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River Raid Tech Demo

joefishjoefish
edited May 2009 in Development
Just a little something to look at. Enjoy.

Joefish_River_Raid_Tech_Demo_01.tap

Put together using a 48K Spectrum under ZXSpin, but it seems to be stable on most models.

Sadly there are no controls and the river's a bit narrow. I have a few more ideas so may come back to this. Or it might mutate into something else...
Post edited by joefish on
Joefish
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
«1

Comments

  • psj3809psj3809
    edited May 2009
    You cant tease us with something like that !

    Looks very good, would love this to be a finalised game ! Pretty please !
  • SwainySwainy
    edited May 2009
    Wow, that looks good!
  • joefishjoefish
    edited May 2009
    psj3809 wrote: »
    Looks very good, would love this to be a finalised game !
    If I said that's easier said than done, it would make me understatement champion of the world!
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • RalfRalf
    edited May 2009
    Impressive!

    Please, make a game of it. Such a potential shouldn't be wasted
  • joefishjoefish
    edited May 2009
    I sort of intend to, but it'll take a lot of planning to make it interactive.

    For a start, that's as wide as the river can get. It could possibly go two characters wider, but then you couldn't have the border effect. To make it more interesting, I should be able to make it weave side-to-side but that's a hell of an overhaul. Then there's the problem of combining pixel-drawn sprites (like the plane) and attribute-drawn sprites (like the ships) into the same game.

    So don't hold your breath.
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • BiNMaNBiNMaN
    edited May 2009
    what the f***, how the hell have you done that?

    works on my +3, even my wife said 'you shouldn't be able to do that'!!!

    I'm still rubbin' my eyes!!

    sweet
  • VincentACVincentAC
    edited May 2009
    That looks amazing.

    Can't wait to see how it evolves.
    Oh, no. Every time you turn up something monumental and terrible happens.
    I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
    --Raziel (Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver 2)

    https://www.youtube.com/user/VincentTSFP
  • LCDLCD
    edited May 2009
    I'm impressed! It looks really promising.
  • Matt_BMatt_B
    edited May 2009
    Great piece of work. I can make some pretty good guesses as to how it works and why it'd be an utter bugger to turn into a playable game, but well done none the same.
  • ZnorXmanZnorXman
    edited May 2009
    How in the [hoopadoodle] were you able to get the attribs to contain more than 2 (two) colours??? It's one of them there speedy-tricks, huh?

    Image1.png

    Cool stuff!
  • ArjunArjun
    edited May 2009
    Nice one joe!
    Zero - A modern Spectrum emulator for Windows.
    Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
  • ArdaArda
    edited May 2009
    ZnorXman wrote: »
    How in the [hoopadoodle] were you able to get the attribs to contain more than 2 (two) colours??? It's one of them there speedy-tricks, huh?

    Cool stuff!

    look at the "new game ideas" forum.


    @joefish:
    wow! Something to show to my CPC friends.
    Focus now! You know you can do it! ;)
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited May 2009
    Hey Joe, What ya doing with that great demo in your hands!

    Well done - looks amazing!
  • joefishjoefish
    edited May 2009
    It re-writes the attributes on each line of the screen as the TV beam is drawing the image. So, one line of the image is drawn with the first set of attributes, but when it comes to draw the next line the attributes have changed so those pixels appear in different colours.

    But, this only works for the 14 characters in the middle of the screen. The 9 characters to the left and to the right (where the road continues) are perfectly legal Spectrum attributes (black on green or black on yellow). Then half way through swapping the attributes, it swaps the border colour to match on that line too (this is why it isn't quite the 16-character wide strip some demos achieve, as there's a border switch in there too).

    The ships and scenery are drawn entirely from attributes. Most of the centre section of the screen is filled with a 00001111 pattern, so by setting ink and paper colours it can draw shapes in 4x1 pixel blocks. These can also be scrolled fairly quickly just by moving the address of where the screen redraw takes its attribute data from.

    This makes it much harder to draw detailed sprites, as the pixels have to be drawn to the screen memory, but the attributes have to be drawn to a moving window on a buffer elsewhere in the memory.

    If you look closely where the biplane passes over the bridge, there's still a brief moment of 1x8 pixel attribute clash where the white of the bridge support flicks out to fill most of the 1x8 cell, when one black pixel of the propellor is drawn there.
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • bobsbobs
    edited May 2009
    It's very very impressive, hats off to your there, certainly a huge leap over the released version... but can it be turned into a full game with bullets etc?
    https://bobs-stuff.itch.io
    https://twitter.com/bobsstuffgames
    https://www.facebook.com/bobs.stuff
    http://www.bobs-stuff.co.uk
  • RalfRalf
    edited May 2009
    Joefish, would you reveal one thing, if it is not a secret?

    You have joined WOS quite recently and you have already shown a very high skill of Spectrum programming.

    Say, have you had written something on Spectrum before, or is it your first try?
  • Bob StainsBob Stains
    edited May 2009
    Worky on a 48K :)
  • joefishjoefish
    edited May 2009
    The only 'games' I ever produced on the Spectrum were converting a few really simple educational titles for a small retailer back in 1980-something (done in BASIC and compiled). This was following on from work experience, whilst still at achool.

    I did try writing some machine code multi-colour routines like this one. I had another one that redrew up to 8 16x16 sprites every frame, swapping between two images to make them appear to be in 3 colours, but they were flickery as hell. I did get the hang of optimising and timing code based on the Z80 instruction set.

    I moved onto the ST shortly after that, where there were similar effects you could produce, but they took a long long time to master. I never produced anything commercially, though I have worked in programming for various communications and defence-related businesses.

    The thing is, there's a big difference between developing the code for a game and developing good progressive levels that people would actually want to play. It's the latter that I never got to finish. Though if I need it, I hope I can get some help here.
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • joefishjoefish
    edited May 2009
    Bob Stains wrote: »
    Worky on a 48K :)
    It was designed for the 48K emulation under ZXSpin. It's pure luck that it's still stable on the 128s - there's no special timing tweaks based on the platform.

    Do you mean you've tried it on a real one?

    I really need to find my old Speccy, but it's in my parent's loft, and the room below the loft access is so full of old stuff too...
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • rich_chandlerrich_chandler
    edited May 2009
    joefish wrote: »
    Do you mean you've tried it on a real one?
    He does, he's does things like that.

    Bob is a very useful bloke to know...
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • Bob StainsBob Stains
    edited May 2009
    Still running happily on a 48K Spectrum after several minutes :)
  • ewgfewgf
    edited May 2009
    Joefish, that looks great (just tried it on Spin). You MUST finish it, something as impressive as that cannot/must not be abandoned!

    Wow, it is impressive!
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited May 2009
    bobs wrote: »
    It's very very impressive, hats off to your there, certainly a huge leap over the released version... but can it be turned into a full game with bullets etc?

    If this demo could be turned into a playable game with enemy sprites, bullets, free player movement and a scoring system I'd go as far as to say it would be the greatest programming achievement from a technical point of view on the ZX Spectrum....ever!
  • Bob StainsBob Stains
    edited May 2009
    Must be an hour or more now and no timing drift on the machine.
  • rich_chandlerrich_chandler
    edited May 2009
    zxspecticle wrote: »
    If this demo could be turned into a playable game with enemy sprites, bullets, free player movement and a scoring system I'd go as far as to say it would be the greatest programming achievement from a technical point of view on the ZX Spectrum....ever!
    Thats a bit OTT...
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • ArdaArda
    edited May 2009
    karingal wrote: »
    Thats a bit OTT...

    but this would be first ever fully multicolour game in a standard speccy. I remember there may be some other game, about "bats" (or something) which uses multicolour sprites only.

    So, the argument made by zxspecticle may be slightly ott but not so much. Turning this demo into a game is not an easy task, if not impossible.
  • rich_chandlerrich_chandler
    edited May 2009
    Arda wrote: »
    but this would be first ever fully multicolour game in a standard speccy. I remember there may be some other game, about "bats" (or something) which uses multicolour sprites only.
    Erm, are you sure and would you want to explain exactly what you mean about 'fully multicolour'?
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • ArdaArda
    edited May 2009
    karingal wrote: »
    Erm, are you sure and would you want to explain exactly what you mean about 'fully multicolour'?

    eheh, a game which relies on multicolour rendering to make sense?
  • gasmangasman
    edited May 2009
    Arda wrote: »
    but this would be first ever fully multicolour game in a standard speccy. I remember there may be some other game, about "bats" (or something) which uses multicolour sprites only.

    Not sure if this is the one you mean (it has "bats" in), but... TV Game by Weird Science Software
  • rich_chandlerrich_chandler
    edited May 2009
    Arda wrote: »
    eheh, a game which relies on multicolour rendering to make sense.
    That statement doesn't make sense, there are loads of multicolour Spectrum games what makes this demo different?
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
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