Spectrum Computing

yes, I guess it has got a bit complicated, but I will explain. Highriser was my coding name and my itch.io shop name, i.e me Happy Coding ZX was my Youtube and Facebook group name, i.e my work Midnight brew is the publishing company which I run, which publishes my games as well as those of some of m...

initially I just wanted to implement Pacman Plus and added a few more features and I'm pretty much all-Pacced out now I do have Ms Pacman pencilled in to do next year maybe, as well as Crazy Otto.

I don't know if you've read the youtube blurb but this is a different game mode, when you eat the fruit you get random effects. Rather than replicate Pacman plus exactly, I decided to riff on it a little and have a bit of fun with it. In this version, the game is faster and it is the fruit that gene...

testing the 'Plus' mode.

I admire the faith in humanity that some of you have, but the guy has been part of the homebrew scene for a decade. He gave no credit at the start, thus passing it off as his own work, and then gave no apology at the end. That is more than a little urinary extraction if you ask me.

thanks, yes, I think I was testing the high score bell or something

ok, let's get back to the topic, full game playthrough.

Interestingly, Moon Cresta was actually the first officially licensed arcade conversion for the Spectrum.

Hyper Sports and Green Beret are great conversions. You can usually tell when someone really knows and loves the game. Moon Cresta also deserves a mention.

Well, perhaps we can compete or collaborate in the future, who knows :) You're right about the Arctic version, it was very well done for the time. Someone made a Galaxian clone quite recently which was on par with it, but I can't help thinking that a more arcade accurate version is doable. https://s...

This is a screen capture of the experiment I did about four years ago. It was possible to draw all the aliens in a single cycle, with 2 pixel colour banding, and have them animate and be shot. It pushed the whole thing to the limit though, and in the end I decided it was an interesting tech demo but...

regarding Pacman, yes, all sprites are preshifted and also stored in pages so that shifting is done by simply reading the X offset and adding it to the source. Overall this uses about 2k. I have a full screen buffer at $C000 to allow quick testing, so that's another 7k. Pacman sprite is handled indi...

Just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for all the work you have put into this over the years, the community really appreciates it.

re the wipe, I first used it in Lunar Rescue, since both games are supposed to be on a vertical monitor I wrote a wipe routine that just gives it that extra arcade feel. Always makes me happy when someone notices it.

Let's say I'm cooking it on a Spectrum with an arcade recipe, adjusting wherever appropriate for optimal results really. It's running at 50hz which means it is a bit slower than the arcade, though the way the maze is built might make up for that a bit. There's a full set of dev videos with commentar...

yes, the judder is almost entirely due to the way the video is recorded. I don't allow any of the unholy trinity of jerk, flicker or tear

There are three cutscenes in total, all of which I will include.

I might be wrong but I don't believe that Platform Game Designer does anything that AGDx or MPAGD can't do. One thing that they both support is inline assembly code though, so you can put your own assembly routines in there. If I were you though, I would suggest starting with something like Jonathan...

If you're happy to develop a game on an emulated machine, then you can still have some fun with AGDx, but MPAGD has PC tools which you might find suit you better. The engines in them are very similar, as can be seen from the games that have been made on them. I wouldn't necessarily reccommend them f...

As remarkable as something like Starstrike 2 is, it's just about possible because it's in space, there are no backgrounds. As has been said above, as soon as you want to have backgrounds and fast moving foreground sprites, all done in software, you are going to end up running under 10 frames per sec...

Pac-Land is a fun game, the PC-Engine version is great, but on the Spectrum I really prefer the golden age single screen games because I know it's possible to really do them justice. You can certainly expect more of them from me!

it's funny you should mention Galaxian - it's certainly something I've considered, because even though the official conversion is pretty good, it could be a bit smoother and faster, especially if it has AY sound effects. That being said, I have a pretty long 'to do' list, so it probably won't be for...

Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated. The option to redefine the start key is there because it's actually the joystick fire button as well and is used in game for pausing the game too. The idea being that people play these games on emulators in a number of ways and you can be on the couch or ...

I guess it could clash if you chose 'R' to as the 'start' key, I guess I could disallow that. Seems an unlikely choice though!