Games that made use of the Plus range capabilities non cartridge
I know there was Stryker in the Pits of Trogan but other than that what other non cartridge games came out that used the Plus range extra capabilities.
- Space Gun 1992
- Burger Party 1995
- Fifa World Cup Soccer 2006
- Frogger 2007
Thank you all downloaded :-)
I also remember
Fluff (1994)
Prehistorik 2 (1993)
I am really impressed of the capabilities of the machine , just had a look at that Burger Party game which as a game is not much to write home about , but the look and techniques in it are really impressive . It is such a shame that the plus machines didn't come out sooner , some great games could have been developed for it.
Amstrad missed a trick with te Plus machines maybe one year earlier might have done it that and looser control over the publishing process
Quote from: dcdrac on 22:20, 08 July 13
Games that made use of the Plus range capabilities non cartridge
I know there was Stryker in the Pits of Trogan but other than that what other non cartridge games came out that used the Plus range extra capabilities.
Rick Dangerous 128+ - CPCWiki (http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Rick_Dangerous_128%2B)
D.Day (Loriciels) also took advance of the plus palette at least.
(http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/csd/shots/dday.png) (http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/csd/shots/dday.png)
http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/plus.php?title=dday (http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/plus.php?title=dday)
[attachurl=2]
L'Aigle D'or - Le Retour, too:
(http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/csd/shots/laigle.png) (http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/csd/shots/laigle.png)
http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/plus.php?title=laigle (http://cpc.devilmarkus.de/plus.php?title=laigle)
[attachurl=4]
[attachurl=3]
thank you all downloaded and when the new cable turns up will connect up the HXC and let it rip
Quote from: Puresox on 01:01, 09 July 13
... It is such a shame that the plus machines didn't come out sooner , some great games could have been developed for it.
It's still time for that...
I can only hope!
I can just imagine a new plus game, a redoof Savage maybe or Elite or Iron Lord imagine that in a plus version it was good enough before, and Defender of the Crown
Quote from: TFM/FS on 21:28, 09 July 13
It's still time for that...
Plus version of Cyberhuhn???
Imagine Starstrike 2 or Starglider redone as Plus game.
All the Freescape games Driller et al
Maybe Space Flight Game
Hmmm.... I didn't even think about it! But the idea is not bad. May be worth being considered :)
Actually I thought more about a new game dedicated to the Plus - specifically using its new Features. IMHO it makes no sense to bring out Plus vesions of games running perfectly on CPC oG (old Generation) like Savage, Trantor or so on.
For a good game its IMHO needed as a first step to check out what the Hardware can do for you, then you create your Software around it and make perfect use of it.[nb]Which more or less excludes conversions and favours original new games.[/nb]
Quote from: dcdrac on 19:39, 10 July 13
Imagine Starstrike 2 or Starglider redone as Plus game.
All the Freescape games Driller et al
That's exactly my Point!!! The Plus can not do better in Vector graphics. Both games would be absolutely the same on the Plus - maybe with different Colors. But for this games you can't use the Plus soft-Scrolling or the Sprites or or or.... Soooooooooooo, sorry, a Plus Version wouldn't be a gain at all.
The idea is because there are fewer games for the Plus and even fewer that pushed it
Quote from: dcdrac on 19:43, 10 July 13
The idea is because there are fewer games for the Plus and even fewer that pushed it
What would make sense to be converted to a Plus?[nb]Means: What uses Sprites, Scrolling and maybe a Screen split?[/nb]
- Giana Sisters
- Mario Brothers
- Gryzor
- Street Fighter
All games like this: Using Scrolling, using sprites - but few. That are eligle candidates :)
Adapting some old games on cpc+ will be a good think...
On Amstrad forum we speak and work on an adaptation of Hero quest.
See this screenshot:
(http://img.xooimage.com/files97/e/3/1/2013-05-06-3e027d9.png)
The work is hard because we don't have the original source (i don't know if it's the correct word in english...) of the game...
Originaly it's a fucking spectrum game on old cpc with mode 1 monochrome palette...
We try to adapt it with mode 0 - 16 color with CPC+ palette.
Hard work but we hope to finish it...
Difficult because there is a few automodification in the code and i have to replace all sprites routine...
So, some games will be great with better graphics/sound/hard sprites :)
Its actually rather hard to find existing games that fit with the + as the number of sprites is so limited. If only they'd allowed you to set the memory start address of a sprite hmmm. I do seem to recall Cliff telling me they had planned to do that, and that the top nibble of sprite data was to be an alpha channel.... oh if that had happened the plus would have been a truely awesome beast
Quote from: Trebmint on 09:58, 11 July 13
Its actually rather hard to find existing games that fit with the + as the number of sprites is so limited. If only they'd allowed you to set the memory start address of a sprite hmmm. I do seem to recall Cliff telling me they had planned to do that, and that the top nibble of sprite data was to be an alpha channel.... oh if that had happened the plus would have been a truely awesome beast
Did he mention anything about there being 64 sprites, perhaps 256 colours per sprite or anything else?
Come on tease us with more "what could have been".
Actually I think my memory must have been at fault, as I was under the idea that the alpha channel was placed on the upper nibble of the sprite data. Having looked at the docs again Im sure that was me either getting the wrong end of the stick or forgetting. Was a phone call 15/16 years ago and my memory sucks
There's 3 spare bytes in each sprite header, which Im fairly sure was to be allocated initially to be a 2 byte memory pointer to the start of sprite data, and 1 byte which was 3/4 bits alpha, and 1 bit foreground or background display. I assume the background would just be ink 0??? certainly there's no data table allocated for anything different.
I think the maximum number of sprites was 32, but I guess for cost and lack of gates that was never done.
As for 256 colours, I dont think that was ever the plan, but I guess its a possibility given the top 4 bits of sprite data isnt used, plus there is room to add palette 17-255 in the memory address.
At a guess I think they were leaving spaces for future proofing so the Plus 2 could keep backward compatability but have 32 multiplexed sprites with 256 colours (which would have been utterly awesome)
Does anyone know what happened to Cliff Lawson??
Quote from: Trebmint on 12:29, 11 July 13
Actually I think my memory must have been at fault, as I was under the idea that the alpha channel was placed on the upper nibble of the sprite data. Having looked at the docs again Im sure that was me either getting the wrong end of the stick or forgetting. Was a phone call 15/16 years ago and my memory sucks
There's 3 spare bytes in each sprite header, which Im fairly sure was to be allocated initially to be a 2 byte memory pointer to the start of sprite data, and 1 byte which was 3/4 bits alpha, and 1 bit foreground or background display. I assume the background would just be ink 0??? certainly there's no data table allocated for anything different.
I think the maximum number of sprites was 32, but I guess for cost and lack of gates that was never done.
As for 256 colours, I dont think that was ever the plan, but I guess its a possibility given the top 4 bits of sprite data isnt used, plus there is room to add palette 17-255 in the memory address.
At a guess I think they were leaving spaces for future proofing so the Plus 2 could keep backward compatability but have 32 multiplexed sprites with 256 colours (which would have been utterly awesome)
Cool. Yes I understand it's from memory.
Quote from: Trebmint on 12:29, 11 July 13
Does anyone know what happened to Cliff Lawson??
http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=949503 (http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=949503)
He is frequently on the AVR Freaks forum (AVR microcontroller).
And within the post is a picture of him.
This is the same Cliff Lawson from Amstrad.
"1 bit foreground or background display" - surely that means whether the sprite appears in front of or behind the standard graphical output.
The CPC Plus would have been far better if it had pointer based sprites, especially 32 of them. At least it could show all 16 on the same scan line.
I presume that this early plan would have used an off-ASIC memory for sprites, as the bandwidth sharing with main memory was an issue. That memory bus could have been directly wired to the cartridge slot even. Obviously that increased the pin count of the ASIC and also the cartridge slot beyond a reasonable expectation (additional 4-bit data + 16?-bit address bus), and that memory was shrunk and dragged onto the ASIC itself.
Yes as I understand it the sprite would be made to appear behind the background except for ink 0. Im not a hardware guy at all, but I dont really understand how this can be true (due to memory contention issues), but I definately remember it being mentioned.
Also due to memory contention the sprite data would always be held of on the ASIC, but at 32 sprites rather than 16 (Thats an 8k bank of memory). Being to allocate address of the 8k/4k memory the sprite started I guess on the surface might not appear that useful, but given the powerful line interrupts it could have been used very cleverly I reckon IMHO
Im sure there were other features they discussed putting into the ASIC, but I cant remember what
Quote from: Trebmint on 13:59, 11 July 13
Yes as I understand it the sprite would be made to appear behind the background except for ink 0. Im not a hardware guy at all, but I dont really understand how this can be true (due to memory contention issues), but I definately remember it being mentioned.
I see, currently all sprites are over, so this would allow it to also go under, but show through where ink 0 in the background was used. That would have been quite nice.
Quote from: Trebmint on 13:59, 11 July 13
Also due to memory contention the sprite data would always be held of on the ASIC, but at 32 sprites rather than 16 (Thats an 8k bank of memory). Being to allocate address of the 8k/4k memory the sprite started I guess on the surface might not appear that useful, but given the powerful line interrupts it could have been used very cleverly I reckon IMHO
I agree it would have been very powerful and useful.
Quote from: Trebmint on 13:59, 11 July 13
Im sure there were other features they discussed putting into the ASIC, but I cant remember what
:(
@Briggsy. Im really not a hardware guy so I'm not sure quite how some of this stuff was to be implemented. I know they were planning sprite memory pointers, but I assumed it was on ASIC memory, and not from the main 64k.
@ArnoldEmu. At the time I spoke to Cliff I'd just finished some work on a Gameboy project, and was talking to Campursoft about doing the PcW16 stuff (Probably 1998/99???). Im sure all the other things were programmer aids rather than major hardware improvements and probably although useful not anything that couldn't be done easily through software. Probably something like sprite on sprite collision detection, or sprite blocking. That's just a guess cos Im sure I'd recall anything wow!
.
Quote from: Trebmint on 09:58, 11 July 13
Its actually rather hard to find existing games that fit with the + as the number of sprites is so limited. If only they'd allowed you to set the memory start address of a sprite hmmm. I do seem to recall Cliff telling me they had planned to do that, and that the top nibble of sprite data was to be an alpha channel.... oh if that had happened the plus would have been a truely awesome beast
Hi! :) Very interesting. But what do you mean with "Alpha channel" ?
@TFM Alpha in that each sprite would have been given a (I believe a 3 bit 0-7) transparency level, so you could have the sprite 100% displayed or % transparent. TBH although this is cool, its fairly limited to special FX and perhaps characters like ghosts etc. I guess if you multiplexed the sprites you could have done cool things, but with only 16 sprites it would have been novelty.
Thanks' for the Explanation. Well, yes, having a Pointer for each sprite to define the start in the RAM would be great. Without that the reload of data into sprites take a lot of time (especially if you have to write 8 bits for filling four bits...). However, I still think that a game which is programmed from the beginning with keeping the Plus Hardware Features in mind can be really awesome.
The other thing I was told, but Im not sure is true is that the ASIC wasnt initially planned as CPC product. Think less gx4000 and more zx4000 haha, and I guess it made more sense at that time to put a sprite chip on the speccy.
The reason I say Im not sure its true is the person who told me was a member of AA staff 92/93 time, who TBH i wasnt best pals with. He certainly told me other stuff that wasn't true or was taking the mick. Im very sceptical this was true TBH, but hey what does it matter now :)
Actually coming back to this ghosting effect, I guess it can be easily simulated. Here an (ugly) example for the CPC oG (old Generation)...
Transparenz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztf7pacNf6A#)
@TFM I say transparency, but I dont know if thats exactly what was planned, who knows there might have been the option of blend or additive, so you could have glow effects?? Im not even sure its possible with how I understand the ASIC, as the ASIC would need effectively the RGB content of the screenmap??? Perhaps a hardware guy might have some thoughts on this. As far as Im aware the ASIC just puts an additional layer on the standard display rather than merging the sprites into that memory map... which is a simplistic way of looking at it, but makes imagining how they might do an alpha thing tricky... ???
Maybe that's the reason why they didn't do it. The ASIC could have become to costy then. But if you want to compete with Amiga (with all that custom Chips), then a cut down Version of the ASIC may be not the best choice.
It's easy to ask for more in These days, back 1991 times have been different of course. So I'm glad that we have a 6128 Plus at all.
Who knows what went on back then at Amstrad prior to 1990. Dont forget they had access to all the sinclair developments, so whatever the status of the Loki was available to use, and then you had the Flare chip and guys (See Konix) who definately discussed a games machine with Alan Sugar back then. And there was supposedly a comfy relationship with Sega hardwarewise that resulted ultimately in the stupid idea MegaPC.
It is fairly strange that Amstrad made a games console out of the CPC and not the ZX. They built spectrum games into the e-mailer, why not CPC instead. We will probably never know
Well, the ZX Hardware was obviously inferior to the CPC [nb]even when some Features leave room for discussions.[/nb]. So it seems to be logic to use the CPC for a new Generation and not the ZX[nb]which was not their own design anyway[/nb]. Never mind if I missed the Point. :)
So should we open a + game competition?
How does the compo work then?
Quote from: Trebmint on 12:50, 15 July 13
How does the compo work then?
This is what I suggest:
- small game (this ensures games are finished)
When I say small, I mean, something you can develop and finish within the deadline, not the actual size in bytes of the game.
I suggest a limited time - say 6 months.
must:
- use plus palette
- use plus sprites - sprites can be used for anything ;)
could:
- plus line interrupts
- plus dma
- hardware scrolling (but if you do this you must use the plus pixel scroll). Use of scrolling depends on the type of game you want to make.
optional:
- analogue joystick input
- 2nd digital joystick
This is what the aims are:
- to have more games using plus features. we don't just want a cpc game with plus colours.
- we all become more familiar with the plus hardware, especially the sprites, how we can use them, and perhaps find creative ways to use more or get more from them.
- opens up good discussions about plus because we are more familiar with it's hardware
- opens up more possibilities for using plus
- gets more plus games
- some people may find development on a plus more easy because of it's hardware sprites.
I understand that some people don't have a plus.
So for those development using an emulator is ok. Perhaps somebody who has time and a plus could give them feedback on things that don't work on a real machine.
But all entries will be tested on a real plus. I know people will flame me for this, perhaps the base is a 464+. If the games are all small this is enough I think.
Please give your feedback.
Quote from: Trebmint on 19:36, 12 July 13
@TFM I say transparency, but I dont know if thats exactly what was planned, who knows there might have been the option of blend or additive, so you could have glow effects?? Im not even sure its possible with how I understand the ASIC, as the ASIC would need effectively the RGB content of the screenmap??? Perhaps a hardware guy might have some thoughts on this. As far as Im aware the ASIC just puts an additional layer on the standard display rather than merging the sprites into that memory map... which is a simplistic way of looking at it, but makes imagining how they might do an alpha thing tricky... ???
Well the ASIC also handled the standard screen display, and is selecting whether to show a sprite pixel or that screen pixel at any point on the display already...
However blending operations would have taken up quite some logic - even at 50% transparency you're talking about doing an add and dividing by two, for each pixel displayed. And that's before you consider vertically stacked sprites... I could see more simple bitwise operations being doable, but they're less useful (although some interesting effects could be done).
Ultimately alpha channels had to wait for later consoles with far higher transistor budgets and cpu clocks.
I like the idea of a competition. However as you say its more about people never having coded the plus, so having to learn it.
Thing is as anyone knows who has written for it. Its simple. Bang there's a sprite... Bang there's another. Ok there's more complex stuff with the interrupts, but hey its far easier than getting something on the screen on the CPC.
The thing about the plus is thats its not as flexible with the added hardware as say the c64. Its 16 sprites, it very hard to use them more than once... and if you need to you have to start doing hardware/software sprites combo etc and it starts getting harder. The problem is you have to pick a game the hardware can do and concentrate on gameplay rather than more rasters and more sprite etc
Howabout a few of us get a plus game framework together. Like a map scroll/drawing routine and a PC based map designer, (perhaps something that imports from a BMP). Just a load of Plus game routines ready to plug together. That lets people stop worrying about technical and do gameplay
learnt all about the gentle art of cartridge connector cleaning
@Trebmint:
Not sure about the idea. I would say let people learn from nothing. If it's so easy it'll not take them long. ;)
If a editor was made, then all the games would be the same, all would be scrolling games.
If they also learn about how to put the sprites on the screen, use interrupts, colours etc, perhaps they would think up different ways to use them.
What about a puzzle game that uses plus sprites perhaps one for a cursor and a few for displaying score in high resolution?
@arnoldemu
I was really thinking more like a firmware aimed at the plus hardware, and a gameloop setup with sections for screenupdate, gameupdate and interrupt. And TBH side scrolling platformers and shooters is where the plus could excel over the cpc. It takes games from 12fps to 50fps, and thats the main difference imho
Any kind of Software is better than no Software 8)
Quote from: TFM/FS on 19:41, 15 July 13
Any kind of Software is better than no Software 8)
Not to me. In my world "No Windows" is better than "Windows".... a lot.
I would love to see 3D Starstrike 2 mixed with Elite
and my least favourite piece of software OS X
Quote from: mr_lou on 06:27, 16 July 13
Not to me. In my world "No Windows" is better than "Windows".... a lot.
So why is your hard-drive still not formatted? :laugh:
Quote from: TFM/FS on 19:26, 16 July 13
So why is your hard-drive still not formatted? :laugh:
Because it contains Linux.
Haven't used Windows for centuries.
Quote from: mr_lou on 19:44, 16 July 13
Because it contains Linux.
Haven't used Windows for centuries.
Ah! So you are using some Software instead of no Software. Gotcha! :laugh: :) :)
*bump*
No more interest then? :)
Well it sounds like a nice idea to me.
Quote from: andycadley on 21:06, 30 November 13
Well it sounds like a nice idea to me.
Weren't you working on something when we first "met" online over a decade ago...? =-)
I could use the excuse that I'm still waiting for a decent DMA capable tracker. Or my habit of rewriting bits that worked fine because I felt they could be better. Or blame my younger self for not using better source control which lead to something of a loss of motivation when I suffered drive corruption (nothing much was really "lost" as I did keep backups, but piecing it back together takes time).
Instead I'll just point out that I did say I coded slowly! :laugh:
It did at least make it out in about 90% complete format. Which is probably better than the half dozen other bits and pieces I have lying round in various states (some known, some not).
Finding the time and motivation to sit down and code these days is a lot harder, but I really must get back to it. Spending all day in Visual Studio for work doesn't help so much.
If it took a decade to get to 90% then... a year more?