not sure if a topic already exists.
I was always ashamed that this game had no better port.
I recently updated the Wikipage on this game.
Of course the music is awesome (clearly one of the most memorable on CPC, we all remember it fondly I guess), but the 1bpp ingame graphics are so... casting eror... on CPC.
It could really have been so great with a proper dithering job in 3 inks.
Also it is a little bit to sluggish...
Aren't the Speccy sources available somewhere ?
Also why don't we see that much isometric games like this these days ?
Vortex games had it's share of great gamesn I simply loved Revolution.
Funny thing, Revolution had a more proper CPC port, in real full colours.... and yet was released earlier by the exact same team.
Perhaps the scrolling was too much to handle on "H.A.T.E"...
(http://cpcwiki.eu/imgs/thumb/7/7c/Hate_cpcmap_redone10.png/800px-Hate_cpcmap_redone10.png)
http://cpcwiki.eu/imgs/7/7c/Hate_cpcmap_redone10.png (http://cpcwiki.eu/imgs/7/7c/Hate_cpcmap_redone10.png)
I haven't done the sprite properly yet, as working on such a large picture seem to be heavy for my computer to handle, just filling with ditherings is laggy as hell...
But to be honnest this sort of graphic has a good potential with palette swaps (between each levels).
Could even be generated semi-randomly I guess. really a lot of combinaison are good, can also certainly be tried with other light shade than bright white....
Also a shame most Demos don't use some Isometric designs that much.
on C64 they seem to do it more often I guess.
I guess Gauntlet III is also comparable... (and also a killer chiptune)
PacMania too.
Is Head over Heels that much an exception ?
Did the 64K version requirement actually killed thsoe games ?
(Gauntlet3 and HATE had to scroll while HeadOverheels not)
To me, the saddest aspect is that those games could really have been totally superior to speccy, if they had real graphics... even if a bit slowlier.
What doesn't cut it is... they were slowlier and not even superior graphically.
Whoa. I'd love to have this as a poster for my room...
a, sadly it is not well finishedyet, I'm a bit into my old graphics rippoffs.
I got the tiles from winape, and am converting them into tilestudio stuffs.
But to be fair i understand well why the game was monocolour...
Those tiles would really be doubled in RAM if done in colour (going from 1bpp to 2bpp...), also the ditherings i added in the maps mockup would put additionnal tiles too.
HATE is a Speccy48K game only... I suppose the CPC464/64k had not that much space after all.
But still... not the sprites...
sadley, those were not CPC adapted. they still use a 1bpp mask and are the fucking same colour as the background.
This mean too much of the speccy engine was kept, would have needed to change the mask system into "sacrifice one ink" then recode them into 2bpp.
Perhaps they prefered to keep the same 1bpp to 2 bpp CPU convertion as the Background.
Still, this game could really enjoy a proper modern 128K version... not sure but to me, the only issue was more like 64K RAM limitation than lazyness in the port.
128K could get all graphical datas CPC coded, so certainly some CPU freed (despite having to draw twice bits...sort of) and this would perhaps even be faster and feature a few more tiles, or extra levels and upgraded palette swaps options to mark the different levels.
Just see how cool looking Revolution and Head over heals were....
Files.
there are :
tilest basic : extracted (resized to be easier to manipulate in tile studio). but it appears that when taken from winape, they need some vertical flipping.
tileset reversed : having been flipped.
I hope those are all the "game" graphics... not sure...
The HUD and menus are not included here.
PS : i failed to upload the pictures...Ii tells me the picture failed security test...Ok, imageshack then...
tilest basic : extracted (resized to be easier to manipulate in tile studio). but it appears that when taken from winape, they need some vertical flipping.
(http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8371/hatetilesetbasic.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/31/hatetilesetbasic.png/)
tilest basic : extracted (resized to be easier to manipulate in tile studio). but it appears that when taken from winape, they need some vertical flipping.
(http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/3636/hatetilesetreversed.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/841/hatetilesetreversed.png/)
There the sprites and a few other stuff, but the format is a bit high...
(http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/4287/linespriteshate.png)
Ouch it's big...
New post, the past one is a big big due to the picture (how do i get then in reduced stuff ?)
The sprites seems to be all in 4 copies, with pixels shift...
This enable for smooth movement a bit like the Way R-Type did it... hence the smoothness of animation/scrollings perhaps.
So this goes with a lot of Datas in the limited RAM, as this easily do for a lot more sprites than needed with hardsprites on other machines.
Still would be possible on a 128k machine, but not sure it wouldn't be that faster, would it ?
I can't see the point about Revolution? It seemed unplayable on Amstrad compared to speccy?
Revolution played fine in my memory... are you sure ?
May be just my skills are a little lacking but found it somewhat laggy in comparrison with the spectrum release.
Ok.
concenring HATE... some other details went into my mind...
The game must be quite heavy actually (for a 64K system).
ok most sprites are in 4 frame with a 2 pixels side shift... in order to ease the scrolling with some character system...
Of course, many of those sprites had some animation so multiple frames were mandatory anyway.
another thing is... the shadows... yep, those damn shadows follow the floor.
They must be some sort of pain in the CPU to manage too.
The more I look into this game, the more i understand how difficult it could have been to have it done in "Real CPC video" on a 64k machine.
Do you know how those shadows are generated ?
They must be another sort of sprites, but hard to recognize those in the findgraphics from winape.
Ok, after a llittle research, I found them and ripped them...
Again, the same shadow exists in perhaps 4 frames in order to scroll, which is...despite being 1bpp... somewhat heavy cumulated with all the rest of graphics.
And some of those shadows simply follow the "3D" floor...
Good point the game manage to display a lot of masked sprites... really.
And features a quite heavy sound compared to speccy (only beepers in game, i guess)
The sound and the huge lot of graphical content to be changed from 1bpp into 2bpp... no wonder the CPC vesion is slowlier.
haven counted the mass of graphics, but if those are to be stored in RAM in 2bpp... it should easily go for something like +16k ?32K RAM ?
not sure...
let's make some approximations...
in characters 8x8...
there's something like 318 characters of shadows' masks/sprites. (in 1bpp)
72 characters of Tiles (for the in-game background). in 1bpp (non masked)
The sprites are about 424x1bpp characters, with the same number of masks, hence +424x1bpp characters.
this goes for 424x 2bpp characters for masked sprites...
also 64 mode1 coded characters (the letters, frame and numbers )
i didn't count the HUD stuff and menues and so on... (all the non scrolling part of the screen) who are most probably already in 2bpp and stay where they are in the "VRAM".
I don't think the Sprites would need to get more RAM if the "loose aone colour instead of using a 1bpp mak" way is used...
Or else, it may also be possible to keep the 1bpp mask and get the sprites in 2bpp, this could be nice as it would enable to actually use 4 colours for the sprites...
Letters are already in 2bpp.
Not sure shadows would need to be turned into 2bpp...
well, not sure this would then be that much bigger indeed, but some other problems may arise.
the game is tailored to handle on 1bpp stuffs... and 1bpp masks.
a CPC "upgrade" would perhaps need to handle both 1bpp masks and "1 sacrified colour" masks...
This would go for more code and perhaps even more CPU used... or not.
Also the need to scroll the backgrounds...
only the background...
72 x8rows = 576 bytes/octets... x2 in order to put them into 2bpp... 1152 bytes...
only +1 kilobyte ?
Is this correct ?
just another matter.
while searching for stuff on the author... i found out a funny detail...
Costa Panayi...
is often mispelled Panavi.
seems his name has to be written with an Y instead of a V.
(Also he is from greek origin, and created Vortex...)
there an interview :
CRASH 33 - Vortex (http://www.crashonline.org.uk/33/vortex.htm)
(http://www.mobygames.com/images/portraits/large/1172239628-00.jpg)
Would be great to find him and get some interviews...
could some english do it ?
I used my stalker-fu a bit...
http://www.yatedo.com/p/Costa+Panayi/normal/9252aea6b6cf5c3cf742e37098066c68 (http://www.yatedo.com/p/Costa+Panayi/normal/9252aea6b6cf5c3cf742e37098066c68)
Was working at "ip.access"...
The guy is actually some sort of mechanical engineer, no wonder he introduced that many isometric.