Games with scrolling that follows the player correctly?

[Optimus]

I am curious if there are some doing it properly and with smooth or not so smooth scrolling? We are talking about platforms or action where you move a character here, and only if the character goes closer to one side of the screen the screen scrolls. Not shoot em ups where the scrolling is stable.
If a game ever had hw scrolling on CPC and trying to do it, it was usually "freeze all action and scroll screen" (Ghost and Goblins) or somehow slow down movement/gameplay response, and scroll while you have some sort of control but reduced, or somehow doing it in a weird way (Prehistorik 2, Striker in the Crypts, etc).
Even Robocop 2 on the plus (although I am not talking plus here), horizontal scroll was perfect following, but at parts with vertical scroll your character controls freezed, Why? What was the technical difficulty?


And yet again, I discover Karateka on CPC. I never had on CPC, but played it on old XT. But I now see from videos that the scrolling is unique in that aspect, follows the player like a real game, and even has various speed, smooth pixel scrolling (but maybe it's not 50fps?) or faster scrolling when running and you can also go backwards and scroll both direction. Wow!!! That's the best thing I have seen on CPC in that aspect, and how have they done it? Well, I think the backgrounds are very monochromatic, so maybe it's even software scrolling where only very few parts of the background have to be drawn erased. There is even a mountain behind a transparent foreground, also small areas, wow. That's another way to do smooth scrolling, design your game in such minimal graphics that a lot of the areas remain the same during scrolling.


I was quite impressed by this version btw, because also the sprites are bigger and more colorful and good animation than other version, and even good machines like C64 and AtariST have very slow scrolling. Wow! Only NES has smoother scrolling but smaller characters with crappy gfx. So, a CPC game that technically is quite good and much better than even the better machines? Wow!


But anyway, back to the original question..

[TFM]

I am curious if there are some doing it properly and with smooth or not so smooth scrolling? We are talking about platforms or action where you move a character here, and only if the character goes closer to one side of the screen the screen scrolls...

Sounds like my Giana Sisters or Gerelakos. It's 50 fps.




Goto 1:40





Goto 0:50

[fgbrain]

Sly Spy Secret Agent has big sprites and smooth scrolling as well.

About  Karateka, Microids always produced impressive stuff on CPC..

[Optimus]

Wow, Sly Spy. I remember this game but never finished it. I as impressed by the graphics, big statue of Abraham Lincoln. And all that. At some points the scrolling moves small steps and stops, not so continuously. At others, like underwater moves continously. Also, I was reminded of Dragon Ninja, a game I played a lot. Of course it had some kind of scrolling following the player. And good enough for the CPC (doesn't seem 50fps but moves 2 Mode 0 pixels).

[sigh]

Skate Crazy (Car Park Challenge) and Dynamite Dux are very good examples of scrolling that follows the sprite. They both have up and down movements too.

Skate Crazy also has different speeds depending on how fast you are skating around the arena.

[MacDeath]

shinobi with its flipscreen-smooth scrolling, is good... a nice compromise between extremes and CPC friendly.

Invasion of Zombi mosnter is a nice one indeed... or AMC (astro marine Corp)... the "tile/character" based engine can really do it not too bad and stay quite fast...

I guess with more RAM so double buffering and possibility to get 1byte scrollings and 1/4 chars (like... 2x4 pixels squares, mode0) or also get the screen slightly bigger, it could really be somewhat perfect.

example of great "character based" engine :

NEC PC-8000


MSX :


having the game with "320x200" sized screen makes it seem smoother than 256x192 sized...
But I guess youtube and emulators don't help as well to compare properly.

but yeah, to stick to "256" large screen helps a lot concerning scrolls and animation on CPC...

[fgbrain]

Moreover, I remember "Le 5eme Axe" has nice scrolling although its rasters gets a bit messed up when moving up and down..

"Tornado Low Level" has impressive multi speed multi directional scrolling as well!!

Check out wiki page for more:
Programming methods used in games - CPCWiki

[remax]

Savage? (or have i misunderstood the question?)