Alcon 2020 released

[abalore]

24 hours after the game release one guy uploaded a video finishing the game in HARD difficulty level, without picking the speed power-up.
Is the game easy? hard? It depends on the player, I guess 

[Shaun M. Neary]

24 hours after the game release one guy uploaded a video finishing the game in HARD difficulty level, without picking the speed power-up.
Is the game easy? hard? It depends on the player, I guess 

Also depends on how you look at it. It's pretty close to the arcade so the arcade tactics will also work.
I know for example, R-Type, a lot of the tactics I used in the arcade I was able to use on both CPC versions and they work for the most part.

Great accomplishment though. Be proud of this, sir!

[Gryzor]

24 hours after the game release one guy uploaded a video finishing the game in HARD difficulty level, without picking the speed power-up.
Is the game easy? hard? It depends on the player, I guess 

Where's that vid? Tried looking but nothing came up!

[TotO]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl4pelWVnhI

[Gryzor]

*grabs popcorn*

[Livingstone]

There is a way to do an installation with M4 Board in a Z-MEM as in an X-MEM? 

[TotO]

There is a way to do an installation with M4 Board in a Z-MEM as in an X-MEM? 

The game do not require additional RAM. Only your M4 Board is required by loading the CPR.
May be I misunderstand your question. By the way, the Z-MEM is useless here.

[rexbeng]

Good effort to recreate the arcade, although I notice (from videos tbh)... that's too low a framerate! Perhaps slower than 25 frames even?
Regardless, it would be interesting to take a look and discuss the technical sides of the three latest released vertical shmups; the different priorities and design choices made, compromises etc. Maybe a bit academic on one hand, but, hey why not!?

[abalore]

Good effort to recreate the arcade, although I notice (from videos tbh)... that's too low a framerate! Perhaps slower than 25 frames even?
Regardless, it would be interesting to take a look and discuss the technical sides of the three latest released vertical shmups; the different priorities and design choices made, compromises etc. Maybe a bit academic on one hand, but, hey why not!?

The game draws 1 of each 3 frames, so framerate is 50/3. This is locked to be constant during all the gameplay. When unlocked, the game runs about 80% of the time at 25Hz (some areas at 50Hz). The reason for the lock is that I hate when games slow down. The priority in this game was the accuracy respect to the arcade. All enemies are the same size than the arcade and do the same movements and attacks, and also your own ship can be 5 modules width, all shooting at the same time. You can do whatever you want in the game and you hardly will see it slow down.
This is my decision for this game, in other future games maybe the priority is the frame rate, and I'll adjust enemy sizes or game mechanics to keep the frame rate over the target value. It's very easy to have constant 50hz when you have a maximum of 3 enemies of 16x16 on screen. In Alcon we have sometimes 3 enemies of 48x64 pixels plus a lot of other smaller ones, a myriad of bullets, 16 homing missiles flying around and your own ship upgraded to the max.

[rexbeng]

Thanks for the response! So, then, that is indeed a 17Hz game; but that sounds like the realistic option since you wanted to include as much content possible from the arcade. Still, good job on keeping everything tied to constant frame-rate and animation pacing. I personally am no fan of random-ish slow-downs or speed-ups either; or inconsistent animations.
I admit I regretfully didnt pay the needed attention (despite the coder had pointed it out) to how things moved faster in X (because of double-pixel resolution, heh) in one of my own games and am actually quite surprised by how not so many people noticed that!
Anyway, what is interesting is to get some insight on how going the cartridge way has assisted in making the game the way you did. What otherwise impossible hazards has it helped overcome. For example, would making the game for disk just mean that you'd have to 'split' it in three separately loading levels and that's it, or is there even more data being streamed while the game is running?

[abalore]

Thanks for the response! So, then, that is indeed a 17Hz game; but that sounds like the realistic option since you wanted to include as much content possible from the arcade. Still, good job on keeping everything tied to constant frame-rate and animation pacing. I personally am no fan of random-ish slow-downs or speed-ups either; or inconsistent animations.
I admit I regretfully didnt pay the needed attention (despite the coder had pointed it out) to how things moved faster in X (because of double-pixel resolution, heh) in one of my own games and am actually quite surprised by how not so many people noticed that!
Anyway, what is interesting is to get some insight on how going the cartridge way has assisted in making the game the way you did. What otherwise impossible hazards has it helped overcome. For example, would making the game for disk just mean that you'd have to 'split' it in three separately loading levels and that's it, or is there even more data being streamed while the game is running?

A disk version of the game is not doable with the current level of detail. The game requires many memory blocks to be accessible simultaneously. In case of doing a disk version, it would run only in 128K machines and it would need to be severely downgraded.