Bubble Quest - GX4000/CPC+

[OneVision]

Congrats on a gameplay and artistic awesome project !

[nanrc20]

Increible...fantástico trabajo...regalandole  a la gama plus los titulos que se merece, y colocándola como la mejor maquina de 8 bits incluso superior a msx 2 .


Yo también quiero copia fisica...anotadme!!😀😅

Gracias!

[MacDeath]

So it wasn't abandonned after all... long time awaited. Might be the awesomnest of the homebrew stuff.

(Can't wait for a PC1512 version either) 

[kawickboy]

Barjack: it's your first CPC+/GX project isn't it ? Do you have some feelings to share about it ?

[Barjack]

The cpc+ is not my favorite machine and it is a mistake to think that it is a cpc with an "improved" palette.

Realizing a game on cpc+ that really exploits the machine is a new experience for anyone coming from cpc old.

Few games exploit the potential of cpc+, I am happy to have contributed at my level to the graphics of bubble quest as the talents of my comrades in their places is well above what has been done so far.

That said, I can't wait to turn this page to return to the old cpc ^^

[Gryzor]

Your gfx are always amazing. Have you perhaps done any mockups for a CPC port of BQ?

[GUNHED]

Wonderful to see that the work on this awesome project continues! 

Eventually displaying the 6128plus real potential in a great way.

Please put me on the pre-order list for a physical copy.
(if physical copies get numbers then please reserve me one of these: 9, 12, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 57, 63, 72). 

[Anthony Flack]

I'm really looking forward to this, it is exactly what I need to celebrate finally getting a Plus machine. I hope you're making plenty of carts!

That's interesting to hear you can't wait to return to the original CPC though. I'm quite keen to take the Plus for a spin, programming-wise, once I get everything working. It seems like the sprites would be fun to work with, but you don't think so?

[Barjack]

It is simply impossible to redo bubble quest on cpc old, partly because of the use of hard sprites, but not only.
Trying it would be like making a whole different game.
For my next projects on cpc old, I would like to use extension cards (sd or usb support + ram extension)

[Barjack]

I see a lot of games limited to 64k for 464 in Spanish, why not...

But I find it a shame not to take advantage of our expansion cards to make games with no support limit and with 512kb or more for graphics and sound on cpc old.

This for me does not distort the machine, very quickly on the amiga we moved on to games that required a ram extension and we could have a hard disk.

This closes doors for us to have much better games on cpc...

[roudoudou]

But I find it a shame not to take advantage of our expansion cards to make games with no support limit and with 512kb or more for graphics and sound on cpc old.

Many hundred of people with expansion cards, not using them...

[XeNoMoRPH]

i would like to hear more games that use my PlayCity !!!   

[MacDeath]

The cpc+ is not my favorite machine and it is a mistake to think that it is a cpc with an "improved" palette.

not improved, but extended...

[dthrone]

The cpc+ is not my favorite machine and it is a mistake to think that it is a cpc with an "improved" palette.

not improved, but extended...

or worsened?? 

"There is also a slight color difference between ASIC machines and those with a real Gate Array. The Red, Green and Blue levels produced for each of the 32 color-codes between the CPC and the Plus are close, but not equals. This won't be a problem most of the time but as soon as you start combining differents colors together (dithering and mostly flippping), the differences are accumulating and can be much more annoying (ask SuperSylvestre about that if you dare ."

https://www.grimware.org/doku.php/documentations/devices/gatearray

[andycadley]

The cpc+ is not my favorite machine and it is a mistake to think that it is a cpc with an "improved" palette.

not improved, but extended...

or worsened?? 

"There is also a slight color difference between ASIC machines and those with a real Gate Array. The Red, Green and Blue levels produced for each of the 32 color-codes between the CPC and the Plus are close, but not equals. This won't be a problem most of the time but as soon as you start combining differents colors together (dithering and mostly flippping), the differences are accumulating and can be much more annoying (ask SuperSylvestre about that if you dare ."

https://www.grimware.org/doku.php/documentations/devices/gatearray

I suspect connecting a CPC to a modern display makes way more difference to the colour output than the slight differences in how it maps them onto the extended palette. I'd certainly not give up all the extra colours myself. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing this, it really seems like it might be a showcase for the GX. Will definitely be picking up a cart. Shame it won't be available for emulators too, both for convenience and helping future emulator accuracy but pushing it past the 512K cart limit presumably means we'll need to extend to CPR format anyway (and introduce something similar to the NES mapper logic)

I can see why you wouldn't want to try an old school CPC version though. When you code something specifically to take advantage of all the Plus hardware it's unlikely to be plausible to downgrade it without major rewrites. 

[TotO]

I obviously agree with the fact to use standard expansions to extend the CPC capabilities. Extra ROM / RAM is not something that will add alien extra power to the CPC old, it just show the full power of its original design. Using an extra AY to be able to play music & sfx at the same time is a nice optional feature for CPC old games. All those things can allow to go ahead with the original system.

[Barjack]

Making remakes of other games closer to more powerful machines is always disappointing.

- It's not original.
- We tinker to be closer.
- To necessarily compare to the original, it can only be worse, even if it is successful for the cpc.

This goes for Bubble Quest.
I think it is more interesting to do something new on cpc old taking into account the capabilities of the latter.

On my site there are graphics on old for a beat em up, a brick breaker, I still have the works of gryzor for a run n gun... with more ram on "HD", everything is possible to create a new game in these genres that will surpass all previous ones.

I'm much more motivated by this prospect than to make a failed and unadapted adaptation of Bubble Quest on cpc old

[GUNHED]

But I find it a shame not to take advantage of our expansion cards to make games with no support limit and with 512kb or more for graphics and sound on cpc old.

Totally agreed!!!   
Of course it's more work to support expansion, but that's the reason of having them.

Using RAM / ROM instead of (re)loading stuff form disc is easy and makes things quicker. Or one can specifically code for more ROM/RAM - which makes things even better.
And there are PlayCity (same as PSG, just a bit more easy to program and some sound channels more - great!). Also there are the LambdaSpeak expansions (just send the text to the screen and to the LS and it will say these words).

Eventually it's not so hard to take advantages of expansions, also only few bytes are used.

Wish you all the luck and success with you next CPC-unlimited project 

[Prodatron]

But I find it a shame not to take advantage of our expansion cards to make games with no support limit and with 512kb or more for graphics and sound on cpc old.
This for me does not distort the machine, very quickly on the amiga we moved on to games that required a ram extension and we could have a hard disk.
This closes doors for us to have much better games on cpc...

Complete agreement. On the Amiga 500, <1MB quickly became a "no go". But on the CPC, 64K will have to do for everyone. We had the ability to use 576K back in the 80's. And so flexible! Other systems could only dream of it (like those beloved Spectrum ZX, Commodore, Atari 8bit and most other 8bit systems).

[roudoudou]

But I find it a shame not to take advantage of our expansion cards to make games with no support limit and with 512kb or more for graphics and sound on cpc old.
This for me does not distort the machine, very quickly on the amiga we moved on to games that required a ram extension and we could have a hard disk.
This closes doors for us to have much better games on cpc...

Complete agreement. On the Amiga 500, <1MB quickly became a "no go". But on the CPC, 64K will have to do for everyone. We had the ability to use 576K back in the 80's. And so flexible! Other systems could only dream of it (like those beloved Spectrum ZX, Commodore, Atari 8bit and most other 8bit systems).

DO IT !!!

[Anthony Flack]

Were people asking for Bubble Quest to be downgraded to the regular CPC? Seems like missing the point of designing a game for the Plus machine. Oh well. 

Yes, memory paging is something the CPC was built to do and it's a shame most games just stuck to 64k. The CPC is so much better when given more memory to work with, and like you say it doesn't distort the machine; extra memory was available from the beginning, but seldom used.

[Gryzor]

Were people asking for Bubble Quest to be downgraded to the regular CPC? Seems like missing the point of designing a game for the Plus machine. Oh well.

No. I just asked if there's a mockup with the CPC limitations. Got misunderstood.

[roudoudou]

Were people asking for Bubble Quest to be downgraded to the regular CPC? Seems like missing the point of designing a game for the Plus machine. Oh well.

No. I just asked if there's a mockup with the CPC limitations. Got misunderstood.

at the very beginning, bubble quest was intended to run on a CPC+128K
but fullscreen target leads me quickly to a dead end*

*it's not impossible, it's simply MOAR complicated and i did not wanted to go that way, +storage limited to a floppy, +..., +...

[Barjack]

For my part, my approach to game development on cpc or cpc+ is simple.
I'm not nostalgic for games that are graphically or musically limited to 64kb

More ram allows more graphics, more work in number, but much less in realization to be able to make everything fit.
Likewise for music.
The coder no longer has to rack his brains to optimize everything and can focus on the essentials.
In the end, we have less development time and more content, more openings.

I don't want games from 1990 on my cpc, I want games from 2023.
Extra ram, ultra-fast loading on usb or sd, lots of different sprites, rich backgrounds, games that require a mouse, why not?

The Spanish platforms in 64k, do not amuse me personally, the gryzor or renegade are poor on the screen even if they are very good for 64k.
That's good if the devs want to keep producing 90s games on k7

It would also be nice if we did something else with our machines (like other machines do).

[GUNHED]

Best words of 2023!
Let's got an use the full potential of CPC6128 and 6128plus.