Does any one remember SPACE HAWKS on the CPC?

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Ian Price

#60
QuoteRaster bars on the title screen, this involved waiting for the VBlank interrupt and then changing the pallet of colour 0(always the background colour), using 100% CPU to match the screen retrace gun. This allows for a tonne of colours on the screen and drawing the bars into the borders. I think I was the first to do this on the CPC. It would not been possible without being able to set the colour palette in real-time.

You could easily change the colour on the fly, but not the actual palette. The palette was fixed at 27 colours (on normal CPC). It wasn't just a limitation of Locomotive BASIC. As I stated, you can have more than 16 colours (although I only mentioned Mode switching) on screen at a time and the borders  were very easy to manipulate.

I did a fair bit of assembly coding back in the day too, but I don't remember much nowadays. And not because of drugs or alcohol - just old age and dementia!

See here, ONLY 27 and definitely not 4096 colours on normal CPC - http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Video_modes
I came. I saw. I played.

erico

Thanks for the info and the links guys, I also got these two here:

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Video_modes#Mode_0_graphics
http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Creating_images_for_the_Amstrad

From what I understood, legacy wise you could have 16 colors from a fixed pallete of 27 in mode 0 + 160x200 screen with pixel aspect at 2.
I´m appending its pallete here (.act files).

And an extra pallete where the dithered colors are real colors.
I thought I could reach the original by going this way first and only susbtitute the non-colors for the dither.
Alas it worked better for auto conversion but still needs hand work.
I would like it to use this mode.

For the sake of time, I decided to use CPC+ and its 4096 colors =D
I upped the resolution a bit to try and match mobile screens and a comfortable play area while retaining the pixel visual aspect of 2.

But the hardest part in drawing these things was the motto behind the art.

If you take a look at the originals, IMHO, they look like they were referenced from a mix of games and effects of old computers.

So in my case, the hawks are actually a bit cyber-cthullu-cenobits like and have insect wings :D
More or less like this order:

The yellow disk is the hawk egg enlaced by some polygonal energy.
There is a set of 2 mutated/cyber eggs.
And a set of 2 mutated/cyber young hawks.
The green spinning liquids are failed eggs condensed into an explosive liquid.
You have a young and a mature hawk (that can come from the egg).

There is more on the objects relationship and some story. I find it easier to draw something doing that first.

edit: Bigsofty, warmachine looks awesome!

bigsofty

I bow to your superior memory Ian, I think you may be right!  ;)

Thanks Erico, it was a long time ago but even to this day I remember it being one of the most enjoyable times I had coding! :)

Erico, your sprites would look great in a good old retro Galaxian Shmup IMHO!  :good:
Cheers,

Ian.

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC.  As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
(E. W. Dijkstra)

Brick Redux

Quote from: erico on 2013-Aug-23
Thanks, here is the latest one with a better size (200x250 upscaled to 800x500).

Original sprites in png, square pixel.
plus a mock

Super nice blocky GFX Erico, just what I needed.  Will add them to the Hawks prog and post a demo soon. Watch this space. Brilliant!
A mournful owner of a HP HDX18 Laptop that has died...FECK!

Ian Price

I came. I saw. I played.

Brick Redux

A mournful owner of a HP HDX18 Laptop that has died...FECK!

erico

Sooner then some title?? :P
...me and folks wanna see it moving! 8)


:D hardcore bump!  :D

MrTAToad

Amstrad's console (GX 4000) had a palette of 4096, from which 16 could be used.

When it was released, I was certainly rather interested in it...  Mind you, I also wanted a C128 and (later on) a Falcon...

Ian Price

The GX4000 was a nice little machine, but the controllers were really small. I had four games for mine; Pang, Burning Rubber, RoboCop 2 and Klax. All looked graphically great and three of them played well too. However, I can't remember getting off of the first level in RoboCop 2. It was rock-hard. A real shame because it looked absolutely fantastic.

The GX4000 could display more than 16 colours at a time MrT -

  - Maximum colours onscreen: 32 (16 for background, 15 for sprites, 1 for border)

  - Maximum onscreen colour counts can be increased in all Modes through the use of interrupts.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_GX4000
I came. I saw. I played.

MrTAToad

#69
Dont forget thats the total for the background, sprites and border...  However, I suspect most took advantage of the use of interrupts to increase that number.

Ian Price

Nope, 32 was normal without interrupts. The GX4000 used the PLUS capabilities of the CPC PLUS range, which included a larger palette (as you said 4096) and more colours on screen (upto 32 without interrupts) and sprites.

View a game like Robocop 2, Pang or even Burnin' Rubber on YouTube and you can clearly see there's more than 16 colours visible at any one time. These games weren't available on regular CPC due to that reason.
I came. I saw. I played.

MrTAToad

I only saw the Burning Rubber game when the machine came out...

mentalthink

I think Alan sugar was wrong with CPC + and this Console, today they are nice machines, but with the Amiga and Atari in the market was a wrong Step.

About the +'s and the console really it's nice look a Z80 and seems practically an Amiga using Sprites , I look some games of Plus and they are awesome, something similar whats happends whit MSX2 or MSX-Turbo a simply Z80 and it's like an Arcade.

In those times was the end of the "Golden Era of the Spaninsh Soft", the market was really extrange, anybody nows wich machine use for do games... the PC whit 2 colors, or less graphic quality than an Spectrum not was a good idea think on it... another great error.  :'( :'( and Amiga and Atari, very expensive computers for the most part of population.

erico

I just saw a tube with that robocop2 game on cpc, really nice! But quite not as ´pretty´ as the amiga version, which did sport ham images between levels.

Here I don´t care much for ´pretty´ and the ham images are a waste for me, games have to inspire the imagination not copy what our eyes can see.
The cpc version looks quite ´manic miner´ style.

I think the 2x aspect ratio of amstrad is awesome! It generates intriguing possibilities.

Ian Price

Quotethink Alan sugar was wrong with CPC + and this Console, today they are nice machines, but with the Amiga and Atari in the market was a wrong Step.
Yeah, not really sure what he (Alan Sugar) was trying to do there - with the GX4000 or the PLUS range.

QuoteI just saw a tube with that robocop2 game on cpc, really nice! But quite not as ´pretty´ as the amiga version, which did sport ham images between levels.
Not surprising really, seeing as the CPC was 8bit and limited by its graphic Mode 0 and the Amiga was 16bit and not limited. If you want to graphically compare "like for like" look at other 8bit versions, like the the 64C ... ;)

QuoteI think the 2x aspect ratio of amstrad is awesome! It generates intriguing possibilities.
I love the chunkiness of CPC (and to a lesser degree, C64) games.

I came. I saw. I played.