Pinball Dreams, new game from Batman Group!!

[Rhino]

I haven't read through this whole thread, so I apologise if this has already been asked.

Isn't it supposed to run on a CPC plus?

I tried yesterday (at the annual local retro-gaming meeting), and all I got was a black screen.

It works on the plus. The only requirements are 128 kb and floppy drive.
Maybe it was a disk or drive issue? A 10 sectors per track special format designed by Arnoldemu is used, and maybe it is more sensitive to minor damages in disc that are not noticeable in standard format.

[arnoldemu]

@mr_lou : Please describe to me your plus configuration.

Are you running it from hxc or gotek or real drive?
3.5" or 3"?

I will try and discover why it's not working for you.

Thank you.

[||C|-|E||]

It works on the plus. The only requirements are 128 kb and floppy drive.
Maybe it was a disk or drive issue? A 10 sectors per track special format designed by Arnoldemu is used, and maybe it is more sensitive to minor damages in disc that are not noticeable in standard format.

I am writing just to confirm that it certainly works fine on the Plus

[Rhino]

XeNoMoRPH in amstrad.es forum had the same issue and he solved it by simply saving the disk again:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amstrad.es%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D19%26t%3D4525&edit-text=
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amstrad.es%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D19%26t%3D4525&edit-text=

Btw, the Oliver Twins verifying that it works on plus 

[MaV]

turek = turkey?
But I guess he is Polish according to the writtings ?

http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=turek

A polish guy with croatian or serbian ancestry, most probably.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

One of the thing I think may be the most triky : all the colour cyclings everywhere...
(it's a freaking flipper/pinball)

Indeed, but luckily the lights on the board (which seem to be set for the worst case scenario in the preview, they don't seem to be linked to the things that perma-light them up) flicker at around 0.5Hz, so that's 25 frames to update them (a few per frame).


It looks great though!

[mr_lou]

@mr_lou : Please describe to me your plus configuration.

Are you running it from hxc or gotek or real drive?
3.5" or 3"?

464 plus with 128k ram, HxC, Megaflash...
I suspect it's the Megaflash causing trouble, because of memory issues. I think I've experienced this before. My best guess is that the Megaflash uses up too much memory preventing certain games to run.

It'll be a while before I get a chance to check. I'm thinking about completely removing the Megaflash.

[MacDeath]

Btw, the Oliver Twins verifying that it works on plus

Always nice to see them around. They really are legends for us.

[ivarf]

Always nice to see them around. They really are legends for us.

Did they release anything on the CPC to deserve that status? In my opinion their best games were early games like Killipede which was Amstrad only. Dizzy? No..

[MacDeath]

GhostBuster 2 ?
Basically they released a lot of games and were the typical exemple of "from Bedroom to job in video games".

[Docent]

Here we have 8bitscene and Demoscene and Amigascene putting the projector on this.
CPC was unknown to Poland few years ago, until some Joker-themed-award-raping Demo showed those speccy-C64-Amigaists that CPC is more than just a bad Speccyclone but more like an upgraded AtariST clone with only 8bit CPU.

I can assure you that Batman demo did not enlighten us in Poland .  Cpc was known in Poland for ages - I got mine (464) in 1985 and I knew many people who owned them at that time. Cpcs were highly appraised by computer magazines in Poland for its bundled monitor, its high resolution and high quality basic. 6128 was also very popular as cheap cp/m machine - many companies used it before switching to pcs.  Of course, zx spectrum and Atari xl ruled in 8bits, followed by commodore (c64 and later  amigas). Cpc was a minority platform, so it did not have a chance to get locally developed games, but the cracking scene in Poland was pretty strong - most titles were cracked locally from tape or disk copies of originals. There were also some small tools or games developed,  I personally even did a small music disk for cpc with music ripped from various games

[MacDeath]

Ok so I was wrong... thx to rectify this then and teach us a piece of history.
 

[Singaja]

I can assure you that Batman demo did not enlighten us in Poland .  Cpc was known in Poland for ages - I got mine (464) in 1985 and I knew many people who owned them at that time. Cpcs were highly appraised by computer magazines in Poland for its bundled monitor, its high resolution and high quality basic. 6128 was also very popular as cheap cp/m machine - many companies used it before switching to pcs.  Of course, zx spectrum and Atari xl ruled in 8bits, followed by commodore (c64 and later  amigas). Cpc was a minority platform, so it did not have a chance to get locally developed games, but the cracking scene in Poland was pretty strong - most titles were cracked locally from tape or disk copies of originals. There were also some small tools or games developed,  I personally even did a small music disk for cpc with music ripped from various games

To backen this up I can also add that CPCs were provided to Polish political opposition "Solidarność" for editing texts in the 80s. Some people also grey imported them, but there was no official distribution due to COCOM cold war embargo. The Polish well known computer magazine of it's time called Bajtek (literally meaning tiny byte) did cover Games and program listing to be typed in for CPCs.

[Rhino]

464 plus with 128k ram, HxC, Megaflash...
I suspect it's the Megaflash causing trouble, because of memory issues. I think I've experienced this before. My best guess is that the Megaflash uses up too much memory preventing certain games to run.

It'll be a while before I get a chance to check. I'm thinking about completely removing the Megaflash.

The preview uses the page 0 of extra mem (#c1-#c7 values). Maybe some memory extension does not map the extra mem in that page?

[||C|-|E||]

Just in case it helps, I am running the game using an upgraded 464 Plus (basically now is a 6128 Plus with a few more things). The computer has a C4CPC and I also have connected a MX4 with a X-MEM, X-MASS, Albireo... everything works fine loading it from my HxC .

[arnoldemu]

@mr_lou :
Is it a ram expansion or is it modified by Bryce to 128KB?

[Puresox]

The good recognition this is bringing to the CPC is unbelievable . Seriously you guys have big respect for this work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIdAJuLidsc

You Tube link didn't work Mod so just put a link

[MacDeath]

seriously, how many videos are tehre now ? not that they do millions of views but still the number of youtube channels covering this preview is quite a first for our community.

Now you really have to finish this game and deliver what we all expect !!!
 



also is it me or is 2016 some sort of record breaking year concerning number of releases (whatever sort) ?


CPCpowers :
(may not be complete actually)

ten years ago, the number of "releases" averaged around 40 per years, be it full games, Demos or just a screen or sound-disks or applications....

2008 : 41 refs.
2009 : 41 refs
2010 : 50 refs
2011 : 52 refs
2012 : 65 refs
2013 : 72 refs
2014 : 78 refs
2015 : 103 refs

2016 : 91 refs
and still counting, I guess they still haven't entered the many games from this years Retrodev contest, and the many games that seem to be released right now is outstanding.

Post Edit :
now there are 131 entrie for 2016 at CPCpower, and still counting.
(Kukulcan implemented results from CPCretrodevs and all the recent releases/previews)
This marks a record as we are back to even more than the number of references from between 1995 and 1996, still less than 1995.

[mr_lou]

@mr_lou :
Is it a ram expansion or is it modified by Bryce to 128KB?

Internally mounted, all done by Bryce yes.
But I've had issues with certain games before, that worked after freeing some slots in the Megaflash.
So I'm gonna try that when I have some time again. As usual I'm way booked with too many projects right now.

[mr_lou]

The preview uses the page 0 of extra mem (#c1-#c7 values). Maybe some memory extension does not map the extra mem in that page?

Too technical for me. I have no clue. 

[Skunkfish]

Did they release anything on the CPC to deserve that status? In my opinion their best games were early games like Killipede which was Amstrad only. Dizzy? No..

Sacrilege! I love Dizzy

I mean sure, not all of the Twins games are 10/10 material but they've probably sold more games on the CPC than any other programmers and they were just teenagers at the time! Their throughput used to be incredible, wasn't it them who shared a CPC and took it in turns to code whilst the other one slept?

[Dubliner]

Btw, the Oliver Twins verifying that it works on plus 

The Oliver Twins' faces when they were watching Batman Forever


They could not believe what they were seing 

[ASiC]

The Oliver Twins' faces when they were watching Batman Forever

They could not believe what they were seing 

I'd love an (mini) interview of the Twins commenting of the stuff the CPC is capable of and why we didn't see even a fraction of it during its lifecycle.

[Dubliner]

I'd love an (mini) interview of the Twins commenting of the stuff the CPC is capable of and why we didn't see even a fraction of it during its lifecycle.

We had an informal chat with them about this kind of topics. They told us that they were more focussed on actually doing games that they were fun of playing and that it didn´t take too long to develop.

But they had in mind the demoescene when hiring workers for their studio after the Codemasters years.

[||C|-|E||]

The tools were not so good back in those days and many people was coding and compiling in the Amstrad itself; the knowledge of the machine was not perfect either, there were tight deadlines, the games had to be released for many systems at the same time... I reckon that all this made a huge difference.

For example, in the particular case of our little adventure it would have been impossible to produce the game if I was not compiling it in Winape and writing the source code in the PC. The source is more than 350KB... imagine to write that in the Amstrad using a CP/M Plus text editor and without the mouse, it would not even fit in the RAM before compression . Then, compilation itself would take ages and this would make testing a bloody nightmare. Creating the graphics would have been crazy too. There were geniuses, of course, La Abadia del Crimen was entirely developed using a couple of 6128, but Paco Menéndez was a truly awesome programmer.