News:

Printed Amstrad Addict magazine announced, check it out here!

Main Menu

ZX Spectrum ports

Started by equinox, 03:54, 28 January 23

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Carnivius

#25
Quote from: andycadley on 14:58, 31 January 23Ah yes, the lesser spoken of type of port to the CPC. Where the graphics are lifted straight from the C64 (with similar 3 colour restrictions intact) and the code from the Spectrum.

Yeah, reminds me that Barbarian always bothered me with the clearly C64 sprites when the CPC could do sprites with far more colour, depth and definition. But it was mentioned to me that keeping them 3 colour helped keep the memory usage lower which is important in a game with a lot of frames of animation such as a fighting game.  If you compare the backgrounds though, the CPC versions often have some differences with more colour and detail making the C64 versions look unfinished in comparison in some areas.

Favorite CPC games: Count Duckula 3, Oh Mummy Returns, RoboCop Resurrection, Tankbusters Afterlife

Shaun M. Neary

Quote from: andycadley on 14:58, 31 January 23Ah yes, the lesser spoken of type of port to the CPC. Where the graphics are lifted straight from the C64 (with similar 3 colour restrictions intact) and the code from the Spectrum. Generally I think these work a bit better, or at least have the potential to, but can still be shockingly bad if done lazily (see Wonderboy).

And there are games like Batman The Movie, RoboCop and Chase HQ which almost certainly share at least some core code with the Speccy but have all the graphics redone for Mode 0. And it's not like anyone would call those out as bad, it's sometimes just a question of how much time has been put into polishing the final product.
Rick Dangerous is a very good example of a Speccy port done right. The code is exactly the same. I have finished both CPC and Spectrum versions using the EXACT same techniques!
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

Gryzor

Wonder Boy? TIL...

Rick Dangerous? I just can't believe that. 

Shaun M. Neary

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:43, 01 February 23Wonder Boy? TIL...

Rick Dangerous? I just can't believe that.
Play Rick Dangerous on the 128k Speccy and then play the CPC version. They are the non identical twins of 8bit gaming.

CPC just has nicer sprites, but the code is definitely lifted from the Speccy. I think there are a couple of non interfering bugs in the game which are also in both versions.

For what it's worth, it's only when I got into Spectrum gaming in 2017 that I noticed.
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

Gryzor

Well they could be down to the engine mechanics, the maps, does it have to be the same code? 

Carnivius

CPC-Power has both Rick Dangerous games tagged as 'Speccy Port' in the keywords.  I dunno how reliable that info is but I dunno, after replaying both again I can believe it.  It's extremely well made on both formats, playing and feeling very similar but with graphics taking advantage of each machine's unique capabilities.
Favorite CPC games: Count Duckula 3, Oh Mummy Returns, RoboCop Resurrection, Tankbusters Afterlife

andycadley

There's really no reason a well written game can't share large chunks of the game logic code between machines and just use platform specific logic for the graphics etc. Sure if you're really hitting the limits of the hardware then that probably won't work, but for something like Rick Dangerous, it shouldn't really be an issue.

The difference really is about taking the time to change the key parts and to optimize code again if it turns out to need it, rather than just slapping together the quickest possible solution.

Shaun M. Neary

#32
Quote from: Gryzor on 17:18, 01 February 23Well they could be down to the engine mechanics, the maps, does it have to be the same code?
The bugs being in the exact same places kinda give the game away...

For example, the Egypt stage (level 2), there is a bug where the enemies don't climb the ladder on the opposite side in the centre and are blocked and don't follow you up to the top and you often have to jump off the platform and force them to climb again. This happens on both the Spectrum and on the CPC. The C64 version does not do this (from memory anyway).
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

rexbeng

#33
A looking at the screen pretty much gives away whether a game is a straight Spectrum port or not. Wonderboy may share assets with other versions (graphics from the C64 version and portions of code from the Speccy) but it's not the lazy port. It uses the full length of the CPC screen and the 'flickerish bug' to the right gives away that it's using hardware scrolling. Also the limited number of colours (3 for the sprites and another 3 for the background) suggest it probably uses the same method as Ghost and Goblins, Mission Genocide and Relentless. So, some work to specifically take advantage of the CPC's capabilities has been done. Perhaps it's not as good as it 'could have been if done from the ground-up TODAY', but a straight port it's not.

To contradict this example, take a look at Shovel Adventure, which won the CPC Retrodev last year. Well, that one is a Speccy port with the graphics redone in mode 0, so pound for pound it may even have less CPC specific work done than Wonderboy. Ofcourse that's an assumption based on what I see. A coder may give better insight.

andycadley

3 background and 3 foreground colours might mean it is using colour plane techniques (it certainly could) or it could just be because that's effectively a limit of the C64 where the graphics were ported from (not strictly but scrolling the C64 colour RAM is trickier so some games cheap out and stick to three colours for the whole background).

It's the same way that a mono Spectrum game could ditch masking and use colour planes to get the same effect with less processing power, but it requires preprocessing the graphics data and so lazy ports just do it the spectrum way and take the speed hit.

Anthony Flack

I have to give credit to Core, all the 8 bit versions of Rick Dangerous 1&2 look really good. 

Shaun M. Neary

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 10:06, 02 February 23I have to give credit to Core, all the 8 bit versions of Rick Dangerous 1&2 look really good.
Core have produced some great looking and playing games.

I enjoyed Impossamole, it got a bit of flack but it's pretty much a Rick Dangerous game with a different main sprite and harder levels.

Dynamite Dux was also very nice as well but on tape it was a bit of a multiload nightmare.
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

Anthony Flack

They certainly did.

Monty Python's Flying Circus was pretty good too, and probably a Spectrum port as well.

Too bad we never got a CPC port of Chuck Rock. Or Tomb Raider. 

rexbeng

Quote from: andycadley on 09:32, 02 February 233 background and 3 foreground colours might mean it is using colour plane techniques (it certainly could) or it could just be because that's effectively a limit of the C64 where the graphics were ported from.
Sure, so you or anyone else are welcome to take a look at the code and shed some light. I dont have the knowledge to do that myself.

andycadley

Quote from: rexbeng on 13:06, 02 February 23
Quote from: andycadley on 09:32, 02 February 233 background and 3 foreground colours might mean it is using colour plane techniques (it certainly could) or it could just be because that's effectively a limit of the C64 where the graphics were ported from.
Sure, so you or anyone else are welcome to take a look at the code and shed some light. I dont have the knowledge to do that myself.
You can usually tell by looking at how the palette colours are set up. The trick behind colour planes is repeating the same colours in different PENs (based on the bit pattern of the PEN number) so if a game is using that technique you can usually see a lot of repetition in the colour palette.

andycadley

So I had a nose about, Wonderboy is indeed using hardware scrolling but then software scrolling the status panel in the opposite direction to keep it static.

Sprites are using a colour plane technique. I was thrown at first by the odd ordering of the palette as it uses colours 2, 8 and 10 for the background (rather than a more usual 1,2 and 3) but it still functionality the same. I'd imagine the sprites are just XORd onto the screen as I don't think they ever overlap.

But it was certainly an attempt to use the hardware better, even if the end result is a bit clunky.

Anthony Flack

Wonder Boy certainly looks like it uses the bitplane technique. It has large sprites and they cut off square when they overlap. Also on the water stages the sprites go behind the background, which is easy to do with bitplanes.

Besides, the limited colours look horrible, and if they weren't using bitplanes you'd have to wonder why not.

equinox

#42
Quote from: Carnivius on 28/01/2023, 10:07:05

> Robin Hood - Legend Quest being one of the worst offenders, because usually as bad as Speccy ports got, the saving grace was often "oh well, at least it doesn't have colour clash" thinking that be thankfully an almost-impossible thing to see on the CPC and yet a game as late as 1993 showed me that indeed it was possible on the CPC and that's NOT a good thing.  At that time the CPC should have been showing off all it's tricks to compete as best it could with the 16-bits, not regress into being even more Spectrum-like.


Clearly they learned nothing from the GX4000!

(P.S. I had to copy-paste this message and mess with it, since the "quick reply" feature really seems to screw up badly in Google Chrome.)
(P.P.S. Greetings to andycadley. Drop me £50 on PayPal and I won't tell these people that you used to be one of the most active posters on comp.sys.sinclair on Usenet.)
(P.P.P.S. BSC, Rapture misses you on Nectarine. heh-heh)

equinox

I see this thread really has legs :D  Thanks for the very interesting replies.

Actually, the reason I asked is that I was listening to some demoscene "novelty songs" by Kangaroo MusiQue*, who likes to sing about the CPC; and I thought he should do a song about Speccy ports; and he said, well I never played that many of them, so what are the characteristics?


* If the CPC wiki is to be believed, this guy may not be the absolute most popular in your scene. Heh. Anyway I enjoy his songs a lot.

equinox

Quote from: zeropolis79 on 18:48, 28 January 23Switchblade and Dizzy games are good examples of good artistic MODE 1 games.

I dunno, if I see an egg that's gone green around the edges, I would throw it away.

MaV

I'd argue that a green egg is probably most "alive" aside from it hatching a chicken. :P
Black Mesa Transit Announcement System:
"Work safe, work smart. Your future depends on it."

equinox

Quote from: zeropolis79 on 18:48, 28 January 23Last Ninja 2 and Super Hang-On were prime examples. I didn't mind the graphics but the coder directly ported the 48k Spectrum beeper music to the CPC and jeez, that was enough to induce headaches. Thank goodness for the volume control.

Actual trolling. I bet that programmer hated the CPC and resented doing the port. Still, nothing worse than beeper music on early PCs, where you can't beep fast enough to make interesting sounds (Tim Follin style) and everything sounds like a Casio wristwatch.

Feel bad for those BBC Micro owners whose sound came directly out of the keyboard with no volume control at all. My dad stuffed a bit of sponge in there.

equinox

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 10:06, 02 February 23I have to give credit to Core, all the 8 bit versions of Rick Dangerous 1&2 look really good.

I played a LOT LOT LOT of Rick Dangerous on the Spectrum. I just watched a video of the CPC version and wow, it really is identical (I recognise every little scrolling jerk, and the whole visceral "feel" of how everything moves), but the graphics are much more beautiful.

GUNHED

RD shows what the speccy can do. Great version too!  :) :) :)
http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

zeropolis79

Quote from: equinox on 23:06, 02 February 23
Quote from: zeropolis79 on 18:48, 28 January 23Last Ninja 2 and Super Hang-On were prime examples. I didn't mind the graphics but the coder directly ported the 48k Spectrum beeper music to the CPC and jeez, that was enough to induce headaches. Thank goodness for the volume control.

Actual trolling. I bet that programmer hated the CPC and resented doing the port. Still, nothing worse than beeper music on early PCs, where you can't beep fast enough to make interesting sounds (Tim Follin style) and everything sounds like a Casio wristwatch.

Feel bad for those BBC Micro owners whose sound came directly out of the keyboard with no volume control at all. My dad stuffed a bit of sponge in there.

Speccy beeper music can be good when done right. Tim Follin shows what you can do with it..

With the Beeb, when the software don't let you turn the music down or off, I sometimes open it up and disconnect the speaker.

Powered by SMFPacks Menu Editor Mod