Not an April Fool's :)

[Gryzor]

[attachimg=1]

[arnoldemu]

2 tweets have ever been made by Clive it seems, so this is a joke!!!!

464 retweets
6128 favourites

13 mar 2014!!!!

nice.

[Gryzor]

Yeah, it is a joke. I made it. But it was -as you noticed- done on March 13th, so it makes it a not-Fool's-day


PS I actually twitted that...

[Bryce]

How about a tweet from Robert Yannes saying he preferred the sound of the AY? That would really ruffle some feathers.

Bryce.

[TotO]

How about a tweet from Robert Yannes saying he preferred the sound of the AY? That would really ruffle some feathers.

Why? It's not the case? 

[MaV]

You know, I'd have readily believed that joke, were it not for the fact that he doesn't like the internet and doesn't use computers.

Besides, he has another "distraction" these days ... well, ever since he married Angie Bowness in 2010:
http://www.sinclair.hu/tortenelem/orokoptimista/index.php
(No, I don't speak Hungarian, just scroll a bit down and klick on her pictures. )

[fano]

this woman is not interested in money , she is just interested because he's very very clever 

[Gryzor]

Ay caramba! Pays to be a genious (even a failed one)!!!


As for Yannes, sadly he's not on Twitter, so I can't have him say that...

[robcfg]

Well, I have to recognize, that Sir Clive has an exquisite taste for some things... 

[Gryzor]

Wonder if he takes her out in a C5 (sorry, had to be said)

[robcfg]

Maybe that was the design flaw that killed the C5... no room to bang anyone! 

[MaV]

You can bet on it that if he would design a C6 these days those issues would have been solved to her utmost satisfaction.

And I personally would bet that problems with overheating in that crammed space would return just as they haunted him in the Spectrum models.

[MacDeath]

I loled... a lot.

Damn you Gryzz... was too good to be true...

Well we all know it is true, sadly he never told this.

[Gryzor]

Well, it *is* true, he just didn't admit it like you said

[AMSDOS]

As much as I enjoy playing Nich's ported version of "zblast SD", Nich suggested that his version of the game couldn't reach the blistering speed of the Spectrum version (not that I've played it for myself). Though I'm a bit confused how this could be unless there's some advantages to the simplified graphics the Spectrum has perhaps. 

[arnoldemu]

As much as I enjoy playing Nich's ported version of "zblast SD", Nich suggested that his version of the game couldn't reach the blistering speed of the Spectrum version (not that I've played it for myself). Though I'm a bit confused how this could be unless there's some advantages to the simplified graphics the Spectrum has perhaps. 

it's simple, the original uses the attribute system to clear sprites from the display just by setting the colours to black for that area. That would be 1 write per 8x8. In comparison the cpc would need to actively clear this, and it would be 2x8 per 8x8, so a lot more.

That is why the spectrum version is faster

[TFM]

Right. A rewrite of the sprite management would be needed to speed up the CPC version. Not a problem though.

[ralferoo]

How about a tweet from Robert Yannes saying he preferred the sound of the AY? That would really ruffle some feathers.

8912 likes

[AMSDOS]

it's simple, the original uses the attribute system to clear sprites from the display just by setting the colours to black for that area. That would be 1 write per 8x8. In comparison the cpc would need to actively clear this, and it would be 2x8 per 8x8, so a lot more.

That is why the spectrum version is faster

Unfortunately I'm not quite following (making me look like an April Fool!  ), so I'm assuming the CPC needs to do 16 writes (8x2) in order to do what the Spectrum can do in 1 write? Can the CPC not do it in 1 write or if it can does that mean a compromise with the Gfx?

[Optimus]

it's simple, the original uses the attribute system to clear sprites from the display just by setting the colours to black for that area. That would be 1 write per 8x8. In comparison the cpc would need to actively clear this, and it would be 2x8 per 8x8, so a lot more.

That is why the spectrum version is faster

Wow, never thought about this. I mean, of course you can set that block to black color but when in the future you write a new sprite there and set the colors, the sprite would be blend with old garbage graphics. Unless if the sprite rendering is fully filling the tile area without xoring with the background, so totally erasing.


I like tricks that makes it possible to not have to clear up the screen. On a PC with VGA and 4 pages, one could do 1024 frames of dot effects, without having to erase, just plot pixel,color with color=current frame number, seting previous color number to black, and current to white, after 255 you switch to page two and start from 0 to 255 again, etc. I was thinking this trick on CPC for short animation of morphing dots, but at best you could do 16*4 pages = 64 frames, a bit too little, 1.2 second of animation. But yeah, with character attributes this changes to another level.

[Optimus]

Unfortunately I'm not quite following (making me look like an April Fool!  ), so I'm assuming the CPC needs to do 16 writes (8x2) in order to do what the Spectrum can do in 1 write? Can the CPC not do it in 1 write or if it can does that mean a compromise with the Gfx?

The Spectrum has character attributes, which is while you really have 1bit graphics, for each 8*8 pixel block there is another area in memory where you can set up foreground/background color for this small area. So, if a block has some old graphics you want to stop displaying, you just set both background and foreground color to black for example. But of course, the graphics in that block still exist, just invisible, tell they are replaced by a new sprite that also sets back the colors to something visible. Anyway, because this color information for an entire 8*8 block is stored in a single byte, it's sort of cheating trick to "erase" that block with just blacking it's palette with 1 byte write, instead of fully clearing the graphics which would be 8 bytes (it's 8 bytes on Speccy with 1bit graphics, but 16 bytes on CPC even with 4bit color on 8* .


Also, this is not to be confused with hardware character mode like C64. In that one, you write a byte that corresponds to a ASCII character (or also you can have your own graphics tiles masquarading as characters) and instantly the hardware gfx chip writes a 8*8 graphic tile. You also have 4 color palette (actually 3 + 1 common background color for all tiles) for each char, so you can do more. But Speccy has just the attribute colors, and CPC has no hardware trick that could ever manipulate something (color, gfx, everything) in a pixel block area (except if you count split raster tricks .