! Pinball Dreams is going to be released for CPC classics !

[dlfrsilver]

ahahaha

You remember when i talked about the CPC totally underused as Rhino explained it in its Batman Forever demo ?

Only 6% of its potential, with the best games only using 10% of its potential at best ?

Now here is another proof : 50fps per sec, it doesn't use preshifted graphics, or pre-calculated sequences. A guy asked to Overflow, the coder, if it does, and he answered it does not.

The whole thing stands in 22kb !

[s2325]

I thought it's for Plus hardware but no, it's standard CPC.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by s2325

I thought it's for Plus hardware but no, it's standard CPC.

yes standard CPC

[roondar]

That is a very nice demo. And even more amazing, the coder has released a making off (both as webpage and as a special video + demo disk)!

You can find it here: http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html

Very impressive, it uses lots of pre-calculation and cleverly uses the available video memory to allow for full screen animation without using much CPU time at all. I especially love how he hid the build-up of the next sequence during the playback of cube sequence. Nice!

I love tricks like this, very clever indeed

[MartinW]

I was beginning to wonder why all of the videos of PBD were showing the BeatBox table. So I guess they are releasing the tables 1 at a time as they are completed? Better than taking it all on in one go and never finishing it, but I only ever played Nightmare, and I guess that will be the last

[Neil79]

Update : Remember you heard it here first!



http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/0...tic-amiga.html

[dlfrsilver]

oh oh oh XD !!!

The game is finally finished, and we're in April !!!

[trixster]

Oh boy, Nightmare is the best table of the lot by far

[idrougge]

Tried it out on my 6128, and I was very impressed all the way until the game started.

It turns out to suffer from the same problem as most CPC games: postage stamp-sized screen. The Amiga version uses the entire width of the screen, while the CPC version for some reason limits the width to three quarters, making it feel more like the Gameboy version.

Thank you for your feedback!

@idrougge
Current in-game screen are 69632 pixels (256x272 mode 1), more than the standard 64000 (320x200) and most 8-bit systems:

Spectrum -> 256x192
MSX -> 256x192
Master System -> 256x192
NES -> 256x224
C64 -> 320x200

Amiga is 320x256, a bit larger (wider but less high), what happens is that the CPC monitor shows much more border than the Amiga 1084. Note that the default Amstrad and Amiga resolutions have the same width (320) but on the CPC monitor you see a horizontal border that does not appear in Amiga.

Anyway, I agree with you about a wider screen would be much better. When I analyzed the viability of the port, I estimated that with 256 pixels wide would have no memory problems. Now, I think it would be possible to do it 2 or 4 characters wider, sacrificing some speed, it is mainly a memory issue (speed is no problem, about only half a frame is consumed).

Regards!

[trixster]

Welcome to the forum Rhino, congratulations on Pinball Dreams so far, it's an incredible achievement! I showed it to a friend who is a professor of computer science at york university and who had a cpc6128 as his main computer in the 80s, and he was absolutely staggered by what you've managed to create. I cannot wait to play the finished version.

[idrougge]

I use my CPC on a standard Amiga screen, and while games use only a fraction of the screen area, demos do not, and neither does the Basic screen. With 128 kB of memory, it shouldn't be impossible to cover the entire width of the screen.

[Tsak]

I'd say 256x272 is still damn impressive! Far from stamp-sized surely. Scrolling seems smooth unlike the extreme vast majority of Amstrad titles, the amount of action like flashing parts e.t.c. is fantastic and ball physics feel spot on. I seriously think I've never seen a more impressive Amstrad game than this one!

[idrougge]

AFAIK, vertical scrolling on the CPC isn't all that more difficult than vertical scrolling on the Amiga, only it wasn't utilised in CPC games based on Spectrum code.

@trixster, @Tsak

Thanks for the support. There is no release date yet, but we continue working to finish it as soon as possible!

@idrougge

The CPC Basic screen (default screen) is 320x200. As you use the same monitor for CPC and Amiga, you can do a simple test to see what I say. From Amstrad Basic type border 0, and see the large amount of black border for a 320x200 screen, then run any Amiga program where you can see the default Amiga border, for example, the white border lines of the CLI, and you will see that Amstrad border is much larger for the same 320 pixel wide screen. In my previous email I was a bit inaccurate since the difference is not in the monitor but in the CPC signal that shows the pixels of a size a little smaller than Amiga.

The CPC demos often use the overscan feature (384x272), If you use that resolution in Amiga, there will be a large portion of the screen you will not see, due to the larger pixel size. For Pinball Dreams I defined a custom screen size in portrait using more than 16kb of video and resulting a screen larger than the default screen of almost any 8-bit system.

Amstrad is one of the 8-bit systems where graphics requires more memory, due to its free pixel video mode. This has the advantage of display higher quality graphics than most 8-bit systems, but it has the drawback of consuming more memory and speed to draw software sprites. Anyway, these disadvantages can be compensated by optimized programming.

At this stage of development, I agree with you that it could be a bit wider (2 or 4 chars), but during the first development phase I wanted to be sure to not have memory issues. Note that Pinball Dreams is a very demanding game in many aspects, not only the visual or code for physics, scoreboard fxs, etc ... there are also a lot of music ... I calculate that only the game musics will require about 64kb, when usually only about 4-8kb are required by 8bit games.
Making a port 100% like the original, requires reducing the 1024kb of the original Amiga version to 128kb on CPC, which means to divide by 8 the original size!

Regards!

[idrougge]

If the CPC pixels really are thinner than Amiga pixels, then all the more reason not to define a smaller active display than the default.

Originally Posted by idrougge

If the CPC pixels really are thinner than Amiga pixels, then all the more reason not to define a smaller active display than the default.

I agree, but note the double standard: a 256x192 screen is fullscreen on Spectrum or MSX, but it is a "postage stamp-sized screen" on CPC, and, in your opinion, even a 256x272 is a "postage stamp-sized screen" on CPC.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by idrougge

If the CPC pixels really are thinner than Amiga pixels, then all the more reason not to define a smaller active display than the default.

I guess that what Rhino means is that the screen display is different, and you can't compare one with another.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Rhino

I agree, but note the double standard: a 256x192 screen is fullscreen on Spectrum or MSX, but it is a "postage stamp-sized screen" on CPC, and, in your opinion, even a 256x272 is a "postage stamp-sized screen" on CPC.

Where have I mentioned the Spectrum or MSX? I can't even make a comparison right now since both my Speccy and MSX is in a state of disarray.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I guess that what Rhino means is that the screen display is different, and you can't compare one with another.

Of course I can. I have eyes and a working monitor.

Originally Posted by idrougge

Where have I mentioned the Spectrum or MSX? I can't even make a comparison right now since both my Speccy and MSX is in a state of disarray.

I am who mentioned these platforms to show a double standard that exists in general. But your particular double standard seems to be a bit harder: You said that 256x272 is a "stamp-sized screen", putting the focus on the reduced pixels in the width (64), but not to mention the pixels added to the height (72).

The CPC screen that in your opinion is a "stamp-sized screen", is greater than 320x200 and therefore, that the 99.99% of 8-bit games. It is even bigger than all ntsc Amiga games, Atari ST and most of the 16-bit games.