Speccy vs CPC - battle of the Ages

[SyX]

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  we enjoyed some of the worst speccy ports  or the best sperriums emulators 

Take a look at Spirits (one of the best color attributes emulator  ), the best of Positive (Amo del Mundo, Dimension Omega, Enchanted [attention to the loading screen  ], Mambo [Arrghhh, my eyes!!!  ], Mountain Bike Racer [My eyes hurt Part II  ], or Rath-Tha), the best of Diabolic (Oberon 69 [see the first game picture, even the game knows "what horror" is this game  ], The Brick, Star Bowls or Drakkar [famous for let you choose Kempston in the controls screen  ], Time-Out ... and of course, it's impossible talking about this and not mention "la creme de la creme" ... Xortrapa  with Mr. Gas and their masterpiece Triple Commando, you can enjoy my adventure trying to fix it the last summer, much more terrifying that "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" 

[MacDeath]

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...

[FatAgnus]

"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/

[MacDeath]

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


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...

I 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... 

[FatAgnus]

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!

[FatAgnus]

"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...?¿?

[steve]

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.

[sigh]

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.

[MacDeath]

I 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...

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.

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.


But what is this then if not speccy ported ?

[FatAgnus]

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

[sigh]

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...
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)



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

[MaV]

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.

Very, very nice. 

MaV

[redbox]

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.

[MaV]

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

[MacDeath]

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...

[SyX]

Also :
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.

on 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.

[sigh]

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.)

[MacDeath]

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 :


and the "Merde in china" copy :



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 :

"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...



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.





A perfect equilibrium...

[andycadley]

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

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.

[sigh]

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



More motivated to work on my own project

Back on topic:

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.

[MacDeath]

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 :




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...

[andycadley]

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.

[MacDeath]

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

[andycadley]

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. 

[MacDeath]

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...