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Patching existing games

Started by arnoldemu, 15:41, 03 November 09

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ukmarkh

No offence taken... I was just foolin around.

Outrun on the Speccy and C64 both included in-game music and music included on a tape, so not sure about that.

MacDeath

#76
I was never a big car-race games fan.

I think this is not the best an 8 bit computer can offer.

Of course it also because there is not a lot of blowing and shooting peoples involved.

Yet I must admit I was a fond player of Lotus turbo Esprit challenge and Wec le Man.
(Mode1 car race games)

Lotus had a far too little screen which spoil it, but Wec le Mans was great yet.

Also Crazy car, buggy boy and Crazy cars 2 were not that bad graphically.


It seems that no modern CPC game is a car game.
Why ?

It must be hard to make properly.

Bunrin rubber mods would be great.

ukmarkh

Apparently, the Burnin rubber engine is the same one used for Chase HQ 2 on the GX4000???

redbox

Quote from: MacDeath on 09:51, 20 January 10
I was never a big car-race games fan.

Me neither, and I always thought Burnin Rubber was an odd choice to bundle with the Plus range (but it looked pretty so maybe that's why?).

You forgot about
Continental Circus - that was fast and good fun.

ukmarkh

Can sombody please turn on the main title music in Afterburner on the CPC, so that it plays in the main game? This would be excellent and the music is already there... it also plays on the end screen and hi score table.


retrofreak90

#80
Quote from: mr_lou on 17:22, 19 January 10
I do change gears. It just seems like it's an impossible mission to reach each goal in time.
I would think I should be able to reach the goal (and get more time) since I don't crash, but no.
And that's what I don't understand.
Well, you may not be crashing but you're clearly driving far too cautiously (slowly). Arcade Outrun rewards (nay, DEMANDS) brave and skillful driving.

You could always hit the TAB button once the game's loaded and change the dip switch settings to easy. On easy I finish the game regularly. On normal I've completed it a couple of times and usually reach the third or fourth stage.

As to the controls, I use a 360 pad - which has analogue sticks - and have no control issues whatsoever.

Deeko

I don't know the technical difficulty, or even if it's patching, but I always wanted an english translation to Iron Lord.

I would drool over the AA screenshots and was disappointed when an english version didn't appear. If memory is correct I think Turbosoft in the UK was looking at doing/selling an english version.

ukmarkh

Me and my wife have played Iron Lord through till the end... fantastic game. My wife speaks French, and although we both really enjoyed the game, it was equally frustrating. The upshot of all this was that we fully wrote down the French sentences, and my wife converted them into English for me.  8)

MacDeath

#83
Iron Lord.

I didn't played at it but readed tests in magazines.

Another great greatness from UbiSoft.


Funny :
Britons made lame Speccy ports.
UbiSoft made Atari ST ports/cross dev.


Many Ubi soft games despite being Mode 1 are in fact Atari ST games put from 16 colours to 4 but with the same graphics.


Just like the CGA-EGA games on PC.

Atari ST was very popular in France.
As it was quite close to Amstrad CPC in many ways so coders/programmers would prefer it most of time.

Amiga was for gamers only, Atari was a serious bizness...sort of.

Other exemples of Mode1 Atari ST games on CPC :

Back to golden Age.
Night Hunter (great game on Atari ST...)
Skate Ball
Twinworld.

Also many games did feature a 16 bit flavour or sweet mode0 :
Pick n' Pile (would be great with a mouse)
Inertie
Gabrielle (sort of Antiriad, with more boobs...)
Defender of the crown (from cinemaware game)
B.A.T
Conspiration de l'an III
Asphalt

And a lot of Adventure or RPG games in Mode1 too.
a rarity on Amstrad.

Zombi (first game from Ubisoft, was later ported on other machines but the first was on CPC)
Hurlement (zombi 2)
Fer & flammes (Iron and flames)
l'Anneau de Zengara (Fer & flammes 2)
L'ile
La chose de Grotembourg
Le Maitre des Ames
Le maitre absolu (maitre des ames 2)

And many others.

The problem : all those RPG/adventure were text heavy and were probably not translated.


Just check the CPCpower site, chose from editor : Ubisoft list...
And get a look at all those pictures.

http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=staff&lenom=UBI%20Soft

So many of their games were so grim dark gritty and violent looking.

On the other Hand, Infogrames (now Atari...lol) was well known for the lot of games adapted from French/belgium comics.
None of them being speccy ported too (well, perhaps ?)

http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=staff&lenom=Infogrames


Perhaps I should do a special page on french games in the wiki...

Gryzor

A "French connection" article would be great!

Aside from that, Iron Lord looks fantastic, but although I speak French I never played it to any serious extend... But the point of MacDeath about those 'ports' is very interesting - and thanks for the titles, they will make up for a chunk of my weekend!

PS Mate, sorry about yesterday, I only saw your IM msg this morning; my home PC is always on and connected...
PS2 Speaking of RPGs, reading the latest Retro Gamer made me remember Heroes of the Lance. I never got anywhere with this title (I hadn't acquired the proper RPG background when it came out), but damn it looked impressive...

redbox

Quote from: MacDeath on 01:36, 28 January 10
Many Ubi soft games despite being Mode 1 are in fact Atari ST games put from 16 colours to 4 but with the same graphics.
Atari ST was very popular in France.
As it was quite close to Amstrad CPC in many ways so coders/programmers would prefer it most of time.

If the Plus had been more popular then this would have been very interesting because instead of using MODE 1 they could have used MODE 0 and the extended colour set and ported Atari ST games that way...

I have been experimenting a little myself with converting Atari ST graphics to the Plus and it works very well usually.

Gryzor

Indeed. I remember reading somewhere, a few years back, that in many occasions, colors matter more than resolution. It was a revelation, reading that...

MacDeath

#87
This is completely true.

Many colours allow antialiasing which soften the borders so the low resolution is not that important.


A PLUS picture (photo) put in Mode0 with 16 shades of grey looks quite reel indeed.


This explain the popularity of PC as a gaming machine when the VGA became standard.

The MCGA mode was 320x200 x256colours (no attributes of course).
The 320x200 was a mean to use less Video Ram, and to get partial graphical compatibility with CGA and or EGA graphics.

the advantage of Plus is the 4096 palette.
On the old, you have a limited choice of colours to make Antialiasings so it wasn't well used.

On a Plus you may always find a proper colours to antialase so use it.

And the Extra colours from Hard Sprites may help too.


Having you modern pc in 5433330x56987421 resolution is useless indeed.


I wish the CPC could get a more flexible pixels coding...
A 32Ko mode with double bits would have been awesome on Plus.

Enabling a Mode0 with 256 colours...if only the ink management would allow this too.
Or simply the good old 320x200x16 colours as on Atari ST...sweet enough.


Look at Jim Powers game.
A typical Atari ST port on Amstrad CPC.

The advantage in porting from ST :
--compatibility in resolutions : any 320x200x16 may be turned into 320x200x4 with a simple graphic application. This would have been done nicely with a EGA PC too...as most 320x200x16 graphics (EGA in extended CGA mode in fact) could easily turned into CGA (mode 1 on CPC...actually, yet often with more limitations in inks/palette)
--GUI : Atari ST was great in GUI, really.
--Sound compatibility : totally.
--Compression capability : "powerfull" 16bit machine allowed this as faster an a lot of Ram.
--Even puting in mode 0 wasn't such a big deal, more retouch yet, but you could do it while doing the ST graphics.

On the other Hand a speccy port offer petty advantages.
--You work on 8 bit machines : no GUI, no Hard Disc drive, and so on...
--You can't properly enhance graphics to CPC standard in fact.
--Your ZX Speccy code can't go well on a CPC with heavier Video so you can't really optimise it.
--as many Speccy technics to get rid of Colour clashes such as unmasked sprites, lack of backgrounds, or 1 color games...are simply disgusting when put on a CPC...this does not even make the game faster, just shittier.

The more proper way would have be to indeed port CPC games to speccy IMO.

Seriously, how can someone pretend to be a speccy graphist ? :o


But to be fair, there weren't that many speccy ports.

Many of them were more Crossdev in fact.

The problem comes from the fact that most of the awfull ones were actually Arcade games, or simply great hits of their time (Milestones in gaming).

Enduro Racer, R-Type, Black Tiger, Strider, PacMania, Midnight resistance, Shadow of the beast, Saboteur, the last ninja 2, pit fighter, street fighter, Double Dragon 3.
Most of those were actually great games in original version.

Also lots of Movie Franchises too :
Indiana Jones 3, Big trouble in little china, Star wars, Red Heat...

And so on.
Those were games that count !

mr_lou

How about patching Wonderboy to make it scroll smoother, and go faster.

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