how clash works). Was thinking of putting a little banner ont he wiki's homepage. This banner could include one or two pics showing the result of speccy porting; which one(s) would you suggest, that sticks out of the crowd?

Now the article is really getting somewhere :)

Quote from: Gryzor on 06:49, 20 April 11
I did some light editing (couple of spelling mistakes, 15 colours instead of 16, added a speccy screen to show how clash works). Was thinking of putting a little banner ont he wiki's homepage. This banner could include one or two pics showing the result of speccy porting; which one(s) would you suggest, that sticks out of the crowd?

Now the article is really getting somewhere :)

Maybe R-type and Enduro racer?

Quote from: andycadley on 18:28, 19 April 11
I don't think you can really say it's a 'trick' to display 15 colours on the Spectrum. Each attribute square contains a BRIGHT bit which selects whether to use the ordinary 8 colours or the brighter versions (which is really only 7 extra since BRIGHT black is still black). It's a completely designed in feature of the hardware and is entirely accesible even from things like BASIC (via the stunningly well named BRIGHT command). The attribute also contains a FLASH bit, which periodically alternates INK and PAPER colours within the attribute square without CPU intervention.
It does place an additional limitation on the use of colour, since it means you can't mix dark and bright colours in the same attribute square.

@andy: Ok, I didn't mention about flash I don't think, but I think I mentioned about bright.
Ok I did know there are really 15 visible colours ;)

@others:
I think to add to this article we need a picture of the spectrums palette colours and the cpc's, for a side by side comparison.

also we need a picture from a game like chuckie egg, where the main sprite colours take priority and change the background.

we also need a link to beeper sound, and manic miner staccato sound.
but also a link to Mister Beep's music would also be good to show what the beeper can do.

I am happy others like the changes I am doing, I am trying to give a good comparison and try to explain more, showing examples of poor cpc games resulting from this is perfectly good, because people can understand it better now.

I think after reading the finished article (not complete yet), they'll see the screens, compare spectrum and amstrad version and then understand we could have had more colour.

Quote from: sigh on 08:58, 20 April 11
Maybe R-type and Enduro racer?

R-type is a classic that shows char based movement.
Enduro Racer is good for showing lack of colour, and sprites mixing with each other.

I think we should include Myth and show it as an example of a spectrum game that is acceptable.

Mister Beep's stuff is pretty clever, though as a traditionalist I still don't think anything is quite as impressive as Tim Follin's music in Chronos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM)

For a banner I guess that indeed a side-by-side screenshot of the speccy and the new version would be perfect :)

Quote from: arnoldemu on 09:44, 20 April 11
R-type is a classic that shows char based movement.
Enduro Racer is good for showing lack of colour, and sprites mixing with each other.

I think we should include Myth and show it as an example of a spectrum game that is acceptable.

How about including something like Chase HQ, seeing as that was allegedly 100% speccy code, with redone graphics? This could show an example of an excellent conversion.

Quote from: sigh on 14:59, 20 April 11
How about including something like Chase HQ, seeing as that was allegedly 100% speccy code, with redone graphics? This could show an example of an excellent conversion.

Yes, but this would be good for the article; for a banner you'd need to show the mess that is, and how it could be. :)

Right, it's official. Check the main page :)

Let the crusade begins...

Purge the unclean.
Destroy the Heretech.
Cleanse the unpure speccy.
:D

When I saw the new banner I almost jizzed in my pants. :-[

QuoteI think to add to this article we need a picture of the spectrums palette colours and the cpc's, for a side by side comparison.

I will, but I have a busy week theses days... but I will do this kind of comparison pics.

Also perhaps a few stuff to show the difference between 1bpp graphic and 3-4colours mode1...(ditherings...) from notorious exemples.

Quote from: MacDeath on 19:05, 20 April 11
When I saw the new banner I almost jizzed in my pants. :-[
I will, but I have a busy week theses days... but I will do this kind of comparison pics.

For the first, just do a picture with a square of each colour side by side.
Then you can see the colours for each system.

Then we could also do a comparison to show which cpc colours match which spectrum ones so you can see the Amstrad can do a good job of showing the spectrum's colours.

Quote from: MacDeath on 19:05, 20 April 11
Also perhaps a few stuff to show the difference between 1bpp graphic and 3-4colours mode1...(ditherings...) from notorious exemples.

Yes this would be good for the graphics section which I haven't altered yet.

In the comparisons: I added some more info about joystick port, which market they were built for, the tv/monitor and loading system. I want the comparison to be fairly comprehensive, even though some of it doesn't relate to speccy port, but it gives the reader a better idea of both systems.

Ok, what about this ?

(http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=238.0;attach=1551;image)


So, CPC has an additionnal "layer" of basic colours : the Pastel colours...
and an additional layer of mixed colours... such as orange or mauve...

There this picture show where trhe "cross colours" are supossed to be placed. (also ditherings effects for additionnal full range)


(http://www.cpcwiki.eu/imgs/5/51/Mire_CPC.png)

Anyway, with something like exactly +12 extra colours on palette... this is almost twice the available colours .

interesting, I was thinking more just showing the colours in order for both for an initial: this is the palette of speccy, this is of cpc.

Then I think your comparison pic shows how cpc can match that and then shows it has more shades.

So please can you also do one just to show the colours (the comparison has black and white duplicated which may confuse initially).

Sorry I fail to understand what do you want...
Also having the blach/grey/white part duplicated is not that a problem if you comment about it.

To me it was a way to have a proper separation between the basic palette (RGB + purple+yellow+cyan) and the extra CPC colours (orange and so on...)

But to be fair, concerning Speccy... Grey is actually dark white, not bright black as black remains black in any config...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_8-bit_computer_hardware_palettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_8-bit_computer_hardware_palettes)
perhaps more something like that ?

Funny detail :
Thomson MO5/TO7 : while speccy had the "dark" and "medium" versions of the basic colours, Thomson has the basic version (bright) and pastel versions...
Yet it is also a bit customised in order to have an orange (the 16th colour).

So CPC palette is something like the addition of both palettes (Speccy and Thomson)...

Anyway here are a pair or other tries...

As I said, why Speccy has only 15 colours instead of 16 is to be commented... (cheap rip off CGA palette...)

Quote from: MacDeath on 11:42, 21 April 11
Sorry I fail to understand what do you want...
Also having the blach/grey/white part duplicated is not that a problem if you comment about it.

To me it was a way to have a proper separation between the basic palette (RGB + purple+yellow+cyan) and the extra CPC colours (orange and so on...)

But to be fair, concerning Speccy... Grey is actually dark white, not bright black as black remains black in any config...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_8-bit_computer_hardware_palettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_8-bit_computer_hardware_palettes)
perhaps more something like that ?

Ok what I wanted was 

This first to show the palettes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AmstradCPC_palette.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZXSpectrum_palette.png

to show colours with no repetition (or that was the idea anyway - I notice there are 2 blacks in the speccy one  :laugh: )

Then have yours to show cpc and speccy together and how cpc can handle speccy and then extends it.

Then, i guess my new batch is good... Is it ?


Also there is some argu we often get from speccyfans concerning Speccy graphics...
"More detailed graphics on Speccy while CPC is gross and blocky..."


I came to a conclusion...
First, the "blocky" Mode0 pixels on CPC are not that blocky if directly compaired to Speccy displayed on the exact same monitor...

CPC pixels are calibrated for a "320x200" instead of 256x192...
(and in 320x200 you don't have that a huge border anyway...)

Would be cool to have pictures of "real size"comparisons on "same Monitor"...

a bit like this :
(http://sylvestre.cpcscene.com/technique/gfx7/point.jpg)
sucres en morceau/supersly site...

Would be nice to compare both...



Also... CPC can do real "overscan"...
This leads to a clumberfull 32K of VRAM, but...

I never know the real size of this full screen resolution, i heard this may vary from monitor to monitor, so... I assume something like :

==CPC Mode0 full screen : 192x272 = 52224 pixels displayed (may vary)...

==Speccy resolution : 256x192 = 49152 pixels

More detailled ? CPC even in mode0 can actually display more pixels...
This means of course that you can't really port straightly pixel to pixel, but have to get some zoom in/out and redrawn properly...

But Batman demo recently reminded us the power of the true fullscreen on CPC... in any video mode...
Even Mode2 actually looks like a 3 colour mode thx to the ditherings.

By the same virtue, the Mode1 has actually smaller pixels than speccy (on same monitor) and the lack of attrreibutes enable a real dithering action, hence the mode1 on a real cathodic  monitor can be perceived as having far more colours than the "on the paper" 4 colours... provided you use a larger pictures and don't restrain yourself into speccy graphics/specs.

But when coding a game, you simply can't really use that big screens that often.. :laugh:


The only aspect of Mode0 is that the pixels are not as square as on speccy...
But as it can be part of a larger picture, you can't say it is that blocky...

Anyway there is no such thing as really square pixels with those old cathodic computers...


So yeah, with speccy specs games on CPC, the largely reduced window makes the Mode0 blocky...
But in pure "art" fullscreens, it is not.


Does it look blocky ?
(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_titre/3566.png)
(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_titre/3565.png)
:laugh:

Quote from: MacDeath on 12:23, 21 April 11
Then, i guess my new batch is good... Is it ?

yes it's good. I already made the changes and it's in there now.
I need more help with the wiki formatting though.

Quote from: MacDeath on 12:23, 21 April 11
Also there is some argu we often get from speccyfans concerning Speccy graphics...
"More detailed graphics on Speccy while CPC is gross and blocky..."


I came to a conclusion...
First, the "blocky" Mode0 pixels on CPC are not that blocky if directly compaired to Speccy displayed on the exact same monitor...

CPC pixels are calibrated for a "320x200" instead of 256x192...
(and in 320x200 you don't have that a huge border anyway...)

Would be cool to have pictures of "real size"comparisons on "same Monitor"...

a bit like this :
(http://sylvestre.cpcscene.com/technique/gfx7/point.jpg)
sucres en morceau/supersly site...

Would be nice to compare both...



Also... CPC can do real "overscan"...
This leads to a clumberfull 32K of VRAM, but...

I never know the real size of this full screen resolution, i heard this may vary from monitor to monitor, so... I assume something like :

==CPC Mode0 full screen : 192x272 = 52224 pixels displayed (may vary)...

==Speccy resolution : 256x192 = 49152 pixels

More detailled ? CPC even in mode0 can actually display more pixels...
This means of course that you can't really port straightly pixel to pixel, but have to get some zoom in/out and redrawn properly...

But Batman demo recently reminded us the power of the true fullscreen on CPC... in any video mode...
Even Mode2 actually looks like a 3 colour mode thx to the ditherings.

By the same virtue, the Mode1 has actually smaller pixels than speccy (on same monitor) and the lack of attrreibutes enable a real dithering action, hence the mode1 on a real cathodic  monitor can be perceived as having far more colours than the "on the paper" 4 colours... provided you use a larger pictures and don't restrain yourself into speccy graphics/specs.

But when coding a game, you simply can't really use that big screens that often.. :laugh:


The only aspect of Mode0 is that the pixels are not as square as on speccy...
But as it can be part of a larger picture, you can't say it is that blocky...

Anyway there is no such thing as really square pixels with those old cathodic computers...


So yeah, with speccy specs games on CPC, the largely reduced window makes the Mode0 blocky...
But in pure "art" fullscreens, it is not.


Does it look blocky ?
(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_titre/3566.png)
(http://www.cpc-power.com/images/ecran_titre/3565.png)
:laugh:

Well I think the argument is more directed to mode 0 graphics?
And sure it has fatter pixels, but you show the result can be really nice.

I'm not sure about the pixel sizes (mode 1 vs speccy), to check we would need to know the pixel rate of both and hsync/vsync widths.

But I understand your point and will mention it in the article.
Well it's there already, but I will alter the words.

I have a Speccy+2 (with peritel) and a MP2 box so I should try when I have time to compare both on my big cathodic TV...

Got to compare the displayed zone (border size...) for both, and perhaps take some extrazoomed photos...

but not for now...no time to do that.


Also : nice part concerning the Tapeloadings...
i was unaware of this...
Many tapeloadings were judged unrelyable (wait 30minutes to see the abysmal fail and have to do it again...lol...)

So you tell it may have been because even the tapeloader could have been speccyported ?
Now this is a real crime !


grudge grudge grudge !

Quote from: MacDeath on 13:09, 21 April 11
So you tell it may have been because even the tapeloader could have been speccyported ?
Now this is a real crime !

grudge grudge grudge !

yes, cesar can tell more, but a lot of loaders were badly ported from speccy.
for example: The toposoft loader. This is a spectrum ROM based loader I had to patch to make it work correctly!

The red/yellow striped loader on mastertronic tape games, a spectrum rom loader that ignores checksums and things and it's really unreliable.

EDIT: I made some code to convert spectrum screens to cpc, and also some code to patch XPDB to read +3 discs. I'll publish this when I have time, it easily shows how graphics can be converted at runtime AND it shows the problems. I hope it doesn't result in a load of speccy ports  :laugh:

Now I understood your comment in the other thread; indeed, this should now be split in two, one article dealing with the ports and another with the machine capability comparison... I'll see if I can do it tomorrow...

I've seen that some sort of speccy emulator did exist on CPC...
But... :o
Are there any CPC emulator on Speccy ?
:laugh:

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/ZXM

Do you have informations on this emulator ? does it use Hardware ? ROM ?
Are there other ? does it work well ?

Need a closer inspection...
Would be so nice to see some Actual Speccy games running faster with this emulator than the speccyport... ;D

On another matter, my picture use CPC emulated colours for both Speccy and CPC, I suppose Speccy don't have exactly the same, does someone have the values for the speccy palette ?
(RGB 0-255 please) so I can edit my pic to get it closer...

The Speccy Port page information is looking pretty good. Would be good to have a side by side screen comparison on the games mentioned:

Robocop:
Chase HQ
Wec le mans
Midnight Resistance

Rtype Spec , Rtype CPC original and then Rtype Remake.

QuoteRtype Spec , Rtype CPC original and then Rtype Remake.

Perhaps you should have a looke at R-Type page...

Quote from: MacDeath on 20:58, 21 April 11
I've seen that some sort of speccy emulator did exist on CPC...
But... :o
Are there any CPC emulator on Speccy ?
:laugh:

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/ZXM (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/ZXM)

Do you have informations on this emulator ? does it use Hardware ? ROM ?
Are there other ? does it work well ?

Need a closer inspection...
Would be so nice to see some Actual Speccy games running faster with this emulator than the speccyport... ;D

On another matter, my picture use CPC emulated colours for both Speccy and CPC, I suppose Speccy don't have exactly the same, does someone have the values for the speccy palette ?
(RGB 0-255 please) so I can edit my pic to get it closer...

I recall AA reviewing the ZXM emulator and from memory it wasn't the kind of emulator you could play your commercial games on, though from memory I think only allowed you to play around with BASIC programs as they would have been written on the Spectrum.

Actually the csa8 FAQ mentions a commercial emulator... but I didn't see any details on it.

Quote from: Gryzor on 07:59, 26 April 11
Actually the csa8 FAQ mentions a commercial emulator... but I didn't see any details on it.

Probably the same one that got reviewed in AA. I suspect the rarity of it may be down to very few CPC owners being prepared to pay actual money to downgrade their machine to a 16K spectrum.  :laugh:

Yeah... filed under the title "Useless software ideas" :D

Still, it's be great if we could track down the dev and ask them a few questions...

[EDIT] Erm... the wiki (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/ZXM) is an excellent source of information!

Quote from: MacDeath on 20:58, 21 April 11

On another matter, my picture use CPC emulated colours for both Speccy and CPC, I suppose Speccy don't have exactly the same, does someone have the values for the speccy palette ?
(RGB 0-255 please) so I can edit my pic to get it closer...

It seems no emulator agrees.
It seems that bright is 255, and not-bright is 192.
So levels are 0, 192 and 255.
This may be closer. Don't forget that the cpc's is probably not accurate either.

Quote from: einoeL on 12:20, 07 April 11

I don't like the 464, it's an ugly CPC.
The CPC6128 is the love of my life.

I had a CPC464 back in 1987 until around 1994.  These days I have a CPC6128 but I still like the colourful look of the 464, whereas the 6128 is very conservative and business like.

Quote from: andycadley on 11:03, 20 April 11
Mister Beep's stuff is pretty clever, though as a traditionalist I still don't think anything is quite as impressive as Tim Follin's music in Chronos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM)

I remember in 1987 (?) being utterly stunned and blown away by the Spectrum Chronos music...still am in fact!  Shame the game was a little ordinary, although the graphics were nicely done despite being monochrome.

Quote from: Shredder11 on 13:47, 26 April 11

I remember in 1987 (?) being utterly stunned and blown away by the Spectrum Chronos music...still am in fact!  Shame the game was a little ordinary, although the graphics were nicely done despite being monochrome.

Well, I hit Play on YT and... my PC starts to f@rt. Weird.

@Macdeath: Nice edits to the Speccy port page!

I like the way it's been split into sections for comparison and the extra info you added.

I think we should do the following now:

1. a Speccy port category for games

2. in the Speccy port page we link to the game information (I added a link to black tiger to show what I mean)

3. I think we need to keep the spectrum/amstrad comparison in it's own page for each game.
This keeps the game information page clean, and the speccy port page clean.

The following links are needed I think:

Speccy port->Game info page
Game info page->Speccy port
Game under Speccy port category
Speccy port->game comparison
game info page->game comparison

4. I think the game information page should just show:
a) publisher, year of release, name, information about game, links to download, links to other computer versions (c64, spectrum).
b) all comparison should be done on another page where you are free to put screenshots and write about "what if"

I think the information is then more controlled and more easy to read.

I agree with moving comparisons (maybe except for a couple of examples) to separate pages, but I think that braking game info pages in two would be too much... I think it'd be better to have the vs speccy section in the game's page itself...

Thx...
The mass of comparison details was quite big so I though to put them in sub categories/paragraphs would ease, but as it was a bit messy I did this roughly...
Yet now the idea is here, up to someone else with better technical knowledge to finish it.


The comparison pages (games ?) could get some "8 bit wars" category then... (alos all comparison topics and benchmarks ?)


Anyway, just get it as you feel ...

The fact is that the topic is quite interesting IMO...  ::)
And can also lead to something quite more technical, be it to edit existing games, understand betterly how the industry worked, but also understand how to port stuff (cross dev) betterly...


I think we may know our CPC better thx to such topics.


When I came to the internet CPC community a pair of years ago I was told that to patch-edit existing game was nearly impossible... or too complicated...
Anyway Fano did it twice with awesome result (one is still unreleased).


So we can do better.

Speccy ports often used the same few techniques and tricks... So a proper general method can be set.



Also spanish are still doing speccy ports...
So this topic is still alive and well... (yet modern speccy ports are betterly ported anyway... :D )


I had a dream...I had a dream....
Of the day the infamous list of the 30 speccy porks of death would get properly patched and show the real fact that Speccy is humable and amstrad Strong ! ;D :laugh:

::) :'(

Concerning the Black Tiger...
It was also a way to get the map of the game so player can finish it...

My main computer was an Amstrad CPC464 with all the add-on's at the time I owned a 48k Spectrum. For me, the 464 had much more plus points than the Speccy. For a starter, the main killer of Spectrum games was the awful colour-clash, it simply made the games unplayable for me. The 464 games always seemed more playable and better to look at.

As far a scrolling between the systems, yes, the 464 did have some games that scrolled badly, but back in the day the amount of games that relied on scrolling for game-play seemed insignficant. The colour choice on games was also nearly always better on the 464, especially games which used Mode 0! Games such as Ikari Warriors and Barbarian which I played to death were best played on the 464 because of the better colour and indeed great scrolling on Ikari Warriors.

I think as an overall computer, the CPC was (an is) a far superior machine to the Spectrum, and a far more versatile machine than the C64. Of course, the same with any system, there were better games on other systems, but when the CPC got it right, the games were the best of the 8-bit era.

I eventually upgraded to a CPC6128+, which of course was the best 8-bit computer released. However, it was released to late to make a difference sadly.

:) Mark

Quote from: Gryzor on 11:20, 26 April 11
Yeah... filed under the title "Useless software ideas" :D

Still, it's be great if we could track down the dev and ask them a few questions...

[EDIT] Erm... the wiki (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/ZXM) is an excellent source of information!

You can also download it from here (http://www.cantrell.org.uk/mirrors/ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/misc/zxm.zip) (or here (ftp://www.cantrell.org.uk/ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/misc/zxm.zip) for those who love FTP!  ;D ) and it will be on NVG too, so is in no danger of being lost!  8)

From memory I think it could only let you type in some BASIC Spectrum programs (I'm unsure if it would even let you save or load them - a Manual would certainly help). Some of those BASIC programs published in them Usborne books from 1983 or so though might have helped someone figure out how the program would run in Locomotive BASIC (as opposed to buying a Spectrum instead), though long term appeal would have been limited.

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Tiertex

I added the Tiertex page.

They were quite responsible for a lot of s***ty speccy invasion on our beloved CPC..

Quote from: MacDeath on 14:15, 01 May 11
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Tiertex (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Tiertex)

I added the Tiertex page.

They were quite responsible for a lot of s***ty speccy invasion on our beloved CPC..

A funny review on Human Killing Machine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUkK14bHDk

Speaking of ports - here's a great website "Games that weren't C64". It pretty fantastic information showing screenshots and information about games that got canned during production, or games that were totally rewritten for their final release. Here's and example of the original screenshots of Xybots on the C64 which then got the Spectrum treatment later on:

http://www.gtw64.co.uk/Pages/x/Shots_Xybots.php (http://www.gtw64.co.uk/Pages/x/Shots_Xybots.php)

It also has interviews with the programmers, musicians and artists of certain games that never saw the light of day.

It would be brilliant to have something similar for the CPC.

There was a GTW-CPC site. Where has it gone?

All I got of GTW-CPC is this:

http://www.gryzor.info/gtwcpc (http://www.gryzor.info/gtwcpc).

Seems like the link is down...

Yeah, I was once hosting it but I think it got its own home after a while... and then died?

Quote from: Gryzor on 04:07, 10 May 11
Yeah, I was once hosting it but I think it got its own home after a while... and then died?

got any backups of the files you had?
This may help us to build our articles that we have.
Then perhaps the cpcwiki could be the main gtw site for cpc

Unfortunately, I checked, and no :( :( Lots it in a server crash I think...