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#1
Quote from: Barjack on 15:53, 10 March 23For my part, my approach to game development on cpc or cpc+ is simple.AMEN !
I'm not nostalgic for games that are graphically or musically limited to 64kb
More ram allows more graphics, more work in number, but much less in realization to be able to make everything fit.
Likewise for music.
The coder no longer has to rack his brains to optimize everything and can focus on the essentials.
In the end, we have less development time and more content, more openings.
I don't want games from 1990 on my cpc, I want games from 2023.
Extra ram, ultra-fast loading on usb or sd, lots of different sprites, rich backgrounds, games that require a mouse, why not?
The Spanish platforms in 64k, do not amuse me personally, the gryzor or renegade are poor on the screen even if they are very good for 64k.
That's good if the devs want to keep producing 90s games on k7
It would also be nice if we did something else with our machines (like other machines do).
The main limit of the CPC was that its first iteration was a cassette based 64k-only machine.
Yes the palettes could have been more (like having attrribute characters and multiple palette banks, EGA64 or ST 512palette...), the sound could have been more (having 2x AY instead of 1)... but those were well rounded enough compared to the machines of the era and it offers a good resolution capability anyway...
The real culprit is the 64ko+tape limit, wich then limited the successor upgrades : CPU in wait-state when the Video is accessing the "64k VRAM", can't use the extra RAM banks as 'VRAM", can't get the CPU to do something else while the "VRAM" is displayed (oh, already told that)... There is basically not enough RAM to satisfy the CPU AND the graphics, a minima configurations would have been at least 80ko (64k + 16k) or 96ko (because double buffering or Fullscreen).
So just having proper Massdata capacity via RAMdisk/ROM/Cartidge or HDD/X-MASS can somehow show what the machine can do.
16bit sceners have no shame to ask for 4mb of RAM on any Amiga/ST, or special 8mb cartidges for Megadrive. Many commercial games from late80s asked to 1mb of RAM and used 2-3 disk on ST/Amiga. Games on 4-5 disk weren't uncomon on 16bits, and would also ask for HDD...
So many shitty games were had because the devs limited themselves to Speccy48 ports on some CPC464.
Hell SegaMasterSystem managed to get some Populous port to run... but couldn't be done on CPC because not enough memory.
Most 8bit machines were under-powered on the RAM department because good luck filling 256k with a tape driver.
Thomson TO8 (256ko RAM) or PCW (256/512ko) are the only european 8biters with "enough" RAM, yet they lack at other stuff (poor shitty sound beeper for both, no colours for PCW...)
Japan had those NEC PC-88 that were quite good and could run heavily graphic adventures like Snatcher, alongside various Loli-rape-simulator, ah those Japs....
But again good luck filling 512ko with 178ko per face 3" disks that cost 25Francs each by 1985....
SymbOS shows what a modest 8biter can offer provided it is properly RAMed.
GX4000/PLUS are also failed mostly because the cartidges were limited to 128ko and RAM to 64ko(Gx4000 and 464+) either. Well, those weren't NEC PCengines anyway.
So yeah it is great to have projects like Alcon showing what a souped up ROM can do, and prods for PLUS/GX4000 with proper 512ko ROMs (Eery Forest, CRTC3, BubbleQuest).
#2
Oh damn that's awesome indeed.
#3
Oh MacDeath is back with more palettes!
#4
I would not focus too much on the early AMSOFT games, especially not those that came free with the CPC. Sure some of them were very bad, but they were also the first attempts of a developer on a new machine. Maybe a section that covers them in general, but please not (for the 100th time) a rant about Bridge'It.
For lazy Speccy ports maybe one could focus on those that were not bad on the Speccy but then were awful on the CPC.
My personal worst is Winter Sports. I wanted to get Winter Games but it wasn't available so I unfortunately chose Winter Sports as it seemed similar. But it isn't - it is an abysmal Speccy port. Slow, sluggish and incredibly boring. The worst 50DM I ever spent on a game. I am still angry at the developers/executives who were responsible for that crap.
For lazy Speccy ports maybe one could focus on those that were not bad on the Speccy but then were awful on the CPC.
My personal worst is Winter Sports. I wanted to get Winter Games but it wasn't available so I unfortunately chose Winter Sports as it seemed similar. But it isn't - it is an abysmal Speccy port. Slow, sluggish and incredibly boring. The worst 50DM I ever spent on a game. I am still angry at the developers/executives who were responsible for that crap.
#5
I really love that. I have actually no idea how/where to order keys and switches.
What do I need to consider when ordering those?
Do you have a recommendation/example of what works well?
What do I need to consider when ordering those?
Do you have a recommendation/example of what works well?
#6
Hello there.
I see some old montage to pray for someone to patch Heroquest and "correct some speccy ports was of some inspirational value.
You or mojon twins or anyone can use it if you want guys, it's ok for me.
Just put something like 'hey that man did this and its cool, lets do a patch for the game along that concept and give that man 1.000.023 pesos."*
Nah it's ok.
Funnily I recently found out I was an inspiration for some Wikipedia media too and cited from this forum... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amstrad_CPC_ink_numbers.png
(was just flexing by)
Good to see some coders are still trying to patch a few oldies.
*1.000.023 pesos = 0.023 euros I guess...
Nigel Mansell's World Championship : it use some monochromatic palette of Black and White + 2x colours in the same hue/colour ramp, so if you want to switch it into a bichromatic palette you may have to patch the graphic assets as well.
Prohibition use a grey+red palette, no real need to patch it, it is good as it is, Mode1 is very limited si no need to really try that much to get a full colour vibe, it won't work.
Some "Mode5 CGA" palette is always good : Black-White(pastel yellow?)-Red (pink?)-(dark)Cyan
I goes with everything, may get the darkcyan instead of plain cyan, may get the white into pastel Yellow, or some variations of that.
I see some old montage to pray for someone to patch Heroquest and "correct some speccy ports was of some inspirational value.
You or mojon twins or anyone can use it if you want guys, it's ok for me.
Just put something like 'hey that man did this and its cool, lets do a patch for the game along that concept and give that man 1.000.023 pesos."*
Nah it's ok.
Funnily I recently found out I was an inspiration for some Wikipedia media too and cited from this forum... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amstrad_CPC_ink_numbers.png
(was just flexing by)
Good to see some coders are still trying to patch a few oldies.
*1.000.023 pesos = 0.023 euros I guess...
Quote from: TotO on 00:04, 26 March 23I had loved a 6128 with a 4-bit palette. 12-bit palette is great, but the limited number of displayable colours is more frustrating.the "ideal and realistic" CPC-from-1984 palette would have been a 5 level (not bit) RGB cube, the 5x5x5 of 125 colours, which is the extended /dithered CPC palette....
Nigel Mansell's World Championship : it use some monochromatic palette of Black and White + 2x colours in the same hue/colour ramp, so if you want to switch it into a bichromatic palette you may have to patch the graphic assets as well.
Prohibition use a grey+red palette, no real need to patch it, it is good as it is, Mode1 is very limited si no need to really try that much to get a full colour vibe, it won't work.
Some "Mode5 CGA" palette is always good : Black-White(pastel yellow?)-Red (pink?)-(dark)Cyan
I goes with everything, may get the darkcyan instead of plain cyan, may get the white into pastel Yellow, or some variations of that.
#7
Applications (CPC and CPC-related) / Re: UniDOS, the new multi-devi...
Last post by zhulien - Today at 02:04I was thinking perhaps with mvram, if you put a small header at the start, you could let the user choose what they want to use it for, e.g. for usifac or for extra ram tracking (reserving blocks), and perhaps other purposes. I could really find it useful to track memory... e.g. have an array of characters in there to indicate which memory to not use (first 128k), which maybe to use for a ramdisc (user specified), which to allow for memory allocations within an application (so it doesn't trash ramdisc or stick data e.g. in first 128k) and other...
Nothing is forced on a user, but they are good options for those who do want nicely behaving software. I'd either have an array of 16kb block reservations or an array of 64kb block reservations depending on granularity either could be used. 1 allows up to 4mb to be tracked, one up to 16mb within 256 bytes.
If mvram allows for that in addition to what you currently use it for, perhaps 256bytes of nvram could be reserved for this purpose?
It means e.g. software like an assembler could be happy to store source and even preserve itself in ram knowing that cpmbplus with 512kb ramdisc might also trash it, so don't use the first 576kb in this example. Hence yo make it user definable. A user (andy?) who doesnt like such a feature won't be affected.
Nothing is forced on a user, but they are good options for those who do want nicely behaving software. I'd either have an array of 16kb block reservations or an array of 64kb block reservations depending on granularity either could be used. 1 allows up to 4mb to be tracked, one up to 16mb within 256 bytes.
If mvram allows for that in addition to what you currently use it for, perhaps 256bytes of nvram could be reserved for this purpose?
It means e.g. software like an assembler could be happy to store source and even preserve itself in ram knowing that cpmbplus with 512kb ramdisc might also trash it, so don't use the first 576kb in this example. Hence yo make it user definable. A user (andy?) who doesnt like such a feature won't be affected.
#8
Quote from: Brundij on Yesterday at 23:16DoneWow, that looks amazing compared to the original crap. Fantastic work, wish we could have an alternative archive of games with proper loading screens.
#9
Atom Smasher.
It was the first game I bought back in the day.
The cassette inlay made it look like a cool asteroids type of game, but it certainly wasn't that!
Still my most hated game to this day.
It was the first game I bought back in the day.
The cassette inlay made it look like a cool asteroids type of game, but it certainly wasn't that!
Still my most hated game to this day.
#10
Nice one.
Lots of cool optimisation ideas in there.
Lots of cool optimisation ideas in there.