Which games would you show a Spectrum person to show the Amstrad's power?

[BSC]

Ooh Tractor!

The last fieldplower.

[Gryzor]

Ooh Tractor!

The last fieldplower.

Hahaha damned autocorrect

[OneVision]

That's only one level, but the work we did with GurneyH and e-dredon on Wonderboy Remake is IMHO far better than what a Spectrum can do : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An2o7iDoptI&ab_channel=SabermanRetroNews

[Shaun M. Neary]

Ooh Tractor!

The last fieldplower.

He's my friend and a whole lot more...
(Stop lying to yourself, you're so singing that tune and you know it!)

[Bryce]

Which games would you show a Spectrum person to show the Amstrad's power?

Answer: None, their tears from crying at the thoughts of what they missed out on all these years could cause short circuits in the CPC and damage it.

Bryce.

[McArti0]

I once heard The Speccy fan say that ZX has a higher resolution and that it is better than 16 colors at 160x200.

[Shaun M. Neary]

I once heard The Speccy fan say that ZX has a higher resolution and that it is better than 16 colors at 160x200.

If World Of Spectrum forums have taught me anything, it's that Speccy fanboys are happy to poison themselves to death drinking their own kool-aid after failing to fall on their own swords...

... multiple times!

[MartinJSUK]

I've played a few of these on emulation, alongside the Spectrum version in a few cases, and a theme is building up. Graphics usually win on the CPC, likewise sound when compared to the 48k Spectrum (though I had a +2, so was used to the same music as the CPC on most later full-price games, and the odd snatch of speech as mentioned). Choppy scrolling (or push-scrolling instead of smooth) and small screen windows are frequent CPC issues though. Compare (e.g.) Rainbow Islands or Turrican to their Spectrum versions and both become more playable on the Spectrum as a result. CPC Gryzor's push-scroll takes some adjusting to, though I think it's a better game than the Spectrum one. Mundial de Futbol is another with screen size and scrolling issues, but it seems really good otherwise. Even most of the top rated homebrew games don't seem to use scrolling, so it's obviously a perceived weakness.

Very impressed technically with Bactron (especially that music) and After the War (though the small screen area and large sprites can be problematic).

On the more negative side, what possessed CPC Game Reviews to give Amstrad Rodland 9/10? It's not just the horrendous slowness, but also the botched game mechanics (the rod is too short, hitting enemies with an enemy on the rod doesn't stun them, the EXTRA letters cycle in the wrong order...).

[Anthony Flack]

Even most of the top rated homebrew games don't seem to use scrolling

Really? What top-rated homebrew are you looking at?

Off the top of my head, there are nice examples of smooth hardware scrolling in Super Edge Grinder, Relentless, Corsair, Red Sunset, Alcon 2020, Pinball Dreams, The Abduction of Oscar Z, Hyper Drive. And some pretty fast software scrolling in Sub Hunter, Scramble, Star Sabre, The Adventures Of Timothy Gunn and more.

Also plenty of games like Galactic Tomb, Invasion of the Zombie Monsters etc. where the software scrolling is a bit more obviously choppy but certainly not being avoided. I think homebrew coders enjoy the challenge. 

The CPC has an easier time with smooth vertical motion than horizontal, both with scrolling and with sprites. It's easier to move things sideways by whole bytes, which translates to either two or four pixels. So you will quite often see games where the horizontal motion is a little choppy. 

[RockRiver]

hummm thinking about classic ones : Fred ; Oh Mummy ; Prohibition ; Bactron ; SuperCauldron

And I would add to our little brothers that finally Spectrum were Amstrad machines  (I like 3" fdd computers: PCW, CPC , +3 )(nowadays mines have 3,5" fdd ha ha ha ha but returning some units to 3" )

And actually I am loving the new enhanced 8bit XXI century life : PCWcolor ; CPRclassic CPC ; CPC+/GX new releases ; ZX +3 soft from tape to disk ; spec256 ; MSX3 (msxVR) ; FPGAs ; ZX next ; habisoft's PCW16 ports ; Mega65   and I love their people: YOU!!

[MartinJSUK]

Other than Pinball Dreams I'd missed those examples, some of them are really impressive. Most look to be pretty well-designed games too. A lot of great music, especially Galactic Tomb - people probably overestimate the C64's advantage here. What a shame these games weren't made during the machine's heyday. 

The CPC can clearly do constant-speed scrolling, excellently in vertical and more than well enough horizontally. The software scroll, especially when it's multi-directional, is a bit more awkward - luckily Galactic Tomb and Zombie Monsters seem to have been designed around this, there aren't any points where you're encountering enemies or difficult jumps during the slightly clunky scrolling. With e.g. Turrican there are moments where the choppy scroll does put the player at a disadvantage.

What would people suggest as smooth-scrolling isometric 3D games? CPC Marble Madness has no scrolling, Spindizzy is designed around being flip-screen, and The Great Escape is much jumpier than on the Spectrum

it's almost as if, if compiling a Top 100 of Amstrad games, you'd come up with three lists:

• The brilliant Spectrum games that aren't too technically dependent or were converted well
• The conversions from arcade / C64 / 16-bit where some effort was made, and where the design wasn't too reliant on the things the CPC wasn't great on
• Technically stunning Amstrad exclusives where the gameplay has been well enough designed to show these qualities off

...And combine the three.

[Anthony Flack]

8-way scrolling in hardware is a tough one because you have to update two edges of the screen instead of one. That doesn't matter in software, but the CPC can't fill the screen as fast as the Spectrum, so software scrolls tend to use a smaller window, or else utilise tricks like Sub Hunter which is taking advantage of the repeating tiles to force registers through the stack to get the maximum fill rate, or Scramble which is only updating walls at the edges. (For another creative approach, check out Vector Vaults).

Hardware scroll can be to-the-pixel vertically, and it doesn't matter if it's continuous or not, and this used to be something of a secret having been used in only one game in the 80s (Mission Genocide) but is now well-known and used all the time. Scrolling in both directions is a bit harder than only one. Horizontal scrolling is easier if it is continuous because then you can use the double-buffer to shift every other frame by half a byte and make it twice as smooth. Scrolling two separate windows is possible if it's a horizontal split.

The 30 Year Megademo has a nice 4 way hardware scroll that you can control, in full overscan with a second scrolling window at the bottom. I just loaded it up to check and it uses a per-pixel scroll vertically and a push scroll horizontally and is probably about as good as it gets on the non-Plus hardware. Per-pixel horizontal scrolling has been demonstrated but at the cost of most CPU time.

The now sadly-discontinued remake of Wonderboy which exists as a short demo gives a pretty realistic impression of what can be achieved in an actual game I think. Not quite perfectly smooth motion but not terrible either; there are also sections on the hills with limited diagonal scrolling.

There is something to be said I think for avoiding scrolling and trying to hit 50fps with your sprites instead. Very few games manage to hit 50fps with scrolling; Relentless is one that does, Pinball Dreams is another. (OTOH I don't think any Spectrum games manage a 50hz scroll; Cobra doesn't really count! You could probably get there with something like Defender I suppose?)

In general, the Spectrum should be faster with software scrolls but the CPC can outperform it in certain circumstances where hardware tricks allow.

There are some other scrolling isometric games besides The Great Escape, Spectrum ports like Gunfright and H.A.T.E., not particularly good examples though and H.A.T.E. especially runs much too slow compared to the Spectrum. But no reason why you couldn't... check out the Isometrikum demo by Vanity.

[Anthony Flack]

Oh, I think Corsair manages 50fps too, with the restriction that sprites can't cross in front of the background. And the aforementioned Mission Genocide. 

The CPC can't really manage scrolling as well as tile-based hardware like the Sega Master System, but within certain limitations you can almost pretend like it can. 50fps with scrolling and sprites is quite tight though.

[Axelay]

Even most of the top rated homebrew games don't seem to use scrolling

And some pretty fast software scrolling in Sub Hunter, Scramble, Star Sabre, The Adventures Of Timothy Gunn and more.

Star Sabre uses hardware.

Hardware scroll can be to-the-pixel vertically, and it doesn't matter if it's continuous or not, and this used to be something of a secret having been used in only one game in the 80s (Mission Genocide)

There was also Warhawk, and later Axys, which was apparently a type-in.

[Anthony Flack]

Thanks, I did wonder if I had all of those 100% right.

[cwpab]

@MartinJSUK Have you tried 3D Grand Prix?

[MacDeath]

Barbarian, Arkanoid, DonkeyKong... any proper nonspeccyport, most modern homebrew games.

[jondavb1970]

I think in this day & age all the 8 bits from 40 years ago are being pushed to the limits with new programming techniques, Its brilliant but a stand out game for me on cpc would be the recent Booty remake, Great sprites, speed of characters on screen & an amazing musical tune.

[cwpab]

Second attempt...

MartinJSUK Have you tried 3D Grand Prix?

[MartinJSUK]

Sorry, yes. 3D Grand Prix is technically impressive for such an early game (not to mention for an Amsoft game). However, and it may be an emulation issue, I'm finding the controls really sticky - once you start running wide it seems impossible to slow down and steer, or even change gear down, until you're already on to the grass. And I've always hated that trait of some early racers where contact with another car sees you slow to a standstill and them continue unabated (especially when you're racing for position rather than against the clock). From the Amstrad racers I've tried my favourite is probably Super Cycle, its not as insultingly easy as the otherwise-superb C64 version, though its a shame you can't change the livery and leathers like you can on the C64 (probably a legacy of reusing the Spectrum code?). WEC Le Mans and Chase HQ are impressive, but the noticeable slowness compared to the Spectrum versions does cloy with me.