Anaglyph Aliens: Amtix CPC type-in

[seanmcmanus]

I wrote a a new type-in game for the final issue of Amtix CPC called Anaglyph Aliens. It works with blue/red 3D glasses to make the aliens fly out of the screen at you. It works best on Winape at the default window size - on bigger screens or windows the effect breaks down (but could be fixed by tweaking the code). I haven't seen any other Amstrad games using this effect. Perhaps someone else can do something with this technique in machine code and make a game that's faster and more responsive?

You can see the code and play it in your browser here:
https://www.sean.co.uk/books/amstrad/play_anaglyph_aliens.shtm

The final issue of Amtix CPC also includes a round-up of the best games over the last few years, a look back at the final issues of Amstrad magazines over the years, and reviews on Hypernoid, Oh Chute!, Pang+, Foggy's Quest, Where are you?, and all the regular features. Back issues are available here:
https://fusionretrobooks.com/collections/amtixcpc

[HAL6128]

Hey, that's pretty cool and works great. Simple and very effective!

Nicely done (you are also using your sprite driver?) and cool idea for such kind of games.

[Rity]

Hello, it seems to me that on the amstrad computer there were two 3D adventure games with this technique.

https://cpcrulez.fr/GamesTest/relief_action.htm

or

https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=352


Thanks for the dsk, goodbye

[seanmcmanus]

Hi HAL6128. Yes, I'm using my sprite driver to grab the images created in BASIC and then display them as sprites. The game was designed to be a type-in listing, so I didn't want lots of sprite data. The sprite driver code is just a tiny snippet of machine code. I wrote it for my programming book in 1993.

Hi Rity. Thanks for those pointers to those games. I wonder whether they had glasses that were tailored for the CPC in some way. I'm not getting great results from them using my generic red/blue glasses. I have updated my web page to mention them.

[eto]

I'm not getting great results from them using my generic red/blue glasses.

I am using cheap, probably 30 years old red/green glasses. With the changes I mentioned on Facebook and the result is really good. 

[seanmcmanus]

Thank you, eto. I've made a note to get back to you on Facebook later! I want to try your colour combinations in my game with my red/green glasses.

My comment on the red/blue glasses was in relation to the games Rity mentioned and I think your comment was in relation to my type-in. I'm getting much stronger depth perception from my game Anaglyph Aliens than from the old commercial games using the same glasses.

[eto]

My comment on the red/blue glasses was in relation to the games Rity mentioned and I think your comment was in relation to my type-in.

oh... right... sorry

[eto]

I want to try your colour combinations in my game with my red/green glasses.

find attached the changes I made for red/green (REDGREEN.BAS). In line 26 you can switch if you want to use red/blue or red/green and line 25 also allows you to select bright green instead of the darker green. I personally prefer the darker green.

I also added a Defint a-z (line 24) which speeds up the generation significantly (30 seconds less). I didn't recognize any difference compared to floats, so maybe that helps a bit.

And an absolutely amazong piece of BASIC :-) I would have loved to have that as a type-in back in the days.

[seanmcmanus]

Hello! Finally found time to take a look at this.

Thanks for making these changes and for your kind words about the listing. Yes, I would have so loved a listing like this back in the days, too. It's a shame I didn't work out some of this stuff back then! :-)

I did test red/green using the default purple colour and found it looks okay, but I can see orange is a better match for the red/green glasses. I wanted to try to make minimal changes for green glasses. I wasn't sure how easily the listing would fit on the mag's A5 pages, which is also a reason I didn't include a proper menu for choosing the glasses. I might reconsider that for my online version.

The colours look good on the title screen of your version, but the game crashes for me after the graphics are generated. I don't know why that is. I'm using Winape.

Thanks for adding defint. I tried this during development but couldn't work out why it was throwing an error. I can see how you've fixed that on the mem loop in line 30. It noticeably speeds up the generation of the sprites, and perhaps slightly speeds up gameplay.

I'll look at updating the version on my site when I get a moment. Should I acknowledge you with your pseudonym here, or the name you used on Facebook?

[eto]

but the game crashes for me after the graphics are generated.

oh... sorry, there is still an "end" in the code when I measured the time for the generation (after adding defint). Just remove line 126 and it should work.

If you want to acknowledge me, then please with the pseudonym here. thanks.

[seanmcmanus]

I've updated the game now with a menu for choosing between red and green glasses at the start and with that defint optimisation:
Play Amstrad CPC 3D game Anaglyph Aliens online (sean.co.uk)

I think you might have had the inks the wrong way around in your version, eto. I think the eyes were swapped.

I decided to keep the pink for the main colour. In my glasses, it didn't make a difference whether I used pink or orange, and it reduced the code changes to just change the ink2 value.

Thanks again for your help!

Sean

[eto]

I think you might have had the inks the wrong way around in your version, eto. I think the eyes were swapped.

I think I kept red as it was and just swapped green with blue, didn't I? Not sure if there is an official side for each color but if red/green and red/blue have the same side for red, then the other should be green or blue. 

But as I just had cheap cardboard "glasses", I am not sure which direction is correct.

[Xyphoe]

Nice work Sean!

There were some other Amstrad games that used the Anaglyph 3D effect.

We tried to find as many as possible on an Amstream 3 years ago -

Probably most prominently and well know recently was...

"3D Suck Hunt" from Keith / aka Akuyou / aka Chibiakumas - that probably is the one that worked the best out the bunch we found.

There was also -

"Bad Max" - a not very good I found French graphic text adventure game)

"3D Light Cycle" - an actually quite decent Tron light cycle type game, with a very bright pink background! But it works REALLY well with the blue/red glasses - because you're playing with an extra axis and depth going into a 'box' and works surprisingly well! DO check this out.

Chapter points are there in the above Amstream video for the 3 games.

[seanmcmanus]

I think you might have had the inks the wrong way around in your version, eto. I think the eyes were swapped.

I think I kept red as it was and just swapped green with blue, didn't I? Not sure if there is an official side for each color but if red/green and red/blue have the same side for red, then the other should be green or blue.

But as I just had cheap cardboard "glasses", I am not sure which direction is correct.

The red/green and red/blue glasses have the red lens on the same (left) eye. My cardboard glasses had arms to make it easier to work out which way around they go. I wonder whether your glasses were on the wrong way around perhaps. Comparing your code with the updated code on my site, I can see the red is on the other side for you, so I expect it worked fine for you if you had your glasses reversed.

Thanks again for your help! Much appreciated.

[seanmcmanus]

Nice work Sean!

There were some other Amstrad games that used the Anaglyph 3D effect.

We tried to find as many as possible on an Amstream 3 years ago -

Probably most prominently and well know recently was...

"3D Suck Hunt" from Keith / aka Akuyou / aka Chibiakumas - that probably is the one that worked the best out the bunch we found.

There was also -

"Bad Max" - a not very good I found French graphic text adventure game)

"3D Light Cycle" - an actually quite decent Tron light cycle type game, with a very bright pink background! But it works REALLY well with the blue/red glasses - because you're playing with an extra axis and depth going into a 'box' and works surprisingly well! DO check this out.

Chapter points are there in the above Amstream video for the 3 games.

Thank you! I'll take a look at the video! I'll be intrigued to try those other games you identified.

[Xyphoe]

Just came across another game -

"Relief Action" from Loriciels!

https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=package&num=1783

[Gryzor]

Looks interesting!

[seanmcmanus]

Can anyone point me to the dsk file for 3D Light Cycle please? I've found the others. 

Also, I came across an ad for 3D Light Cycle that mentioned 3D Labyrinth, so it might be that there's another 3D glasses game out there somewhere.

[Jean-Marie]

Can anyone point me to the dsk file for 3D Light Cycle please?

Crackers Velus - Amstrad CPC
3D Labyrinth has never been found IIRC, or maybe never released.

[seanmcmanus]

Thank you! It's a shame 3D Labyrinth hasn't been found. It seems like a 3D maze is an obvious game to convert to 3D glasses.