Shit Game Time: Green Beret + Cassette 50

[arnoldemu]

How can Green Beret's scrolling be worse than in Gal(i)van?

galvan - cosmo police &copy ocean software (1986)

*Tiny* playing area horrible jerking scrolling. Ouch!

[arnoldemu]

How can Green Beret's scrolling be worse than in Gal(i)van?

galvan - cosmo police &copy ocean software (1986)

*Tiny* playing area horrible jerking scrolling. Ouch!

They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.

[ivarf]

They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.

Thinks about how hard Dinamic Green Beret would have been...

[Axelay]

Or take the speccy code and put in nice cpc graphics That is also a big job but not as big as re-writing it all!

... and end up with a game probably running at the same frame rate as the current CPC version in nearly half the play area size?

They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.

This is a case in point.  Army Moves is already a little sluggish (and dont get me wrong, I love my Dinamic games) but the playing area is small and heavily bordered, and I'd be very surprised if it's scrolling more than those 4-5 characters along the bottom with everything else as sprites, so it doesnt look remotely comparable to what you'd want for Green Beret to me.

[ivarf]

How can Green Beret's scrolling be worse than in Gal(i)van?

galvan - cosmo police &copy ocean software (1986)

*Tiny* playing area horrible jerking scrolling. Ouch!

That's a good candidate for zeusdaz shit game. Have anyone here had good fun playing Galvan?

[arnoldemu]

That's a good candidate for zeusdaz shit game. Have anyone here had good fun playing Galvan?

it actually made me feel a bit sick when I played it.

Also the colour of the character sometimes merges into the busy background

[sigh]

Name 100 Amstrad games that should be on the shit list before Green Beret. It should be quite easy... Zeusdaz you have misunderstood the Amstrad fanboys. We quite like Green Beret, we know the system has a lot of bad games. We just disagree with your choice

Not me. I totally agree with Zeusdaz choice on this one.

They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.

Games like Kung Fu Master had better scrolling and collision detection around the same time that Green Beret came out. I think that they would of made a good conversion of Green Beret.
I also agree that the game would need a completely new rewrite.

At least It's not graphic heavy and the animations are very simple along with the sounds effects and music.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Games like Kung Fu Master had better scrolling and collision detection around the same time that Green Beret came out. I think that they would of made a good conversion of Green Beret.
I also agree that the game would need a completely new rewrite.

Gotta slightly disagree here. While the CD was good on the generic muggers / knife guys, it was an utter shambles at the end of level guys, half the hits not registering at all.
Totally ruined my gaming experience on what was otherwise a decent attempt at a conversion (It was also a graphic horror in places, specifically the 3rd end of level boss).

[ivarf]

Seems that people have to agree on disagreeing. It makes me wonder if there are any games that we all think is good. From the sound of it in this thread, the c64 and Spectrum critics are right, most games on the CPC is shit and the CPC couldn't scroll. Are least not scroll at the  time and that ruined the game experience.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Seems that people have to agree on disagreeing. It makes me wonder if there are any games that we all think is good. From the sound of it in this thread, the c64 and Spectrum critics are right, most games on the CPC is shit and the CPC couldn't scroll. Are least not scroll at the  time and that ruined the game experience.

I think that only happened if you allowed it. As I've said before, I enjoyed Green Beret despite it's lack of scrolling, it's hit detection bothered me more as there's nothing more frustrating than losing your last life when you *knew* you hit the guy.


It's horses for courses, personally, I never understood the appeal for the Spectrum and it's monochrome style at all. Most of their graphics were just outlined. That would have put me off more than scrolling, but that's just me personally.

[||C|-|E||]

Seems that people have to agree on disagreeing. It makes me wonder if there are any games that we all think is good. From the sound of it in this thread, the c64 and Spectrum critics are right, most games on the CPC is shit and the CPC couldn't scroll. Are least not scroll at the  time and that ruined the game experience.

I guess that nobody would say that games like Savage, Trantor, Turrican, Exolon, B.A.T, Iron Lord, Capitán Trueno, Navy Moves... and many others are bad. It happens, however, that there are games that were not so good but we personally enjoyed when we were kids. Probably the good memories make us to appreciate them much more. I have a few of those in my own list, like Quartet or even Score 3020 

[AMSDOS]

This thread has got me playing Green Beret again. I've never played the Arcade game, but I could play this. Scrolling - Not as Jerky as "Roland on the Ropes" and people still enjoy playing that game. Playability - actually really good, I can Duck, Jump, Stab, Move Left & Right while Ducking! Compare that with Codies SAS Combat Unit, the 2nd Round in that game you need to be Pixel Perfect to Stab those guys coming from Front & Behind, Green Beret allows multiple opportunities to stab the enemy before they kill you.

[chinnyhill10]

This thread has got me playing Green Beret again. I've never played the Arcade game, but I could play this. Scrolling - Not as Jerky as "Roland on the Ropes" and people still enjoy playing that game. Playability - actually really good, I can Duck, Jump, Stab, Move Left & Right while Ducking! Compare that with Codies SAS Combat Unit, the 2nd Round in that game you need to be Pixel Perfect to Stab those guys coming from Front & Behind, Green Beret allows multiple opportunities to stab the enemy before they kill you.

Yes. I now want to go back to it to see if my memory cheats or not + to compare it to the other versions. IIRC there is a BBC version. Perhaps will do a round-up later in the year.

[arnoldemu]

....Scrolling - Not as Jerky as "Roland on the Ropes" and people still enjoy playing that game.

Roland on the ropes is using hardware scrolling but moving at 2 chars at a time. Everything is drawn as tiles. The character is split into tiles, the enemies, the backgrounds etc. No problem at all with drawing over the "problem" are because of this. And it seems to keep track of which tiles are dirty so only erases/redraws the tiles it needs to. It makes extensive use of the firmware for both doing the scrolling AND for calculating screen addresses and yet it also has some multiplies done in loops which should have been look up tables. The thing that lets it down is that it is single buffered and when scrolling the panel at the bottom is redrawn and it looks a bit messy and flickery.

If it was double buffered this could have been avoided but it uses quite a lot of ram for the graphics maps and sprites. It's got "real scrolling" too, none of the green beret fake scrolling.

[chinnyhill10]

Roland on the ropes is using hardware scrolling but moving at 2 chars at a time. Everything is drawn as tiles. The character is split into tiles, the enemies, the backgrounds etc. No problem at all with drawing over the "problem" are because of this. And it seems to keep track of which tiles are dirty so only erases/redraws the tiles it needs to. It makes extensive use of the firmware for both doing the scrolling AND for calculating screen addresses and yet it also has some multiplies done in loops which should have been look up tables. The thing that lets it down is that it is single buffered and when scrolling the panel at the bottom is redrawn and it looks a bit messy and flickery.

Roland On The Ropes was one of the first games coded for the system and had to be programmed extremely quickly.

[AMSDOS]

Roland on the ropes is using hardware scrolling but moving at 2 chars at a time. Everything is drawn as tiles. The character is split into tiles, the enemies, the backgrounds etc. No problem at all with drawing over the "problem" are because of this. And it seems to keep track of which tiles are dirty so only erases/redraws the tiles it needs to. It makes extensive use of the firmware for both doing the scrolling AND for calculating screen addresses and yet it also has some multiplies done in loops which should have been look up tables. The thing that lets it down is that it is single buffered and when scrolling the panel at the bottom is redrawn and it looks a bit messy and flickery.

But we still love it! 


Roland on the Ropes uses every bit of the 43k the 464 had available to it, so any attempt to improve it with double buffer, would mean 128k at least. 

If it was double buffered this could have been avoided but it uses quite a lot of ram for the graphics maps and sprites. It's got "real scrolling" too, none of the green beret fake scrolling.

Well I could of presented the game I'm working on, originally it was using SCR SW ROLL (&BC50) to Scroll down a section of the Screen, and like Roland on the Ropes there was flicker. Altering that to use Fake Scrolling has made a difference, though the game improved significantly when I went from the UDG Driver to Sprite Driver (which has received little interest).

[TFM]

Roland on the Ropes uses every bit of the 43k the 464 had available to it, so any attempt to improve it with double buffer, would mean 128k at least. 

Well.... look at the code... sorry, this looks nearly like taken from an 8080 system. Not much usage of the 2nd register set an sophisticated Z80 code. Code could be more quick and compact.

[ukmarkh]

For me, the arcade version was fantastic, the Speccy and C64 conversions felt authentic, and were enjoyable. Other versions came out, that were fun i.e. NES version.

I owned a CPC 464 in 1984, I was nine, in 85 / 86 I played Green Beret, it was shit then, it's still shit now. We had a C64 as well, I preferred my CPC, but Green Beret on the C64 was programmed to perfection.

No amount of fanny boy Amstrad talk will ever convince me otherwise. I would love a remake, i believe given the R-Type treatment, it would play a blinder. 

I love the CPC, but will I never defend some of the crap that was released for it... Outrun and Green Beret being prime examples.


   

[TFM]

Best words spoken to end the discussion! All said! 

[ivarf]

Green Beret was coded on the Amstrad by the same coder that coded Yie ar Kung Fu. Two good games. Too bad we didn't get more games from him

[arnoldemu]

Green Beret was coded on the Amstrad by the same coder that coded Yie ar Kung Fu. Two good games. Too bad we didn't get more games from him

Yie Ar Kung Fu had two coders on it.

Brian went on to make loads more games for cpc.

Looks like Keith went on to do Vidi - so no longer doing games.

[ivarf]

Re: Rastan Saga CPC coder mini interview
« Reply #4 on: 18:39, 01 August 15 »

Hi

yes Keith was indeed the coder on Yie Ar, I only did the sprite routines which used a cool form of RLE compression to get more of them into the game and allow colour changes using the same data.
I also did all the sprite graphics, which at the time were done by freeze framing a video of the arcade game and copying the fames in Amdraw...it took a while

I did however write the Speccy 128K on my own for Ocean which may be why I keep getting the credit for all the 8bit versions of Yie Ar Kung Fu, which is not at all fair on the original coders. Keith was a brilliant young talent and its a shame he quit coding.

I already answered on the FB post about Rastan, I don't know of any level loading bugs in the tape game. When we delivered the masters it was all working fine, so it maybe something bad happened at the mastering stage. I do know we delivered it fine though.

Anything else you want to know feel free to ask.

Brian

[invent]

A remake of green beret, interesting visually I quite liked the conversion but it was the scroll / collision that made the gameplay hard...  Must play this game again including other platforms(maybe in cheat mode?)


I noticed yie ar Kung fu in conversations, one of my Amstrad favs, so much so I did a concept for Amiga (it never got a version)

[ivarf]

Back in the day Green Beret scored 81% in Amtix. Amstrad Action gave it a Rave and 83%

[TFM]

Because they got impressed by the brutal GFX. [nb]Yes, back the day this was brutal.[/nb]