Search found 296 matches

by highrise
Wed Feb 14, 2024 5:46 am
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Pacman Begins
Replies: 25
Views: 1042

Re: Pacman Begins

Was aiming just to pip Lee's score, and ended up with... 195600 ... Your turn, Andre :mrgreen: Wow, well played Sir. Andre was helping me to work on the difficulty curve and I thought I'd set the maximum level to 'almost impossible'. Looks like I will have to look at that hardcore mode I was planni...
by highrise
Sat Feb 10, 2024 12:05 pm
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Pacman Begins
Replies: 25
Views: 1042

Re: Pacman Begins

oh, and a little bit of tech stuff. The pills and maze walls are laid out in such a way that facilitates fast drawing and by shifting everything down a little, allows the fruit to be multicoloured. I had originally planned for this game to use a multicolour trick to give the ghosts white eyes but in...
by highrise
Sat Feb 10, 2024 11:56 am
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Pacman Begins
Replies: 25
Views: 1042

Re: Pacman Begins

here's a few little tips: The fruits are set so that they appear only after a certain number of dots are eaten, and they will only appear when you are closer to the edges of the screen. This was a design choice to stop people lurking in the centre, more risk more reward. The other way to score big p...
by highrise
Sat Feb 10, 2024 11:50 am
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Pacman Begins
Replies: 25
Views: 1042

Re: Pacman Begins

Nice to see you guys getting a high score game going. Andre is the master though, he has a ridiculous score of about 80,000 or more. Mad skills!
by highrise
Fri Feb 09, 2024 7:08 pm
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Pacman Begins
Replies: 25
Views: 1042

Re: Pacman Begins

Thank Gabriele, I did indeed work really hard on not cutting any corners, which is really important when you have minimal gameplay.
by highrise
Fri Feb 09, 2024 1:09 pm
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Super Sonic Bros. Fast scrolling platform game which tries to not look like a ZX game
Replies: 19
Views: 1070

Re: Super Sonic Bros. Fast scrolling platform game which tries to not look like a ZX game

Nice work! I've seen this trick used quite extensively in the demo scene over the years but not much in games, well done.
by highrise
Sat Feb 03, 2024 11:03 pm
Forum: Design/Ideas
Topic: 1D Pac-Man
Replies: 8
Views: 1179

Re: 1D Pac-Man

Yes, I thought it would be interesting to take the concept but apply the gameplay and feel of Pacman more closely, especially as I already had the assets. It's coming along quite well.

by highrise
Thu Feb 01, 2024 3:59 pm
Forum: Design/Ideas
Topic: Papers, Please
Replies: 3
Views: 425

Re: Papers, Please

Ah yes, my wife still says 'Glory to Arstotzka!' whenever we go through customs.
by highrise
Thu Feb 01, 2024 3:57 pm
Forum: Graphics
Topic: Why yellow?
Replies: 26
Views: 1425

Re: Why yellow?

Likely because there's no pink or brown, so it's often used for skin tone.
by highrise
Thu Feb 01, 2024 12:39 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?
Replies: 19
Views: 949

Re: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?

sorry, reading that back, I don't think I was especially clear - any game code would have to be done when the raster beam was in the border, thus making it quite limited - although you could potentially use the top two thirds for the game and have quite a few more cycles to play with.
by highrise
Thu Feb 01, 2024 12:10 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?
Replies: 19
Views: 949

Re: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?

p.s the screen does update at 50hz. It uses an attribute buffer of 1536 bytes, with each byte containing two 3-bit colour values. Whatever you write to that buffer will be displayed on screen. But given that anything you do would have to be in the border, it's quite limiting.
by highrise
Thu Feb 01, 2024 12:06 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?
Replies: 19
Views: 949

Re: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?

Well, I used to open source stuff, with the strict proviso that people didn't use it for commercial games without my permission. Unfortunately this got ignored one too many times so I don't really do that anymore. But I'm always open to collaborations with like-minded chaps.
by highrise
Wed Jan 31, 2024 11:22 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?
Replies: 19
Views: 949

Re: I'm doing a sonic clone, best way to scroll the attributes layer 4 bits at a time?

True story - I'm quite friendly with Denis who wrote Ringo and before he coded it, I had a chat with him about a technique to use attributes to create a full colour low res effect. I completed a demo engine that ran on 48k. I think he must have been inspired since Ringo came out several months later...
by highrise
Thu Jan 25, 2024 10:22 pm
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: Paul Holmes (coder for Elite and US Gold)
Replies: 6
Views: 666

Re: Paul Holmes (coder for Elite and US Gold)

If you'd like to know more about Paul, here is an old interview.

https://worldofspectrum.net/interviews/HolmesPaul.htm
by highrise
Thu Jan 25, 2024 12:58 pm
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: Paul Holmes (coder for Elite and US Gold)
Replies: 6
Views: 666

Re: Paul Holmes (coder for Elite and US Gold)

Hi guys

I can confirm that I received this news directly from a friend and former colleague of Paul's who I managed to contact. Very sad news.
by highrise
Mon Jan 01, 2024 3:52 pm
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Midnight Brew editions
Replies: 12
Views: 558

Re: Midnight Brew editions

Incidentally, the digital set is also a perk for my supporters on Patreon, who also help with beta testing. Both this year and last year's digitals are there for them, as well as every other game or mod I've done. So if you want to support homebrew and help free up my time to make more games and vid...
by highrise
Mon Jan 01, 2024 11:49 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Midnight Brew editions
Replies: 12
Views: 558

Re: Midnight Brew editions

Hi guys The feeling was always that we didn't want to sell these updated versions of what were originally free games for profit. Nevertheless they do have value so the plan is to release the Midnight Brew Digital collection for 2023 for charity, which is also what we did last year. I'm in the proces...
by highrise
Sat Dec 23, 2023 6:26 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Arctic Atac
Replies: 6
Views: 600

Re: Arctic Atac

Thanks everyone! Every year I try to do various mods as gifts for my Patreon supporters, and then release them for everyone a year or so later. This one was actually only completed on something silly like the 10th day of Xmas, so I figured I would gift it to the community in good time this year. I'm...
by highrise
Wed Nov 01, 2023 8:13 pm
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Atic Atac: All Hallows Eve
Replies: 6
Views: 481

Re: Atic Atac: All Hallows Eve

Yes, I don't share these mods publicly. Those who support me on Patreon do get to test it though.
by highrise
Tue Oct 31, 2023 11:54 am
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Atic Atac: All Hallows Eve
Replies: 6
Views: 481

Atic Atac: All Hallows Eve

hey guys

here's a quick look at new lighting mod I've done with Atic Atac for Halloween. It uses ULAplus to give a nice range of shades in multiple colours.

by highrise
Fri Oct 27, 2023 7:03 pm
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Just who was Matt Jackson?
Replies: 11
Views: 551

Re: Just who was Matt Jackson?

No great mystery - He's active on Facebook, working on a Defender clone, he replied to me about a month ago but haven't had any updates since then.

https://www.facebook.com/Cruithne3753
by highrise
Thu Oct 26, 2023 5:56 pm
Forum: Emulators
Topic: ESPectrum 1.0rc3
Replies: 14
Views: 995

Re: ESPectrum 1.0rc3

yes, I admit it, it confused me twice. I was so happy to see there was an update for the Es.pectrum emulator I immediately clicked, only to face the crushing disappointment that it was a totally different program, although I'm sure it's one that involved just as much hard work and dedication which I...
by highrise
Sun Oct 22, 2023 9:47 am
Forum: Emulators
Topic: ESPectrum 1.0rc3
Replies: 14
Views: 995

Re: ESPectrum 1.0rc3

Great work, but this is not the same thing as es.pectrum is it? this one

https://www.habisoft.com/espectrum/EN.htm


because if they are different, I really think you should consider a different name to avoid confusion, this emulator has been around for a long time and is one of my favourites.
by highrise
Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:50 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Short fallout style text game (Merged from multiple topics)
Replies: 90
Views: 943

Re: Reading a 16 bit value at (IX+4)

There are also some useful commands using ixl and ixh, which are the high and low values of IX. They are documented here along with everything else https://clrhome.org/table/ For example you can copy IX into DE using: ld d,ixh ld e,ixl which would be slightly faster that using the stack. you can als...