cpc speedball

[cpc4eva]

with all these wonderful cpc projects being done has anyone ever thought of doing a cpc version of speedball?

speedball never released on cpc and i was gutted that i never got to play a cpc version of speedball.

with all these wonderful re makes like r type, bubble bobble, frogger etc surely someone would be able to get a cpc version of speedball

pretty please

[Carnivius]

I thought I had played a CPC port of Speedball 2 but I guess I just dreamt it.   Would look pretty lovely with the CPC's rich blue colours.

[MacDeath]

Does exist on a Z80 based platform.


actually slow, so no shame to have it on CPC.


I suggest a "256x256" display (128x256 in mode1) so we can actually base the graphics on this version.




Just like populous as well... if it exists on the sega master system, it could be done on CPC.

[Carnivius]

Heh, you've already posted this same topic some years ago as pointed out by the 'similar topics' bit at the bottom  speedball..... cpc......   

Anyways I got a bit bored this afternoon waiting in for a delivery so I did a mock up.  Ok this is Speedball 2 not Speedball 1 but I felt it looked cooler and had more interesting perspective.  Also these colours are based on the Amiga CD32 version just cos I felt like pushing it a bit.   Can easily recolour them all blue again if necessary but it's much easier to tell the difference between the team players this way.   I may add the status panel later on.  Anyways yeah it was just for fun.  Dunno if it would work well or not but I just wanted to take a shot at making a CPC Speedball mock up try look as good as 16-bit. 

[tastefulmrship]

ICE CREAM!

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

That's a lot of large sprites to be pushing around the screen! And there needs to be some form of AI running too for the non-player-controlled characters :/


I feel the CPC could do it at 16.6 or 12.5fps graphically however.  But it's a large project.  Speedball 2 is the better game (and it was done on the C64 IIRC) so that would be the one to do anyway.

[Token]

Speedball 1 was one of my favourite on the Atari ST, I think it wasn't 50 FPS but the game was so good anyway.

[MacDeath]

yeah it is a recuring topic of course. and I may repeat myself as usual.
each time a newcomer comes (d'uh) he may rise the same sort of classical topic like with "this" games doesn't exists on CPC...

Speedball, populous, MonkeyIsland (scumm engine games) or other Japan/US RPGs... yeah we miss them.


speedball 1 is simple vertical scrolling. also fewer sprites (smaller teams).

Speednball2 has multiscroll... which is harder to achieve on CPC... not on PLUS. but also a far better team management and extra ingame features as well (multipliers, other ways to get score than goals... and so on)

a mix of the 2 could be nice indeed. a really Amstrad specific version... inspired by, not a straight port... warum nicht ?


Hey, we have skateball/skatewar anyway...

Merci la France...

Also Killerball.

merci la France encore (I think).


oh, BloodBowl could make a nice game as well... or some decent Rugby game.


(yeah, not action game)


another fun game :





anyway, too few "sport" or bloodsport games are released theses days on CPC... none actually.


Platformers, puzzles and shooters are great, but hey, nice to have more exotic stuffs...

[cpc4eva]

never played speedball 2 but as MacDeath says it had multiscroll which is hard for cpc to do but not cpc + so speedball 1 would be easier option.

id really like to see a cpc version of speedball 1.

speedball 1 seemed pretty simple in design or am i wrong?

i mean it doesnt look too complex the only real movement is the ball and sprites of your team and opponent cpu team.

i do wonder with top down view if it would be a problem for cpc capabilities as some games i remember that were top down view on cpc were very ordinary ie gazza soccer, kick off, etc ?

 

[tastefulmrship]

@Mainly for MacDeath...

We also had ROCKETBALL, which was loosely based on the amazing ORIGINAL 70s film, ROLLERBALL (the sequel was shyte; and death & bad karma to anyone who disagrees... I'll even throw a "TFM" if you disagree! ^_^) on which SPEEDBALL was also loosely based upon.



Also the C64 did have the original game as well as BRUTAL DELUXE.







Personally, I spent a lot of the 90s playing BRUTAL DELUXE on the Amiga. Loved it, but preferred Dave Whittaker's original music.
Here's a nice relaxing remix by ROMEO KNIGHT (Featuring PATMAN)

[MacDeath]

the "remix" is a bit far from the original, isn't it ?

[sigh]

The C64 version of Speedball 2 looks incredible. 8 sprites moving nicely all over the screen and I'm guessing the ball must be composed of software sprites.

[cpc4eva]

the sega version does look more colourful and slighty more appealing graphically.

but it looks slow and lacks gameplay and not much sound.

speedball on the c64 gameplay was what made you come back again and again.

from the vids posted i still prefer speedball 1 over speedball 2.

[Carnivius]

wow, both games look pretty lousy on C64.  Yeah they move fine but they're pretty ugly to look at partially due to the C64's max colours per sprite limit and it's drab palette.  Always has a 'rainy day' atmosphere about it even on their most 'colourful' games.

I looked in the boxes in my closet last night and it turns out I still have both games on Amiga (official disks, not pirated, and both still with their boxes pretty much as new).  I spent about 10 mins playing the first game before I got kinda bored with it, quit it and loaded up the second which I ended up playing for 2 hours and forgetting I was supposed to have met a friend and my phone was in the other room, it's text and ringtones drowned out by the sound effects of Speedball 2 played through my headphones.   Still, I had a fun night even if they didn't.   

[arnoldemu]

I was thinking.

Sega Master System uses z80.

Yes it uses a TMS video chip variant so has hardware "acceleration".

But perhaps the core "logic" could be extracted.

But then the comparison is:

1. How long to extract logic from Sega Master System version so AI is the same as it....
2. OR write it from beginning on CPC

Of course if you took the Sega Master System version code you would still need to connect it with CPC functions.

I am not saying to convert graphics or sound from Sega Master System version, but to get the AI logic from it.

I really don't know what would be the most work.

No I am not going to put myself forward, I am busy with other projects.

[Token]

I like that C64 speedball 1 version. Gameplay and atmosphere feel right as the original Atari ST Bitmap brothers version. I played it a lot. When I had it a year later on Amiga it felt dull, not amigaish and has been.
On Amiga Speedball 2 was a lot better but there were so many better games in 1991, and it was really not as good as Speedball 1 on ST to me. 2 looks much cute in gfx, and fun in sound, not what I was looking for then. I didn't play Speedball 2 a lot. I was disappointed.

[sigh]

I was thinking.

Sega Master System uses z80.

Yes it uses a TMS video chip variant so has hardware "acceleration".

But perhaps the core "logic" could be extracted.

But then the comparison is:

1. How long to extract logic from Sega Master System version so AI is the same as it....
2. OR write it from beginning on CPC

Of course if you took the Sega Master System version code you would still need to connect it with CPC functions.

I am not saying to convert graphics or sound from Sega Master System version, but to get the AI logic from it.

I really don't know what would be the most work.

No I am not going to put myself forward, I am busy with other projects.

I've been thinking about something similar (but in regards to the football game I'm making.)

Extracting AI code from the master system version and converting it to CPC as a starting point, would be a very clever thing to do.
That way, the basic logic is already set up in which case, it could be played with and experimented upon with further routines.

[Carnivius]

2 looks much cute in gfx

Cute?  I have to disagree with that.  I love the style of the sequel.  The first game looks like some bland amateurish fan-game in comparison.  Especially after playing both of them in the same evening last night.   My real disappointment with Speedball's graphics is that the players still looked too much like the original in costume design and not like the more 'hardcore' look of the box art (and not even much like the large in-game graphics during the upgrading or victory/defeat pics).   In fact one of the first graphics I remember pixelling in Deluxe Paint IV AGA (after upgrading from Deluxe Paint III) was of a more box-art accurate Speedball 2 sprite.  Wish I still had it (I might still do if it's on one of those many unlabelled discs).  Probably looks terrible now though. 

I bought Speedball 2 Evolution on PSP a couple years ago.  Awful graphics.  Some additions were nice like but overall it was one big photoshopped-all-to-hell ugly mess. 
edit:  just had a look at the PC version of Speedball 2 HD.   Bit better looking than the PSP game but still pretty terrible.  Amazing how with higher resolutions and more colours, that often modern 2D graphics seem 'flatter' and paper-like compared to the classic pixel work of 8 and 16 bit games.

[Carnivius]

I wonder if would be better not to make Speedball at all but a CPC-specific game in the vein of it.  It can blatantly inspired by both games in many ways but really just design it with the CPC strengths in mind and any extra features that could work and add to the gameplay.  And also to avoid any potential legal issues that may occur since that HD remake for PC only came out recently (which oddly has a Sensible Software guy behind it rather than the Bitmaps)

[Token]

just had a look at the PC version of Speedball 2 HD.   Bit better looking than the PSP game but still pretty terrible.  Amazing how with higher resolutions and more colours, that often modern 2D graphics seem 'flatter' and paper-like compared to the classic pixel work of 8 and 16 bit games.

I remember when it was announced, of course very exciting. I totally forgot it, and just saw it today on Youtube... 

[cpc4eva]

i wouldnt call it cute - skweek is cute, but not this.

its more futuristic the GFX may not be outstanding by any measure but they were not meant to be.

its about the gameplay and playability and atmosphere.

id rather see a speedball 1 not speedball 2 on cpc.

i think the cpc would shit all over the speedball c64 version in gfx but thats not the issue

the main concern is the screen sizing and scrolling of a top down view as the examples i posted earlier the cpc seems to have an issue with.  microprose not a bad game but screen size was tiny.  kick off awful game tiny screen both top down views and not the best scrolling either.

if you look at executioner's frogger thats damn good game with top down view and quite a large playing screen.  works awesome on cpc but theres no screen scrolling in that game.

how would a mode 1 over mode 0 speedball affect the scrolling and screen size of a cpc version speedball

[Carnivius]

its about the gameplay and playability and atmosphere.
id rather see a speedball 1 not speedball 2 on cpc.

Heh, gonna have to agree to disagree because I find the first game barely playable at all despite the many chances I've given it over the past two decades.  Even the other night when I was playing them both on Amiga, I just found the first one to be horrendous, the AI felt all over the place and I never felt in control of my own team at all (and some of the motions of the opposing team made it look like they were drunk at times).  I never managed to score at all and nearly smashed the joystick down on the desk.  Then I loaded up Speedball 2 and immediately on starting a match I felt like I had far more control and was scoring a lot easier (hence that 44-2 victory I had which I managed to get in the photo in another thread.  I lost the next match though at 38-42) and I was feeling a lot of satisfaction in injuring the opposing team players (which always worked when I actually intended to) and it was actually fun.  The improved graphics and sound helped too.   

I dunno if the C64 or Master System versions of the first game are much improved in control and AI but the Amiga game is terrible.  Good theme music though but I don't need to hear it all the way through the matches like it seems to think.

Anyways I'll leave ya to it.   I'd like to see A speedball-type game on CPC but only if it was considerably improved over the original game.

edit: ok i did another mock up. this time redoing my speedball 2 style mock up but with the graphics half the original size so that the game would only need speedball 1 style vertical-only scrolling.  Didn't bother doing the playfield properly because I haven't time but I guess the players are still somewhat readable.   meh.

[dcdrac]

Carnivac isn't stryker in the Pits of trogan due a remake?

[cpc4eva]

you're off topic dcdrac....

carnivac your mock up sprites and screen shot look great...

carnivac "I'd like to see A speedball-type game on CPC but only if it was considerably improved over the original game."

as i stated i just feel speedball 1 was good as it is.  But if there will be improvements im all for it who am i to argue with a cpc version looking better, sounding better, and playing better than the c64 original !!! 

[TotO]

carnivac always made outstanding mock-ups.