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New CPC+/GX demo: Shadow of the Beast

Started by kawickboy, 09:03, 13 November 17

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kawickboy

Sorry if ever it has been published elsewhere but enjoy this new Logon product:



https://youtu.be/CPCyF71098o

||C|-|E||

This is amazing! I always said that I would really love to have a proper Shadow of the Beast for the Plus and this demo is the closest thing I have seen to the original one in our machines  :D

Zoe Robinson

This is a pleasure to watch. Thank you for sharing it.  :)

Gryzor

Oh fuck yeah. How many layers is that?

Shining

Just got my 6128+ out of the cupboard, turned it on and whooooooooow.



TGS is back

Download my productions at:
cpc.scifinet.org

00WReX

Wow, just watched this on a GX4000...Very impressive to only require 64k  ;)

Cheers,
Shane
The CPC in Australia...
Awa - CPCWiki

fgbrain

this is the power of a 512KB cartridge!

mind you - 368KB of it are full of sample data for playback.. :o
_____

6128 (UK keyboard, Crtc type 0/2), 6128+ (UK keyboard), 3.5" and 5.25" drives, Reset switch and Digiblaster (selfmade), Inicron Romram box, Bryce Megaflash, SVideo & PS/2 mouse, , Magnum Lightgun, X-MEM, X4 Board, C4CPC, Multiface2 X4, RTC X4 and Gotek USB Floppy emulator.

Sykobee (Briggsy)

Quote from: fgbrain on 20:36, 14 November 17
this is the power of a 512KB cartridge!

mind you - 368KB of it are full of sample data for playback.. :o


Really! Wow.


TBH I'm now hoping that someone can break the 512KB cartridge limit so we can have 4MB or higher carts.

roudoudou

Quote from: Sykobee (Briggsy) on 12:07, 15 November 17

Really! Wow.


TBH I'm now hoping that someone can break the 512KB cartridge limit so we can have 4MB or higher carts.


no way as ROM (only 5 bits register for 32 ROM)


but there is already mass-storage almost unlimited like Albireo, very fast with gigabyte capacity (for CPC and CPC+)


ps: you can already have 4M ROM on CPC and 2M ROM on CPC+ with a romboard (yes, the CPC+ cannot handle as many ROM as the CPC first generation)
My pronouns are RASM and ACE

PulkoMandy

Well, it's always possible with some hacks. The C4CPC actually somewhat manages this as it can switch between different 512K banks.


This was actually not uncommon on other cartridge based platforms, where the bank switching logic was not part of the base machine, but left to the cartridge itself. NES cartridges are known to exploit this in lots of creative ways (not just adding extra space, but also custom interrupt controllers and whatnot). But I don't see an impossible challenge in making a larger cart. However, direct SD card storage as with Albireo + a 1MB or 512K RAM expansion is a simpler solution for developers, so why not go with that?

gerald

Quote from: PulkoMandy on 13:20, 15 November 17
Well, it's always possible with some hacks. The C4CPC actually somewhat manages this as it can switch between different 512K banks.
The Ram holding the cartridge content is 512k, so switching is not possible.
However, updating its content from the SD card is possible with one limitation : you cannot access the cartridge during the update time.

Sykobee (Briggsy)

Quote from: gerald on 18:36, 15 November 17
The Ram holding the cartridge content is 512k, so switching is not possible.
However, updating its content from the SD card is possible with one limitation : you cannot access the cartridge during the update time.


Yeah, have been chatting to Toto, and it would be possible, even without the R/W line on the cartridge port, by reading a special fixed address ($FFFF say?) followed by another read of an address we will treat as data, and the c4cpc recognising the first read, and interpreting the second read as data (a command).


I can think of one useful command - load 16KB from selected SD image into RAM page. This would allow multi-load carts up to 32MB in size, of which 512KB is active at any one time. And you'd want to busy loop in your code until that had finished (read returns 0 or 1 say) so you knew it had finished doing the page load.


Obviously another command could be 'write byte to [19-bit] address' to treat c4cpc RAM as 'slow to write' RAM, but that would be more complex to encode on the address bus.

PulkoMandy

It is still simpler to use the expansion port where all the needed signals are directly available. Unless you really want GX4000 compatibility, that is. And there the C4CPC has you covered already. It's not as fast as real bank switching, but surely one could live with a short loading time (I think it's less than 0.5 seconds to load 512K?)

Shining

But you can built real cartridge-games with extended features. Think what the SNES did for example. It had all these fancy addon chips.


So think for example about a 512kB Dual-Port RAM instead of the Cartridge-Eprom, connected to the CPC and the other site to a µController which has acces to much more flash. So the controller can for example include a mod-tracker and put all the needed plus-dma-soundinfos somewhere in the DPRAM. Or it precalculates you some gfx etc. Sadly you cannot do very much directly in video-ram for example, using the cartridge port.


But I think somehow, a plus with an enhanced cartridge is still a native plus. Whereas a plus with addons on the expansion port is something else. I really want to see more productions, uncovering the potential of the plus, compatible to native GX4000 and 464+.


And to come back to topic: Exactly this is, what  "Eerie Forest" does imho.
TGS is back

Download my productions at:
cpc.scifinet.org

Rhino

Amazing!!!
The previous version for old CPC from Overflow was already very impressive. This one could almost to be Amiga.

tastefulmrship

Wow! A fat-pixel Amiga demonstration indeed!
Impressive sound and visuals! Now we need the game on GX4K! ^_^

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