Nintendo were always going to take it down, I'm pretty certain ZeroPaige would've been fully aware of that. But just to have it available for a few days means it will have downloaded plenty of times. The game ain't going nowhere.
Indeed
Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
Original L64 thread in case you missed it, I'm not sure if there are further technical details in there, such as the programming challenges and why the slowdowns etc, it's hard to tell atm with its 14+pages (it's nice to see an alive retro community for a change too, haha)
A little-known fact 37499201: the Speccy has its own version of Mario-with-lags. This is best coupled with 'playing the resolution card' if used as some sort of argument I suppose ...
- Actually, I think it's not impossible to get this kind of game to acceptable speeds using a combined LD-PUSH 'inplace tile' (= Stormlord-like) approach, as well as converting some of the more difficult graphics elements into 'code as data' (= dat cloud). Or possibly a full 'code as data' engine ...
Original L64 thread in case you missed it, I'm not sure if there are further technical details in there, such as the programming challenges and why the slowdowns etc, it's hard to tell atm with its 14+pages (it's nice to see an alive retro community for a change too, haha)
A little-known fact 37499201: the Speccy has its own version of Mario-with-lags. This is best coupled with 'playing the resolution card' if used as some sort of argument I suppose ...
- Actually, I think it's not impossible to get this kind of game to acceptable speeds using a combined LD-PUSH 'inplace tile' (= Stormlord-like) approach, as well as converting some of the more difficult graphics elements into 'code as data' (= dat cloud). Or possibly a full 'code as data' engine ...
theres also an original speccy version of super mario bros
Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
“The most addictive game—the tension builds as you fight off more and more
of the pesky varmints and stand your ground or jump from pipe to pipe
keeping one step ahead of your pursuers. Fast comic fun with loads of
hidden features and unexpected hiccups.”
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
Original L64 thread in case you missed it, I'm not sure if there are further technical details in there, such as the programming challenges and why the slowdowns etc, it's hard to tell atm with its 14+pages (it's nice to see an alive retro community for a change too, haha)
There's a little bit from the author on page 13 - I read it all so you don't have to :-P - but nothing extensive. It seems he started from an existing disassembly and sort of hacked the C64 bits around it, including "emulating" bits of NES hardware in a way to re-map things onto the C64. It's interesting to see that, because the NES screen has less characters across compared to the C64, you actually see more of the map on screen on the C64 version but get weirdness at the edges (fireballs disappear and sprite collisions might not happen etc).
I have learnt a few things about the C64 that I didn't know as a result of various discussions about this port though. I had no idea how difficult it is to scroll a proper colour screen. The "colour RAM" (think attributes) on the C64 is fixed in memory, so whilst you can double-buffer the character part of the display to get around the slow CPU not having time to copy a full screen of data during vblank, you run into issues if you want the background colours to move with it and need to use numerous tricks to chase the raster. This probably explains why so many C64 scrolling shooters always seemed to have such a limited palette of colours on screen - if the colour memory doesn't need to scroll it's a lot easier to handle moving things around.
This probably explains why so many C64 scrolling shooters always seemed to have such a limited palette of colours on screen - if the colour memory doesn't need to scroll it's a lot easier to handle moving things around.
Another common technique that allows a bit more colour is using 4x4 blocks with 1 unique CRAM colour each. That way you only need to update a quarter (for horizontal scrolling) of CRAM each time. :)
Comments
A torrent? Lol, the torrent files prolly bigger than the game
Indeed
I think it may also be on some Slack channel also ;) :P
A little-known fact 37499201: the Speccy has its own version of Mario-with-lags. This is best coupled with 'playing the resolution card' if used as some sort of argument I suppose ...
- Actually, I think it's not impossible to get this kind of game to acceptable speeds using a combined LD-PUSH 'inplace tile' (= Stormlord-like) approach, as well as converting some of the more difficult graphics elements into 'code as data' (= dat cloud). Or possibly a full 'code as data' engine ...
The first rule of Fight Club: You don’t talk about Fight Club. X(
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0003035
“The most addictive game—the tension builds as you fight off more and more
of the pesky varmints and stand your ground or jump from pipe to pipe
keeping one step ahead of your pursuers. Fast comic fun with loads of
hidden features and unexpected hiccups.”
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.
I have learnt a few things about the C64 that I didn't know as a result of various discussions about this port though. I had no idea how difficult it is to scroll a proper colour screen. The "colour RAM" (think attributes) on the C64 is fixed in memory, so whilst you can double-buffer the character part of the display to get around the slow CPU not having time to copy a full screen of data during vblank, you run into issues if you want the background colours to move with it and need to use numerous tricks to chase the raster. This probably explains why so many C64 scrolling shooters always seemed to have such a limited palette of colours on screen - if the colour memory doesn't need to scroll it's a lot easier to handle moving things around.