Games with good use of push scrolling?

[Morkin]

Was thinking about the way Android 2 (great game ) uses push scrolling, in that as the next bit of the screen scrolls in, it includes the enemies (rather than scrolling the scenery and drawing the enemies right at the end of the scroll). So it gives you a tiny bit of time to react.

Only issue I have is I think it does it a tad too late - it basically only scrolls when you're right at the edge of the screen, rather than near-ish the edge. Enemies often lurk near the edges and cross between screens.



I guess ideally you'd keep the sprite central and have full scrolling (like T.L.L.). But I guess that can take a lot of programming effort. with scenery, sprites etc. in some games.

Are there any Speccy games that have a really good use of push scrolling?

Particularly scrolling that doesn't negatively affect gameplay, e.g. avoids the player coming into sudden contact with enemies on the edge of the current/new screen as the new one scrolls in?

[ParadigmShifter]

If Android 2 is like TLL and Cyclone I expect it only scrolls the attributes as well, the attribute squares for the grass and walls will have same ink and paper colour. You can probably save the screen without the attributes (so dump 6144 bytes from starting address 16384) to check if that is the case.

So it is only redrawing sprites and it doesn't need to erase anything (which is what I am doing in my puzzle game engine - still in progress).

So it's not really doing a lot of complicated scrolling.

Stuff that is redrawing the screen at all times would be Joffa's games, Green Beret, Cobra, Firefly.

[+3code]

Bionic Commando?

A recent one is Marsmare: Alienation.

Ps: maybe this needs a separate category/group in the database.

Ps2: the oldest I can find is Splat!

Ps3: error... Splat! isn't push screen, sorry. But interesting, however.

[Lee Bee]

You're basically talking about "animated flip-screen games", where the entire screen suddenly scrolls over to the next "room" when you reach the edge.

There's another type of "push scrolling" - like in The Final Matrix, where you're constantly pushing the screen to scroll. It's horrible!

[ParadigmShifter]

Right I thought they meant using PUSH instructions aka "stack abuse" to draw to the screen as fast as possible

Gauntlet is pretty good example then. (Probably not though, I expect you mean it scrolls some fixed amount when you reach a screen boundary and not scrolling each time you move so you are always in a "safe region" i.e. never too safe to the edge of the screen).

[+3code]

You're basically talking about "animated flip-screen games", where the entire screen suddenly scrolls over to the next "room" when you reach the edge.

Yeah, you are right. Bugaboo should be too included in that interpretation of "push scroll".

[AndyC]

I'm not sure the are any good examples of it, it's a really clunky mechanism for dealing with camera movement. While there are a handful of games where it maybe doesn't interfere too much, almost all of them would be vastly improved by a more fluid camera movement (which doesn't necessarily mean constantly scrolling as that can be very annoying in some platform games)

[+3code]

Using the second interpretation of "push scroll" pointed by Lee Bee, then Turrican (the first game) could be a good example, I think.

Ps: I loved that game, despite the tape multiload.

[AndyC]

Using the second interpretation of "push scroll" pointed by Lee Bee, then Turrican (the first game) could be a good example, I think.

Ps: I loved that game, despite the tape multiload.

I wouldn't really call that push scrolling, it just has a camera that moves independently of the main character horizontally, at least.

I think the Spectrum and Amstrad versions let you get too close to the edges though (probably a result of slimming the width of the Playfield) which harms the game a bit as you're too close to enemies when they come on screen. It also has a bit of a vomit inducing vertical camera movement - it'd play nicer if the camera didn't necessarily pan every time you jump.

[Lee P]

Anarchy? I guess a full scroll (as with the C64 version) wasn't possible on the Speccy so the sort of "flip the screen along a third" thing it does is a decent compromise. It added an element of danger to the edge of the screen but you could always start firing into it as you approached.

[AndyC]

I'd call Anarchy a flip screen game (albeit with a certain amount of overlap between "screens"). To be what is typically meant by "push scrolling" it should actually appear to scroll and the game should stop playing whilst it does.

[PQR]

Northstar
Avenger

[deanysoft]

Quazatron springs to mind as a push scroller but as I think Steve Turner was pushed for RAM, it wasn't the smoothest! Cool game, although I still prefer the action in Paradroid (puts tin hat on in readiness for the CBM haters)

[Ralf]

I had to check what you mean by push scrolling. At first I believed it's about using a series of PUSH commands in assembler.

But now I know: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/push-scrolling

I don't recall many games using it, but speaking of more recent games, Spectrum version of Castlevania uses it quite nicely:
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... _Interlude

[Lethargeek]

Northstar
Avenger

no, both use immediate scrolling (although avenger does "push-flipping" at the edges of large areas)

[+3code]

I don't recall many games using it, but speaking of more recent games, Spectrum version of Castlevania uses it quite nicely:
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... _Interlude

Nah, it's the same as Bionic Commando and Marsmare (and Bugaboo), here they use "push scroll" with a slightly different meaning.

[worcestersource]

How would you describe the scrolling in Boulder Dash? (Other than a very good game mechanic)

[ParadigmShifter]

Can't you run faster than the scrolling in Boulder Dash though? So you can get off screen?

[Nienn Heskil]

The team that made the recent Delta's Shadow and other stuff seems to make an effort to make this look good, e.g.not pausing the action while it's scrolling, and just going with the general concept of 'having life outside of the currently showing screen' (logically these are more akin to scrolling games in a way). Same with the Ninja Gaiden conversion

[Morkin]

Ninja Gaiden looks good, that was the sort of thing I was thinking of - scrolls when you're near the end of the screen (but not right at the end), bringing in some of the next screen including the enemies, giving you time to react.

Delta's Shadow is highly impressive-looking, though it's extremely fast, almost like a stylish version of a flip screen.

I'd forgotten about Quazatron. I guess you have to be right at the edge to trigger that, and it's a bit jerky. I didn't realise that Bionic Commando did it. I guess Bugaboo counts, though you can't really do anything about it when you're flying through the screen and into the dragon's mouth


Nice to know I'm not the only person who got confused with the definition of 'push scrolling'... I'm sure everyone talked about it on WoS and I thought it was about PUSH and POP for ages until I looked it up...

[AndyC]

Nah, it's the same as Bionic Commando and Marsmare (and Bugaboo), here they use "push scroll" with a slightly different meaning.

Marsmare and Spectral Interlude are classic push scrolls. You reach the edge of the screen and the game stops while the scroll happens and then continues again.

Bionic Commando is similar in that the scroll kicks in once you get near the edge of the screen and moves so fast as to almost feel like snapping into a new position. But crucially it doesn't stop the game whilst that's happening, so it's more of a dynamic camera effect (albeit a bit of a crappy one IMO).

[ketmar]

How would you describe the scrolling in Boulder Dash?

awful. ;-)

[worcestersource]

Can't you run faster than the scrolling in Boulder Dash though? So you can get off screen?

Yes but I was surprised when I saw the game on the C64 and Atari that this game mechanic wasn’t present and Rockford couldn’t run off the screen.

Personally, I really liked the idea and would run off the screen on purpose. Knowing the levels well, I knew where I was going but it added a little extra jeopardy in case of error.

What I’m trying to remember is whether the scrolling was triggered straight away or after moving x squares from the centre.

[ketmar]

'cmon, it's not a game mechanic per se, it is an artifact of conversion from single-screen game to scrolling game. it never really meant to work this way (and the game was initially designed to fit the screen completely, with smaller graphics).

p.s.: atari 800 definitely had this catatonic camera too. that's where i've first played BD, actually.

[Morkin]

Been looking at Spectral Interlude - although it push scrolls, it would probably work as flip screen, as it looks like the enemies are restricted to their own screens, and don't seem to appear immediately (as the screen scrolls in).

I was thinking that a benefit of push-scrolling - where the game is too 'heavy' for full screen scrolling - might be in games like Quazatron, where enemies move about the whole map, not just your screen and they can move into your viewport at any time, and aren't in fixed positions when you move screen.

As you move towards the edge of a screen, it scrolls the next section in. If you notice an enemy very close, you see it scroll in with the map graphics, and have a valuable few milliseconds to decide how to react.