CPC plus showing its power

[AxelStone]

I've seen this Shadow of the Beast proof of concept and it's really amazing:



https://youtu.be/ySi3BemeTa8?t=11


CPC plus seems a great and unexplored machine

[DanyPPC]

The CPC Plus series has to be discovered. I think it's a powerful 8-bit machine.


Playing Pang seems to look at the Amiga. 

[ivarf]

My question is, is this anywhere near the power of Super Nintendo as Cliff Lawson said many years ago?
People thought he didn't know what he was talking about, but I wonder...
How right was he?


The Ghost'n Goblins plus version looks nice too, see this thread:
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/ghost'n-goblins-(6128-version)/

[roudoudou]

My question is, is this anywhere near the power of Super Nintendo as Cliff Lawson said many years ago?
People thought he didn't know what he was talking about, but I wonder...
How right was he?

He's completly wrong. The CPC+ power is a little better than the CPC old generation
The Z80 is still as slow as the old CPC
The video memory is still interlaced and bitplaned like the old CPC for compatibility reasons. This choice is also responsible of limitations with the Asic functionnalities
We can gain time for some FX because color changing and video reprogramming may be done via adress mapping instead of painfull gate array access -> 1 memory write instead of 2 I/O access
Do not forget demos are tricky
Super Nintendo has MANY sprites with ram/rom mapping, simultaneous colors without tricks, mode 7 (perspective rotozoom) dedicated processor, ...
About my production, the 3D tunnel in the begining and the 3D wasp at the end are almost completly software
Both of these FX can be done on our old CPC, without the + colors obviously 

[DanyPPC]

Thanks for the clarifications.


But hardware scrolling and sprites, DMA audio, 32 from a palette of 4196 colors make the differencies respect to the old CPC.
It's not a SuperNES, ok. But these features should facilitate the development of games.

[arnoldemu]

My question is, is this anywhere near the power of Super Nintendo as Cliff Lawson said many years ago?

I thought it was meant to compete against the NES not the SNES?

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Yeah, it's fairly decent versus the NES, especially the sprites and palette.


But it's not even close to a SNES or Megadrive - although the former's CPU isn't that brilliant, it's the graphics hardware that does a lot of the heavy lifting, and that's what the Plus added to some extent. It seems the potential of the sprite implementation - limited as it was - is being realised now.


The bitmap CPC screen is always going to be more difficult to manage versus a 80s gaming-oriented tilemap display. More flexibility of course.


I have no idea if it's possible to add hardware in the cartridge to offload from the CPU - this was common on the SNES, I guess the cartridge slot was more of a generic expansion slot in behaviour.

[Bryce]

I thought it was meant to compete against the NES not the SNES?

It couldn't have been meant to compete against the SNES as the SNES came out after the Plus had already been spec'ed and gone to manufacturing, so Amstrad had no idea of what its capabilities would be.

The biggest thing that limited the Plus was the decision to keep it compatible with the Classic.

Bryce.

[Ygdrazil]

I think the CPC+ simply was Amstrads attempt to prolong the the life of its CPC series and to keep the CPC series competitive in the 8bit marked in general.

Other companies tried the same...

C64GS(C65), SAM coupé and MSX2+(3) etc.

They all failed, more or less...

Sadly the 8bits era was at the time lacking towards the commercial end...

To launch a completely new 8bit system without backwards compatibility would have been unrealistic with 16bits and PC's getting more and more cheap!

I think Amstrad did a great job keeping the CPC pluses backwards compatible with the classic CPC's - and the CPC6128+ is clearly my favorite CPC!

No question the CPC pluses are interesting machines and sadly have never had their potential fulfilled in the same way the classic CPC's have.
Would have been interesting if the pluses had been released just a few years earlier.. Yeah i know what if!! 

Regards,
Ygdrazil

It couldn't have been meant to compete against the SNES as the SNES came out after the Plus had already been spec'ed and gone to manufacturing, so Amstrad had no idea of what its capabilities would be.

The biggest thing that limited the Plus was the decision to keep it compatible with the Classic.

Bryce.

[Carnivius]

The biggest thing that limited the Plus was the decision to keep it compatible with the Classic.

I thought the only reason it even had any software was because it was compatible with the 'classic'.  I can't imagine many of the software houses back then leaping onto an all new Amstrad computer especially so ridiculously underpowered compared to what else was available. 

[andycadley]

I'm not sure it was ever quite that clean cut. The 16-bit machines hadn't got much traction until very late '89 and pretty much all the manufacturers out there were looking at revamped 8-bit machines, compatible with their previous range (or the Speccy in the case of the Coupe), as a possible avenue. The big shift happened that Xmas though and the market suddenly starting looking like a very different place. Had any of the enhanced 8-bit machines been available for Xmas '88, it might have been a very different story.