Memories of Amstrad sh*t quality products

[Vapor]

I thoroughly enjoyed my 6128, especially playing Elite !

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Korban

Definitely.
Anyone with even half a clue understands that most of the time most of the capabilities of a machine is used.
You don't use a portion of a machines capabilities, its a matter of what you do within the full capabilities that are almost always being used.
It's also point blank impossible to say what % of a machines capabilities are being used. Different machines/hardware are more, or less capable in different things.
The coders in the Batman group and Pinball Dreams (if the latter was actually said and not just a figment of someone's imagination to help them with their delusions) certainly know this.
The only people who would cling to these sorts of %-ages used are those that are clueless, those who want something to be true to talk it up/delude themselves that what they're fanatic about are more capable than they truly are.

True, but you've only got to look at the titles I mentioned (mostly by either hobbyists or very small specialist companies) and compare them to most commercial releases from big companies to see just how underexploited the CPC was. Imagine if those games had been released in 1988 by big publishers?

A Spectrum port wasn't using the CPC's potential, and it was besieged with them - those programmers probably didn't deliberately fail to make use of the system, but a lack of time or maybe system knowledge or skill meant the results were often underwhelming.

Who did the CPC have in its heyday who were equivalent of Thalamus for the C64, or Team 17 for the Amiga - cohorts of ex-demo guys regularly releasing varied games which pushed at the system's technical potential? Or even Superior on the BBC or English Software on the 8-bit Ataris, who were (largely) dedicated to maximising what that one system had available?

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Korban

Definitely.
Anyone with even half a clue understands that most of the time most of the capabilities of a machine is used.
You don't use a portion of a machines capabilities, its a matter of what you do within the full capabilities that are almost always being used.
It's also point blank impossible to say what % of a machines capabilities are being used. Different machines/hardware are more, or less capable in different things.
The coders in the Batman group and Pinball Dreams (if the latter was actually said and not just a figment of someone's imagination to help them with their delusions) certainly know this.
The only people who would cling to these sorts of %-ages used are those that are clueless, those who want something to be true to talk it up/delude themselves that what they're fanatic about are more capable than they truly are.

Ask to Rhino why he used this

[reno]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

A Spectrum port wasn't using the CPC's potential, and it was besieged with them - those programmers probably didn't deliberately fail to make use of the system, but a lack of time or maybe system knowledge or skill meant the results were often underwhelming.

I suppose we had a slightly different perspective on the continent. In France, the CPC being the #1 8-bit micro (with the C64 a distant second and the Spectrum virtually nonexistent), local software houses would design for the Amstrad first and set rather high standards for what a CPC game should look like amongst players and the press.

It meant that nobody wasted any time on drab Speccy ports from small UK publishers : we had plenty to do with games from top-notch UK outfits like Ocean/Imagine (think Gryzor, Operation Wolf, Target Renegade) or Hewson (the Raffaele Cecco ones at least), our local software houses (Loriciels, Ere, Microids, Titus, Ubi Soft, Silmarils...) and other CPC strongholds (Dinamic in Spain).

Speccy ports were only really an annoyance when they struck an eagerly awaited conversion (Lotus, R-Type, Enduro Racer, SOTB, Strider...). Otherwise, we would just skip to the next game as soon as we encountered one. They certainly didn't *define* the CPC gaming experience as much as they seem to have done in the UK (which would have been infuriating tbh !)

Who did the CPC have in its heyday who were equivalent of Thalamus for the C64, or Team 17 for the Amiga - cohorts of ex-demo guys regularly releasing varied games which pushed at the system's technical potential? Or even Superior on the BBC or English Software on the 8-bit Ataris, who were (largely) dedicated to maximising what that one system had available?

Xyphoes Fantasy was made by an ex-demo guy.
Super Cauldron, Prehistorik II by another one, and it showed.

It's true there were few games that were "pushing the limits" of the CPC like these, however there were still plenty of teams consistently churning out great games : again look towards Ocean / Hewson in the UK, Dinamic in Spain, and Loriciels, Ere, Microids, Titus, Ubi Soft, Silmarils in France.

Check out Prince of Persia, B.A.T, Chase HQ, Gryzor, Robocop, Arkanoid, Titan, Skweek, Crafton & Xunk (Get Dexter), Targhan, Iron Lord, Cybernoid II...

[Korban]

@Megalomaniac

I agree. I like the the CPC and it was definitely more capable than a lot of its software shows.
I was merely saying that thinking it can literally do something 16.6x better based on a tongue in cheek claim that it's using %6 of its potential, or 2.5x better than another something based on a claim of %40 of it's potential being used is at best silly and would only be clung onto by someone who wants it to be true, or is trying to feed a delusion.

Even if it was true it doesn't mean that the software in question could be improved by these factors. Within the context of the software the machine is being pushed to, or near to it's limits.
Something the coders themselves very likely assume is obvious even if they did make the aforementioned claims.
No-one puts significant effort into software intended to be a showcase knowing it could be improved by orders of magnitudes. They push as much as they can for whatever it is they write.

[Megalomaniac]

I'd rather play CPC Lotus or Strider than just about anything by Dinamic, even if they're both Spectrum ports, but I'd broadly agree with reno. Get Dexter, Skweek and BAT all had no other 8-bit versions, so they're well work seeing as examples. I hope our dear departed OP is here to see this and check out some of our suggestions. We probably didn't get all the good French or Spanish games - Iron Lord was never released in English despite a rave review from Amstrad Action for example. Strange that Ocean put so much effort into most of their CPC conversions, when their early Amiga games were almost all ST ports.

[reno]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I'd rather play CPC Lotus or Strider than just about anything by Dinamic, even if they're both Spectrum ports, but I'd broadly agree with reno. Get Dexter, Skweek and BAT all had no other 8-bit versions, so they're well work seeing as examples. I hope our dear departed OP is here to see this and check out some of our suggestions. We probably didn't get all the good French or Spanish games - Iron Lord was never released in English despite a rave review from Amstrad Action for example. Strange that Ocean put so much effort into most of their CPC conversions, when their early Amiga games were almost all ST ports.

Iron Lord was awesome (and I'm desperately looking for an original copy ).
Since 16-bit versions do exist in English, I'm sure some enterprising soul could move the text strings across and release a faithful homebrew English CPC port !

You guys also didn't get most of the Lankhor adventure games, apart from Mortville Manor.

But apart from those exceptions, I think the bigger issue was awareness, and that's largely down to magazines being understandably more keen to cover the stuff from local people they had relationships with.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

the CRTC is a beast with much more possibilities than the amiga blitter for example (i don't talk about power, but cases of uses).

The CRTC is a problem in its own.

With the right tricks, the CRTC can be made to handle overscan, interlace and even (limited) scrolling.

However, there were several CRTC manufacturers, with different implementations of features documented and undocumented.

I had to buy and fit a new CRTC to my 6128 before I could enjoy many demos since they were not satisfied with the Motorola CRTC I had. A Hitachi one worked better.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by idrougge

The CRTC is a problem in its own.

With the right tricks, the CRTC can be made to handle overscan, interlace and even (limited) scrolling.

However, there were several CRTC manufacturers, with different implementations of features documented and undocumented.

I had to buy and fit a new CRTC to my 6128 before I could enjoy many demos since they were not satisfied with the Motorola CRTC I had. A Hitachi one worked better.

6128 with CRTC type 2 were not made for playing, but working. This is the most reduced and less capable of all the CRTCs.

CRTC 0 & 1 are the best ones. 0 equip the 464 & 6128 and 1 equip the 6128.

[idrougge]

That doesn't matter. As a commercial publisher, you can't very well write "requires CRTC 0" on the packaging since no buyer will knows what a CRTC is, let alone what version he has. You just have to cope with the least common denominator, just as ST developers had to deal with single-sided floppies, blitter-less machines and the buggiest implementations of Shifter.

[dlfrsilver]

It has been discovered lately that the Amstrad CPC is able to make a smooth hardware scrolling horizontally in 1 pixel mode 0 and in 1 pixel mode 1 without use the double buffering method.

This thanks to the work of Longshot (Logon) democoder.

He mades a compendium for the CPC :

http://logonsystem.fr/down/ACCC1.5-EN.pdf

[ImmortalA1000]

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