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If the amstrad CPC 464 had no sprites, how were games made?

Started by Techboy, 06:02, 31 August 19

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Techboy


If the 464 and 664 have no accommodation for sprites outside of the symbol command, how were certain games made?

DanyPPC

CPC 464 with USB Floppy Emulator / CPC 464+ with USB Floppy Emulator / CPC 6128+ with C4CPC and Gotek HxC USB Drive Emulator

tjohnson

Hardware sprites I guess make it easy by baking routines to display sprites into the hardware doing much of the legwork that would otherwise require coders to write software routines to move sprites around on the screen.

Techboy


reidrac

You can write into video memory directly, instead of loading sprite data to a hardware sprite interface.

May be reading about the CPC video modes can help: http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Video_modes

EDIT: this includes a more practical explanation: http://www.cpcmania.com/Docs/Programming/Painting_pixels_introduction_to_video_memory.htm
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Techboy

i have a zip file for z88dk


how do i use it to run bat files?

Techboy


AMSDOS


I brought it up in the "New to Locomotive BASIC" thread about creating a platform game, and then testing it out with some Sprite Drivers. @DanyPPC is correct about the early generation CPCs using Software Sprites, which means writing your own Sprite Driver in Assembly and hope it's fast enough. Fortunately the CPCs have a 4Mhz processor as opposed to a C64 ~ 1Mhz, software Sprite Driver maybe too slow on it. The CPC Plus has Hardware Sprite Driver, but I don't know a great deal about it (have only heard negetative things about it).
So because the earlier CPCs have Software Sprite Drivers, there's quite a few floating around, the ones I used in that Platform Game thread place the Sprites in a Text Coordinates position, there are a number of Graphical ones which were also published in Magazines as well as Commercial Software, but have been too pre-occupied to look into them. I made a couple of Graphical Demos last year using Sean McManus' Easi-Sprite Driver Advanced, though I need to improve my skills at making Sprites Moving around the screen without the Flicker, which is why I have been sticking with the Text Coordinate Sprite Drivers for the minute.
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tjohnson



Techboy

Quote from: tjohnson on 10:24, 01 September 19

I've no idea about this but it appears off topic.


No, it's related. CPCmania is all asm, that's why i asked. I have some experience with Z80

GUNHED

Quote from: Techboy on 06:02, 31 August 19
If the 464 and 664 have no accommodation for sprites outside of the symbol command, how were certain games made?
Better! Hardware Sprites always have limitations, for example they have certain X and Y size, certain maximum number of colors. Now if they were not used, then you can use software sprites, and they can be what ever you want.
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VincentGR


Techboy

Quote from: GUNHED on 18:18, 01 September 19
Better! Hardware Sprites always have limitations, for example they have certain X and Y size, certain maximum number of colors. Now if they were not used, then you can use software sprites, and they can be what ever you want.


how exactly?

VincentGR

HW sprites have fixed number, size and colours.
On the other hand if you blit some sprites with a cpu or blitter, you can have as many colours as you like and sizes(well it depends on the hardware).
They are slow, you need to detect collision in software and redraw backgrounds.


With HW sprites you have almost no overhead on the cpu and in most of the cases collision detection is in hardware level.
They are also fast and they're drawn in their specific ram area which doesn't affect the background.

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