Pinball Dreams, new game from Batman Group!!

[LambdaMikel]

And you cannot just autoload a DSK file?

[SyX]

First, this thread should be a celebration of this amazing game by Batman Group

Syx point me to the Amstrad Basic itself, because it uses the hardware scroll capabilities when displacing the screen while listing a program.


But as I said before, the math is there. The CPC cannot do a scroll like Pinball Dreams without hardware assistance, and that is not witchcraft, it’s hardware scrolling.

... but, it is impossible not jump to this discussion about what is or not an hardware scroll. I made an small article about this matter in my blog, for trying not pollute more this thread


In conclusion, Pinball Dreams for CPC is a masterpiece in every way.

The absolutely best 8 bit pinball game... if only PD was not an original Amiga game, i would say that is the best 16 bits pinball game too, hehehe.

For me, this is one of the best CPC games ever, making PD the state of the art of CPC gaming, every new CPC game should be compared to it.

And the best of it, it's that the only way of enjoying this game is over the real machine attached to a CRT monitor. You don't know how great is this game after you have seen how smooth and fast is everything over the real machine.

I have nothing more to say, this game speaks higher

[sigh]

An excellent product.

Thank you.

[Skunkfish]

I'm still loving Pinball Dreams but I'm greedy and always want more. Would Pinball Fantasies be out of the question in the future? I know the tables are taller so perhaps memory might be an issue and there are additional flippers further up the tables at different angles which I guess may cause some difficulties....
Still, is it technically feasible?

[mr_lou]

I'm still loving Pinball Dreams but I'm greedy and always want more.

You gotta give some to get some. 
How about a 3rd issue of that fanzine? 

[TMR]

There is nothing to be sorry about, debates are good and I think the knowledge you bring about the C64 is very interesting.

Ta for that, I feel a lot better. =-)

As far as the "is it hardware scrolling" question goes, I found a Motorola data sheet for the MC6845 and it refers to one of the chip's features being "hardware scroll (paging by line or by character)" on the first page. That's reiterated later on under the heading "hardware scrolling" where it talks about using R12/R13 to change the screen's start address.

So if Motorola are calling it "hardware scrolling"...

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Yeah, but it's coarse hardware scrolling, by character. Fine hardware scrolling of course would not be handled by the 6845, because ultimately it's just an address generator and video timing circuit.


A fine intra-character horizontal scroll/delay (+ additional border-blanking support) would have had to be implemented in the video gate array. Which would have required a more capable gate array, which means more cost, and we know what Mr Sugar's opinion on costs were. We only got 27 colours because of a reliable tri-state output, the rumoured original planned 64 colours (presumably via external resistor ladder) wasn't possible due to pin count.


Many 8-bit smooth hardware scrolls are a combination of coarse and fine scrolling.


Might be a nice project for someone to take the existing GAL logic for CPC video output and copy it to a more capable PAL and add fine scrolling. Academic, of course, but could be fun.

[ivarf]

A fine intra-character horizontal scroll/delay (+ additional border-blanking support) would have had to be implemented in the video gate array. Which would have required a more capable gate array, which means more cost, and we know what Mr Sugar's opinion on costs were.

I rather think it has to with time and the intended use of the machine. It's not like Amstrad expected to sell millions of these machines.

Many 8-bit smooth hardware scrolls are a combination of coarse and fine scrolling.

Consoles maybe, but computers? The Amstrad plus computerrs have both. Any more 8 bit computers?

[TMR]

Yeah, but it's coarse hardware scrolling, by character.

That's the thing, just using the term "hardware scrolling" doesn't specify if it's coarse, fine or a combination of the two so it can be either or both.

Consoles maybe, but computers? The Amstrad plus computerrs have both. Any more 8 bit computers?

After the Plus series I can only think of two more; the Commodore 128's 80 column VDC display (all documented from the C128 PRG) and the Atari 8-bits, although Atari didn't release any official documentation for a couple of years so there's a Devil's advocaat question mark over if self modifying of a display list's LMS commands counts as a deliberate feature in the same way that vertical smooth scrolling on the CPC is up for debate.

[robcfg]

MSX, and Enterprise maybe?

[TMR]

MSX, and Enterprise maybe?

Not on the original models of MSX no, it doesn't have hardware-powered fine scrolling - a lot of games famously move their scrolling backgrounds a tile at a time - and coarse scrolling is being done by the Z80 too. From what I've read just now, the MSX gained fine vertical scrolling and what looks like coarse scrolling with the MSX2 and it gets the full set with the addition of fine horizontal hardware scrolling in 1988 with the MSX2+ in 1988 so that model and the later Turbo R which has the same video hardware are both a yes.

No idea either way about the Enterprise even after a little digging...?

[TotO]

The Enterprise use a CRTC like on CPC for adressing and a custom chip to display data with modes close to the CPC and Speccy.
It handle a 256 colours palette, but only 8 can be set by the user for "160x200" screen modes, the 8 others have to be chose from an existing set.

Watch the R-Type port in example


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1VjO7mUV_s

[Gryzor]

That last bit is a bit... weird?

[Widukind]

Excellent work – congratulations to Rhino and his Batman Group!
 
It's great to see such impressive software coming out for our CPCs, 35 years after we had bought one.


A word please to the hardware-scrolling matter: I'd say that when the hardware does the scrolling, it's called hardware-scrolling; and when your software does the scrolling by shifting bits, it's software-scrolling.
No matter what you have to do with the hardware, since programming hardware chips is always tricky.
Because a CPC's Z80 can't move the full-screen's bytes by software, when you see a (nearly) full-screen which is scrolling smoothly (50fps), it's hardware-scrolling.
 
After we studied Paul "Spindizzy" Shirley's amazing vertical pixel-wise hardware-scrolling in his game Mission Genocide, we programmed something similar for several parts of our megademo in 1989. Clearly we didn't shift any raster bytes by software but used the CPC's video-hardware to do the 50fps vertical scrolling: hence hardware-scrolling. And I suppose it's the same with Pinball-Dreams and similar games or demos. (In contrast to demos, in games the programmers usually need much more work in order to adjust the software-sprites to the hardware-offsets).

But this "software- or hardware-scrolling" controversial is just words. Actions matter more.

So back-on topic: Keep up the good work, Rhino. God bless, and all the best!

[XeNoMoRPH]

https://youtu.be/_wfruXEucUQ

Pinball Dreams Amiga-Falcon-SNES-CPC Opinion of an 11 year old girl

[VincentGR]

Oh the SNES...
Smaller area, has to scroll left-right and the lazy physics 
Atari needs a Falcon 
What happened there, they have obsession pinball on the STE.
The blitter routine was a nightmare from what I have red.


Well it is clear now that a Z80 can do the physics just fine 

[Rhino]

Hello


Is it planned to release a cartridge version ?


That's mainly because I no longer use the floppy on my 6128+ (in fact, it's not even working), but the famous C4CPC.


And also because I would like to test it on my Raspberry pi 6128+ emulator....


Anyway, great work, it's awesome !

Thanks!
Cartridge versions aren't in our plans right now, sorry.

[Rhino]

I'm still loving Pinball Dreams but I'm greedy and always want more. Would Pinball Fantasies be out of the question in the future? I know the tables are taller so perhaps memory might be an issue and there are additional flippers further up the tables at different angles which I guess may cause some difficulties....
Still, is it technically feasible?

I believe Pinball Fantasies would be a good candidate to do it on cartridge so as to be able to include largest boards and the scoreboard animations.

[norecess]

Pinball Fantasies ... able to include largest boards

@Rhino By "largest boards", do you have in mind "wider boards" to achieve plain full-screen (cf. R1=48) ? Such improvement would push the envelope even further !

[robcfg]

Still only around 20% of total CPC Power, so plenty of envelope to push... 

[ivarf]

Quality capture from a real Amstrad CRT screen running Pinball Dreams.
It looks lovely, way better than on an emulator. This really is Atari ST quality on the humble Amstrad CPC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCA6psxb-7U&t

Chinnyvision review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOUXfN8_hJ4

Americans try Pinball Dreams (and the Roland games)

https://youtu.be/m9GX0GjU2co?t=1467


11 year old review and comparison of versions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wfruXEucUQ

Amstrad and Amiga version running side by side

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faDRc7R7a10

Pinball Dreams live stream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi9gTXk38Ic

Green screen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moAFiRBUeu4

Download the game:
https://t.co/nAQuShB8A1

[Rhino]

@Rhino By "largest boards", do you have in mind "wider boards" to achieve plain full-screen (cf. R1=48) ? Such improvement would push the envelope even further !

Well, I think it could be 384 pixels wide using almost all the first 64kb for video, but you'd see a very small portion of the table compared to the total and that's not good for gameplay, I think 320 pixels wide as the Amiga original would be more suitable.

[norecess]

@Rhino Yes, I had in mind the exact width of the Amiga. I always tend to forget that the Amiga does not require "overscan" technique (like the Amstrad CPC) since the image displayed by the 1084S monitor can be physically stretched.
So yes, R1=40 (vs. R1=32 like current version of PD) would be great, to remain close to the original.
But honestly, .. even if I have no doubts you can do it -- I believe you are better now to focus on Vespertino and other promising things you hide to us

[40Crisis]

Here are cdt tape files to write pinball dreams for tape to disk.
Strange idea, isn't it ?    I don't know if it can be useful to somebody but it worked for me on a CPC 6128
tape interface connected to the PC sound card with Wintzx.
I used Pelrun's tool dsk2cdt2disc to generate tape from dsk.
I modified it to had support for 10 sectors by track.
It comes in two flavours depending if you are
using a tape with motor stop control or not.

Be careful, it doesn't warn you before writing to disk.
So insert blank disk before loading tape.

Pinball dreams is an amazing piece of CPC software with perfect gameplay
Congratulations to Batman group.

[siccoyote]

Looks great didn't notice this had finally come out, just wish there was a Cart version for the 64k machines.