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avatar_Vince

My Games

Started by Vince, 05:24, 21 June 20

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Vince

Thanks for all the positive vibes in my intro topic everyone!  :) :) :)

Of the games I have designed and am working on, the ones most suitable for conversion to the CPC range are:


Premier Football Manager       - a *mostly text based Football Management Sim. I wrote it in 1991, reworked it recently and have updated the player Names, Stats and things. I'd like to say it is quite
different and innovative, but you'd have to judge that for yourselves.

Dragon's Keep (Working Title) - an advanced Text Adventure with graphical touches and real-time elements. Again there are ideas here that I have not seen in the genre.


Unknown Treasures - My Pirate Themed 'Treasure Hunting' game. This one's pretty special. It's a bit like Spy vs Spy...


I will be releasing the C64 versions first. I was thinking if there was sufficient interest that I would maybe skip over converting to the Spectrum and do the Amstrad versions then go back, this would ensure that all the games were written from the ground up, as proper conversions.

I always felt the CPC users got 'short changed' with nasty quick shoddy ports of Spectrum games, sitting in tiny windows.

Needless to say, I do not agree with that sort of thing. I'd like to see what I can do with the colours too.

You've got a good palette to play with and I am sure I can do better than monochrome. I don't think it helps that a lot of you had a green monitor. If you had just the tv like the rest of us, maybe it would have forced the developers to use more colour, I don't know. What I do know is CPC usually got the worst version of any given game, despite having solid hardware, decent amounts of ram.


I read somewhere that there was an intention to use the 6502 processor!


Had this been the case I think the C64/CPC versions of games would be very much on par and the Spectrum the 'poor cousin'.

Ok so, If I did convert these games, and I put them out on tape in boxes with instruction manuals (digital version included for gratis), would you buy one?

It's not really about making any money, But if I pay to have all the tapes duplicated, booklets and boxes printed I'd like to get my money back.

pelrun

Quote from: Vince on 05:24, 21 June 20
If you had just the tv like the rest of us, maybe it would have forced the developers to use more colour, I don't know.
It's more down to the differences in how the CPC and Speccy handle colour.
The Speccy is much like the C64 in that it has attribute colour - one screen can contain all the colours the machine is capable of, but you're limited to a single fg and bg colour in each attribute cell. The CPC however has no attribute modes, only direct indexed colour. Each pixel can be any colour in the palette, but the total number of colours is restricted and traded off against resolution. No colour clash, but the mode that matches the Speccy's square pixels only has 4 colours available, without using raster tricks that no speccy port will bother with.
So a speccy port ends up being the worst of both worlds - monochrome sprites, and only four colours on the screen, one of which is the background.
It's pretty stark the differences between a speccy port and a native CPC game of similar ilk (for instance Technician Ted against Roland In Time.)


Vince

#2
Quote from: pelrun on 08:11, 21 June 20
It's more down to the differences in how the CPC and Speccy handle colour.
The Speccy is much like the C64 in that it has attribute colour - one screen can contain all the colours the machine is capable of, but you're limited to a single fg and bg colour in each attribute cell. The CPC however has no attribute modes, only direct indexed colour. Each pixel can be any colour in the palette, but the total number of colours is restricted and traded off against resolution. No colour clash, but the mode that matches the Speccy's square pixels only has 4 colours available, without using raster tricks that no speccy port will bother with.
So a speccy port ends up being the worst of both worlds - monochrome sprites, and only four colours on the screen, one of which is the background.



Hi Pelrun mate! Thanks for your reply.


Yes, I know.


I think I meant that, had most of the developers not looked on the CPC as an afterthought and a lesser machine, and took into account the true capability, not least the nifty speed of the CPU, they might have done a much better job. I've seen some great use of colour, like in Prince of Persia.


Quote
It's pretty stark the differences between a speccy port and a native CPC game of similar ilk (for instance Technician Ted against Roland In Time.)
Has anyone 'invented' any undocumented graphic modes?


Can I split the screen and use 4 + 4 colours ?


I'm more than happy to 'dive deep' into the nuts and bolts to produce the best results.

Axelay

Quote from: Vince on 10:20, 21 June 20
Has anyone 'invented' any undocumented graphic modes?


Can I split the screen and use 4 + 4 colours ?


I'm more than happy to 'dive deep' into the nuts and bolts to produce the best results.


Not sure if invented graphic modes are possible on the CPC in the way they have been on the C64, but people have done various split raster tricks in mode 1 to make it looks more colourful, sometimes in a particular way referred to as 'mode 5'.  The game Imperial Mahjong used alternating lines in-game of mode 0 and mode 1 to give the impression of 16 colours at mode 1 resolution, which they called 'EGX'.


As for 4+4 colours, it depends on where you want the 4 colours.  If 4 mode 1 colours in horizontal bands, that's not too hard to achieve.  4 different colours on an arbitrary or character by character basis, no.  Using split rasters you could change one colour every 4 characters though.

Vince

Quote from: Axelay on 12:46, 21 June 20

Not sure if invented graphic modes are possible on the CPC in the way they have been on the C64, but people have done various split raster tricks in mode 1 to make it looks more colourful, sometimes in a particular way referred to as 'mode 5'.  The game Imperial Mahjong used alternating lines in-game of mode 0 and mode 1 to give the impression of 16 colours at mode 1 resolution, which they called 'EGX'.
Very nice!!!! Ok so there is some wiggle room.

Quote from: Axelay
As for 4+4 colours, it depends on where you want the 4 colours.  If 4 mode 1 colours in horizontal bands, that's not too hard to achieve.  4 different colours on an arbitrary or character by character basis, no.  Using split rasters you could change one colour every 4 characters though.
Thanks.


Ok, how about being able to split the screen down the middle horizontally, so you have effectively two mode 1 screens and can choose any 8 colours?

Sykobee (Briggsy)

Sadly no side-by-side splits with different palettes. Doing a precise raster to achieve that would be painful in a game.


But because you can resize the CPC screen, you may be able to put one play area above another with different palettes, and still give them, say 14 or 15 character rows of height each - of course that's not a lot for a game that needs vertical space.

Vince

#6
Quote from: Sykobee (Briggsy) on 10:24, 22 June 20
Sadly no side-by-side splits with different palettes. Doing a precise raster to achieve that would be painful in a game.


But because you can resize the CPC screen, you may be able to put one play area above another with different palettes, and still give them, say 14 or 15 character rows of height each - of course that's not a lot for a game that needs vertical space.
Ok thanks mate! I don't know if I should be calling you, Sykobee or Briggsy but thanks for this!


One thing for certain, I know I could use the punching power of a 4MHz processor to my advantage, and with a colour palette of what 27? colours to choose from, I could maybe select a decent 4 colours on say the Advanced Text Adventure.

Vince

#7
I might be able to use that technique you just mentioned if I had a normal size screen and an additional playfield below which was the input from the player section on a Text Adventure? That would only need a couple of lines.

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