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#1
I've just released a six-track EP of songs about coding, with a couple of tracks dedicated to the Amstrad. It was created using the Udio artificial intelligence app, so it's an experiment in (and showcase for) computer creativity. You can hear it and find out more here:
https://www.sean.co.uk/music/songs-about-coding.shtm
https://www.sean.co.uk/music/songs-about-coding.shtm
#2
#3
Quote from: SyX on Yesterday at 20:47But we are able to see the true potential of the machine. It's just that we're discovering it a little late... I mean... more than 30 years lateQuote from: iXien on Yesterday at 20:31PS : Really, no chance of starting to play on the 32 arcade backgrounds and have the NES-style ones AFTER ?Sure! You only need to play first to the original version and then put Flipull+ xDDDD
You don't need to think about so much gray is to c64, you need to think that CPC+ open a new palette with no limits, hehehe.
Thanks for the good words!
The problem is that you have explained perfectly. And if you have read the Higgins interview, there is a moment where he says that he though that Ocean and Amstrad had a contract for only doing things for CPC+ and left the CPC behind. We don't know how real is that, but the feelings inside Ocean were that: CPC is OUT! Convert everything to CPC+! And Fast!
And the original idea was not bad, using the 8 bits code + 16 bits design and graphics... if only Amstrad and Ocean would have given the chance for a second wave of GX4000 games, maybe we would have been able to see the real potential of the system.
#4
Quote from: iXien on Yesterday at 20:31PS : Really, no chance of starting to play on the 32 arcade backgrounds and have the NES-style ones AFTER ?Sure! You only need to play first to the original version and then put Flipull+ xDDDD
You don't need to think about so much gray is to c64, you need to think that CPC+ open a new palette with no limits, hehehe.
Thanks for the good words!
The problem is that you have explained perfectly. And if you have read the Higgins interview, there is a moment where he says that he though that Ocean and Amstrad had a contract for only doing things for CPC+ and left the CPC behind. We don't know how real is that, but the feelings inside Ocean were that: CPC is OUT! Convert everything to CPC+! And Fast!
And the original idea was not bad, using the 8 bits code + 16 bits design and graphics... if only Amstrad and Ocean would have given the chance for a second wave of GX4000 games, maybe we would have been able to see the real potential of the system.
#5
Quote from: SyX on Yesterday at 20:02OK, IXien but you know that this is going to be another big story xDDDD.Yes, and I love your big stories
(...)
I think that is all.
It was very interesting, as usual. I think all the games exclusive to GX4000 have this "spaghetti-code"
You're a warrior of a man diving in this ugly lines of code to upgrade what would have been so nice CPC games if once again developers didn't have to work in a hurry. Personally, I hate the NES graphics and colours in general, I think it remembers me the C64 too much. So I won't tell you I'm very fond of the 4 coloured backgrounds I will have to play on before retrieving the good ones, arcade based. And to be honest, I loved the original HUD and game screen border. Once again, too much NES-style for me here. No matter, you changed a lot of other things for the best, so many thanks for your work
.PS : Really, no chance of starting to play on the 32 arcade backgrounds and have the NES-style ones AFTER ?
#6
S
General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Interview with James Higgi...
Last post by SyX - Yesterday at 20:16Quote from: norecess464 on Yesterday at 14:35Thanks for sharing! I had a very great moment while reading the interview. The questions were really pertinent and the answers, very well detailed! And thanks too for the English translation.@Dubliner's goal is always telling the story from the CPC point of view, a lot of those people that he has interviewed never have been asked specifically about his cpc work or even asked at all.
He has had a few great interviews in the last months, last week was Dave Rogers, before that we got Sylvestre Campin, Charles Goodwin, Dean Belfield, Mike Male, Dave Thomson, Patrick Hinrichs (The Fraggle), ...
#7
Very interesting read until that last paragraph -oh Lord. 😂
#8
OK, IXien but you know that this is going to be another big story xDDDD.
Let me remember, because this patch was finished two weeks ago.
At the beginning, I didn't want to make this project, because I don't like the CPC+ version of Plotting. I always had the feeling that this game was finished in a hurry.
And after looking at the code my impression was even worse, the game credits has a person credited exclusively for compression, I can tell you that there is no compression at all in the game.
On the contrary, the game is a continuous waste of rom. The last 16 KBs cartridge page is the "loading screen", things like the upper and lower HUDs in the game are graphics storage in the cart, when they could have drawn the HUDs using tiles. In the same way, the 8 backgrounds graphics are uncompressed in the cart and they take around 40 KBs.
Every piece of code for handling the first player is duplicated with minimal changes for the second player. Even the funnier thing, the first player code is near around the same piece of memory, while the second player code appears in random places around the memory. Everything is signaling that the game was going to be originally for one player only, the same as in c64 or zx, but in the last moment it was decided that the game had to be for two players as Amiga and ST versions.
The first thing the game does, it is to copy the first 32 KBs from the CART to RAM. This is the game engine that is going to be executed from RAM instead of ROM during the game. I have the suspicion that originally this game was designed as the other 8 bits version and it was going to be a CPC game, not a CPC+. But as we speculate about Pang, Ocean forced the developers to convert the game to CPC+ and fill the 128 KBs in the cart.
I said too that we were finishing an interview with an old ex-Ocean that could bring more light about how those CPC+ games were made. The interview with Mr. James Higgins was published last Monday and you can read here (english original, after the spanish translation).
But well, the rest of the game code was terrible, special prize for how they encoded the levels, twice, 32 levels per player and there was a few errors because the copy and paste process; or the animation system for the introduction or the game (when you launch a tile and how return to you); or the abuse of tables instead of using simply math.
You can imagine that after I saw this horror, I wanted to run far far far away xDDDD, but RedAngel didn't stop sending me pictures with their graphical improvements. And they looked great, but I told him that we could not change the playability, because every change had to be duplicated and tested.
Then because I can not look too much at the same thing over and over, I extracted the levels from the cart for being edited in our map editor. And after that I extracted the maps from the arcade version and I discovered that the arcade game has a random component for generating the levels. A feature that lacks the CPC version, although at the end of the day, the cpc levels were similar to the arcade ones (surely they used a longplay in an vhs).
RedAngel continued sending me more and more graphics, and I told him that we could not change too much. And I asked him why he was so interested in this game and he told me that he loved the Nes version, because it was very normal that appears in the nes clones sold in Spain.
At that moment, I took a look at the nes version, and extracted the map for the advanced mode. This mode is 50 levels, and every level is different to the arcade. Nes version has a random component but it is minor compared to the arcade. Then RedAngel adapted the maps from Nes to the style needed for the CPC.
The last detail were the backgrounds, because after I added compression, we got a LOT of free space in the cart for adding backgrounds. We discovered that the backgrounds for the cpc version, even if they are the same as the arcade ones, were converted from the Atari ST version.
Because I am an ex-amiga guy and this game is practically an st port; then in those cases I usually prefer to touch the Amiga version, instead of the Albino Speccy one
Then I disassembled the Amiga version, discovered the background compressor and patched the game in an amiga emulator to get all the backgrounds that RedAngel converted really fast to the cpc.
But now, we had another problem: there were only 32 backgrounds and we now have 50 levels. RedAngel converted the geometric backgrounds from the nes versions, and using 4 colour variants, we got 16 backgrounds more. And because I didn't know if I could patch the game for having an ending; because when you finish the original 32 levels, the original cpc+ game restarts from the first level and with one minute less than before. Then I asked RedAngel to design two backgrounds for the last two levels for being a price for reaching the game ending.
Then in short, the list of improved things are:
* All darker ST palettes (RGB 9 bits) now are using the full CPC+ palette (RGB 12 bits), that means, loading screen, menu, ...
* Change the name from Plotting to the original Japanese name, Flipull. And a + for saying that this is a CPC+ game.
* Loading screen has been crunched and improved graphically, not only the game logo has been changed to Flipull+
* Credits screen has been updated. And now we really have a compressor, in this case zx0
* Menu sequence animation: New big font that is more faithful to the nes version. all the animation sequence has been updated to the new font and new positions where the blob jumps (it has been a big pain in the ass and super boring). Palettes and tiles have been changed to be the same as the graphical changes that have been made for the game.
* FX IA Attract mode, where the player controlled by the computer used an advanced IA for trying to win the play xDDD xDDD xDDD
* Game screen borders and HUDs, everything has been redesigned and repalettized. I sincerely think that the game looks clearer and prettier than before. In the LCD white font used for the time, the digit 1 was wrong, the digit should be in the right, not in the left (a few more silly bugs like this were fixed).
* Every game sprite has been retouched and repaletized. And the colours for player 1 and 2 are different now, giving an extra personality to the blobs.
* 50 new levels taken from the nes version, but adapted to the CPC game motor and retouched by adding extra lives in specific levels, for improving the playability. I fixed the game code to use math instead of tables and now, the real limit is 128 levels, but 50 levels would be enough for everybody. And we started to count in 1, instead of 0, we are humans - no robots
* Instead of 8 awful backgrounds chosen randomly from the ST version, we have 50 backgrounds now. Yes, every level has its own background. First 16 levels are the geometric nes ones, they are perfect for focusing in the game mechanics while you are learning how to play. After that, you get the 32 backgrounds from the arcade/atari st/Amiga. And two bonus backgrounds in the last two levels as a prize for reaching the end.
* Ending: If you finish the last level (50), the game will end instead of going back to the first level.
* A lot of silly bugs were fixed, I don't remember everyone, but there was a lot.
And now the sad things, we were not able to make more changes to the code, it is a terrible big spaguetti plate for two (everything duplicate by no reason than finish fast).
Don't ask about the animation system, seriously, I need a strong drink for forgetting what I saw there; even if we wanted to change the music and I was working in converting the original Plotting ST music to my Sakis music player (Yes @Gryzor, I am so crazy that my music player routine took its name from Sakis Rouvas xDDD); at the end, the silly animation system depends in the music player code and my tries for fixing that hell, made the game break for everyplace.
I think that is all.
Let me remember, because this patch was finished two weeks ago.
At the beginning, I didn't want to make this project, because I don't like the CPC+ version of Plotting. I always had the feeling that this game was finished in a hurry.
And after looking at the code my impression was even worse, the game credits has a person credited exclusively for compression, I can tell you that there is no compression at all in the game.
On the contrary, the game is a continuous waste of rom. The last 16 KBs cartridge page is the "loading screen", things like the upper and lower HUDs in the game are graphics storage in the cart, when they could have drawn the HUDs using tiles. In the same way, the 8 backgrounds graphics are uncompressed in the cart and they take around 40 KBs.
Every piece of code for handling the first player is duplicated with minimal changes for the second player. Even the funnier thing, the first player code is near around the same piece of memory, while the second player code appears in random places around the memory. Everything is signaling that the game was going to be originally for one player only, the same as in c64 or zx, but in the last moment it was decided that the game had to be for two players as Amiga and ST versions.
The first thing the game does, it is to copy the first 32 KBs from the CART to RAM. This is the game engine that is going to be executed from RAM instead of ROM during the game. I have the suspicion that originally this game was designed as the other 8 bits version and it was going to be a CPC game, not a CPC+. But as we speculate about Pang, Ocean forced the developers to convert the game to CPC+ and fill the 128 KBs in the cart.
I said too that we were finishing an interview with an old ex-Ocean that could bring more light about how those CPC+ games were made. The interview with Mr. James Higgins was published last Monday and you can read here (english original, after the spanish translation).
But well, the rest of the game code was terrible, special prize for how they encoded the levels, twice, 32 levels per player and there was a few errors because the copy and paste process; or the animation system for the introduction or the game (when you launch a tile and how return to you); or the abuse of tables instead of using simply math.
You can imagine that after I saw this horror, I wanted to run far far far away xDDDD, but RedAngel didn't stop sending me pictures with their graphical improvements. And they looked great, but I told him that we could not change the playability, because every change had to be duplicated and tested.
Then because I can not look too much at the same thing over and over, I extracted the levels from the cart for being edited in our map editor. And after that I extracted the maps from the arcade version and I discovered that the arcade game has a random component for generating the levels. A feature that lacks the CPC version, although at the end of the day, the cpc levels were similar to the arcade ones (surely they used a longplay in an vhs).
RedAngel continued sending me more and more graphics, and I told him that we could not change too much. And I asked him why he was so interested in this game and he told me that he loved the Nes version, because it was very normal that appears in the nes clones sold in Spain.
At that moment, I took a look at the nes version, and extracted the map for the advanced mode. This mode is 50 levels, and every level is different to the arcade. Nes version has a random component but it is minor compared to the arcade. Then RedAngel adapted the maps from Nes to the style needed for the CPC.
The last detail were the backgrounds, because after I added compression, we got a LOT of free space in the cart for adding backgrounds. We discovered that the backgrounds for the cpc version, even if they are the same as the arcade ones, were converted from the Atari ST version.
Because I am an ex-amiga guy and this game is practically an st port; then in those cases I usually prefer to touch the Amiga version, instead of the Albino Speccy one
Then I disassembled the Amiga version, discovered the background compressor and patched the game in an amiga emulator to get all the backgrounds that RedAngel converted really fast to the cpc.
But now, we had another problem: there were only 32 backgrounds and we now have 50 levels. RedAngel converted the geometric backgrounds from the nes versions, and using 4 colour variants, we got 16 backgrounds more. And because I didn't know if I could patch the game for having an ending; because when you finish the original 32 levels, the original cpc+ game restarts from the first level and with one minute less than before. Then I asked RedAngel to design two backgrounds for the last two levels for being a price for reaching the game ending.
Then in short, the list of improved things are:
* All darker ST palettes (RGB 9 bits) now are using the full CPC+ palette (RGB 12 bits), that means, loading screen, menu, ...
* Change the name from Plotting to the original Japanese name, Flipull. And a + for saying that this is a CPC+ game.
* Loading screen has been crunched and improved graphically, not only the game logo has been changed to Flipull+
* Credits screen has been updated. And now we really have a compressor, in this case zx0
* Menu sequence animation: New big font that is more faithful to the nes version. all the animation sequence has been updated to the new font and new positions where the blob jumps (it has been a big pain in the ass and super boring). Palettes and tiles have been changed to be the same as the graphical changes that have been made for the game.
* FX IA Attract mode, where the player controlled by the computer used an advanced IA for trying to win the play xDDD xDDD xDDD
* Game screen borders and HUDs, everything has been redesigned and repalettized. I sincerely think that the game looks clearer and prettier than before. In the LCD white font used for the time, the digit 1 was wrong, the digit should be in the right, not in the left (a few more silly bugs like this were fixed).
* Every game sprite has been retouched and repaletized. And the colours for player 1 and 2 are different now, giving an extra personality to the blobs.
* 50 new levels taken from the nes version, but adapted to the CPC game motor and retouched by adding extra lives in specific levels, for improving the playability. I fixed the game code to use math instead of tables and now, the real limit is 128 levels, but 50 levels would be enough for everybody. And we started to count in 1, instead of 0, we are humans - no robots
* Instead of 8 awful backgrounds chosen randomly from the ST version, we have 50 backgrounds now. Yes, every level has its own background. First 16 levels are the geometric nes ones, they are perfect for focusing in the game mechanics while you are learning how to play. After that, you get the 32 backgrounds from the arcade/atari st/Amiga. And two bonus backgrounds in the last two levels as a prize for reaching the end.
* Ending: If you finish the last level (50), the game will end instead of going back to the first level.
* A lot of silly bugs were fixed, I don't remember everyone, but there was a lot.
And now the sad things, we were not able to make more changes to the code, it is a terrible big spaguetti plate for two (everything duplicate by no reason than finish fast).
Don't ask about the animation system, seriously, I need a strong drink for forgetting what I saw there; even if we wanted to change the music and I was working in converting the original Plotting ST music to my Sakis music player (Yes @Gryzor, I am so crazy that my music player routine took its name from Sakis Rouvas xDDD); at the end, the silly animation system depends in the music player code and my tries for fixing that hell, made the game break for everyplace.
I think that is all.
#9
General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Interview with James Higgi...
Last post by Maniac - Yesterday at 19:25Nice article and a nice guy to boot by all accounts!
#10
MAME 0.265 32bit and derived distributions avaliable (Xp compatibles). Download from RETRODANUART MAME XP