CPCWiki forum

Hey guys,

Does anyone have any news on the Bubble Bobble remake?

I can't find much information on the web but I have found its CNGSoft (who made the CPCE emulator) was making this and certainly has been in development since 2008.

Quote from: Xyphoe on 06:54, 05 January 11
Hey guys,

Does anyone have any news on the Bubble Bobble remake?

I can't find much information on the web but I have found its CNGSoft (who made the CPCE emulator) was making this and certainly has been in development since 2008.

Yes I talked with CNGSoft and he is back working on it again and it's progressing.
I have seen another version which does a bit more than that one.

This looks absolutely gorgeous. I love it when coders and artist take a   game that came out on a CPC, then update in all ways that are wonderful!   I saw a remake of the R-Type graphics on the CPC and that looks   great(haven't seen it move yet though...).

Quote from: arnoldemu on 10:36, 05 January 11
Yes I talked with CNGSoft and he is back working on it again and it's progressing.
I have seen another version which does a bit more than that one.

César has posted some screenshots of BB4CPC (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_rnd_010.htm?lang=0) on his site. Mmmm... nice... 8)

Quote from: Nich on 22:57, 05 January 11
César has posted some screenshots of BB4CPC (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_rnd_010.htm?lang=0) on his site. Mmmm... nice... 8)

WOW!

They look GORGEOUS!

May as well paste the image here -

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_20101025_.png)

looks gorgeous........ but does it have sound  ;)  ???




hindsight is a wonderful thing as the saying goes - in the 80's / 90's when games were released remakes weren't considered seems silly this wasn't undertaken a remake of say poor games like jail break with better scrolling, easier control and movement, sound & fx, some extra bonuses etc  say a year out from release perhaps would have generated more money for software houses and coders. 

Wow this looks fantastic... from the stills, it makes the CPC and the game justice - at last!!!

To the untrained eye, it probably looks like a blocky mess, splashed with a colourful display. For me it's the CPC at its best! woo-hoo!!! 

I hope there's an option to send them a blank cassette tape to put the game on, as it would be nice to play this on a real amstrad.

Years ago, Amstrad Action cover tapes came with the option to transfer to disk... used to love that!


Wasn't aware it could be done the other way round?

Any word on this?

Yes!!

Any word from CNGSoft or César? Is anyone in contact with them?

WOW that looks awesome!!!

We need to make a list of remakes that need doing and send it to whoever and get them to make them how they should have looked! like this and the R-type remake

Quote from: Xyphoe on 16:50, 10 April 11
Yes!!

Any word from CNGSoft or César? Is anyone in contact with them?

Yes me ! But you were not interested by talking with me so......never mind  :D

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 22:55, 10 April 11
Yes me ! But you were not interested by talking with me so......never mind  :D

What do you mean dude?

Quote from: Xyphoe on 16:50, 10 April 11
Yes!!

Any word from CNGSoft or César? Is anyone in contact with them?

I have him on MSN but I haven't talked to him recently.
He has done more work, look at cpcrulez.fr forums ;)

On RetroEncounter we can play a demo :

Lucky b@st@rds :D

Quote from: Cpcmaniaco on 10:00, 11 April 11
On RetroEncounter we can play a demo :

Did you play the demo? Impressions please :)

You can see the video from the version that we (the lucky bastards  :D ) can play in the Retro Encounter

I think you mispelled BastardOS...

BastardOS is a new GUI OS from spain... :D

a mix between FuturOS and SymbOS...
This also need no additionnal Hardware.
This OS is really enough for a CPC464

hense the name  BastardOS  :

Basta+Hard+OS = BastardOS. ;)

Anyways your favourite ones are the BastardOS+ with plus features !  :D

Quote from: SyX on 11:14, 12 April 11
You can see the video from the version that we (the lucky bastards  :D ) can play in the Retro Encounter

Absolute lovliness! I just had a look at the original cpc port. It's almost like 2 different games (no disrespect as I did enjoy that port too).

From what I can tell, you can't push bubbles at all, they just pop as soon as you touch them.  You can push bubbles even on the *cough* Spectrum version, so it should be doable.

Also, will the Power Up/Original Game/Super codes from the arcade version make an appearance?

The real Bubble bobble had quite a complicated bonus system... that was never fully implemented in any port...

Quote from: dlfrsilver on 22:55, 10 April 11
Yes me ! But you were not interested by talking with me so......never mind  :D

Aha - I now know what you are on about  :-[ PM sent!!!!

mahlemiut, the game is not finished, and the objective of Cesar is to make a great conversion, although he is the only person with the answer at your questions, but i can confirm you that the Power Up appears, because i took the candies and the shoes when i was playing  :D

Well, I'm just being a bit picky, loved the original arcade game back in the day, played it heaps :)

I'm referring to the Power Up, Original Game, and Super codes that you can enter (one at a time) at the title screen.  Only the X68000 (and maybe the MSX2 version also) version has them (albeit easily selectable on the options screen instead).

Here's some more technical stuff from the arcade version, including how the bonus system works, complete with Z80 code - http://replay.marpirc.net/txt/bublbobl.txt

New preview video up! With more information, and comparison to Arcade and original conversion -



As I say in the video, and must stress, this is still just a preview unfinished and beta version.

I spoke to Cesar a lot yesterday and he filled me in with everything. Things like pushing bubbles, riding the water, and other bonus's and powerups will be implementing along with proper scoring. I'm sure there will be a nice loading screen too!

One interesting thing is that it loads all in one go, and in only 64k of memory too!!

Where this project is at - I believe all the available memory has gone, and now Cesar is looking to fiddle with code then recompress using better methods. He's already free'd up 1k of memory since this preview version.  :)

My only issue so far, bar the flickery sprites at times (which I think sadly, is now unavoidable but not a big problem) is jumping is not as maneuverable in the air like the arcade original. I'll put this to Cesar when I next speak to him, but he probably already knows as he's a huuuuuuge fan of Bubble Bobble :D

oh Yeah, Cesar is a lot into the 464... :)


Perhaps some extra gameplay features may come in 128K version then ?

I mean i don't think the Arcade version weighted 64K only...

Looks great, shame about sprite flicker - wonder if it's because there's no room for double buffering in the 64kb?


And a nice video too - thanks Xyphoe!

Quote from: redbox on 09:26, 15 April 11
Looks great, shame about sprite flicker - wonder if it's because there's no room for double buffering in the 64kb?

Exactimundi!!! :P ... but i commented him in the Retro Encounter that i would be nice if he could make an 128KBs version if only was to add the double buffer and finish with the sprite flickering and he doesn't show too much objection...

Quote from: SyX on 09:38, 15 April 11
Exactimundi!!! :P ... but i commented him in the Retro Encounter that i would be nice if he could make an 128KBs version if only was to add the double buffer and finish with the sprite flickering and he doesn't show too much objection...

Cool!  Hopefully you persuaded him enough...!

I tried to appeal at his perfectionist soul  ;)

What the...
César, I will come personally to kick your butt if you don't !!! >:(


Was I credible ??? ::)


(kidding ....of course....)

Quote from: redbox on 09:26, 15 April 11
Looks great, shame about sprite flicker - wonder if it's because there's no room for double buffering in the 64kb?

Or it can be a synchronisation problem.

Noticed in that preview, that the second bonus item sticks around once all the enemies have been popped.  Should disappear as soon as the last enemy is popped, if it hasn't already past the time it should appear for (which varies from stage to stage, can be as short as 1 frame).  First bonus doesn't disappear at this point, though.

Let me know if I'm being too picky... ;)

If Cesar needs a playtester, I'm here :)

I've always loved Bubble Bobble, and I play the Saturn version to death! This new CPC remake is looking promising, let's just hope it gets released soon. Even a little go of the demo would be nice ;)

:) Mark

The bonus system was a bit wild indeed. Given that, IIRC the computer devs didn't have access to the code as was the usual practice, but were given an arcade cab (if that), they would have to figure out this system themselves before putting it in...

That said, I had enjoyed the original version as well. The new one looks, erm, brand new - no relation! :D It looks just amazing. I just find the flickering a bit disappointing - I really don't understand why the 64k limit, unless it's an exercise.

Cesar is a lot into CPC464 and tapes actually.

Don't remember if he has 6128 in stock... or even RAM addon.

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:23, 17 April 11
I really don't understand why the 64k limit, unless it's an exercise.

The C64 version managed to fit everything into that amount of memory and the creator saw no reason why it wasn't/couldn't been done on an a cpc with the same amount.

Quote from: sigh on 18:54, 17 April 11
The C64 version managed to fit everything into that amount of memory and the creator saw no reason why it wasn't/couldn't been done on an a cpc with the same amount.

C64 has hardware sprites = no flicker.

CPC has no hardware sprites = flicker, needs double buffering.

Quote from: redbox on 19:26, 17 April 11
C64 has hardware sprites = no flicker.

CPC has no hardware sprites = flicker, needs double buffering.

You don't need double buffering, if you choose the moment right in which you move the sprite. There are loads of examples out there.

QuoteThe C64 version managed to fit everything into that amount of memory and   the creator saw no reason why it wasn't/couldn't been done on an a cpc   with the same amount.

Aren't C64 datas lighter concerning graphics (Attribute based) and Sounds (Sid based) ?
Also having Hardwired sprites may get this easier to implement... no need for complicated software routines to get this done.


Yet I quite understand the will to get a 464 game (Dead on time per exemple...)
But an upgraded 128K version is a good thing too...

Quote from: MacDeath on 06:57, 19 April 11
Aren't C64 datas lighter concerning graphics (Attribute based) and Sounds (Sid based) ?
Also having Hardwired sprites may get this easier to implement... no need for complicated software routines to get this done.

The simple answer I believe is 'yes' but then there are other issues to address (I may not be entirely correct but sprites made up of x by x pixel chunks may have a problem with other sprites on the same horizontal plane of each other). If TMR is reading this topic he'll be able to explain exactly, but it does appear ironically enough that the C64 and NES both suffered a lot from flickery sprites (I think usually because of too many being on the screen) in a lot of games considering this very topic we're discussing! The sprites also tend have that strange 'squished' look (perhaps not in all cases) .... hello TMR? Explain this to me! :D

Quote from: MacDeath on 06:57, 19 April 11
Aren't C64 datas lighter concerning graphics (Attribute based) and Sounds (Sid based) ?
Also having Hardwired sprites may get this easier to implement... no need for complicated software routines to get this done.


Yet I quite understand the will to get a 464 game (Dead on time per exemple...)
But an upgraded 128K version is a good thing too...

C64 has 8 hardware sprites, each of which is a fixed size. Now you can use some clever code to multiplex, so you can have lots and lots. Now the sprite data is always 64 bytes long, so it's small to write if you need to or you can just re-program the pointers to say where the data is fetched - so you can have lots of sprites and just tell the hardware where to fetch the pixels. Nice, flexible and quick, and low on memory too.

There are some restrictions for the colours: 1 Pen is transparent, leaving 3 for the sprite (I talk multi-colour here). 2 more colours are shared between all sprites, leaving 1 colour to be chosen uniquely for each sprite.

So when you compare it to CPC/Spectrum you're saving time drawing and erasing sprites which we are forced to do.

Now the C64 also has raster interrupts, so you can interrupt at any scanline on the screen and do things (change modes, change colours, change sprites etc). This makes things a lot more easy. On Spectrum you have *1* interrupt per frame, on CPC we have 6 interrupts in fixed locations per frame.

Reading the joystick and keyboard on C64 are quicker than on the cpc. In fact reading the keyboard on the spectrum is faster than the cpc. We have to go through the PPI/AY, the others have direct port/memory access.

For Spectrum and c64 you have direct access to sound registers, we have to go through the PPI. So it's slower here too.

Spectrum has 1 mode where you choose 2 colours for each cell (background and foreground), the colours are read from ram, so if you want to change them you re-write the data in ram.

On C64 In terms of "modes", there are various, but they all essentially come down to a cell based approach, in that you have a certain number of colours you can choose for each colour cell.

So it has a spectrum like mode where it has attributes and high res and you can choose 2 colours for each cell.

multi-colour mode is similar (same res like mode 0), and here you can have up to 4 colours per cell, but you do have restrictions.

There is another mode where you can mix hi-res chars and multi-colour pixels too to help make nice huds.

There are modes where you define a charset and write tile indices to the screen, and others which are bitmapped.

And finally bitmapped modes as we have.

Spectrum's mode is also bitmapped.

So on c64 essentially you have restrictions but you have some nice hardware to help. So in a way you're given a lot of help to make nice games. I would say "life is easier"... but well making a game is more than just having hardware help.

C64 Demos do some clever stuff that forces the video processor to refetch colour information and things like that to get more colours on the screen (FLI).

The c64 also has pixel perfect vertical and horizontal scrolling. We don't. Spectrum doesn't have any hardware scrolling ability.

The SID is a great synth, it's quick to access, and produces some really nice sounds. The AY has nice sounds too. On Spectrum the AY is quick to access, but on CPC we have to go through PPI.

Our display is always bitmapped. Each mode has a fixed selection of colours. Our interrupts are at fixed positions on the display (6 per frame), if we draw a sprite we also have to erase it. If we draw tiles we have to draw every pixel for each tile. So we've got a lot more hard work to do.

But in the end, we can have a good result just like on C64 *if* the programmer has the knowledge and time to do it. Cesar certainly has both.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 09:42, 19 April 11
C64 has 8 hardware sprites,

- snip -

With your approval, we can use parts of this post for the wiki articles (cpc vs c64 vs spectrum).

Quote from: MaV on 10:07, 19 April 11
With your approval, we can use parts of this post for the wiki articles (cpc vs c64 vs spectrum).

yes go for it.

I added some more comparisons between Spectrum and Amstrad in the Speccy Port page.
anyone who wants to update the spectrum page can re-use these.

I added them here so people can understand a little more about the hardware differences, or similarities and understand why Speccy Ports happened.

EDIT: We should also add comparison with the Plus too (but for now concentrate on CPC).

Thanks for the info arnoldemu. The USA version of Streetfighter on the C64 is an example of hi-res sprites on low-res  backgrounds.

I recall a common trick on the C64 was to overlay a high res sprite over a low res sprite to get 4 colour (+ transparent) sprites that had high res detail with some colours. Of course this was wasteful of sprites, but good in many situations.


Just a shame that the C64's idea of a colour palette originated in the dreary shades of the 70s.

Wasn't Rick dangerous a common exemple of mixed resolutions ?

Rick is mad of multiple High Res sprites (hence a few colours... while the baddies are wide pixels sprites : 3 colours ?
They don't look that good and were straightly ported into CPC (ouch)...

The same with tiles...
Background is High resolution, so 2 colours...
Foreground is wide pixels so 4 colours...

Needless to say it looks better on the 128+ version...
Yet I must admit a few sprites are not that well finished IMO... I am still ashamed by the frames of the dying gollus...

Yet I am somewhat proud of what I did with the mummy, the Egyptians and Nazies... 8)

The latest news on César's site (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/index.html?lang=1) is that BB4CPC is "close to completion", and he would like to publish it on the 8th of November, which happens to be the anniversary of Bubble Bobble's international release. Let's hope that it will be published in a few days' time! :)

Quote from: Nich on 19:15, 06 November 11
The latest news on César's site (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/index.html?lang=1) is that BB4CPC is "close to completion", and he would like to publish it on the 8th of November, which happens to be the anniversary of Bubble Bobble's international release. Let's hope that it will be published in a few days' time! :)

Better get it out quick cause the day's almost over here and tomorrow's the 8th!  :laugh:

OMG! OMG! Better warm my HxC up!!!

That's a good news...

I do love a bit of Bubble Bobble, I can't wait for this release as well!
So (for a laugh) here's my mock-up, fake CATart I always meant to complete but never did (basically because creating CATart is so tedious and boring)... I might one day!

(click on thumbnail to view full image)
(http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g385/tastefulmrship/th_bubblebobble_fake_catart.jpg) (http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g385/tastefulmrship/bubblebobble_fake_catart.jpg)

Quote from: MaV on 10:07, 19 April 11
With your approval, we can use parts of this post for the wiki articles (cpc vs c64 vs spectrum).

Hmmm.... maybe we should add what the CPC CAN do before, which wasn't mentioned that much (probably because we all know).

Quote from: Briggsy on 17:16, 19 April 11
Just a shame that the C64's idea of a colour palette originated in the dreary shades of the 70s.

The colors were choosen by acciden, actually by using few resistors for colors and their opposite colors. It was all about cost-down. There is an article in the net where the developpers state that.

Concerning the C64, to me the sad part is that this aspect was never properly upgraded.

I mean the C128 could have been quite sweet with still a custom palette but pehaps some +16 additionnal "normal" colours...


As we know, a 32 colour palette is quite good enough for a 8 bit computer and the Amstrad CPC palette was jsute lacking +5 extra colours only (like +2 greys... and a few extra browns/green/dark colours perhaps ...)

But while the extra speed from the C64 light video system is good for cartoonish cute kawai games like "bobobble", the palette is not...



Look a Rainbow Island...

Colour clashes and poor coloured "rainbow" on C64.



So I guess if bubblbobbl manage to be smooth and fast enought (fluid animation would be grat too)... and a good gameplay, the CPC graphics may make the whole difference even if the c64 on plays faster and smoother.

Last night I repaired and upgraded my C16 to 128K. It has 121 colours and mixed-mode text/graphic screens :) Later in the week it will be getting an extra ROM for the Plus/4 3+1 Applications :) It's a pity the sound was so lame, they should have stuck with the SID.

Bryce.

C16 : a shame a lot of stuff are not kept from the C64/128...

Quote from: TFM/FS on 22:37, 07 November 11

The colors were choosen by acciden, actually by using few resistors for colors and their opposite colors. It was all about cost-down. There is an article in the net where the developpers state that.

I read another article where it said they had free choice, so it was not an accident.

Quote from: TFM/FS on 22:35, 07 November 11

Hmmm.... maybe we should add what the CPC CAN do before, which wasn't mentioned that much (probably because we all know).

I wrote this, but did not publish it yet, because MaV was working on his:

Comparing CPC and C64:

- The C64 was released in 1982, the CPC released in 1984.

- The C64 was designed to be connected to a television (PAL: 50Hz, NTSC: 60Hz). The CPC was designed to be connected to a green screen or colour monitor.

- The C64 has a palette of 16 colours. The Amstrad has a palette of 27 colours.

- The C64 has a 1.0MHz 6510 CPU (a 6502 based CPU). The CPC has a 4.0Mhz Z80 CPU.

- The C64 has a programmable raster interrupt. You can define the line at which the interrupt will be triggered. The CPC has 6 "raster" interrupts at fixed positions through the 50Hz frame.

- The C64 has 50Hz and 60Hz variants (for regions where PAL and NTSC are used), the clocks inside the C64 are based off this.

- The C64's color RAM, SID, VIC and other hardware can be made visible within
the 6510's memory space. Access to them is done using normal read/write operations.
All access to the CPC's hardware is done using the Z80's special I/O instructions.

- The C64 has pixel-by-pixel hardware scrolling in both the horizontal and vertical. The CPC has hardware scrolling, with some work it can be pixel-by-pixel in the vertical direction, and 2 pixels at a time in the horizontal.

- The C64 has the SID sound chip. The CPC has the AY-3-8912 sound chip.

- The C64 has the VIC video chip. The CPC has the 6845 CRTC and Gate-Array.

- The C64 tape loading is done through interrupts so is not intensive on the cpc. The CPC tape loading is intensive on the CPU.

- The C64 communicates with the disc drive through a wired serial connection. This means loading from disc is slow unless a special loader is used.
The CPC's disc interface loads quick.

- The CPC can do overscan, the C64 can do it, but only sprites can be displayed where the border was.


Comparison of the SID and AY-3-8912:

AY sound chip has 3 tone channels, 1 noise channel and 1 hardware envelope.
A mixer can be used to enable/disable tone output for each channel, The volume of each tone channel can be independantly controlled,
OR be controlled by a hardware envelope.


Comparing Plus and C64:

- The C64 was released in 1982, the Plus released in 1990.

- The C64 has a palette of 16 colours. The Plus has a palette of 4096 colours.

- The C64 has a 1.0MHz 6510 CPU (a 6502 based CPU with I/O ports based at location &0000 and &0001).
The Plus has a 4.0Mhz Z80 CPU.

- Both the C64 and Plus have pixel-by-pixel hardware scrolling both in the horizontal and vertical.
(pixel by pixel scrolling requires Plus extra features)

- Both the C64 and Plus have programmable raster interrupts. e.g. you can set which
line of the display an interrupt can occur on.
(requires Plus extra features)

- The C64 has the VIC video chip. The Plus has the ASIC.


Sprite Comparisons:

C64:
- The C64 has 8 hardware sprites.
- Each sprites can be one of two resolutions: high resolution or multicolour.
- You can define 1 unique colour for each sprite.
- The priority of sprite-to-sprite is fixed. Sprite 0 has a higher priority than sprite 8.

The pixel size in high resolution is comparable to CPC's mode 1. Each pixel can be either
transparent OR a colour unique for each sprite.
The pixel size in multicolour is comparable to CPC's mode 0.

- The Plus has 16 hardware sprites. They have their own 16 colour palette which is shared between them all. They can have a resolution the same as mode 2, mode 1 or mode 0. Each sprite is 16x16 pixels.

The Plus sprites can have more colours and are higher resolution compared to the C64's sprites.

(Plus extra features must be activated using a special control sequence.
When this is done, the ASIC registers can be made visible in memory between &4000-&7fff.
The Plus registers can then be accessed using normal memory read/write operations).

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 17:10, 07 November 11
I do love a bit of Bubble Bobble, I can't wait for this release as well!
So (for a laugh) here's my mock-up, fake CATart I always meant to complete but never did (basically because creating CATart is so tedious and boring)... I might one day!

(click on thumbnail to view full image)
(http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g385/tastefulmrship/th_bubblebobble_fake_catart.jpg) (http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g385/tastefulmrship/bubblebobble_fake_catart.jpg)

Hi!

As I can see from your post, I believe that you like CATarts! Great!

Just some short questions:

1/ Have you included this CATart in a DSK, or the screen attached in your post is taken after running your basic program?
2/ If you have included it in a DSK, how many entries does it use?
3/ Do you use CATaclysm to build your CATarts or some other self-made software? If not, which editor do you use for it?

It is not an interrogation, even if it looks like :)

In any case, it's a great CATart; congrats!

See you,
voxy

Quote from: arnoldemu on 10:37, 08 November 11
I wrote this, but did not publish it yet, because MaV was working on his:

And I completely forgot.  :-[

Quote from: voXfReaX on 10:40, 08 November 11
1/ Have you included this CATart in a DSK, or the screen attached in your post is taken after running your basic program?
2/ If you have included it in a DSK, how many entries does it use?
3/ Do you use CATaclysm to build your CATarts or some other self-made software? If not, which editor do you use for it?

1. This is still just a picture from the BASIC program. I started a control-code list (04 01, 1D 00 00, etc) but found the Bub sprite was getting a little complicated as it uses a lot of PAPER changes.
It was originally done to try and appease TFM/FS's hatred of the CPC conversion, but I never got around to finishing it.

2. Not yet; ZYNAPS got in the way! I would guess it's probably greater than 64! I'd have to sit down and finish the cc list first and count them.

3. I use NOTEPAD.EXE on PC, DISCOLOGY on CPC and lot of trial & error. My CATart is CPC6128 and MODE 1 specific as catering for all CPCs and MODEs greatly reduces how much you can show in 64 entries. 3" disks don't have such a problem, but most projects don't need such large disks.
For interest; the NYANCAT artwork took me just over 4 days to perfect and doesn't even use all 64 entries (as was noted by someone).

Maybe CATACLYSM is the way forward, but I find manually controlling what order the 'files' are PRINTed much more satisfying, and seeing my (pathetic) work on POUET.NET (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=57949) is simply weird, especially as the screenshot should have showcased the demo, instead! But I guess that's the CPC's selling point over other conversions of NYANCAT!

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 11:11, 08 November 11
1. This is still just a picture from the BASIC program. I started a control-code list (04 01, 1D 00 00, etc) but found the Bub sprite was getting a little complicated as it uses a lot of PAPER changes.
It was originally done to try and appease TFM/FS's hatred of the CPC conversion, but I never got around to finishing it.

2. Not yet; ZYNAPS got in the way! I would guess it's probably greater than 64! I'd have to sit down and finish the cc list first and count them.

3. I use NOTEPAD.EXE on PC, DISCOLOGY on CPC and lot of trial & error. My CATart is CPC6128 and MODE 1 specific as catering for all CPCs and MODEs greatly reduces how much you can show in 64 entries. 3" disks don't have such a problem, but most projects don't need such large disks.
For interest; the NYANCAT artwork took me just over 4 days to perfect and doesn't even use all 64 entries (as was noted by someone).

Maybe CATACLYSM is the way forward, but I find manually controlling what order the 'files' are PRINTed much more satisfying, and seeing my (pathetic) work on POUET.NET (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=57949) is simply weird, especially as the screenshot should have showcased the demo, instead! But I guess that's the CPC's selling point over other conversions of NYANCAT!

1/ OK!
2/ Yes; I thought that this CATart takes more than 64 entries, that's the reason I asked you in the very first place.
3/ I guess Discology is the best editor for creating a CATart.


As far as CATaclysm is concerned, I have to admit that this small application is really handy. However, after some checks done by Sylvestre (regarding a CATart for which I asked him to help me), he found out that there were 11 entries saved while doing the CATart from scratch in Discology, whereas there were 64 in CATaclysm.
Nevertheless, CATaclysm is a great tool, which allows every CPC user to do a CATart, even if it is not that highly optimized... However, I believe that the only way to reach a higher level and become expert in CATart "coding" is via Discology or perhaps some other editor.
Regarding Nyancat, perhaps you should contact Buckethead (the guy who originally uploaded the Nyan demo) and ask him to replace the screenshot with another one? It is just an idea...

Thanks again for your time answering to my questions!
@rest of people: Sorry for this short intermission from the topic!
voxy

Quote from: voXfReaX on 11:27, 08 November 11
However, I believe that the only way to reach a higher level and become expert in CATart "coding" is via Discology or perhaps some other editor.

Indeed. It's difficult to explain how CATart is created to someone who has never done it, as it doesn't involve any actual programming and is simply manual editing of the disc sectors. You can't send a 'before' and 'after' disc for comparison as the 'before' disc is an empty, formatted disc and the 'after' disc is the whole job completed.
I don't know how CATACLYSM handles the two file-extension bytes (after the . in the filename), but it comes in handy changing PAPER & PEN values (0D & 0E followed by a one byte parameter, then 15 to disable VDU), otherwise they can be pretty redundant when messing with WINDOW, MODE, BORDER, INK commands. Wasting valuable space!

C64 has its own directory ASCII art, but is limited to 16 characters wide (from memory) where ours is the whole screen! Theirs can access all of the character set and ours is limited to character 127.
(Swings and roundabouts! Pros and cons! Horses for courses!)

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 11:40, 08 November 11
I don't know how CATACLYSM handles the two file-extension bytes (after the . in the filename), but it comes in handy changing PAPER & PEN values (0D & 0E followed by a one byte parameter, then 15 to disable VDU), otherwise they can be pretty redundant when messing with WINDOW, MODE, BORDER, INK commands. Wasting valuable space!

I cannot answer with 100% certainty to your questions, as I am a newbie to this CATart maze! If interested, there is a lot of information in the readme.txt and sample files in the Cataclysm DSK. You can find it here (http://cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=dsk&num=5041) if you haven't downloaded it already.

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 11:40, 08 November 11
C64 has its own directory ASCII art, but is limited to 16 characters wide (from memory) where ours is the whole screen! Theirs can access all of the character set and ours is limited to character 127.

We have another huge constraint to face: Differences in chars-display between UK/ES/DE ROMs and FR ROMs! A lot of the 127 available characters for CATarts are being displayed differently in the FR ROMs, which does not actually allows you to create impressive ASCII arts...

So... it's the 8th. Anyone got any news?

Quote from: voXfReaX on 12:07, 08 November 11
I cannot answer with 100% certainty to your questions, as I am a newbie to this CATart maze! If interested, there is a lot of information in the readme.txt and sample files in the Cataclysm DSK. You can find it here (http://cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=dsk&num=5041) if you haven't downloaded it already.

I do have the .dsk, but direct from T&J's website, rather than from CPCPower, so it's just the .dsk file without any documentation.
(direct link to manual (http://cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=notices&num=5041))

Quote from: voXfReaX on 12:07, 08 November 11
We have another huge constraint to face: Differences in chars-display between UK/ES/DE ROMs and FR ROMs! A lot of the 127 available characters for CATarts are being displayed differently in the FR ROMs, which does not actually allows you to create impressive ASCII arts...

Are these ASCII differences documented anywhere? I've been trying to create a 76x25 MODE 2 ASCII art of the AMSTRAD logo (for use in a PARADOS .dsk CATart) and it will look weird if the 'symbols' are different on French machines.

Quote from: Gryzor on 12:31, 08 November 11
So... it's the 8th. Anyone got any news?

Yep, try here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/)... ... oh, sorry, do you mean about BB4CPC? No, nothing yet! ^_^

Sorry but "C64 vs CPC" should be plitted into a different topic.


Concerning PLUS and C64 sprites, you failed to mention the multiplexable nature and the fact they access to the RAM for C64 while PLUS' must be uploaded into
some kind of "specific internal ASIC RAM"... hence are slow to "update frame"... hence are quite difficult to actually be used well and plenty.

Also the PLUS' scrolling is not as easy to implement as C64's...
Despite those 16sprites, a good game may still need to rely a lot on Software sprites or go through RAM/CPU intensives processes to get the most from those Sprites...

While C64 sprites are "easily" multiplexable so you have a big surface on the screen with 8 sprites per line...
But on the other hand, the C64 clearly sucks a great lot in Software sprties due to the awfull colour clashes.
(well, large pixels, with 4 colours per character may enable still better exploitation than on the speccy's 1bpp only...)


Also a lot of "additional video modes" can be obtained on C64 thanx to flipping, rasters, Sprites and the 2 characters modes... (1bpp or 2bpp).

but while those may enable sweet still pictures, it can't be seriously considered for a proper game's engine and are still quite limited because of the "special" palette and the attributed nature.
(yet can produce magnificient Greys and browns subjects...stone, wood, skin and metal)

Amstrad PLUS on the other hand is generously gifted in colours palette... even a bit too much.
You simply can't exploit this easily if your maximum "standard mode" is only 16 colours and the square pixel mode is only 4 colours, even the Atari ST 512colour or EGA 64colours palettes are quite enough most of time.

Sadly the PLUS lacks a properly fine 320x200x16 mode per example, which would put it into the MSX2+/TurboR/16bit computers category concerning pure graphics IMO...
But it is still quite good with its rasterized overscaned mode0 with sprites patches and you may get something quite as good (or even better) as with the 320x200x16 from AtariST or EGA PC... yet blockier.

Also this 4096 palette is quite good for gradient rasters or fade-in/fade-out effects.

While Batman demo shown us CPC has quite an untapped potential, the PLUS also has quite an untapped potential in Demomaking that may msilent the C64fanboyz... (and games, but this is another story...).

QuoteAre these ASCII differences documented anywhere? I've been trying to create a 76x25 MODE 2 ASCII art of the AMSTRAD logo (for use in a PARADOS .dsk CATart) and it will look weird if the 'symbols' are different on French machines.

I started such an ASCII topic (CPCwiki discussions section) in hope someone would de a properly linked and categorized page on the wiki on the matter...

As I told there, I simply couldn't find a proper page concerning the letters, characters and ASCII in general from the CPC/Wiki point of view.

But this topic highlighted the importance of such non-existing page also from the Cat'art point of view... and the importance of the different country's ROM that have to be taken into account when you design such ASCII art Cat'arts...

CatArtSCIIs ?
lol

QuoteYep, try here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/)... ... oh, sorry, do you mean about BB4CPC? No, nothing yet! ^_^

What ?
Key ally urges Berlussolini to quit ? :D

Quote from: MacDeath on 12:46, 08 November 11
I started such an ASCII topic (CPCwiki discussions section) in hope someone would de a properly linked and categorized page on the wiki on the matter...

As I told there, I simply couldn't find a proper page concerning the letters, characters and ASCII in general from the CPC/Wiki point of view.

But this topic highlighted the importance of such non-existing page also from the Cat'art point of view... and the importance of the different country's ROM that have to be taken into account when you design such ASCII art Cat'arts...

Maybe this ASCII/CATart discussion needs to be moved to that ASCII thread; though I think that thread got taken over by a "fonts" discussion... and I think I may have been the one who took it over! Hehehe, sorry! Leaving this thread free for the UPCOMING release of BB4CPC! Whoo!

QuoteMaybe this ASCII/CATart discussion needs to be moved to that ASCII thread; though I think that thread got taken over by a "fonts" discussion... and I think I may have been the one who took it over! Hehehe, sorry!

Well, quite normal from an Italian (according o your flag...
Hey, where is your brick ? ;)

QuoteLeaving this thread free for the UPCOMING release of BB4CPC! Whoo!

See, we are all longing for the announced (and longly awaited) release and killing time as we can...
Pathetically... :(


Hey, Dom Cesar, where are you ?You shouldn't have gone to the ides of Mars.

(Mars ? we are in November, WTF ?)


"Ave Caesar, luducii te salutent."

AFAIK César already looked for people who test the game.
So perhaps (because nobody reacted on this) he's still testing....

Will this be Disk or tape version ?

I know he's a lot into Tapes...

(http://maxcdn.fooyoh.com/files/attach/images/591/824/085/001/duct-tape-bra.jpg)
:o ;D

Those spanish and their strange fetishes...

But on the other hand a .wave or MP3 Tape version would be quite good excuse for me to re-use my CPC464...

(http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/walltapings/images/gal_door.jpg)

And here we see Mac Death sorting his CPC-tapes:
(http://2.media.collegehumor.cvcdn.com/3/e/collegehumor.1c37ede391c9aaa33381f3fe8b00ac16.jpg)

I hope it will released today , i especially quit my job later  :D

Quote from: MacDeath on 13:20, 08 November 11
"Ave Caesar, luducii te salutent."

What's that? "Hail Cesar, men called Luducius would greet you!"

"salutent" is 3rd person present active and what? No not indicative! ( /me draws sword ) :D Yes, subjunctive (or actually better in Latin: coniunctivus). And the correct indicative form is? salutant ( ... and player is lusor in Latin, consonant declination)

So the correct form must be:

Ave Caesar, lusores te salutant!


Duck and away!

Quote from: MacDeath on 12:46, 08 November 11
Sorry but "C64 vs CPC" should be plitted into a different topic.

Yes, this document is not complete. It should go onto wiki and then we can all update it.

Quote from: MacDeath on 13:20, 08 November 11
Well, quite normal from an Italian (according o your flag...
Hey, where is your brick ? ;)

It's the Irish flag, (that's supposed to be gold, not red, though it's dang close)... and I'll leave it to the man himself to tell you what has happened to the brick!
http://www.myspace.com/video/mike/i-love-my-brick/5262587 (http://www.myspace.com/video/mike/i-love-my-brick/5262587)


EDIT: And a choice between briiiiiiiick and HoH is simply no contest! HoH wins every time!

Link doesn't work :(


Edit: Tried in IE9, 32&64 bit

Ludus... game...

So i guess Luducii = those who are gonna play...

But Latin declension are not my cup of tea.

But you know I'm french so mostly Germanic language, not even an ounce of Latin remains in my language.


Well, not a lot actually... Germans and their declensions too... seriously, why so declensed ?


Declensions ? in 21st century ? I hope you don't !

QuoteIt's the Irish flag, (that's supposed to be gold, not red, though it's dang close)...

Seriously ?
I believed you were french but with a broken RGB values on your monitor...
Like, a bit too much of yellow into your Blue and Red...

sort of. ;D

We'll have to wait a little bit more :

QuoteP.S.: November 8th ended two hours ago, it was such a terrible idea to rewrite the enemies' artificial intelligence functions... With some luck I'll complete them tomorrow 9th and I'll distribute the first copies.

Hey guys, I've been chatting to Cesar tonight just initially to let him know about this topic to make him aware if not. He's now posted an update to his site.

Basically he wanted it released on the 8th to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the world wide release of this game and conversion, however has found a few bugs with enemy AI which would have made the game look rather bad - best to sort this now than later.

It's not like these modern games where patches are released almost weekly or on the day of the release (eg Dead Island, with a massive patch and bug fix on the day of release!) ... once the disk is out there ... it's out there! ;)


*edit* Ah damnit, Fano beat me to it ... I wrote this out hours ago and forgot to post it after getting distracted!

So we're near the release :) better sage than sorry, surely. Let's wait a bit more!

If he's still looking for beta testers, please someone tell him I'm willing to pay for it :)

Quote from: Gryzor on 10:51, 09 November 11
So we're near the release :) better sage than sorry, surely.

I'm more of a Rosemary fan, myself. Goes better with potatoes and various meatstuffs!

However, CURIOSITY: I wonder if this remake will have BOTH endings? I always like games with multiple endings... it gives you something to work for!

And... it's finished!!!
YIPPEE!!!

(Not yet released though).
http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/index.html?lang=1 (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/index.html?lang=1)

QuoteUnfortunately, right now I'm locked in my bedroom, with minimal wireless Internet availability,

Darn, how much bandwidth do you need to upload a dsk image? :D

Ah well, I guess today will be the day... can't wait!!!!! I'll just drink some sage to calm down the excitement till it's done :)

IIReadIC then they start the "heavy-testing-to-find-the-last-but" phase. That can take a day or a very long time - depending if debugging is needed and how long it will take... So good luck for BB!!!

provided there are quite 100levels this can be quite long to test them too and may even need a progamer...

I for example wouldn't be able to test more than the 5 first level, and not being able to go further more as I now suck deeply at arcade games... :-[

Argh... still not released :(

Hey guys,

Please be patient! It needs to be right, and if that takes more days or weeks then we should wait - once the disk is out there with bugs and problems it's too late then.

I too have been doing some playtesting and found a few minor things (such as the 'continue' system not there and high scores not being recorded) so there's a few little things to adjust at least first.

I'm here if any more testers are needed... ;D

I'm also available for betatesting. Have played quite a lot of arcade Bubble Bobble in my life. Mail me a DSK to mr_lou@vip.cybercity.dk if you want.

EDIT: And my CPC is a 464 with 128 kb ram.

If all of you are beta tester, then there is no point to delay the realease as every potential users would be already Beta testers ... ;D

where would be the surprise ?

Quote from: MacDeath on 21:54, 15 November 11
If all of you are beta tester, then there is no point to delay the realease as every potential users would be already Beta testers ... ;D

where would be the surprise ?

Well right, so there is no point at all to delay the release. If anyone can download and play it you will have the most beta tester :-D

BTW: Does anybody already know the difference to the commercial version?

I don't care if I betatest or not. I just think I'd be really good at it with this game. But it's probably better for the developer if I'm not. I'm really really picky about details, and was hugely disappointed by the original Amstrad CPC version. It was like playing a completely different game. So I'd probably just give the developer a headache in this case.  ;)

I don't think you can have too many betatesters when developing a game. Any feedback is good. When we develop games in LuBlu, we usually have about 10-15 betatesters. I wouldn't mind having 30-40 of them.

What mr_lou said. :)

I used to play the arcade version of Bubble Bobble loads, and know some of the finer details of the game (like how to force a potion to appear in round 4).

I wonder if the 5 round fireball bubble has been added, haven't seen that in any other version before (although it's so rare, it's hard to tell)...

You both guys will be cordially invited to beta-test my next game. That's 2012 or so :-)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 19:27, 16 November 11
You both guys will be cordially invited to beta-test my next game. That's 2012 or so :-)

Great Giani Sisters?  :o :D ;)

Quote from: Xyphoe on 01:21, 17 November 11
Great Giani Sisters?  :o :D ;)

Thinking more about an Game for native CPC OS, but it's in the very beginning now. But I'm definitely working also on Giana, but once a while I like to do something else. Well, and for Giana I miss one item to continue actually, so hopefully I'll get that firy wheel quick :-)

Greetings programs!

QuoteYou both guys will be cordially invited to beta-test my next game.

Astute chap, getting those guy to playtest your game would need them to buy FutureOS.... clever, man...

QuoteThinking more about an Game for native CPC OS

Well, not so clever after all... ;)


BTW, you should be ashamed.... Just implement the icons I will give you first....

Quote from: Xyphoe on 01:21, 17 November 11
Great Giani Sisters?  :o :D ;)

Great Yanni bros?

Quote from: Gryzor on 15:40, 17 November 11
Great Yanni bros?

The Chuckle Brothers?

Quote from: MacDeath on 15:40, 17 November 11
Astute chap, getting those guy to playtest your game would need them to buy FutureOS.... clever, man...


Well, not so clever after all... ;)


BTW, you should be ashamed.... Just implement the icons I will give you first....

Haha, first your most beautiful art, and then .... the extended version for FutureOS ;-)

(Can make somebody some diabolic sound please...)

Take this meanwhile:
EvilLaugh - Dr. Horrible (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGqwqxRF598#)

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 15:42, 17 November 11
The Chuckle Brothers?

Not the Grindhouse bros at least ;-)

...has been released!

Merry Christmas!


http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm)

Well, the big day is finally here. BB4CPC is my little Christmas gift for the CPC fans from around the world: you'll find it in http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm) and I hope it will please you all. Don't hesitate to write comments and ask questions :-) Good luck and have fun!

...best Christmas gift ever!

Thank you!

Awesome, thanks! Good thing that ive got a few days off from work or i would have to call in sick :D

Oh man, did I have to see this just as I was going to bed??! Argh!!!

Level 13:

- First, I've been there: Water bubbles did create water, and washed out monsters inside the heart.

- Second game, water bubbles didn't produce any water. Killed all monstes by bubble (costs a lot of lives), when I touched the last one the game did freeze, but the music was still running.

Hope this little error report helps.

Taken all together a wonderful game. Thank's a lot!

I reached level 32 !
It has been a long time...
Good remake, colorfull mode 0 graphics, music...
Sprites flicker, on 64 k it's normal, maybe a 128k detection and page flipping would be a good  thing.
(but the sprite flickering would not have bothered me when i was a kid, just wanted to play)
I had problems with the controls a few times (going left or right).

Anyway, thanks Cngsoft for this remake !  :D

(Evil laugh video)
OMG he killed Castle...




Anyway, good news, I will give it a try, have to do a disk of this one and turn a real CPC on.


Merci César !!!

Quote- Second game, water bubbles didn't produce any water. Killed all monstes by bubble (costs a lot of lives), when I touched the last one the game did freeze, but the music was still running.

Have you removed all your extra hardware on the CPC ?

Its way better than the old version. Played on my 6128 and worked flawlessly, full of details and perfect control so far. Will give it a few shots later to see if it happens to me some of those little bugs.

Congratulations Cesar you've done a great job, worth the wait!

Enhorabuena macho, está de lujo!

Only tried it for a couple of mins, it looks really great. Fantastic job! Hope I find some time to give it a thorough go, soon!

Ok, let's try this again! I AM A BAD SANTA!  >:(
(great game, by the way... love it!)

!!! CHEAT MODE !!!

Quote from: TFM/FS on 03:13, 27 December 11- Second game, water bubbles didn't produce any water. Killed all monstes by bubble (costs a lot of lives), when I touched the last one the game did freeze, but the music was still running.

Are you sure you didn't accidentally press the [P] key? I just did it now and it's PAUSE, but the music continues playing! Press [P] again to continue.



Once again, BAD SANTA ruins Christmas!  >:(

This is the best x-mas present this year!
Thank you, César, for this nice remake!

 :o   Masterpiece, a masterpiece, I'm playing on my Amstrad CPC 464, I must say that I'm deeply moved I cried like a child  :'( , I suggest really making a donation, you gave a lesson in life and programming.
Thanks from a big fan of AMSTRAD cpc.

P.S. Hope in the future for a PARASOL STARS only for AMSTRAD  ;D

P.S.S. I  made a small gift to the community, expect Dec. 31, and a rare game.

.

How do I get this game to work? Does it work on emulators?

Great work César , nice to see you finished it :D

Nice work César !! :)
Thanks for this awesome gift.

And.. omg, how's on for the secret (or good?) ending? :D

Awesome work. The gameplay, most important of all, works well. I had fun playing this game. It's a bit too hard after the middle but maybe that was the situation with the original arcade too (I used the cheats suggested here to see the end). Only slightly minor thing the sprites that are flickering a bit. But the game is still fun regardless.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

really superb Christmas pressie for us all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   ;D

Hey, I'm very glad to see that you liked my little present :-) I have to announce that I just published a new version on http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm) with two bugfixes, one about the water bubbles that could freeze the game (thanks to TFM/FS for running into the pathological case that could trigger it) and another one about Skel Monsta (thanks to Mr.Lou for making a comment that led me to finding it) that was making the game too easy. Thank you very much for your interest!

Cripes, if there's a single post I must reply, it's this one:

Quote from: Puresox on 18:16, 27 December 11
How do I get this game to work? Does it work on emulators?

It's easy, just RTM. Of course it works.

Quote from: cngsoft on 21:25, 27 December 11
Cripes, if there's a single post I must reply, it's this one:It's easy, just RTM. Of course it works.

Sorry this means nothing to me... RTM?

Read The Manual  ;D

and where is the manual to read?

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 13:25, 27 December 11
Are you sure you didn't accidentally press the [P] key? I just did it now and it's PAUSE, but the music continues playing! Press [P] again to continue.

No, and I had no alcohol. There's a bug. It did appear in the second game I played, not the first.

Anyway a wonderful game, and a great job!!!

BTW: Thanks for the pokes Bad Santa  :laugh:

Quote from: Puresox on 22:35, 27 December 11
and where is the manual to read?

Right here:
http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm)

Just scroll down. Clock on first picture to download the game.

I got no idea about RTM too, but RTFM woul mean something to me ;D [nb]RTFM = Remote answer from TFM[/nb]

Quote from: cngsoft on 21:25, 27 December 11
Cripes, if there's a single post I must reply, it's this one:It's easy, just RTM. Of course it works.

César, I wonder if Puresox is referring to the fact that the download is saved as a 7Z archive file rather than a ZIP file? Most CPC emulators support the ZIP format directly, but I don't know of any that support 7Z files directly. It seems an unusual choice to provide the game in 7Z format.

Thank you Bud, you have conveyed what I mean!^^^^^

Humm but isn't 7zip format already recognized by all zip apps?

I have been playtesting BB4CPC for César over the last few weeks, and I have been really impressed with it. I've never played the coin-op version, but BB4CPC is *so* much better than Firebird's version of the game! :D I'm also quite impressed that it runs on 64K machines. ¡Enhorabuena, César!

Indeed, the result is VERY amazing!
I'm really impressed.

RTM means Read The Manual .

Wonderful!

I'd have liked to have it with so much quality back in the day

Quote from: Gryzor on 00:54, 27 December 11
Oh man, did I have to see this just as I was going to bed??! Argh!!!

Me too!  Might take it with me tomorrow to show my nephew, as I suggested a retro gaming session for the first time.

Super Bubble Bobble mode activated !  :) 

(http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/5848/superbubblebobble.png)

Looks like Metr already discovered the Super Mode code! Congratulations! Now let's wait for someone to find the other secret code as well...

Meanwhile, while I'm very happy with the positive reaction from everyone, I probably should explain something about the music of BB4CPC. Unlike what some folks seem to believe, Hervé "Tom & Jerry" Monchatre did not write the game's main theme: that one had already been written by me when the non-playable demo was leaked two years ago.

Because I had needed one million hours until I got the song's score right (I'm no musician, I just know the mathematics of sound), I thought that a demoscene musician would greatly simplify the job, and might also result in a better usage of the CPC's sound hardware. That's how, thanks to mutual friends, I met Tom & Jerry one year ago and he generously accepted to help.

The problem was that the four tracks and five jingles he wrote couldn't be inserted into the game as they were, for two reasons. He wrote them with Starkos, but BB4CPC uses its own custom music player, made to be lightweight at the cost of having limited functions; he also relied heavily on custom instruments that, obviously, couldn't make the jump. Was I going to scrap his tracks then?

Of course not! Instead, I manually translated the scores from Starkos to BB4CPC, replacing the instruments with envelopes, vibratos and arpeggios, and correcting a couple of off-key notes in the process. His scores were immensely useful nonetheless; thanks to them, a couple of days of work were enough to complete BB4CPC's jukebox, in comparison to the many weeks I had spent on the main theme alone.

So now you know the twisted story behind his credit as "Musical support" rather than "Music" or "Soundtrack". Things are never easy when formats clash!

Thank goodness it is available on CPC- Power now, rather than that other awkward setup.

I found the Power Up! code yesterday.  But is there no equivalent of the arcade Original Game code?

Quote from: mahlemiut on 21:32, 28 December 11I found the Power Up! code yesterday. But is there no equivalent of the arcade Original Game code?

It doesn't exist, Power-Up and autofire already make things too easy. The game was supposed to be hard you know :-P

Oh well, since it looks like BB4CPC holds no secrets two days after its release ("Orion Prime" was lucky to last longer than this), what would you say if I made a third version with a custom Ultra Mode, even harder and more demanding than Super Mode... and that generated a custom code to be sent to an online chart of best players? It's technically feasible!

(also, new icon, because of a certain thread in this same forum)

That sounds so great! :)


This is probably the best remake I've seen (and I think that remake should be removed to put something like "the proper BB version the Amstrad was missing!")

Quoteand I think that remake should be removed to put something like "the proper BB version the Amstrad was missing!"

like every modern proper remakes on the Amstrads... ;)

old preview.

BB4CPC: 11/04/2011 preview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm4JZ2n-THw#)


When will the proper longplay be released ? or a test ?

Quote(also, new icon, because of a certain thread in this same forum)

but Applebloom is just an underaged filly... why not Fluttershy or Rarity instead ?    ;)


Anyway, will you get it into a 128K RAM version too ?

Quote from: Metr on 02:30, 28 December 11
Super Bubble Bobble mode activated !  :) 

(http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/5848/superbubblebobble.png)

May you can tell me what's different on this picture and and what's that special mode you are talking about ???

Well basically:


(http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/4932/bubblemodes.png)


After completing the game you get hints to find some codes. With one of them you can activate a Super Bubble Bobble Mode (You know you activated it thanks to the Star icon). On this mode the game is different and you have access to other stuff :D
With the other one you can activate the Power Up mode (the candy icon), where you can play always with the Shoe+2 candies powers even if you die. You can use this Power Up mode with both Normal and Super Modes.

When will the proper longplay be released ?

Waiting for the signal, the longplay is ready to go but maybe is a little soon!

Thanks Metr! Now I got it. :) :) :)  One Star more or less, that's below my recognition threshold  ;)

Btw, maybe a 2 hours 30 mins longplay is a bit too much, isn't it?  :)

Quote from: Metr on 00:13, 31 December 11
Btw, maybe a 2 hours 30 mins longplay is a bit too much, isn't it?  :)

Yes, but especially it's 6-9 months too early. The game was just released. If I can watch your longplay. why should I play it by myself then??? You are right in taking time. Don't be rushed by others ;-)

btw: You got so much great videos, pleople can watch them meanwhile. However :-D

Hehe, I usually don't expect anyone watch a full longplay without comments, specially the ones >1h unless they serve as guide and/or you are stuck or who knows, interested in watching it.

I understand the point and that's usually why I wait until I have the proper permission to upload them. I dont want to ruin the hard work and effort putting on them. Also if the game has a story to follow or the developer is trying to earn actual money with them I have even more respect about uploading any kind of video.
Apart from that, I want to think they help promoting them and/or spread the news, I mean, if I'm really interested in a game, maybe I watch a couple of minutes to have a peek, but unless I feel is not worth for me to play it, I can't wait to play it myself, and more in a game like this one.
Also it can help to make people become interested if they are not Amstrad users. They will see in that couple of minutes that the graphics are awesome, the playability is far beyond great, and if the video is 2h 30mins long means you have fun and game for really a lot of time, and more if you can play it with another player. The video shouldn't have more interest that just watch some tips on how to play or maybe helping how to play on a screen you are having difficulties, it won't take long until the codes and the pokes will be written in any random web and the rest of it it's just a guy playing it, and for that I'm sure everyone prefer to actually play it. Also for the experience of the videos I've uploaded, people prefer to see a short video than a long one, but it should not be called a longplay if I don't play it until I feel is completed :D
In this one, we all now the story, and we all now the game is addictive and fun like hell, so the actual fun is playing it, and if you are lucky to play with anyone as a second player, you get x3 fun bonus combo or more ! :D
When I put the screen with the super mode the other day I didnt share the code for the same reason, but I think just telling it exists helps to tell the people at what point the conversion is great or just to make them become interested in finding them.
To resume, maybe a video is good to make comparations or for easy argument of any feature, to serve as a guide or just to have a look at the game, and if it helps to generate interest on the game I'm so glad on doing them. In any case I hope not to replace any the fun of actually playing the games. I expect anyone that feels they won't play a game because they see a video or longplay, or if it's evident it contains a spoiler that can ruin the fun, please just use the option of not watching them and/or skip the spoilers until they have played it or is stuck!

Anyways just wanted to state an opinion about this, as I usually wonder about the same and the topic appeared. If uploading them helps or not and if you think if the effect is negative, I'd like to know it! As I say, I usually create them asap and more if I have the free time (something I was lacking these last months) and wait until I have an OK from the owner of the game. Just wanted to say with the other post that 2h 30m is a lot! the video is in the HOLD queue until its time arrives! ;)

PS: Sorry for the long(play) post !

Î got an idea ;D  Well, it's late in the night, so this may not as practiacabel... But.... for BB4CPC you could upload 20 levels each every 1-2 months. So first level 1-20, some 1-2 month later then levels 20-40 and so on... So people could ... do a kind of ... co-evolvement ;-)

Just an idea :-D

I played a lot to this new cpc version of bubble bobble (managed to reach level 50) !
:)
I wanted to correct my opinion about this remake.
Only spoke about flickering ; stupid i was !
There is just some flicker, but it does not affect the gameplay at all.
A lot of sprites on screen, all the game logic, sound and music, and the frame rate is good, almost no slowdowns !
The gameplay is almost arcade perfect ; my problems of control were caused by bad choice for jumping key/joystick direction.
To me the best 8 bit conversion, better than rainbow island (which was good on the cpc) !
:D

Quote from: Puresox on 19:29, 28 December 11
Thank goodness it is available on CPC- Power now, rather than that other awkward setup.

It's now available at NVG (http://ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/games/arcade/bb4cpc.zip) as well, in ZIP format.

The only problem with rainbow island is the control, it's hard to jump over rainbows and that monsters in world 4 always die dunno why to the right, so it's hard to get the diamonds on the left :D
For everything else, it's a nice conversion also !

Well, first of all, happy New Year everyone! :-)

Quote from: MacDeath on 00:36, 30 December 11but Applebloom is just an underaged filly... why not Fluttershy or Rarity instead ?    ;)

Oh, you bronies and your innuendos! This is what _SHE_ thinks of you! (welcome new icon!)

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/84412-ew_gay-lauren_faust--.png)

QuoteAnyway, will you get it into a 128K RAM version too ?

Why? Bill Gates said back in 1981 that 640K should be enough for everyone, and he wasn't totally wrong on that one. Besides, I don't have anything to fill the remaining 64K with... unless people start drawing sprites and writing songs...

Quote from: Nich on 00:14, 01 January 12It's now available at NVG (http://ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/games/arcade/bb4cpc.zip) as well, in ZIP format.

Watch out, Nich, BB4CPC isn't Public Domain but Freeware: I have no rights over the original Bubble Bobble, so I'm not allowed to tag as public domain a derivative fan work either, and I don't want to get in legal trouble! I'll have to say the same to Kukulcan, who also labelled BB4CPC as PD in CPC Power... and failed to replace the old, buggy version there with the new, patched one!

Firstly a big THANK YOU and well done to César for his long hard work on this remake! It's simply stunning and amazing to see in action - espeically in 64k of memory!!! I know the time and dedication César has put into this to get it just right and as close to the arcade original as possible, there's so many little touches and tweaks in there I'm not sure most will realise - especially people like me who never really played the arcade original much. I know he long studied how the arcade version produces it's powerups and how items appear and work, which is very complex (see here - http://tjasink.com/games/bb/bb-stuff.txt (http://tjasink.com/games/bb/bb-stuff.txt)) ... I guess I just wanted to stress and emphasise this as initially when I first started play testing I wasn't aware of all this. Then you add in all the special modes that have also been implemented!!!

Secondly, sorry for not replying sooner, I've been extremely busy over the Xmas and New Years period.

Thirdly I will be doing a video of this shortly, mostly to help 'promote' this release for César and the Amstrad/retro gaming community. I was working on a longplay but as Metr has already recorded this and found the modes I will leave this for him. So it will be a short review.

Also I hope Jason/TMR is reading this topic and will get this into Retro Gamer magazine as soon as possible :)

Once again ... an amazing effort and acheivement ... all hail César!  :D

Hello Folks,
i would like to thank (a big thanks!!!) Mighty Mr.Gonzalez for this awesome gift,
in 1987 "Bubble Bobble" was (with Double Dragon) my favourite arcade game and i was very disappointed when buying the amstrad version i realized how awful was that game compared to the original; when i discovered M.A.M.E. "BBobble" was the first rom that i've downloaded, but now (after 24 years) my loved cpc464 owns the best version of all 8-bit systems, and not only for the graphics or the musics, but for the gameplay, the secrets, the score system!

Only hardcore players of "Bubble Bobble" could understand how faithful is BB4cpc !
Thanks, thanks, thanks!
there are no words to describe how happy i am !

A little hint to make the game more faithful to the original:

In the arcade game when every level starts Bub & Bob can move a few seconds before the other enemies,
same in the original amstrad version but not in BB4cpc, well this thing is very important for the gameplay (at least to me  ;D ), can you add this in the future ?

Quote from: cngsoft on 14:29, 01 January 12
Watch out, Nich, BB4CPC isn't Public Domain but Freeware: I have no rights over the original Bubble Bobble, so I'm not allowed to tag as public domain a derivative fan work either, and I don't want to get in legal trouble!

I have now changed the publication status to "Freeware". I keep using the "CPC" meaning of the term "public domain" to classify programs on NVG, but the modern usage of the term is rather different!

Great job cng! Gameplay and graphics are very good. If we had CPC conversions like this one, we would have been happier in our childhood :)

:/ I have two pb with the game:
-My Archer joystick (a clone of a quickshot II) don't allow me to jump  (and it work perfectly with other game or under basic)
-If I press esc for redefine key, it stay block on the first key to define and the game freeze.

any idea?
I have other joystick to test, but i have to return at my parent house this week end, I will made more test later

Does your joystick set the signal Fire 3 (spare) on?

Please do the following in BASIC

10 MODE 1
20 PRINT BIN$(JOY(0))
30 GOTO 20

When starting the programm you shall get a "0" on the screen. Now press all four directions and the fire keys.

What you you get?

For up, down, lift, right, fire 2, fire 1 I would expect: 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000 and 100000. Using fire 3 brings your 1000000.

 :o yes.... I get 1000000
:? where is located this 3 fire button?

How can I desactivate?

Strange to see your Joystick sending Fire 3 (pin 5 on cpc only).
Most joysticks use pin6 for FIRE (was Fire 2 on CPC and pin7 for Fire 1).

can anybody explain me why, under basic, or old game nothing occurs, and when I run the program of TFM/FS it detecdt this fire 3?

for solving this issue, did i need to cut the cable from pin 5?

Because FIRE3 is not handled by common CPC programs.
But, it's wired on the CPC 464/664 and 6128... So reading the joystick port, the program return the corresponding bit.

Strange joystick you got here, because I don't know micro-computers using pin 5 as first fire button.
You may connect it to the pin 6 instead. (if already used for a fire button, connect it to the pin 7)

Quote from: jbaudrand on 13:25, 07 January 12
:o yes.... I get 1000000
:? where is located this 3 fire button?

How can I desactivate?

Ok, that's what I expected. So you have to cut one wire (see CPCWike Pheriphery for right signal), but please be very careful to get the righ one.

Personally I would add a switch, so you can still use Fire 3. That makes sense for some AMX / OCP applications. (See Bryce mouse topic).

Good luck :-D

EDIT: Toto suggested to reconnect, I would not suggest that, for obvious reasons! (Except you want to have fire 1 activated all the time, without being able to switch if off).

Now, let me explain the nature of the problem. Your Joystick sets fire 3 constantly to active, this actually makes sense for some non-CPC computers.
Now, why do you get software problems? Well, some programs just ckeck the joy-port not properly, that kind of software assumes that fire 3 is always set to inactive - which is not true for some joysticks - obviously.

I may have misunderstand the problem ?

If you already got fire button (1 or 1+2) working but fire 3 always "ON", it's only because your joystick send +5V on the pin5. So, yes, you have to desoldering it if you are in this case.

Ok, and more strange thing is that the joystick only have two fire buttons and an autofire, so I really wonder why there's a fire 3 always set to  ON.
As far as I can remember these kind of joystick were sold by Tandy in France.

TFM/TS: Is there a special reason why programmer doens't use the same joystick detection code? for example, is bubble Bobble or Star sabre (cos a got strange result too) code save more cycle why the old fashion way of coding, or is it.. ^^ laziness?

After playing for a fair few hours, I've finally finished my BB4CPC review  :D

http://classicreplay.blogspot.com/ (http://classicreplay.blogspot.com/)


Guys, if you like my reviews and articles, could you please click on some of the Ads on my blog...

Quote from: jbaudrand on 10:44, 08 January 12
Ok, and more strange thing is that the joystick only have two fire buttons and an autofire, so I really wonder why there's a fire 3 always set to  ON.
As far as I can remember these kind of joystick were sold by Tandy in France.

IMO, they didn't care about fire 3, since it's a CPC specifing thing.

Quote from: jbaudrand on 10:44, 08 January 12
TFM/TS: Is there a special reason why programmer doens't use the same joystick detection code? for example, is bubble Bobble or Star sabre (cos a got strange result too) code save more cycle why the old fashion way of coding, or is it.. ^^ laziness?

You are right of course! Just sloppy coding. And to be honest, only very few devices activate / provide Fire 3 at all. So actually I wouldn't blame the coders, they probably just don't know it. However some companies like AMX are using Fire 3 (and it's a gain to have it).

Maybe I shall support it in my next game, just to fool people a bit  :P

Quote from: ukmarkh on 10:26, 11 January 12
After playing for a fair few hours, I've finally finished my BB4CPC review  :D

http://classicreplay.blogspot.com/ (http://classicreplay.blogspot.com/)

Thanks for the link!

Hello,

in your bb4cpc site (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm)) you mention "This candy extends the player's bubble shooting range." next to the pink candy & "This item lets the player shoot faster-flying bubbles." next to the blue candy. If I remember correctly from the arcade version, this should be the other way around (pink=speed, blue=extra distance). Maybe I am wrong?

Thank you for this great remake!

Yes, you're wrong.

Yellow = Shoot lots more bubbles
Pink = Shoot longer bubbles
Blue = Shoot faster bubbles

Quote from: jbaudrand on 10:44, 08 January 12
Ok, and more strange thing is that the joystick only have two fire buttons and an autofire, so I really wonder why there's a fire 3 always set to  ON.
As far as I can remember these kind of joystick were sold by Tandy in France.

TFM/TS: Is there a special reason why programmer doens't use the same joystick detection code? for example, is bubble Bobble or Star sabre (cos a got strange result too) code save more cycle why the old fashion way of coding, or is it.. ^^ laziness?

Just with autofire turned on, or all the time?  I ask because none of the joysticks with an autofire feature I have come across were compatible with the CPC.  They just stopped fire working at all.


Scanning the keyboard and acting on only the bits you are concerned with is pretty straight forward, so I dont see how the state of fire 3 would matter to the code one way or another at the software level in Star Sabre, it is not used, and each bit is checked individually.  Only thing I can think of would be if the joystick is doing something to mess up the other inputs at a hardware level, but then it shouldn't work under the firmware either.

Played it for quite a bit today. Not much I can say, it's an amazing release, it kept me coming back for more!
Damn, now I wanna go back and play again!

Quote from: cngsoftI've already published two versions of BB4CPC, and thanks to the comments and suggestions from you all I'm preparing a third release with a big, BIG surprise.
What will it be? You'll see, you'll see...

 :( I've just  found my good old "zipstick" at my parent's home, I retype TFM/FS program, it show 0. all direction are functionnal under basic. But in game I can't jump, the upper direction doesn't work.
So Am I cursed?

Well, not you for sure. But don't ask me what instead? This is a mystery.



SEGA Megadrive / Genesis - Mystery / Unknown Joystick? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ux_sJN6iDk#ws)

this is a pic from a zipstick
http://postimage.org/image/6lp6udm85/ (http://postimage.org/image/6lp6udm85/)

:) I'll give a try with keyboard.

I was just wondering, rather than do more remakes, how hard would it be to take the BB4CPC code and create a CPC version of Don Doko Don (also by Taito) as it was never released on the CPC? I've played the PC Engine version and it's great  ;D

Don doko Don - pc engine (1990) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJhvDpeJsXQ#)

Hello everyone! BB4CPC v3 is finally out, it includes a plethora of bugfixes and improvements, including a third game mode (Ultra Mode, for the bravest only!) and the widely requested feature of baddies beginning to move in waves (http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2012/01/24/the-ultimate-bubble-bobble-showdown-which-version-comes-out-on-top-2/) rather than all at once.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120303A.PNG)

Get it from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm) while it's hot! :-)

Quote from: cngsoft on 13:50, 12 March 12
Hello everyone! BB4CPC v3 is finally out, it includes a plethora of bugfixes and improvements, including a third game mode (Ultra Mode, for the bravest only!) and the widely requested feature of baddies beginning to move in waves (http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2012/01/24/the-ultimate-bubble-bobble-showdown-which-version-comes-out-on-top-2/) rather than all at once.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120303A.PNG)

Get it from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/cng_bb4cpc.htm) while it's hot! :-)

Amazing... you've listened to feedback, and delivered an even better experience. I love this game so much, and a big thank you to all involved. When can I buy this version on disk with case???

Damn I'm at work!!! Need to play it... Waves are a seriousy nice addition. Thanks!

Quote from: Gryzor on 16:15, 12 March 12
Damn I'm at work!!! Need to play it...

Same prob here...

Thanks! This game is really a patch on my soul  ;)

¡Olé! Great job César! You finally created the greatest version! :)

Indeed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CNG Soft rulez!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi, just learnt about this through Retro Gamer and itching to give it a play!.  The official site/link appears to be down.  I've been searching the net and found this thread.  I just wondered if anyone knew if this has been mirrored anywhere else?! Cheers!

I'm sure, the server is just temporary offline.
CNGSoft hosts his stuff on his own PC and perhaps he's not online actually?
Mirror:
bubble bobble 4 cpc &copy _public_domain_ (2011) (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=7106)

Or, for your convenience, attached here.


You're in for a treat!

Thanks all, very much appreciated! I'm off for a play now! Cheers!

Quote from: TFM/FS on 02:34, 06 February 12
Well, not you for sure. But don't ask me what instead? This is a mystery.
SEGA Megadrive / Genesis - Mystery / Unknown Joystick? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ux_sJN6iDk#ws)

That looks exactly like the joystick I had for my CPC and Amiga though mine was definitely manufactured by Cheetah

Hi, I tried load de tape versión in my two 464 and my 6128.But it not works.It load the entire progress bar.But the game not start,and the tape no stops.But it works in the winape :S.


Finally after I move a azimut up and down.I break  the screw. :P.And the screw not work in one of the 464.I use a mp3 player/pc with tape adaptador.


Someone tried the image on the tape version in a real CPC.?

Quote from: dragon on 16:31, 17 June 12Hi, I tried load de tape versión in my two 464 and my 6128.But it not works.It load the entire progress bar.But the game not start,and the tape no stops.But it works in the winape :S.

Finally after I move a azimut up and down.I break  the screw. :P .And the screw not work in one of the 464.I use a mp3 player/pc with tape adaptador.

Someone tried the image on the tape version in a real CPC.?

Great work breaking the screw, man  >:( The turbo loader of BB4CPC works at very high frequencies and it won't record well on tapes unless you can generate a crystal clear sample.
Not that it matters much, I intend to rerelease BB4CPC in the near future with a couple of minor bugfixes and a totally different, slower yet less demanding tape encoding.
(by the way, you're from Spain, aren't you? Just curious, because of the "adaptador" bit)

Heh, and "versión" is a good clue too... ;)

FWIW, I've played this on my real 464 with a tape adaptor and it was all fine. Great conversion, and it's so fun it's become my standard test program for my FPGA work because then I can get a few minutes playing every time I test out a new feature (not great for productivity though)!

Quote from: dragon on 16:31, 17 June 12
Hi, I tried load de tape versión in my two 464 and my 6128.But it not works.It load the entire progress bar.But the game not start,and the tape no stops.But it works in the winape :S.


Finally after I move a azimut up and down.I break  the screw. :P .And the screw not work in one of the 464.I use a mp3 player/pc with tape adaptador.


Someone tried the image on the tape version in a real CPC.?

I have recorded it in real tape. The first try I used VLC to play the wav, but it didnt work because the program,equalization, but then the second time I did use Audacity and it works flawlessly.

Give it a try

QuoteGreat work breaking the screw, man  (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/../../../Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/angry.gif) The turbo loader of BB4CPC works at very high frequencies and it won't record well on tapes unless you can generate a crystal clear sample.
Not that it matters much, I intend to rerelease BB4CPC in the near future with a couple of minor bugfixes and a totally different, slower yet less demanding tape encoding.
(by the way, you're from Spain, aren't you? Just curious, because of the "adaptador" bit)

Yeah,I spanish,is a tape adapter :sorry  D.Sometimes my english fault.(I practice en cpcwiki jeje).

Not worry about the screw.I'ts my cpc repaired In One meeting amstrad spanish user group(cassette exchange).I live near madrid,so no problem.Anyway, I have to take them my ctm 644 broken.And all my tape games.To scan what they want.


My problem,is I change the power supply on the pc(without fdd connector)..So I can't transfer the BB4cpc to disk until my molex splitter-> fdd cable arrive.Only tape : (.

QuoteI have recorded it in real tape. The first try I used VLC to play the wav, but it didnt work because the program,equalization, but then the second time I did use Audacity and it works flawlessly.

Give it a try

Hey,I use vlc,which configuration you use?

Quote from: dragon on 19:47, 18 June 12
Hey,I use vlc,which configuration you use?

don't use vlc, it doesn't work (at least for me), use Audacity ;)  it's freeware, seguro que te va mejor.

Quotedon't use vlc, it doesn't work (at least for me), use Audacity   it's freeware, seguro que te va mejor.

It works!.Eres un genio!.

Quote from: dragon on 14:48, 21 June 12


It works!.Eres un genio!.

oleeee, glad u have it working now  :D   q lo disfrutes!

Good morning, it's been a while; plenty of things have happened here, incluing moving to a new house that lacked bed sheets at the beginning and where I don't have anywhere to install my CPC6128 and store my tapes and discs yet.

It's nevertheless time for a fourth release of BB4CPC, with more patches and bugfixes (mostly based on weirdnesses such as popping an EXTEND bubble causing the popping of any bubbles next to the wall where the EXTEND letters are written), and a first try at a loading screen:
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120808_CDT.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120808_CDT.PNG)

Any thoughts on this? My original plans (as stated in my interview for Retro Gamer) were that a friend artist would draw and paint an original illustration, but all he finally made was this rough sketch (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BUB.JPG) before focusing on his own commissions and projects.

Looks good!

Good afternoon, fellow CPC users!

BB4CPC v4 is publicly available at last, it should knock a dozen rough edges off the previous version. As stated in the changelog, it features a new loading screen, more compatible tape encoding, dynamicly-adjusted difficulty, "Hurry up!!" shows when the alarm rings (nobody had apparently noticed that the game rang the bell but wasn't writing the text on the screen!), fixed bubble popping timings and boundaries (cfr. rounds 10, 13, 19...) and so on.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120909_.PNG)

Feel free to get it from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm) :-) Enjoy it!

Quote from: cngsoft on 14:01, 09 September 12nobody had apparently noticed that the game rang the bell but wasn't writing the text on the screen!

You the first, I guess?  ;D
Players may only though that you not add it at all.

Quote from: TotO on 14:41, 09 September 12
You the first, I guess?  ;D
Players may only though that you not add it at all.

Touché. Truth be said, it belongs to the same category of mistakes that also kept Super Drunk from shooting bottles at the players until BB4CPC v3, despite being something that had to be there.

Quote from: cngsoft on 14:01, 09 September 12
"Hurry up!!" shows when the alarm rings (nobody had apparently noticed that the game rang the bell but wasn't writing the text on the screen!)

Perhaps because nobody remembered, that it must be written to the screen?
Or perhaps nobody knew, that you also implemented that, but didnt work ;)

But cool, that you fixed that!  ;)

Quote from: cngsoft on 14:01, 09 September 12
BB4CPC v4 is publicly available at last, it should knock a dozen rough edges off the previous version. As stated in the changelog, it features a new loading screen, more compatible tape encoding, dynamicly-adjusted difficulty, "Hurry up!!" shows when the alarm rings (nobody had apparently noticed that the game rang the bell but wasn't writing the text on the screen!), fixed bubble popping timings and boundaries (cfr. rounds 10, 13, 19...) and so on.

Feel free to get it from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm) :-) Enjoy it!

Awesome timing! Will bring it to our retro gaming day the 15th.  :)

By the way, while several of these mockups have already been featured here, it's perhaps the time for a deeper review.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/parast03.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/ps4cpc_mockup1.png)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/pstars14.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/ps4cpc_mockup2.png)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/pstars21.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/ps4cpc_mockup3.png)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/parastar_ocean4x1-.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/ps4cpc_mockup4.png)

I'm already trying to calculate the memory I'm going to need for this project, and to distribute everything in RAM. I want the game to run on a hardware double buffer (the game needs horizontal scrolling, and I want it to avoid the flickering that BB4CPC had to endure to fit everything on 64k), so this means 32 kB are already out of question.

Since each world has seven levels (never bigger than 64x24 characters), up to six different normal baddies, plus a big boss, does anyone see PS4CPC feasible on 64k CPCs? I'm kinda wary of directly going for a 128k-only design.

The screen look to be 128x192. With double buffer = 24K. You can save 8K.
It may fit on 64K, but like BB4CPC you will have to cut on tiles variety to save memory?

These mockups are amazing! One could say that the CPC version looks better than the original. Did you convert these by hand?

rb

Those mockups are fantastic.
You've got me thinking about those Rodland mockups I did.

I think that fitting a level into 64k would be doable if the bosses were loaded seperately?

The mockups were made by hand indeed, although I had to get a bit too creative with the colour palette; I'm also unhappy with several sprites, the wooden jester of the fourth mockup being perhaps the worst case, the head is totally wrong :-/

It's also worth saying that the mockups are 40x26 characters, although my idea was to run on 40x25 (standard CPC config), condensing the top two lines (lives, "BUBBY 10000", "PRESS FIRE CREDIT 4"...) into just one, and profiting that the game levels are 64x24, for this configuration would make hardware horizontal scrolling trivial.

Sure.
OK, in this case you may done a more accurate game port by taking part of 128K.

Nice work!  At first glance I was wondering why there were sets of the same screen shot shown twice!  :)

On the 64k feasibility, my instinct is to think there's too much there graphically, though you'd have a better idea than anyone else since you already have BB4CPC as a guide on the required space for logic, level data, sound and graphics.  Looking at some of those larger sprites, they seem to be 5-600 bytes in size and even the small ones appear to be almost 300 bytes.  Once they start animating, that's going to knock a significant hole in the 32k you have left.  I don't know how comparable it would be, but would you be able to knock 16k off BB4CPC and still get it to work if you only needed to store the stage data, graphics and behaviour logic for 8 levels or so at a time?

And level maps are two screens size and need to scroll.

Well, I can only encourage you to move on to 128 KB machines (which most people own today). Because 128 KB means you will have 3 times more RAM (when disregarding the 32 KB V-RAM needed).

Well, those mockups are... wow. I adored that game, too, so here's hoping it'll come to a fruitful ending! I'd really pay for it! :)

Good afternoon; I made a tiny patch for BB4CPC regarding the title screen (several odd-looking pixels had been bugging me for a while) and the "Hurry up!!" logic (it actually pauses the game, like in the arcade). It's available from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm) as usual.

Also, a quick question on colours: which ink looks better, magenta or purple?

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_MOCKUPS_D8.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_MOCKUPS_D8.PNG) (magenta)

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_MOCKUPS_D7.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_MOCKUPS_D7.PNG) (purple)

P.S.: I also want to thank Ralferroo for using BB4CPC as a FPGA benchmark. Bubble Bobble running on cpc fpga (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpdg0kHaHo#ws)

Magenta.

It gives a nicer contrast and also resembles the original a lot more.

.

Quote from: phi2x on 13:10, 16 September 12
My advice is: don't trust emulator screenshots to make your palette choices.
If you can, always use a real CPC with a CTM monitor for that. The color differences can be very noticeable.

yeah I noticed that when I was writing stranded. the original colour choice for the tiles was too dark on a real cpc, fine on an emulator.

Am I the only one who can't see a difference??

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:34, 16 September 12
Am I the only one who can't see a difference??

Αππάρεντλι, γιες  :P


On the "which color" topic, my money is on magenta too.

ρβ

Quote from: phi2x on 13:10, 16 September 12
My advice is: don't trust emulator screenshots to make your palette choices.
If you can, always use a real CPC with a CTM monitor for that. The color differences can be very noticeable.

And my advice is, don't trust a 20 years old greenish tired CTM to make a color choice...
Better to use an good RGB CRT TV, then an emulator with "real palette", because the colors are more accurates.
At end, all CTM users will get a different render. (not speaking about the luminosity setting too...)

Looking screens I prefert the seconds here, for sprite bodies and less flashy level platforms. (palette color 7)

Quote from: rexbeng on 19:03, 16 September 12
Αππάρεντλι, γιες  :P

χεγι, θισ ισ φυν! :D

Quote from: MaV on 10:03, 17 September 12
χεγι, θισ ισ φυν! :D

not quite there :)

Quote from: Gryzor on 10:07, 17 September 12
not quite there :)

Next try:
χεγι, θισ ισ φαν!

The question is whether to write phonetically or transcribe from English letter by letter. I'm also not sure how to write the th but a simple θ would suffice, I guess.

Μπέττερ :)


True, but "th" in "this" is not pronnounced as a theta but rather as a delta, soft. Also the gamma in "hey" is not transcribed, hence: "χέι, δις ις φαν". Also "is" can probably be "ιζ" :)

Quote from: Gryzor on 11:16, 17 September 12
True, but "th" in "this" is not pronnounced as a theta but rather as a delta, soft. Also the gamma in "hey" is not transcribed, hence: "χέι, δις ις φαν". Also "is" can probably be "ιζ" :)

Ah, ok. I forgot that New Greek δ is a fricative just like the voiced th in English - and unlike the d in "dust". I was thinking of combining theta with m to produce a voiced th. ;)  λαικ μθισ

If I'm not mistaken δ was a plosive dental consonant, but even that is debatable (and then again, what *is* ancient Greek?).


But I don't understand the μθ combo, it would still be pronounced μι-θήτα and not δελτα...?


This is the second glossological discussion thus far in the wiki :D

And only slightly off topic. Or did I miss the post where they announced BB4CPC will be released in English, French and Ancient Greek? :D

Bryce.

You know, the exact moment I read that last part a "Wow!" was heard from a radio commercial. Yes, it would be superb. Also, please do an ancient Greece level :D

Quote from: Bryce on 13:06, 17 September 12
And only slightly off topic. Or did I miss the post where they announced BB4CPC will be released in English, French and Ancient Greek? :D

:-[ Totally off-topic.

Αι νουδ λαικ α ηλλενικ νερσιον νερι μαζ.

And did I mention that Bubble Bobble is one of my favourites on the CPC? :)

Oh, finally back to topic - Great!  8)

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:34, 16 September 12
Am I the only one who can't see a difference??

It took me a while before I noticed the difference, so no, you're not the only one! :laugh:

My preference is for magenta as well.

Quote from: Nich on 21:12, 17 September 12
It took me a while before I noticed the difference, so no, you're not the only one! :laugh:

Me too.

I think pink fits the overall theme slightly better than magenta.
However, magenta makes the platforms seem farther away from the background than the pink. Using the pink, it could appear as if the monsters aren't really standing on the platforms, but infact on a layer farther away from the background. With magenta it looks more like a match.

So I vote magenta too.

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:34, 16 September 12
Am I the only one who can't see a difference??

Are you using a CRT or LCD monitor? It can be easily seen on my old Dell CRT

Well, if I squint hard enough I can pretend I can see the difference. Haven't tried it at home, only on my crappy office LCD.

I have been late taking up LCD monitors at home. This seems to be another reason for staying with CRT as long as possible. Is your officeLCD very dark. That may be the reason...

It's look that everyone goes to "Magenta" color.
The CPC color table and the CNG screens use this name for the color 07.

CPC : Light Red (06) / Purple (07) / Light Magenta (08)
For me : RED (06) / MAGENTA (07) / PURPLE (08)

(http://totoonthemoon.free.fr/images/cpc/cpc_palette.png) (http://totoonthemoon.free.fr/images/cpc/cpc_palette.png)

Reading comments, I though that some peoples are confused...

I like the DEEP PURPLE though  ;)

Quote from: TotO on 16:22, 18 September 12
It's look that everyone goes to "Magenta" color.
The CPC color table and the CNG screens use this name for the color 07.

CPC : Light Red (06) / Purple (07) / Light Magenta (08)
For me : RED (06) / MAGENTA (07) / PURPLE (08)

(http://totoonthemoon.free.fr/images/cpc/cpc_palette.png) (http://totoonthemoon.free.fr/images/cpc/cpc_palette.png)

Reading comments, I though that some peoples are confused...

Weird. I've always considered colour 7 to be pink, and colour 8 to be purple.

Yes, it's why people may be confused for the choice, here.
And, remember... the main problem :


(http://idolina.free.fr/images/blague/couleur.jpg)

7 is not pink, it's 'altrosa'  :P

I LOLed so much at Color Survey Results | xkcd (http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/), basically on that part about the top5 feminine and masculine colors :)

I'm drawing sprites and tiles, but at the same time I'm divided between which model is the best. On the left, the original TurboGrafx/PC Engine game by Taito; on the right, the Commodore Amiga port by Ocean. I had already noticed that the Amiga version was using an overly dark palette (and in fact I had to correct the PNGs a little because not even the whites were white enough) but I hadn't realised how overboard it had gone and how it had ruined all the pastels of the PCE original.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-LOGO.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-LOGO.PNG)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-GIANT6.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-GIANT6.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-GIANT6.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-GIANT6.PNG)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-RAINBOW1.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-RAINBOW1.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-RAINBOW1.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-RAINBOW1.PNG)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-UNIVERSE.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-PCE-UNIVERSE.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-UNIVERSE.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PARASTAR-AMIGA-UNIVERSE.PNG)

Similarly, after playing the PCE version repeatedly, I saw that the Ocean guys made several mistakes when adapting the rules of the game (motions lack acceleration and deceleration, collisions are less strict and more prone to skip clumped items), as well as in the distribution of certain enemies: for example, in the Giant World screenshots you can see that they erroneously put pink elephants where two tuxedo penguins should have been. All these things really make me wish I could see (and even test) the Atari ST port of "Parasol Stars"; the code is probably the same from the Amiga version, but the visuals can't be the same. Which version do you believe that could be the best starting point for a CPC port?

Definitively the original gameplay version. Look to be finally not released in arcade, but PCE first.
I though that Amiga use half bright mode for the background. But, may be more CPC color friendly...
(take a look on the ST version too if you have no choice but dithering the backgrounds)

I like how the dark backgrounds kinda enhances the platform graphics. Makes it easier for the eyes.

A possible attempt at keeping the graphics' footprint low:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/KEITEN-ROBO-DX_1152.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/KEITEN-ROBO-DX_1152.PNG) (Keiten-Robo-DX, from Giant Star)

Five different sprites that only store the parts that are different, resulting in 1152 bytes of CPC pixels for two animations:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/KEITEN-ROBO-DX_FLY.GIF) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/KEITEN-ROBO-DX_FLY.GIF) (airborne) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/KEITEN-ROBO-DX_LAND.GIF) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/KEITEN-ROBO-DX_LAND.GIF) (landing)

Hehe. Funny.
Nice if you can keep the background for this game, w/o any slowdown. :)

Actually I prefer the Amiga palette version. It's much more vivid and colourful, just the way I remember it from childhood!


And TotO is right, it's much closer to the CPC palette!

Thanks to the thread Proof of concept: adaptive software sprite renderer (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/proof-of-concept-adaptive-software-sprite-renderer/) PS4CPC has developed a new sprite:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/CHAOSTIKHAN-CPC.GIF)

Awww ain't this cute... (NOT!)

Just started work at 9 a.m. Started BB4CPC, whoaaaa, suddenly it was 10:23, uuups.... This game is great!!!

I'm pondering publishing a sixth version of BB4CPC because I noticed the "continue?" screen had a nasty bug: the counter didn't reset if you continued more than once in one game! But right now I'm kinda busy, getting ready for the exams of February (yes, I'm in the university, once again). What shall I do? :( I'm also pondering changing a couple of things. Does everyone like the behavior of the following powerups: the clock, the ring, the oil lamp and the necklace? Do you have any opinions on the following alternative fonts?

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20130117.PNG)
(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120117.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20120117.PNG)

Personally, I think the font in the top-right picture looks the best by far. :)

The only thing is that the forward slashes still look jagged (as in all the fonts), but I don't know whether this is fixable by changing some more pixels to grey?

I prefer one of the fonts on the left. I like the top left one the most.

Top right I think is the best. With the forward slash from the bottom right.

I'd prefer the top-left font.

Quote from: Briggsy on 22:39, 17 January 13Top right I think is the best. With the forward slash from the bottom right.

Oh wait! Why didn't I check the other screenshots before asking if there was a way to fix the slash?  :laugh:  Although my vote is the font from the top-right image with the slash from the bottom-left, not right.

The bottom left look more "space free" and stay readable (less than top left) on a PC.
What about on a CTM ? :)

Quote from: db6128 on 22:48, 17 January 13
Oh wait! Why didn't I check the other screenshots before asking if there was a way to fix the slash?  :laugh:  Although my vote is the font from the top-right image with the slash from the bottom-left, not right.

Actually, yeah, the slash on the bottom left is better.

Alright then, so it's down to the top left font with the more dithered forward slash used in the other fonts.

For the curious, the top left font is the one used in BB4CPC since the beginning, itself being a variation on the one I used years ago in Justin, that in place was inspired by the fonts from Probe Software games such as Beyond the Ice Palace, Savage, Solomon's Key and Trantor. Top right font tries to look like the one used in the original Bubble Bobble for CPC, with hints from the similarly thick font from Probe's Golden Axe and Smash TV. Bottom left is a variant of the top left font where I made each character one pixel shorter, and where certain details have changed following the style of Animagic's font for Aaargh, Bronx or Xenon. Bottom right is an attempt at making a "curly" font, similar to what Probe (yes, I'm a fan of their works, I can't hide it) did in Extreme.

So here comes (again) the other question, the one about the items. Because of space constraints, I couldn't feature all the powerups from Bubble Bobble, but I could "merge" several of them together. For example, the original game has three rings (cyan, purple and red), each one giving you 10/100/500 points for each step you walk, time you jump or bubble you shoot until you're killed or you finish the current stage, but BB4CPC has just one cyan ring whose effect is chosen depending on how many enemies are still on screen. Something similar happened to the six candy canes, merged into one that generates different giant bonuses depending on the current game, to the treasure chest, to the umbrella and the potion. With other items I had to get more creative:

* the clock: rather than freezing all enemies for several seconds, as in the original game, it calms them down, turning all "angry" baddies into "calm" ones, as in the arcade bootleg "Bobble Bobble". Similarly, the skull of BB4CPC makes all baddies angry (like in the bootleg) rather than spawning a shooting star that makes the baddies it touches angry.
* the oil lamp: there were four oil lamps in the game, each one with a different effect (from giving you all the three candies at once to killing all baddies) but here it gives you all the candies and rings.
* the necklace: it merges two items from the arcade, the pearl necklace (that summons an Arkanoid-like ball that bounces everywhere, kills enemies and stuns players) and the tiara (that makes stars rain and kills all baddies): the necklace in BB4CPC spawns a bouncing star that kills baddies and stuns players.
* the jingle bell: it behaves more like the crystal ball (that made the powerups appear just one second after the beginning of the round, rather than ten seconds later) than like the original bell (that played a jingle and flashed the screen when the next powerup could kill all enemies)

Many of these choices were taken because the room for code was extremely limited, but five versions later I've learned that there's always room for a tweak here and there. Any thoughts?

Maybe it's really time to move on to a BB4CPC 128 KB edition. 99% of all CPC sceners habe access to a 128 KB machine. It would be a pity to loose all that good thingies just because the game must fit into 64 KB!

Well, and I think I'm not the only one who hopes for a 128 KB version. But it's left too you to decide  :)

You really have done a spectacular job on this remake.

Top left font :)

...top right font off course, that imitates the original. Also I would like the clock behavior, just like the original that stuns the enemies, cause the bootleg's Bobble Bobble behavior, was actually a copy protection glitch.

Ace, I've just changed the clock's behavior, and in a nice surprise, the new code isn't heavier than the old, so there's still room for more changes. If anything, even if the original CPC port of BB had thick fat letters, I'm inclined to believe that BB4CPC looks closer to the original arcade machine text:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20130122.PNG)(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BUBLBOBL_0593.PNG)

Quote from: cngsoft on 22:05, 22 January 13
I've just changed the clock's behavior, and in a nice surprise, the new code isn't heavier than the old, so there's still room for more changes. If anything, even if the original CPC port of BB had thick fat letters, I'm inclined to believe that BB4CPC looks closer to the original arcade machine text:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20130122.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20130122.PNG)(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BUBLBOBL_0593.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BUBLBOBL_0593.PNG)

In this case, if you want to look close to the arcade machine, has your honor because you are doing the best 8-bit port of this game, you may use MODE 1 with rasters for the score part.

Title picture in full MODE 1:

[attachimg=1]

Ingame with mixed MODE 0:

[attachimg=2]

I really like this idea. Having the the title screen split into 4 different mode 1 screens:)

Quote from: TotO on 09:12, 23 January 13
In this case, if you want to look close to the arcade machine, has your honor because you are doing the best 8-bit port of this game, you may use MODE 1 with rasters for the score part.

Title picture in full MODE 1:

[attachimg=1]

Ingame with mixed MODE 0:

[attachimg=2]

Where is the "LIKE" button ????!!!!!

Believe me, still trying to restore it, but yes, I wanted to LIKE that too :D

I'm not sure I've said this yet, but I adore BB4CPC so much!

And I guess I'm used to the fonts as they've always been, so anything else feels wrong now. That said, the mode 1 idea for the title screen does seem like a really good idea. Personally I always thought the red bubble just looked a bit too chunky in mode 0 even though the game itself is fine and surprising the font is perfectly readable at 4 pixels wide!

Quote from: Gryzor on 15:48, 23 January 13
Believe me, still trying to restore it, but yes, I wanted to LIKE that too :D

Buuuuu... I don't get mines! XD

Quote from: TotOQuote from: Gryzor on Yesterday at 16:48:28Believe me, still trying to restore it, but yes, I wanted to LIKE that too Buuuuu... I don't get mines! XD

Eh? What do you mean? :)

Well, I somehow found out how to make the bubbles clutter in a far more randomized fashion with just 6 bytes of code! Also, round 95 won't cause more visual glitches due to bubbles sliding "into" the leftmost wall. Version 6 is almost ready to go!

The idea of TotO isn't bad but it can't apply to BB4CPC because the game needs to move sprites everywhere, even on top of the scores (abusing the vertical warp by jumping on rising bubbles until appearing in the bottom of the screen is part of the advanced gameplay) and obviously the MODE 0 sprites turning into MODE 1 silhouettes is a no-no.

I nevertheless toyed with a brute-forced conversion of the original font into MODE 0 pixels, using greytones wherever visible and invisible pixels collided. The result was curious to watch, although ultimately antiaesthetical, proving (as usual) that artistic interpretation is always required:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20130123.PNG)

Well, it's done, BB4CPC v6 is out. The "continue" bug was too critical to stay publicly unpatched for any longer, and besides, with the incoming exams I can't guarantee when I'll be able to work again on these things. So feel free to download it from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm). Have fun!

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc-v6.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc-v6.png)

The changelog: fixed a regression in the "Continue" logic, improved EXTEND and fruit drops logic, bubbles now clump together in less predictable patterns, changed the behavior of the clock powerup (baddies freeze instead of slowing down), minor graphical fixes. You already saw several of these changes discussed here (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/bubble-bobble-remake-(bb4cpc)/255/).

CRIPES! Due to an oversight I released the debug versions! Please download the files again, the wrong files are timestamped 19:04:34 while the right ones are 19:04:54. My apologies for the inconvenience!

P.S.: for the curious, the debug version features an even jerkier than usual tile-sprite engine :-P

Just converted that for myself. In case you can't do it for yourself...

The more random movement is definitely an improvement. Makes it closer to the original arcade version.

Now all you need is to make Bub and Bob decent faster in the beginning of each level, and let them move before enemies start moving. That's an important part of the gameplay in the original.

In level 30, you can't jump out of the U shaped boxes. But you can in the original.

It happened again! Started playing at work... and guess what... I really worked late yesterday (playing BB4CPC)!!!  :laugh:

Quote from: TFM/FS
Just started work at 9 a.m. Started BB4CPC, whoaaaa, suddenly it was 10:23, uuups.... This game is great!!!

Quote from: TFM/FS
It happened again! Started playing at work... and guess what... I really worked late yesterday (playing BB4CPC)!!!

Heh, that's awesome to know :) Now I know where to point whenever someone wants to check out testimonials from real BB4CPC players!

Now seriously, mr_lou's comments deserve several explanations.

On one hand, indeed, in the original arcade game you can walk into one of those "U" pits, and jump to safety while walking into a wall. However, if I allow horizontal motion at the very end of the jump, players can escape from the pits of stage 19, unlike in the arcade, where they can't, and Z80 code handling both cases is far heavier than just handling one. Besides, if you can reach round 30 without cheating you're already used to bouncing on bubbles, something you can easily do in those pits: in BB4CPC bubbles can't push you around.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round19.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round19.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round30.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round30.png)

On the other hand, you're already given a time advantage on the enemies at the beginning of each round, as well as three seconds of invulnerability. Does the player need even more advantages? Rounds 44 and 48 are already far easier than in the arcade, just walk towards the enemies and blow bubbles right in front of them, you can kill the first three before they can hurt you, and the remaining will waste time jumping instead of shooting if you jump as well. After all, BB4CPC's AI is easier to abuse and exploit than the arcade's.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round44.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round44.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round48.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round48.png)

In general, people complain when a port lacks something from the original game that makes it easier, but stay quiet when the missing thing would make it more difficult. In particular, I got zero bug reports when the original Super Drunk didn't shoot at all or the enemies would shoot when they were NOT facing the players; and while everyone yelled when the water streams were buggy and made round 13 harder to beat, nobody has talked yet about the glitch that happens when a water stream flows into a wall and must change direction.

You mustn't get me wrong. I think BB4CPC is awesome, and I do enjoy playing it.

The flaw is with me, because Bubble Bobble defines a big part of my childhood: I'm picky and BB4CPC is not perfect.

But it IS awesome. And on wedsday I'm visiting a mate where we'll have an entire day with retro-games, he with his ZX Spectrum and me with my new CPC+. I'm looking forward to a long two-player BB4CPC with him.  :)

Well for me BB4CPC is perfect, but I guess if I ever play the Arcade... it will suck!  :P

Quote from: mr_louYou mustn't get me wrong. I think BB4CPC is awesome, and I do enjoy playing it. The flaw is with me, because Bubble Bobble defines a big part of my childhood: I'm picky and BB4CPC is not perfect. But it IS awesome.

Thanks for explaining yourself, now I get what you were trying to mean :-) Sincerely, I'm the first to mourn how many things I had to remove from BB4CPC to ensure that everything from the original game had a similar degree of implementation. More than a hundred sprites that had to be sacrificed, many choices in the physics and the AI to keep them small yet consistent, a completely new approach to the secret codes and game modes because the originals were completely unadaptable... oh, and of course, I couldn't look at the arcade's source code either! Ah, the fun of reverse engineering! "Let's see, the dragons go this high and this far when they jump, how I'm gonna obtain the same results..." multiplied one thousand times.

QuoteAnd on wedsday I'm visiting a mate where we'll have an entire day with retro-games, he with his ZX Spectrum and me with my new CPC+. I'm looking forward to a long two-player BB4CPC with him.  :)

Hey, that's gonna be great! Can you believe I have yet to play this game with a friend? Yes, I'm one of those guys who's forever alone :-(

Quote from: cngsoft on 21:40, 02 February 13
I'm one of those guys who's forever alone :-(

Bad for you but good for us, now we got the opportunity to play a great game.  ;)

Hi Cngsoft,

How is the reverse engineering for parasol stars ?
;)

With bb4cpc, you entered history.
If you did ps4cpc, you would become history !

It could be a Bug ?

See Videocpcbug (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN4GcRAe28E#)

This video is private!

Doh !

Try Now  :D

Quote from: Axelino on 00:22, 04 February 13It could be a Bug ? See Video cpcbug (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN4GcRAe28E#)

Intriguing. Did it happen with the past versions of BB4CPC too, or just with the current one, "25/01/2013"?
P.S.: nevermind, I found it - an optimisation in the recursive bubble popping function was using a hardcoded starting point for the bubble sprite list. Never again!

Quote from: Xifos on 19:50, 03 February 13
Hi Cngsoft,

How is the reverse engineering for parasol stars ?
;)

With bb4cpc, you entered history.
If you did ps4cpc, you would become history !

Now that I'm studying in the university (yes, again, after dropping out ten years ago) PS4CPC has low priority, but I nevertheless intend to have a minimally playable demo (one round) to show in RetroMadrid 2013. As soon as I'm done with the current batch of exams (three down already, two to go the next week) I'll write Z80 code like there's no tomorrow. For the curious, here's a preview of what you'll see in it:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_G-ITEMLIST.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_G-ITEMLIST.PNG)

P.S.: I almost forgot that I had already posted another preview in another thread:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/CHAOSTIKHAN-CPC.GIF)

Ok, it's done, BB4CPC has been formally updated again. Besides the aforementioned bugfix, players are given a longer advantage time at the start of each round. Also, even if it's not technically part of the gameplay, the Exomizer routine is now 15% faster thanks to a recent suggestion provided by Urusergi. Get it from http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc.htm) and have fun! Thanks for the valuable bug report, Axelino!

Wow, super Fast !

Thanks to you for this Awesome game !

You deserve a monument  :)

This just in: I reuploaded the BB4CPC archive after spotting and fixing a slight bug in the motion of Pulpul, the flying pink thing with a propeller:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round22.png) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/bb4cpc_round27.png)

Both horizontal and vertical collisions were using the same counter (whoops), rounds with narrow corridors made it switch directions too often.

Quote from: cngsoft on 12:09, 04 February 13
Now that I'm studying in the university (yes, again, after dropping out ten years ago) PS4CPC has low priority, but I nevertheless intend to have a minimally playable demo (one round) to show in RetroMadrid 2013. As soon as I'm done with the current batch of exams (three down already, two to go the next week) I'll write Z80 code like there's no tomorrow. For the curious, here's a preview of what you'll see in it:

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_G-ITEMLIST.PNG) (http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/PS4CPC_G-ITEMLIST.PNG)

I am really quite excited by the look of this project , and knowing your skills. I expect it is going to be one of the best games on the 8-bits !

Just saw the posted preview. So... yummy!


Have to fully agree with Puresox, can't wait...

Maybe there's another bug

It happens playing in ultramode

Another thing, why the game doesn't give me the last 2 "letters"?

I entered in the silvers doors in levels 20,30,40
I have cleared the 50th level without using the silver door
I've completed the game without missing lives

where am I wrong?  :(
Metr (thanks!) gave me the first 2 codes 1 year ago (super & ultra mode)
i found the last code (all powers) via keyboard combination,
but i'd like to be the game to give to me it !

Quote from: Axelino on 16:20, 08 February 13
Maybe there's another bug
0004 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UvHu2Yxr4Q#)
It happens playing in ultramode
Another thing, why the game doesn't give me the last 2 "letters"?
I entered in the silvers doors in levels 20,30,40
I have cleared the 50th level without using the silver door
I've completed the game without missing lives
where am I wrong?  :(

Actually, there are no bugs in this case, just two misunderstandings:

1.- every silver door gives you a couple of letters; if you skipped the silver door of round 50 the code will be incomplete!
2.- the blank characters mean you loaded the game on an emulated CPC 6128 but you saved 64k snapshots. Guess where the game stores the graphics for the end of the game?  :P

IMHO this 0004 video shall not be at youtube, because people will get a bad impression about a good game. But I assume it's hopefully not in the public directory. ... Just my two Nickles.

Quote from: cngsoft on 17:48, 08 February 13

1.- every silver door gives you a couple of letters; if you skipped the silver door of round 50 the code will be incomplete!

So do i have take the silver door of 50th round too?
Thanks, i will try  :D

Quote from: cngsoft on 17:48, 08 February 13
2.- the blank characters mean you loaded the game on an emulated CPC 6128 but you saved 64k snapshots. Guess where the game stores the graphics for the end of the game?  :P

::) I thought it was something like that, thanks for the answer

Quote from: TFM/FS on 18:04, 08 February 13
IMHO this 0004 video shall not be at youtube, because people will get a bad impression about a good game. But I assume it's hopefully not in the public directory. ... Just my two Nickles.

You right, the video isn't in public directory so only who read this topic can see it !
By the way i erase it right now for sure  ;)

I was thinking that I could wish everyone a happy new year 2014 with a little surprise: a new version of BB4CPC, the tenth one no less.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20131230-EXTEND.GIF)

Flame and water bubbles now drop their contents from their top half rather than their bottom, thus making rounds 12 and 70 play more closely to the original arcade game; I also redrew several sprites and tiles (wildfire, bubble dragons, Mighta, doughnut, hamburger, peach...) and the "Extend" bubbles cycle when completing them (like in the arcade); secret codes look prettier now too thanks to getting their own tile, a ruby.

(http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/BB4CPC-20131216.PNG)

Many of these changes were possible thanks to the size optimisations done in the Exomizer decompressor by Antonio Villena et al. during 2013.

(my apologies for necromanting the thread, but I thought this news was too small to hijack another thread or start a new one)

Great job! I love the extend cycling!

Did this game ever get reviewed in RG?

So next year will be Parasol Stars:)

Quote from: sigh on 12:50, 31 December 13Did this game ever get reviewed in RG?

It was, 2 years ago and got 92% or 94%, I don't remember well.

I was disappointed to notice when flicking through either in this months retro gamer or the big "volume" in the shop, that they did a BB comparison across all machines, mentioned that the CPC was the worst but didn't mention the remake at all. I was disappointed and so didn't buy the magazine that month...

Awesome!

How much money do you want for making a double-buffer version (i.e. one that doesn't have all the flicker)?  :)

Moar downloads :)

Quote from: TotO on 13:01, 31 December 13
It was, 2 years ago and got 92% or 94%, I don't remember well.

It actually received a rating of a mere 87%.

As said before, they really suck at rating those titles at the back of the magazine...

BB4CPC is a clear 94%

.... 144% if it had double-buffering.

Can't disagree there... especially given some scores in the 90s they have given to some really simplistic games for the ZX... And I also think R-Type was pretty low, too.

Quote from: ralferoo on 14:12, 31 December 13
... I was disappointed and so didn't buy the magazine that month...

You are right there. Tell them about your opinion. They need feedback too.


IMHO they are c64 biased, titles on other systems (especially on CPC) get treated respectless anyway.

Don't know if they're biased, it's hard to work a line so fine as in issues like this... But their scores are really ridiculous: marks in the mid-90s for character-based, really simplistic games on the Speccy and below 90% for major and brilliant remakes such as BB or R-type? Doesn't make sense.


Feedback is sorely needed, and they're looking for it, but their forums are (or were) very badly managed; I once complained to the staff that every single Amstrad-related thread was hijacked and turned into a mine-is-bigger-than-yours thread by Speccy or c64 fans so that the voice of the readers is diluted and CPC fans are driven out, which is exactly what happened with me - I just left.