22 August 2014, 17:55 | #41 |
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First: I don't like the CPC palette at all. Ouch, my retina still burns,but that's just a personal opinion, so it doesn't really count.
Looking at the games is a different story though. You didn't have to wait till the end of their lifes to recognize that the C64 was a lot better in terms of gaming. Just have a look at C64's blockbusters in '83-'85 (Beach Head 1+2, Epyx games series, Super Cycle, etc.) and compare them to the ports for the Amstrad. ...not even close. Anyway, enjoy your CPC, but I'll always prefer the C64. |
22 August 2014, 18:03 | #42 |
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What would of been interesting to see back then would be a skilled company like Thalamus make a CPC 464 game with the same high standards and coding trickery that they used in there C64 games.
Thalamus produced some of the most technically impressive C64 games like Sanxion, Delta, Armalyte, Hawkeye, Creatures, Summer camp etc, and they were very playable and smooth games as well as looking and sounding stunning! An example of a Thalamus game that is actually my favourite shooter on the c64 is Delta, the ingame soundtrack is utterly amazing and goes for 11mins. Also the sprite routines and use of colour are really slick, all this is in a single load and despite looking jerky in this video, it plays at a full 50fps with no slowdowns on a real c64. Have a skip through this video for a look at a very well made c64 game, Witness the awesome salamander style levels at 7mins into the video- [ Show youtube player ] This is pretty slick as well, Mayhem in monsterland, really nice use of c64 colour- [ Show youtube player ] And this is a better example of what R-type could of been like on the c64, i thought R-type was actually pretty decent on c64 but Katakis is better again- [ Show youtube player ] I think if the cpc's lifespan had of been longer like the c64 had, we would of seen some much more technically impressive games on the cpc that exploited the machine more. And that would of been really interesting to see as most of the time the cpc was never utilized fully in games! Also for me, any defects that the c64 had were worth it just for the orchestra that was the almighty sid chip! Last edited by hansel75; 22 August 2014 at 18:33. |
22 August 2014, 19:58 | #43 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CaptainM68K-SPS France
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I have myself a C64. And when i compare the big productions like operation wolf or thunderbolt, or either chase HQ, just to name a few, and play it on my C64, sorry, but it's inferior to what we have on CPC. What makes a good game is the playability, animation, sound and graphics. The C64 mostly has playability (more or less, some games have crap control really), and the SID sound. Quote:
After looking at it, it appears that most graphists fucked them big time on CPC, because they were not smart enough to transpose it without making it buggy from the C64. Just an example of this is stormlord. The graphist failed to use and transpose correctly the palette from the C64. It's not a technical problem, it's not a computer problem, it's clearly a problem between "the chair and the keyboard" as we say here. Quote:
I'm kidding when i say that, but in the end this was what happened, you clearly see that it's the case. Coding for CPC is easier than coding for the C64 and all it's trickeries. The CPC is more straight forward. And look : the CPC had to run spectrum emulator, as it is for R-type, and that's why the game is so slow in its original version, not counting that the guy has 2 weeks to code the game ! Quote:
it's as good and equivalent to amiga or ST productions. Quote:
Mind you, the CPC demomakers were not trying to surpass the C64, they were trying to do things as good as the ones you can find on the amiga. Quote:
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If i want 50 frames per sec, i pick an amiga, with which i get the colors + the animation speed, not the C64. [quote]And a lot of cpc games had very basic sound that sucked compared to the c64 versions, sure there are examples where the cpc can do good sound but a lot of games sucked sound wise.[quote] In a lot of time, and to say things straight, the CPC had to wait long years to get tools that were really pushing their YM chip far. Startrekker soundtracker on CPC appeared in 1992-1993, not before. The CPC is able to make great soundtracks, once again it's a problem between "the chair and the keyboard". Whitakker, page, Joseph, dave rodgers and others made legendary musics on amstrad CPC. Many others made shit. Quote:
This computer in the right hands (understand here with a good knowledge of the Cathodic Ray Tube Controller, something like the copper on the amiga), can do awesome games, almost 16 bits like. Quote:
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Rtype enhanced is nicer, because the graphist did his job ! Correctly, and in the right way ! Not porting from C64 or Speccy ! [quote]And to my knowledge the cpc was a more expensive computer then the c64 was as well so in theory "it should of been better".[quote] That's the full contrary. Sugar killed the C64 in France with the CPC for 2 reasons : 1- The price. a CPC costed 4990 francs with a color monitor. For this same price, you got a C64 with no drive, no TV, and no Datasette. It's was a game console for rich people. In the other way, french engineers loved the CPC, and in companies, the amstrad was in every mouth. Perfect all purpose computer. The C64 was seen as a toy. 2- A C64 was sold with no monitor, and the parents hated that (fuck, again a console on the family TV, that's a NO!) 3- OMG! Look at this crap color palette ! Ehm, seller, do you have any computer not this expensive with a good color palette ? 4- Hello Mr seller, we would like to buy a family computer, we heard that the amstrad CPC is the top computer of the moment, where are they ? Ehm.... Well, look i have this incredible C64 computer, with a great palette, a synthesizer sound, smooth scrolling..... Sir, we said we want a computer, not a toy or a console, and leave us alone with the palette.... Wait, you throw up on the screen or is it me ? This is a caricature, but this was more or less what happened when seller in shops were trying to sell the C64 in France. It was so serious that commodore almost went bankrupt in France due the C64 failure. Quote:
Answer : that's a console with a keyboard or a toy ! Quote:
Some CPC games have been massacred like some amiga games. These 2 computers shares this same problem unfortunately Quote:
It also have in ROM ready to use mathematical operation (COS, SIN, TAN), very useful for demos. Quote:
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I have turrican I and II on C64, and even if the CPC has no level musics, i prefer it on CPC (16 colors, hardware tricks, parallax scrolls on both). Turrican series on CPC are legendary games, extremely well coded and ported from the 16 bits machines. Quote:
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The ST was a 16 bits computer that was 8 bits like on some parts, while the CPC has the guts to be raised as almost what was doing a 16 bits machine. Complicated heh ? Quote:
Dominating the rest of the world, but a little village was still resisting to the invader ! (if you read Asterix... ) Quote:
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On CPC we had some games runs at 25fps having really bad playability (read : badly coded), and some running at the same speed with a good one. Same aroma exist with games running at 15fps. Quote:
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22 August 2014, 20:04 | #44 | |
CaptainM68K-SPS France
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[ Show youtube player ] Features : - detailed mode-0 16 color graphics, - ultra-smooth and fast scrolling which runs constantly at 50 FPS - fast-moving and well animated sprites - nice in-game music which changes dynamically with the action! So you see, the CPC is able to, when you have people that can in front of it ! |
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22 August 2014, 21:39 | #45 |
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Now that's cool, will load it up on the HxC
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22 August 2014, 21:54 | #46 |
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i think all the 8 bit machines were good in there own way.
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22 August 2014, 23:00 | #47 |
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23 August 2014, 07:14 | #48 |
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I'm still only seeing a select few examples of these technically superior games and demos being shown, and the Batman demo has been mentioned a number of times now as a showcase.
Where are the other hundreds of high quality demos on the cpc that the c64 is known to have! And i am seeing lots and lots of excuses as to why past cpc games were mostly inferior to there c64 versions, and only a handful of examples of where the cpc can apparently beat the c64. Spectrum ports, lazy coders etc, or maybe it's simply a lot harder to do a smooth cpc game compared to the c64, even though the cpc is supposed to be technically better! I wonder what a current day remake of a game like R-Type on the c64 would be like in some skilled hands, now that there is 30yrs of knowledge to go by when coding a new remake! Maybe they should even do these remakes on a C128 to equal the playing field with the 128k cpc remakes! As for having a computer back then that could do a smooth scroll and throw lots of sprites around the screen easily, well it may not of been the reason why the c64 was bought in the first place. But once gaming on the it when a kid, i certainly realized it was nice to have those features in most games, and 90% of scrolling games were usually more playable on the c64 due to the smoother scrolling and sprite movement. And i maybe mistaken, but isn't smoothness in a game considered a good thing compared to a slightly prettier but jerky game? Smoothness helps playability, this is a fact in every game since day one, the smoother the game the more playable it is! When i was younger in my circle of friends there were C64's, one cpc 464, an apple 2 and a C=+4, and all my friends envied the c64 the most by far, even the cpc owner! While my cpc friend was showing off Everyones a Wally, i was playing games like Impossible Mission, Loco etc on the c64 and they blew the cpc away! You can only judge a machine by it's software, and with up to 10000 utils and games available for the c64, and with a high number of them being quality technical releases that out shined all the other 8bit formats. For me that's what counts, and only having a small handful of examples of cpc superiority like the Batman demo and half a dozen other examples is not really enough to convince me otherwise. Seriously if you watch this 100 cpc games video- [ Show youtube player ] Then watch the 100 c64 games video straight after the cpc one- [ Show youtube player ] Apart from some more colourful looking cpc games, most of them look terribly jerky and blocky compared to the most of the games in the c64 video. |
23 August 2014, 07:20 | #49 |
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Elvira preview
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Star Driver [ Show youtube player ] |
23 August 2014, 07:23 | #50 | |
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I suggest you have a flick through this video of C64 Armalyte to see a better use of colour, plus impressive scrolling and sprite routines, it may lack ingame music+fx but this was a rarity on the C64, one only has to look at a shooter like C64 salamander to see that it was easy to do music+fx on the c64 if they wanted to- [ Show youtube player ] [ Show youtube player ] And pretty much 99% of C64 games ran in 16 colour mode, it was no big deal for the C64 to be able to achieve this! And 50fps games were quite common on the C64 and not a rarity! Edit- I will be the first to admit that the cpc could do some 3d games better, mainly wireframe 3d. But since this only accounts for probably 1% of all 8bit games, this didn't worry me on the C64. I think it's safe to say that scrolling games with lots of sprites became the most popular by far and probably accounted for 3/4 of all 8bit game types, especially once arcade conversions started flooding into the 8bit market. And i still stand by a game like Mayhem in monsterland on the c64, show me a cpc game that looks better, sounds better and more importantly moves as smoothly as this, and in fullscreen and not some tiny game window like a lot of cpc and spectrum games used- [ Show youtube player ] Last edited by hansel75; 23 August 2014 at 08:10. |
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23 August 2014, 10:49 | #51 |
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This is starting to sound like a Betmax/VHS argument
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23 August 2014, 11:09 | #52 |
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@BarryB : True lol XD
@Hansel75 : Armalyte on C64 is exactly the same kind of game Super Edge Grinder is on amstrad CPC. The diff is that the CPC use a vivid palette. Armalyte palette is horrible ! Seems to be painted by a half-blind guy lol ! You see, this game could be done even more easily than R-type 2012 on CPC. About Mayhem in Monsterland, yes it could be done on CPC in hard scroll (not in 50 fps because we don't need that), but i see nothing that the CPC can't do today. A game like super cauldron is way more advanced than this one, not even speaking about Prehistorik 2. Even the standard CPC version use a hardware scrolling, and the screen is really big with many sprites on screen. The CPC + is another story, it has a triple playfield, with hardware sprites, hardware scrolling, DMA soundtrack music (meaning that like the amiga, the sound is no burden for the CPU), and an amiga like palette (it needs 128kb for all these feats however). |
23 August 2014, 11:10 | #53 |
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I really like the old CPC, I even swapped a Sega Mega Drive for one back in school (I got some strange looks for doing that). Still it's undeniable the C64 has shown it's self to be the better machine in the end, just go to pouet and start browsing the 100's of top rated demos..
The reason the C64 enjoys it's legendary status is because it's a very versatile and loved machine, the mountain of scene demos, apps, and games still produced today show that. But as dlfrsilver points there are some aspects that make the cpc stick out when in the right hands. I have to say I prefer the keyboard on the cpc though In my humble opinion, it's not the hardware specs that measure a machines merits, it's the software produced on that machine. Last edited by lordofchaos; 23 August 2014 at 11:16. |
23 August 2014, 12:00 | #54 |
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Download this and have a look. http://cloud.cbm8bit.com/addictaball..._DEMOS_CSDB.7z
Give me a link with 100 and not just 3 or 4 top demos for the Amstrad and I might rethink my opinion about the Amstrad/Schneider CPC series. Around five games and five demos nearly reaching the quality of hundreds of C64 releases doesn't impress me very much. I guess I could easily find the same amount of games/demos for the Spectrum, TI-99, Atari 800, etc on the same level. |
23 August 2014, 12:03 | #55 |
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Super Cauldron was pretty impressive on the CPC
[ Show youtube player ] Pang on the CPC+ [ Show youtube player ] Bubble Bobble Remake CPC [ Show youtube player ] |
23 August 2014, 13:46 | #56 | |
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Quote:
I know a lot of C64 games didn't run at 50fps, there were quite a lot that probably ran at 25fps or even lower. But in general there were a lot more c64 games that did the full 50fps compared to the cpc. I have seen many old scrolling cpc games that look like there running at under 10fps and the sprite movement was horrendously bad. Do you think a game like Super mario world on the snes would be as good if it only ran at 10-25fps instead of 50fps(or 60fps for ntsc)? I guess back then they could of reduced the smoothness of c64 games to make them graphically better like some cpc games did, but the less smooth the less playable in my opinion. And when i think about the 8bit wars in the 80's, i really think that only the c64, cpc 464 and zx spectrum should be used in the comparison as that is what 99% of people had! If using an upgraded cpc model and then compare it to a stock c64, i don't see how this is fair. One could always use the stats from a c128 with it's extra ram, or even the unreleased c65 if we wanted to see which 8bit machine was technically the best! And should we also take the super cpu accelerators that are available for the c64 into consideration, in which i think gives you a 20mhz cpu! I think a fairer comparison is a stock cpc 464 vs a stock c64. As for Mayhem in Monsterland on the c64 which is a good example of a well made c64 game, nothing comes even close to it on the cpc 464, even super cauldron which doesn't look very smooth to play, mayhem on c64 feels like as smooth as an nes mario game! And if it hasn't been done in the last 30yrs, it's unlikely you will ever see a cpc mayhem beater! I also think when the cpc 464 uses it's high colour mode that the low res that comes with it makes the graphics look like chunky lego. For every cpc batman demo there are dozens of c64 demos that look as good, for every Super Edge Grinder there are dozens of high quality c64 shooters that easily compare. Same goes for Super cauldron, one example of a good looking and smooth cpc platformer, yet i could easily put up a huge list of c64 games that were as good if not better. Anyway it was a nice debate but as always with fanboys like us, we will never agree, lol Edit- The game Green beret is a good example of what most of your typical c64 games looked and played like compared to the cpc versions- [ Show youtube player ] [ Show youtube player ] Last edited by hansel75; 23 August 2014 at 16:56. |
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23 August 2014, 13:54 | #57 |
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Meh you all suck, ZX Spectrum was the best
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23 August 2014, 13:57 | #58 |
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[ Show youtube player ]
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23 August 2014, 14:04 | #59 |
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23 August 2014, 14:25 | #60 |
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you dont need 50fps anyway,24 is enough.
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