New Street Fighter 2 for CPC !!

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

wrong, the most sold model is the 6128. The 464 was the most sold only in countries like UK and Spain.

3 millions of CPC sold, and 1,2 millions just in France, and the 6128 was the choice machine.

I've read 3 million CPCs sold worldwide, of those 2 million were 464's, so by my maths it would make it hard for the 6128 to sell more!

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

I don't see anyone doing a remake for the C64 or any other 8bit (or even 16bit for that matter. SF2 is a fish bone on the Amiga's throat ever since US Gold released that half-assed version. We deserve a far better version for our beloved computer).

Agree, but the lack of a better/current day port does not make that particular machine inferior simply because of the bad port it received 25yrs ago.
And yes we do deserve a better port on the C64 and Amiga(the C64 has already proved itself for fighters using only 64kb with IK+, Bankok Nights etc!), but just because no one is doing this in 2016 on the Commodore machines does not mean the CPC is a superior machine with 10X better graphics as stated elsewhere!
Also we may end up with a superior Amiga port, see here in case you missed it- http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84957
Hopefully if this port goes ahead, it won't take 25yrs to complete

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

It was tricky, but no more. CPC devs know how to handle it correcty these days.

Well if what roondar is saying is true, then it's a little more then tricky on a stock CPC464, considering it takes a full 64kb just to achieve a smooth scroll, leaving no free ram for the actual game contents on the most popular Amstrad model, the model that sold the most on a worldwide scale which was the CPC464.
Because the C64 could achieve full 50hz smooth pixel scrolling with HW assistance using hardly any ram on a 64kb machine, if coded in the right hands, i guess you have decide for yourself which was the superior 8bit 64kb machine!
Also what if we throw 128kb at the C64 and see what happens, i would imagine the results would be far superior then the base 64kb model!

Originally Posted by trydowave

I think the "what 8bt was best" debate could end right now if everyone discussed it honestly.
C64 released in 82
Amstrad CPC6128 released 85

THIS! This says a lot, 3yrs was a massive difference back then when it came to advances in hardware!
Saying that 85 hardware beats 82 hardware just does not make scense, and takes away from the fact that the C64 simply kicked ass when it was released in 82 and still dominated the 8bit computer market into the early 90's, despite these supposedly superior 8bit computers that offered inferior experiences back in the day!

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

There were 2 problems : 1) C64 and speccy versions got way more month of development for a same version of a game against 2/3 weeks for the CPC version. That's why most versions were crap. Teams spent more time to polish the CPC version compared to the 2 other ones. This time is over since a long while now, and the CPC is taking back the 1st place.

Is this just speculation and weak excuses for the poor CPC464 releases back in the day, or is there proof that what you say is true?

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Things have went further since. the game use an hardware scrolling, but it's turned off in the video. Basically with it activated, the framerate is the same than without, it doesn't slow down the CPC.
This is not the final version, the hardware scrolling is disactivated for the moment. And no, it's not slower. I have seen the C64 in action, there's nothing to brag about !

Until we see proof of this then talk is nothing, the demo so far lacks any scrolling whatsoever!

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Because you think the engineers in 1992 were crap ? No, there was a political choice of making games for the most selling computers, and that's it.

US Gold ports were mostly crap on any format, everyone knows it, comparing a very limited demo release in 2016 combined with 30yrs of knowledge about a machine, and many years of hand crafted code with no deadlines, compared to a rushed 90's US Gold release is just, well i will just leave it at that.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I agree. It's an advantage in term of storage ability in RAM. You can have more music, more sfx, more frames, but that's all.

That's all?? Please don't downplay the fact that having twice the ram on retro/limited machines was insignificant!

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The CPC version from what i see run higher than 17fps.

Yes it's at a higher framerate, but seriously, is the Amiga version only 1/10th the framerate of this new CPC6128 port that you have originally stated??

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Just to illustrate, quite quickly, people having 464 machines upgraded to 128k. Because yes 64kb doesn't allow to use the CPC to its best. This machine use a 16 bits like display, so this take a lot of memory if you want to do something great graphically and in term of animation.

But for the bulk of users that had a stock 64kb CPC464, it means nothing.
Throw more ram at any machine and it will achieve better results, that's a no brainer.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

That's wrong, the most sold model is the 6128. The 464 was the most sold only in countries like UK and Spain.
3 millions of CPC sold, and 1,2 millions just in France, and the 6128 was the choice machine.

Do you have factual links to verify that the 6128 sold more then the 464?
Because the Wiki page about CPC sales is inconsistent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3..._sales_figures
To my knowledge and based on the the amount of CPC users in Australia back in the day, the 464 model is the only one i ever saw here, the 6128 was non existent here.
And from reading lots of various UK magazines back in the day, the CPC464 was mentioned 99% of the time when it came to users and games.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Even if you compared a C128 to a CPC 128kb, it doesn't change a thing.

Well yes it does actually, and my original quote was asking the question, is it fair to compare a C64 to a CPC6128, not a C128!
Because you are comparing a CPC6128 to a C64 when it comes to the ports/games!
I simply asked the question, how would you feel about comparing a C128 to a CPC464?
The 6128 model has twice the ram as the base CPC464 and C64!
Which again you can downplay if you like.

Look i am not trying to start wars here, but i won't stand for exaggerated claims about how much superior the CPC range was!
This new SF2 port for the 128KB 6128 is a nice/valiant attempt to show that the CPC range could achieve better results then what was shown in the 80's/90's.
But to say an incomplete 2016 demo, lacking in many features is 10x better then all other computer ports from 25yrs ago, well it just does not seem right to me.
Especially when we all know that a new 2016 port on other formats would also be superior then the crap that US Gold released back then.

I await the full version of this classic game for the CPC6128 with great interest, with it's full HW scrolling routines with no loss of framerate, and hopefully faster speed!
Maybe i will be proved wrong afterall, but in saying that it would impress me more if it was on a base CPC464!

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by kovacm

You know that Shadow of the Beast on ST was even crapier than it should because publisher requested to fit game in 512KB of RAM!

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Of course. Most people only had 512kb of ram and not 1mb of ram. Publishers were making games for the most sold machines on the market.

It didn't stop FTL releasing a 1MB-only version of Dungeon Master for the Ami back in 1988 when the ST was outselling Ami games handsomely. The great majority of Amiga owners in 1988/89 had only 512k memory, but the game still sold well enough. In fact, Dungeon Master was such a good Amiga conversion that it was bundled with 1MB ram expansions in an effort to sell more of them (see HERE).

Between Dungeon Master and 1MB-only games that followed in 1989 like It Came from the Desert, it's safe to say that the old adage that "software sells hardware" even applied to the Amiga back then! Unfortunately Atari ST developers/publishers were far too conservative and short-sighted to produce 1MB-only games until about 1992, by which time the ST market was pretty much commercially dead.

Amstrad and C= devs, however, didn't even get to the party late like the ST devs did (and arguably even the Spectrum 128k devs). There were few dedicated Amstrad 6128 and C128 games released indeed! Most just detected extra memory for minor enhancements like additional music/sound FX and faster loading or graphics routines.

Therefore, to say that the Amstrad 6128 with 128k ram (as opposed to the Amstrad 464/664 with 64k ram) was the "choice" machine back in the day is utterly misleading. If it was, even if only in France, then Ubi Soft would have produced many more gems like Iron Lord and B.A.T. for the Amstrad 6128. They didn't. Sorry Denis, but I respectfully have to disagree.......comparing games on the Amstrad 6128 in 2016 (by hobbyists who can spend as much time as they like hand-optimising code) to C64/Spectrum games released in the late 80/early 90s by commercial devs on tight publisher deadlines is nowhere near even comparing apples and oranges, let alone apples and apples!

The Sam Coupe` might be a fairer comparison (although it has 256k ram - and double the memory on an 8-bit machine at the low-medium end is absolutely huge from a coding perspective BTW!), but I think even the very limited number of conversions it received like Prince of Persia (cf. Amstrad version, which won a Tilt d'Or award in 1990 for "best animation") and Manic Miner in the 1990s suggest that it's close to the most superior of the 8-bit machines......even though its potential is well and truly untapped to this day. You can probably add the MSX2/2+ (64k ram) at the top also. All three are clearly a cut above the Amstrad 6128, C128, Spectrum 128k etc. period.

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by hansel75

Agree, but the lack of a better/current day port does not make that particular machine inferior simply because of the bad port it received 25yrs ago.
And yes we do deserve a better port on the C64 and Amiga(the C64 has already proved itself for fighters using only 64kb with IK+, Bankok Nights etc!), but just because no one is doing this in 2016 on the Commodore machines does not mean the CPC is a superior machine with 10X better graphics as stated elsewhere!
Also we may end up with a superior Amiga port, see here in case you missed it- http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84957
Hopefully if this port goes ahead, it won't take 25yrs to complete

I don't think that anyone was saying that the CPC is 10x better than the Amiga as a machine. That would be just folly. What I think (I hope) that people were saying is that this remake of SF2 for CPC is better (or at least looks better) than the Amiga's version of SF2. Since the Amiga's version of SF2 is bland, ugly, jerky and with a completely wrong playability, it's not hard to make something better. Apparently, not even on a CPC.

[Retro-Nerd]

The game was designed for 6-buttons in 60fps anyway. And you need them all to play it properly. It's no IK+ which works fine with one button.

Strange, that people selected this game in 2016 (or since 2013) to port it to an old and limited home computer. Looks nice on screenshots but the gameplay can't be good. Unless you are a biased CPC fan.

[Shatterhand]

even though its potential is well and truly untapped to this day. You can probably add the MSX2/2+ (64k ram)

Just a nitpicky. Most MSX2 games were distributed in cartridges, so Ram wasn't a big issue. But of course, a few were distributed in floppies and even then the CPC can't even dream about touching them in terms of quality, like Aleste 2 , SD-Snatcher or F1-Spirit Special.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by DrBong

It didn't stop FTL releasing a 1MB-only version of Dungeon Master for the Ami back in 1988 when the ST was outselling Ami games handsomely. The great majority of Amiga owners in 1988/89 had only 512k memory, but the game still sold well enough. In fact, Dungeon Master was such a good Amiga conversion that it was bundled with 1MB ram expansions in an effort to sell more of them (see HERE).

I got the numbers of the market for sales on ST and Amiga.

Basically, the publishers were forced to develop onto the Amiga because they didn't do enough dough on the Atari ST.

With the only ST platform they'd fill for bankrupcy. Amiga games always sold more than their ST counterparts. The proof is that today, there are more games hard to find on ST than on the Amiga.

PS : Dungeon master is a rare exception for the ST, as this game sold a very high amount of games on this machine.

But most ST titles sold between 10000-15000 copies and not more.

The average Amiga title sold 20000-35000 copies (quite a number sold way way more than this).

Between Dungeon Master and 1MB-only games that followed in 1989 like It Came from the Desert, it's safe to say that the old adage that "software sells hardware" even applied to the Amiga back then!

Well it's true that great software sells hardware, but at the same time not the opposite.....

Unfortunately Atari ST developers/publishers were far too conservative and short-sighted to produce 1MB-only games until about 1992, by which time the ST market was pretty much commercially dead.

Games were more sophisticated and used more music, more gfx, more sprite frames, or bigger code. That's why they went for 1mb of ram instead of 512kb.

Amstrad and C= devs, however, didn't even get to the party late like the ST devs did (and arguably even the Spectrum 128k devs).

I don't agree with you on that point, let me explain why below.

There were few dedicated Amstrad 6128 and C128 games released indeed!

So, as i explained above, this is wrong. There are a shit ton of CPC 6128 specific software (a lot of games), which will not even run on 464 + 64kb of ram, because of the lack of the Amsdos rom, and because the 464 use the Basic v1.0. The software for 6128 are lock by memory and firmware revision.

The facts : i'm preserving still and i have preserved a ton of CPC games in original, and there is a very consequent number of 6128 only games.

So many that i could not even list them all.

Most just detected extra memory for minor enhancements like additional music/sound FX and faster loading or graphics routines.

This is incorrect as well in most cases. Only a bunch of title like the ocean titles are using the 128kb of ram to load all the GFX data (read the game levels) in memory. All the other games are using features of the 6128 firmware as well as using the extended memory to allow bigger games.

What i say is however not true in the english countries, because in those countries it was the 464 which was the most sold CPC and the most easy to find on those markets.

In my country, the 6128 was all powerful, it was the most sold machine on our land, and the 464 was behind in term of sales.

The french prefered the floppies over the tapes, at the opposite of the UK and Spain CPC owners.

In Spain, it was like in UK, where the 464 was the choice machine.

Therefore, to say that the Amstrad 6128 with 128k ram (as opposed to the Amstrad 464/664 with 64k ram) was the "choice" machine back in the day is utterly misleading.

It's not misleading in my Country. France was the country between UK, France, Germany, Spain were the CPC sales were the highest.

If you look of course from english countries, you're right, it was the 464 the leading machine in the CPC range.

If it was, even if only in France, then Ubi Soft would have produced many more gems like Iron Lord and B.A.T. for the Amstrad 6128. They didn't.

Yes and they didn't because most of the 128K games were ported not from the oldish C64 or the speccy, but from "superior" 16 bits machines. And those games assets were taken lots of ram.

The publishers were forced to remove some caracteristics in the games, for example, as good as BAT is on CPC (it's a great port from the ST), they had the remove the sound, because the whole 128kb of ram are used !

Iron Lord is a great port from the Atari ST, Defender of the crown is also a port of the Atari ST, Masque /Masque + is also an Atari ST port.

The problem was that the CPC was just short of Ram space for porting, or either with unsufficient CPU power.

That's why Ubisoft did not released more games for 128k only games.
Because the games arriving from the 16 bits machines were too complicated to port on CPC. They had to stop mostly for this reason.

Sorry Denis, but I respectfully have to disagree.......comparing games on the Amstrad 6128 in 2016 (by hobbyists who can spend as much time as they like hand-optimising code) to C64/Spectrum games released in the late 80/early 90s by commercial devs on tight publisher deadlines is nowhere near even comparing apples and oranges, let alone apples and apples!

I got my sources : many developers explained they spent many months to make the C64 and spectrum version, polish them, and then : "Oh shit ! we only have 2 weeks to make the CPC versions !"

If the CPC versions had the same development time schedule, we would had way way better games.

I know enough competent (let's say excellent) CPC coders, and they all shake their heads when they see the massacre operated on the commercial games.

I was talking about the Barbarian case on CPC, the CPC version is dog slow because the coder has used the C64 graphics directly, and converting them first in CPC Mode 1, and next in mode 0 !

This game is not slow because the CPC is bad, has a slow CPU, no, the CPC is asked to perform tasks which makes it lose tons of CPU cycle just to convert gfx coming from the C64 ! And there are quite a number of game on CPC that are basically almost emulators running C64 or Speccy version straight !

No, the real story is that quite a number of devs hated the CPC in UK, and did the best they could to make it die by churning out shit games.

Easy explanation : the C64 and speccy were 40% of the market in UK, and the CPC 10%.

In my Country, the C64 was judged so crap that we stabbed it to death since 1986. And the same for the spectrum. The CPC got here 60% of the market, 20% more than the C64 and speccy all together.

The Sam Coupe` might be a fairer comparison (although it has 256k ram - and double the memory on an 8-bit machine at the low-medium end is absolutely huge from a coding perspective BTW!), but I think even the very limited number of conversions it received like Prince of Persia (cf. Amstrad version, which won a Tilt d'or award in 1990 for "best animation") and Manic Miner in the 1990s suggest that it's close to the most superior of the 8-bit machines......

The Sam coupé was an anecdotic machine. It never worked because it was crushed between the C64-spectrum in UK and the Amstrad CPC in France.

By the way, the sam coupé has never been sold in France.

even though its potential is well and truly untapped to this day. You can probably add the MSX2/2+ (64k ram) at the top also. All three are clearly a cut above the Amstrad 6128, C128, Spectrum 128k etc. period.

The MSX never worked in France for the same reason. The CPC was the master of the 8 bits machine with 60% of the market and this in 1990.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The game was designed for 6-buttons in 60fps anyway. And you need them all to play it properly. It's no IK+ which works fine with one button.

Strange, that people selected this game in 2016 (or since 2013) to port it to an old and limited home computer. Looks nice on screenshots but the gameplay can't be good. Unless you are a biased CPC fan.

The CPC 6128 supports natively 2 joystick buttons, Fire 1 and Fire 2.

Those are planned for support

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

I don't think that anyone was saying that the CPC is 10x better than the Amiga as a machine. That would be just folly. What I think (I hope) that people were saying is that this remake of SF2 for CPC is better (or at least looks better) than the Amiga's version of SF2.

You've understood well what i said. The Amiga is of course way way above the CPC, and 2 hands up.

But SF2 for CPC is indeed 10 times better than the amiga version of the same game. And it's really not a feat since the Amiga version is so rubbish and ugly, and well give it all the bad names you want

Since the Amiga's version of SF2 is bland, ugly, jerky and with a completely wrong playability, it's not hard to make something better. Apparently, not even on a CPC.

That was my point !

[Shatterhand]

Funny you say the MSX didnt work on France... since I only saw 2 european countries developing properly for the MSX instead of going for the shitty direct spectrum ports: France and Netherlands. Though Netherlands surely had a more active scene I guess, since there are more MSX games from there than from France.

But both Loriciel and Infogrames made a fair amount of games for the MSX.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Register 12 Display Start Address (High) xx000000 32
Register 13 Display Start Address (Low) 00000000 0

Register 13 Allows you to offset the start of screen memory for hardware scrolling, and if using memory from address &0000 with the firmware.

Surely that's only for vertical scrolling?
Keep in mind that the Motorola 6845 CRTC was intended for terminal displays, which scroll vertically a lot – but never horizontally.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I have a CPC 128k and also a CPC 64k. Both run at the exact same speed. Having 128k instead of 64k DOESN'T SPEED UP the computer or any operations visible on screen.

The difference between 64 ko and 128 ko is the difference between double buffering or not. Double buffering is speed. And on the CPC, double buffering is necessary to achieve smooth horizontal scroll. That's why Pinball Dreams was possible, but why Edge Grinder required 128 ko on the CPC while it only needed 64 ko on the C64:

http://formatwar.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3326#p3326

Originally Posted by axelay

it's hardware scrolling. A combination of the base character step hardware scroll, modifying the HSYNC which physically shifts the screen position half a character left & right to double that scroll resolution, and finally using two screens with the background written 1 wide pixel offset from each other to produce the 1/4 character step scroll.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Strange, that people selected this game in 2016 (or since 2013) to port it to an old and limited home computer. Looks nice on screenshots but the gameplay can't be good. Unless you are a biased CPC fan.

Agreed. C64 and Spectrum coders never tried to improve on their own shitty SF2 ports because they realise it will never play to their machines' strengths.

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Funny you say the MSX didnt work on France... since I only saw 2 european countries developing properly for the MSX instead of going for the shitty direct spectrum ports: France and Netherlands. Though Netherlands surely had a more active scene I guess, since there are more MSX games from there than from France.

But both Loriciel and Infogrames made a fair amount of games for the MSX.

[offtopic]
The MSX (especially the Philips VG-8020) were also sold here in Portugal, but they came too late (1985 or 1986, I believe) and faced the fierce competition of the ZX Spectrum, that had penetrated the market sooner and had become the best-selling computer here at the time. Every game shop had a tone of games for the Spectrum machine but very few (and in some cases none) for the MSX. Also, as was appanage at the time, many of the available games for the MSX were not the japanese classics that we know today but some (downright horrible) european games that - in about 95% of the cases - we straight conversions of existing Spectrum games. Well, to have those - kids thought - then it's more logical to get the Spectrum instead: it's cheaper, everyone else has one and there's tons of cheap games available. I only actually met a guy back in the day that had an MSX (an aforementioned Philips VG-8020) but he always said that he wished he had a Spectrum... yeah, that was how things were back in the day.

Again due to a timing issue, and again for being too late to the party, the MSX2 was never sold here. I guess retailers realised that it would bomb, since by that time the Amiga, the Atari ST and - especially - the PC compatibles were all the rage here.

I think that the portuguese story of the MSX was actually common on all the other european countries that retailed the MSX. I know that next door, in Spain, the story was pretty much the same. I think that only the Netherlands had a different tale altogether...
[/offtopic]

[Shatterhand]

[going further in the offtopic]
Here in Brazil back in the 80s we had a law that basically prohibited importing computers. We could only buy computers that were produced here. What companies did were basically license (or downright steal many times) other computers to be produced here, as if they were national products. So we got computers like the CP-500 which was a clone of the TRS 80 Color, and the Sinclair products got their clones (TK-85 for the ZX1, TK-90 for the Speccy)

But the thing is that they all came to our market more or less at the same time, and who brought the MSX brand here, did it legally and it was a big electronics appliances company.. (it was the guys who oficially brought the Atari 2600 first to Brazil, and at a later point also represented Nintendo here)... so they could market their product way better than everyone else.... this with also the MSX really being better than all the other computers produced here made the MSX easily get the bigest share of the home market, crushing all the competition.

The MSX2 never "oficially" got here, but the user base was huge (for the time) and other companies produced a kit that could upgrade your MSX to MSX2 or MSX2+. Lots of hardware (and some software too) was produced here, and some stuff was even *copied* by European companies, but were developed here. The guy who first created the MSX2 upgrade kit (also the first to produce a Ram Upgrade for it even before anyone on Europe or Japan did it) says he was earning like a thousand dolars per DAY selling his hardware stuff for MSX back at that time (He was still doing hardware for the MSX up to like 3-4 years ago)

One thing that's really curious and I don't think it happened anywhere but here... we had one big national magazine about the MSX... at one point they added a huge Amiga section on their pages.. which caused fury among MSX users and to this day the brazilian retrocomputing scene has a feud between MSX and Amiga users (with MSX users being in bigger number and the Amiga getting a lot of hate). And after the MSX wasn't a viable option anymore, many people actually upgraded from an MSX to an Amiga (my case, for example), while other people went the PC route. But it was a natural way to do things here, going from the MSX to Amiga.
[/longer off topic]

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Surely that's only for vertical scrolling?
Keep in mind that the Motorola 6845 CRTC was intended for terminal displays, which scroll vertically a lot – but never horizontally.

Well, i didn't know that However, yep, the CPC can hard scroll vertical and Horizontal.

The difference between 64 ko and 128 ko is the difference between double buffering or not. Double buffering is speed.

Operation Wolf and Operation thunderbolt on CPC use double buffering, and the game works in 64kb.

And on the CPC, double buffering is necessary to achieve smooth horizontal scroll.

correct

That's why Pinball Dreams was possible, but why Edge Grinder required 128 ko on the CPC while it only needed 64 ko on the C64:

http://formatwar.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3326#p3326

Yes. 128kb is required to get the most of the CPC. That's why in France people bought more 6128 than 464. We wanted fast loading, color monitor, and the whole chunk of ram.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The CPC has from factory the ability to do hardware scrolling. Not like the ST on which syncscroll is something done by making the computer do what it's not supposed to do.

check this :

Register 12 Display Start Address (High) xx000000 32
Register 13 Display Start Address (Low) 00000000 0

Register 13 Allows you to offset the start of screen memory for hardware scrolling, and if using memory from address &0000 with the firmware.

This shows that the CPC has from the start registers made for hardware scrollings, and those 2 are dedicated to that.

For 8x8 character cells, yes.

1 pixel smooth scrolling is not a supported option. This is very clear from both your link and from http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Prog...ware_scrolling, which goes into some detail. The first tells us you can move the screen on byte boundaries only (=8 pixels at a time), the second tells us that you can trick (using interrupts and cleverly setting registers clearly not designed for this purpose) to get the screen to move by 1 pixel.

This is (summarizing the second wiki here) rather tricky for horizontal smooth scrolling.

So no, the CPC does not have hardware 1 pixel smooth scrolling built in at all. Clever coders managed to make it do so regardless. This is a great achievement by the coders, not the chip.

Well, so.....

The CPC has some games doing hardware scrollings, vertical and horizontal.

Mission Genocide on CPC is a mode 0 game, and is doing a 1 pixel step scroll in vertical.

The CRTC was made from factory to do Hardware scrollings. It's made for that via specific registers.

The mostly incompatible CRTC used on CPC is the CRTC2, which is a shit in a box. Most CPC have CRTC0 and CRTC1 which do not have any incompatibilities with the hardware scrolling ability.

It does not have hardware 1 pixel scrolling. Doing so is a trick, per the CPC wiki and the earlier stuff I quoted from pouet.net.

You're basically distorting a right fact to a wrong one.

You can do hardware scrolls on CRTC0,1,2,3,4

Indeed: all CRTC chips support 8x8 block scrolling in hardware. None of them support 1 pixel smooth scrolling directly in hardware, only through tricks.

The tricks and the effects you're talking about are NOT related to hardware scrolling ability, but are effecting other possibilities on the CPC.

Such as 1 pixel smooth scrolling.

Check instead here :

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/CRTC

this explains exactly what you can do or not with the different CRTC types.

I did and also checked http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Prog...ware_scrolling and both say the same: the CRTC has built in support for 8x8 cell hardware scrolling, all other forms are software based and basically tricks.

Which is why they do not work on all CRTC models.

64kb more are needed not only to achieve the hard scroll, but it's also needed due to the amount of data to store in RAM.

The CPC devs work mostly in mode 0, which takes more RAM than mode 1.

I will not quote Amstrad CPC demo coders or the wiki again, but this is simply not true - you need two buffers to do 1 pixel smooth horizontal scrolling. This totals 64KB of memory to do as you need 4 screens of memory (see the wiki again) at 16KB each to make it work.

So, without 128KB you can't horizontally 1 pixel smooth scroll at all.

So 128kb is not an option. If it was the Amiga, i would prefer the 1mb version of a game instead of the 512kb one, because you have more graphics, more music, more SFX, more sprite frames, etc, etc, etc.

Vertical smooth scrolling does not need 128KB to be done, horizontal smooth scrolling does, as explained before.

The CPC limits have been exploded. Since Pinball Dreams, the CPC took back its throne of the best 8 bits (not difficult, it was the last one to come on market).

I have a CPC 128k and also a CPC 64k. Both run at the exact same speed. Having 128k instead of 64k DOESN'T SPEED UP the computer or any operations visible on screen.

You have 64kb more ? You just enjoy more space in RAM, end of the story

It does speed up. For example, horizontal 1 pixel smooth scrolling is impossible to do at 50Hz on a CPC without using more RAM than the 64KB version has.

Your point of view is the oldish one, when the CPC got the shittiest conversions from the C64 and the speccy. This time is over now, and it started with Pinball Dreams which is more faithfull to the Amiga than the C64 version will never be, scrolling and color wise

My point of view is that of a programmer who likes to tinker with systems and figure out how stuff works (currently doing so on the Amiga OCS chipset). I checked how stuff works on the CPC before posting this and as such am not particularly worried wether or not it'll do better or worse than the C64/Speccy. Sometimes it will, other times it won't.

I replied mostly because your extra-memory does not improve speed in computing stance is well, flat wrong. If you can't see why, I suggest you familiarize yourself with optimising code and programming algorithms in general. It really is the most basic and often most efficient way to optimise code for performance on any system (with a minor caveat that modern CPU's are too fast for their memory, but that does not apply here).

And if you can't code and don't want to take my word for it, that is fine as well. But then I'd suggest taking it from the myriad of coders/programmers out there. Adding more memory means you can optimise in ways that are not possible with less.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Yes. 128kb is required to get the most of the CPC. That's why in France people bought more 6128 than 464. We wanted fast loading, color monitor, and the whole chunk of ram.

You say it like only the French wanted the best, yeah sure Brits wanted slow crappy tape loading with a green screen monitor the reason why the 464 sold better in the UK was because it was a big chunk cheaper and still in the lower 8-bit price range £199-£299 depending on monitor, compare that to £299-£399 for the 6128 you can see with the colour monitor its now pushing towards the ST price range, and i know which one i would rather have!

It's never about which is best, its about cost vs tech, £200-£250 was the max most people paid for an 8-bit machine in the UK, £400-£500 was 16-bit pricing!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

You say it like only the French wanted the best, yeah sure Brits wanted slow crappy tape loading with a green screen monitor the reason why the 464 sold better in the UK was because it was a big chunk cheaper and still in the lower 8-bit price range £199-£299 depending on monitor, compare that to £299-£399 for the 6128 you can see with the colour monitor its now pushing towards the ST price range, and i know which one i would rather have!

It's not a point of view. UK CPC users prefered the 464 with tapes. That's what was the market in UK.

In France CPC users prefered the 6128, which costed 1000 francs more than the 464.

My own father bought the 6128 complete with monitor DMP 2000 printer + AMX Mouse add-on for 10000 francs, this was in december 1985. I got the CPC the 9th of january 1986.

It's never about which is best, its about cost vs tech, £200-£250 was the max most people paid for an 8-bit machine in the UK, £400-£500 was 16-bit pricing!

There was not a big difference here in price between the 464 and the 6128.

The 464 was 2990 francs (299 pounds) with green screen, 4490 francs with color screen (449 pounds) and the 6128 was 4990 francs with Color monitor.

There was only 500 francs (50 pounds) between the 464 color and the 6128 color version.

The Atari 520 ST (first model) in france in 1985 was sold 9990 francs (999 pounds, almost 1000 pounds !!).

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

It's not a point of view. UK CPC users prefered the 464 with tapes. That's what was the market in UK.

Just because it sold more doesn't mean it's 'preferred' as I said it's a decision about cost vs tech, the 48k rubber keyed Spectrum was the most popular because it was the cheapest, it doesn't mean the 128k +3 with disk drive wasn't wanted, it just wasn't worth it for the money, it's the same principle.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Just because it sold more doesn't mean it's 'preferred' as I said it's a decision about cost vs tech, the 48k rubber keyed Spectrum was the most popular because it was the cheapest, it doesn't mean the 128k +3 with disk drive wasn't wanted, it just wasn't worth it for the money, it's the same principle.

I have perfectly read what you said about the fact that in England, people wanted to pay the lowest possible price for an 8 bits machine.

They prefered the price vs the tech as you explained. We choosed the price AND the tech

Alan Sugar did the things right, and the prices went down really good, since the computer sold in tons.