R-Type X CPC

[Xyphoe]

I've come a bit late into this topic, and have only skimmed through the discussions but I feel it really should only be a choice between -

1) Normal CPC 128k - 3" disk

Or

2) 464+ 3" disk or cart - the latter to allow the opportunity for someone to burn to cart to run on a GX4000


I don't see the point in making a new game that will only work for the vast majority via emulators, its a very nice idea to have it run using more than 128k memory and other gizmos but then what's the point? I have no need anymore to go out and buy more memory, hard disks or whatever, even a 3.5" drive which is hard to come by for my 6128+ (my primary machine I use) and will cost you £40+ from Ebay if you're not a dab hand with electronics. The challenge is to write good games on the existing hardware or platform that we have to work with (eg Orion Prime), otherwise only the few will benefit and the rest of us can be dazzled via emulators. But then we might as well re-evaluate old games that were too slow by putting the speed up to 200% and going 'hey this is a good game now!'

Saying that, and slightly contradicting myself, I would love to see a proper new Plus only game as I feel there's very little out there that makes use of the extended features. R-Type would be freaking sweet with hardware scrolling and sprites, and DMA sound!

[MacDeath]

Sorry to be again a bit off-topic.

And we have the needed RS485 network thanks to the CPC Booster+, further   also the VN96 cards can be used (maybe slower, but cheaper).
What a   pity that Inicron never released their NMI driven net-card for the   CPC...

CPC Booster+ is perhaps a bit old technology nowaday, I mean it seems to use old kind of components and being a swissknife extension, too many specific stuffs to be a real standard.

Only the network aspects seems really usefull to me, of course many of the additionnal features are cool...but may also be generated with simpler Hardwares...


From what I'm thinking about :




FGPA "developpment boards"...
Those are generic simple boards with a FPGA (various sizes and specs...) or whatever constructor standards/brands/names... and generic connectors.

Many of those include a plug to program it with a PC computer, some of them needing a USB converter (or whatever), other not...
Also some of those cards include more or less Memory, RAM or ROM like, or even both.

And basic first models are not that expensive, yet the FPGA may be quite smal actually...well, small for nowaday's standards...but compaired to a 1990 machine, it's still enormous.

Price starts at something like 15€uros...(add shipping fees, which may then easily double this...)

Such ones can't enable to put a "one-chip" full CPC per exemple (biggers can most probably...) but may enable enough speed and memory and "gates/programable stuff" to enable a lot of usefull extensions or functions as a CPC extension.

All we have to get :
--5V compatible models (there are some)
--adaptators and connectics (mostly to connect into the extension port, or other stuffs...).
--programs for them so we can put what we can/want...

A basic one with memory can most probably emulate RAM/ROM extension... and a lot of basic functions  :

Mathematical, perhaps AY additionnal soundchip emulation, Blitter, networking stuff...
Or course Sound features would perhaps need some amplification stuff... and so on...

So a common library of said functions would enable to use a large variety of such stuff as universal Extensions for CPC.



If you look at Symbiface per exemple, it's a custom FPGA based card (2 FPGA if I remember well), plus connectics and some additionnal specific stuffs (Realtime clock) that are not always that usefull in Gamemaking...
Good to put a CPC at PC standards (mouse, clock, HDD and CD-ROM....) but the mundane average gamer don't need all that actually.

Lack of mouse can be treated with a specific Keyboard+Joystik interface... and There are actually few Gamewise application for realtime clock... or except so when you save games in a RPG it tells you when you saved...lol... or when you burst the high score.


Finding the proper model of one of those, cheap, 5V-compatible and powerfull enough, then designing the correct protocol, a little library of basic functions, and conectics design...

Getting common purchase may also enable to reduce the price, as such stuff are expensive when bought in a single unit.... (High shipping fee...)


And then no real need to get a custom stuff.... perhaps.

[andycadley]

So, I guess I'm late to this discussion having only just started to re-explore the CPC scene following some rather unnecessary interventions by "real life", but I figured I'd throw my 2p into the pot nonetheless.

I don't think the Plus can do anything that the CPC can't do, apart from a bigger colour pallette. Anyone who's ever dabbled at programming a Plus game will tell you how ludicrous it is to implement hardware sprites.

Absolutely couldn't agree less. There is simply no way I could have done JSW+ without hardware sprites, for example (and that really stresses them). They don't make things Gameboy easy by any means, but they confer a massive advantage. As does the hardware scrolling if you don't gimp yourself by trying to retain compatability with the standard CPC models.

Which brings up the "Prehistorik 2" factor - it's an awesome game, I love it to bits. And the plus version is nice. But it's not great. It's got snap-scrolling where it could have been pixel smooth, the graphics are tweaked so as not to look awful when rendered using the standard palette. It is, unquestionably, a standard CPC game with some plus features bolted on. Compare and contrast with Robocop 2, which oozes a level of quality that simply couldn't be reproduced on the standard hardware (even if the gameplay is a bit dull). Do you honestly think Robocop 2 would have looked anywhere near as good if the design spec had said it also had to downgrade gracefully on standard hardware? I think not.

As to machine specs, I'd say 128K and a disc drive is a reasonable spec. If you haven't got a machine that can handle that, you can pick one up on ebay relatively cheaply or just use an emulator. Expecting people to find 512K ram packs is a lot less practical and, to be brutally honest, there are few games that would benefit from it that couldn't equally well multiload from disc. Of course you could just let everyone use an emulator, but at that point it might just as well be a PC title.

If you're going for the Plus range, then 128K is pretty much essential, a 64K machine just does not cut it unless you are running from cart. I'd love to see new carts so I could also play them on my GX, but unless someone produces a cheap cart emulator using SD cards or something (maybe I've missed one??) then it's really not going to be a terribly practical idea for most people so you're back to effectively making an emulator-only game again.

[Gryzor]

Hey! Welcome Andy mate! ...and let the flame begin

PS Do you have a webpage for your games? The link is missing on the Wiki...

[TFM]

CPC Booster+ is perhaps a bit old technology nowaday, I mean it seems to use old kind of components and being a swissknife extension, too many specific stuffs to be a real standard.

Only the network aspects seems really usefull to me, of course many of the additionnal features are cool...but may also be generated with simpler Hardwares...

Well, I appreciate your oppinion, but... (There must follow a but you know?  )

Aehm, the CPC-Booster+ was probably sold in 50 or more pieces, so it _IS_ already a standard. Hope that other hardware developpers will not make anything different regarding I/O addresses. Sure - you're right - it's a kind of swiss knife and not every feature will be used by every program, coder or game. But thats not the point.

The CPC-Booster+ is cheap to get, it's powerfull and it is quite modern. You can't do everything the CPC-B+ can do with an FPGA, because FPGA is just a better logic IC, nothing else. F. e. it will not allow you networking or so on.

The ATmega16 in the CPC-Booster+ can be replaced by the ATmega32, which is still quit modern and also powerfull.

I wish I would have more time to deal with the CPC-Booster+. However you can look in the FutureView II (basics) and IV (source codes) to get some bits (not bytes!) more of information.

As you see, I like the CPC-Booster+ ;-)

[TFM]

Absolutely couldn't agree less. There is simply no way I could have done JSW+ without hardware sprites, for example (and that really stresses them). They don't make things Gameboy easy by any means, but they confer a massive advantage. As does the hardware scrolling if you don't gimp yourself by trying to retain compatability with the standard CPC models.

If you're going for the Plus range, then 128K is pretty much essential, a 64K machine just does not cut it unless you are running from cart. I'd love to see new carts so I could also play them on my GX, but unless someone produces a cheap cart emulator using SD cards or something (maybe I've missed one??) then it's really not going to be a terribly practical idea for most people so you're back to effectively making an emulator-only game again.

I totally agree!

[Trebmint]

If you're going for the Plus range, then 128K is pretty much essential, a 64K machine just does not cut it unless you are running from cart. I'd love to see new carts so I could also play them on my GX, but unless someone produces a cheap cart emulator using SD cards or something (maybe I've missed one??) then it's really not going to be a terribly practical idea for most people so you're back to effectively making an emulator-only game again.

I tend to think that hardware will follow software in relation to the Plus. If there were a number of new Cart games that are only available for emulators some bright scammer will come along and find a way to put them on carts to extract high amounts of euros out of some gullable ebayer. Actually I'd love to see Fluff put on Cart. Guess that disprove my theory

[andycadley]

PS Do you have a webpage for your games? The link is missing on the Wiki...

Er, nope. I kind of figured webpages were out of fashion these days, what with all these crazy blogs and stuff. I can't even find one of those cool 'Under Construction' animated gifs that all great webpages used to have. 

I tend to think that hardware will follow software in relation to the Plus. If there were a number of new Cart games that are only available for emulators some bright scammer will come along and find a way to put them on carts to extract high amounts of euros out of some gullable ebayer. Actually I'd love to see Fluff put on Cart. Guess that disprove my theory

You're probably right, I guess I was kinda hoping that with all the cart images available that day may have come. Developing cart software when you can't try it out on the real thing is a bit of a pain. FWIW I'd love to see Fluff put on cart too, maybe it's needs a remixed cart release with some bonus levels or something.

[TFM]

I tend to think that hardware will follow software in relation to the Plus. If there were a number of new Cart games that are only available for emulators some bright scammer will come along and find a way to put them on carts to extract high amounts of euros out of some gullable ebayer. Actually I'd love to see Fluff put on Cart. Guess that disprove my theory

Well, you already can buy a $10 Burnin Rubber Cartridge, replace or reburn the EPROM with whatever content you like, give it a nice label and then sell it on ebay for L (goddamn, I hate american keyboards!!!) 415 UK Pounds or even more. But nobody did it up to now...
Think people who want to make money (as only sense of being alive...) will probably not work with the CPC. Let's hope...

[Gryzor]

@Andy: well, could you upload them here as attachments at least?

Oh also, I found a GIF for you

[andycadley]

Hehe. I was only half serious. I've had to trawl through all my old backup cds to see if I can find stuff. Once I've got something worth having, I'll try and figure out this wiki editing and stuff and pop something up there. And now, back to your regularly scheduled thread....

[ivarf]

Hehe. I was only half serious. I've had to trawl through all my old backup cds to see if I can find stuff. Once I've got something worth having, I'll try and figure out this wiki editing and stuff and pop something up there. And now, back to your regularly scheduled thread....

I just stumbled on to one of your pages, looking for good CPC-scrollers - XeO3-CPC. What happend to that project?

[Ygdrazil]

I just stumbled on to one of your pages, looking for good CPC-scrollers - XeO3-CPC. What happend to that project?

This project is very much alive!!

There will be more news in the near future..

/Ygdrazil

[andycadley]

I just stumbled on to one of your pages, looking for good CPC-scrollers - XeO3-CPC. What happend to that project?

Life very much got in the way of CPC coding and at some point I noticed someone else was doing a version that seemed to have got a lot further. Mine was still in the concept code and some roughly sketched out plans based on what documentation there was on the Plus4 version. I can't even remember what the login for the blog is anymore.

As it is, I've ordered one of those swishy HxC SD card drives for my 6128+ as well as a cheap eprom programmer/eraser and some M27C1001s so i can hopefully hack a GX4000 cart tester. Then the real fun begins again. 

[Ygdrazil]

A shame really, I think your CPC-XEO3 project was quite different to ours as it targeted the "plain" CPC. It would have been interesting to see if its possible to make  XEO3 work without any ASIC stuff!

Also its doubtfull if our version will qualify as a 'XEO3', it will be a horizontal shooter for sure. Failing to become 'official' we had to design a lot of graphics from the ground up ...

We still lack any sound at all!

/Ygdrazil

Life very much got in the way of CPC coding and at some point I noticed someone else was doing a version that seemed to have got a lot further. Mine was still in the concept code and some roughly sketched out plans based on what documentation there was on the Plus4 version. I can't even remember what the login for the blog is anymore.

As it is, I've ordered one of those swishy HxC SD card drives for my 6128+ as well as a cheap eprom programmer/eraser and some M27C1001s so i can hopefully hack a GX4000 cart tester. Then the real fun begins again.