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#1
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.
#2
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?
#3
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.
#4
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.
#5
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.
#6
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.
#7
Nice one.
Lots of cool optimisation ideas in there.
Lots of cool optimisation ideas in there.
#9
K
Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: ANSI Telnet for the M4 Boa...
Last post by kolleykibber - Yesterday at 23:09Quote from: Galatronic on 19:17, 28 April 24Hi everybody, any chance to run it with the USIFAC first version + esp8266 module? I have been tried the attached software used to connect the board to the lan to share files with a PC, I have connected an ESP8266 module with the Juno firmware and I'm able to initialized the modem, connect it to my wireless network, and connect a bbs @ 2400 bps but unluckily the software is not a real terminal so I can receive the pages in ascii mode only. I'm looking for a graphic terminal to connect the USIFAC 1 + esp8266 to the wifi network and browse the bbs' . many thanksHi @Galatronic,
There is a version that runs on the USIFAC in the bundle that ikonsgr published here
(connect_to_bbs.zip): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/4snbw50stbl3e0x7rav03/AM7dlZwgOM3s2secpPRZx5Q?rlkey=w7luj7x1d4j3c9g0ebk2dva9x&e=1&dl=0
It's a bit tricky though. It requires flashing the esp8266 with the ESP-link firmware which sets up a serial tcp link. Then you use a linux instance (I used a raspberry pi or a mac) to bridge telnet over the serial tcp link like this:
stty -icanon && ncat 192.168.1.124 23 -e "/usr/local/bin/telnet amstrad.simulant.uk 464".
#10
Quote from: ervin on 03:57, 06 May 24Wow that's a big difference!
What were the main optimisations that led to the speed-up?
To belatedly answer your question:
- instead of scanning the whole playfield (25 x 17 grid) for tiles that have been marked dirty to redraw, each bolt/enemy etc now just keeps two tiles to redraw directly.
- Precalculate the sprite for each possible cell on the grid (there's only 12 possible variations)
- Remove in/out parameters where possible and replace with globals
- Precalculate as much as possible into static arrays
- Adjust what gets done each game loop, and control that by a frame-counter set in the interrupt.
- Get rid of any divisions, and replace structs inside structs so that a struct never contains anything other than normal types.