What is this goddamn game...

[romppainen]

...in this
YouTube clip starting from 05:40? I've tried to rummage thru shmup screenshots @ cpc-power but it just doesn't catch my eye, or maybe I'm already just too cross-eyed to spot it during these late hours.

[MacDeath]

yeah me too, wtf ?


is this a "256x256" screen ?

[romppainen]

Ha, found it by accident, it's 3rd level of Robozone: No wonder I couldn't find it among shmups as this one is under completely different category.

[Gryzor]

Don't remember ever playing it... looks impressive!

[MacDeath]

Sure looks impressive, with slightly better use of colours (less flashy, more somber and sober background) it would really be even more impressive...

We rarely get such big thing on screen on CPC.
Would love a PLUS mod.

[dcdrac]

I recall having this game and loving it

[MacDeath]

Ok, I winApe "find sausages" option.

Backgrounds (tiles) for the last level (the shooter one)/

=Tiles are in 4 bytes x "12/24/not sure" pixels obviously.

Sprites are variable sizes :

=8 bytes large mostly
=A few in 7 or 6 bytes larges as well (some explosions or enemies), some projectiles are 1 byte I guess
=one big walker in 28 bytes large... ?

Sprites are in 15 colours + transparency ink I think.

I know what is wrong with those graphics : Black is the colour used for transparency.
As a result the sprites are a bit too much coloured and lack proper "ink" efect or shadowy feeling.

They fail to be separated from the background by clear black line.

This game could gain in graphic provided the colours are betterly used and chosen.

sometimes more is not good with CPC, it is not like C64 where you can fill large hues gradiants with grey and brown + 2 different colours and get away with it.

As the graphics look like being in true Mode0 with no compression, this game could actually be easy to patch graphically.

No real need to redo very differently every thing, just get it more lavished and refined ink choices..

Still the picture I posted shows they quite put some efforts on proper ditherings... no horizontal lines from Auto-port from 16bit...
Still the CPC palette is not plentifull enough for such number on hues per gradients.

on Plus though, I bet geting the Atari ST palette could do miracles... haven't find decent pictures from ST. Amiga perhaps... but the graphics seem a lot different on the 16bit versions.