Spectrum Computing

Colour clash in these pictures seem to work just fine. As if the player's lamp is casting a bright light at the dark tunnel walls nearby...

This is one of my all-time favourite arcade games! I wanted a Speccy conversion so much back in the day but alas it was never to be. And yet somehow, here it is - 36 years late, granted, but better late than never.

Will be interested to try this when it's done.

I guess it would have been pretty much impossible to avoid colour clash on this port, as long as it plays nicely I'll be happy..

Just to update this thread...

After many many hard spent hours it's finally completed and available to download from here https://t.co/82KLCDSsOZ

Note it's primarily for the 128K Spectrum but will play on the 48K (but with a much more muted experience!)



It's been one hell of a steep learning curve going from simply making pokes all those years ago to writing an actual full game. I have a lot of respect for anyone who undertakes such a task on the humble ZX Spectrum!

Hunting down and fixing bugs in Z80 code is painful and I have to thank Mark Woodmass ([mention]Woodster[/mention]) for his excellent SpecEmu which I used all the way through development.

A special thanks to Mark R. Jones my old school friend for all of the encouragement and the wonderful graphics he provided taking great care over every pixel!

Remarkable achievement. Well done! Can’t wait to play this later.

Adrian_Singh wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:20 am Just to update this thread...

This looks great! I gave it a quick go (and learned that I was miserable at it). Will test it properly later.

I can say with absolute authority that this is a very faithful recreation of the arcade Mr Do... in that I'm still bloody hopeless and can't get off the second level.

Well done Adrian. Northants represent!

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2019 11:50 am I can say with absolute authority that this is a very faithful recreation of the arcade Mr Do... in that I'm still bloody hopeless and can't get off the second level.

I got to Level 3. Yay, me?

Thanks a lot!

When I was maing this thread, maybe I shouldn't say "coming soon" But it's great to see it finished

Mark R. Jones has been publishing a lot of pics of the game these days on twitter.

Seems a very good conversion, in any way: graphics, fonts, ... great work. I'll try it later.

A very good conversion of the historical arcade coin-op. Well done Mr Singh.

For the Spectrum, there had been an unofficial clone available for years, but this is the first "real" rendition.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz8ZThCDlqE[/media]

This is brilliant! Although obviously I died quickly just like in every other game!

Definitelly awesome port!
Animation and playbility are really great.
The occasional colour clash seemed inevitable, I wonder if this type of game might have been done in the Nirvana engine?

Pegaz wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:06 pm Definitelly awesome port!
Animation and playbility are really great.
The occasional colour clash seemed inevitable, I wonder if this type of game might have been done in the Nirvana engine?

I had the exact same thought when I saw it, aren't Nirvana/Bifrost supposed to be used with static screen games? If so then great.

Not an expert on this so maybe someone else could chime in but I expect the size of the engine code itself could be a limiting factor..?

I had no idea what anyone was talking about. Mr Do? Never heard of him! Then I gave it a try - it's Digger! Why did no one say so?! I played that for hours when the free version came out on UNIX platforms.

This is a fantastic achievement, really playable, despite the limitations of the humble Speccy. Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved!

Superb game! Well done fellas.

Plays really well, looks great, and a nice plinky plonky AY tune. As we hoped, the colour clash of the white player sprite works perfectly as a miner's torchlight.

Great conversion..!

I only played Mr Do (the arcade version) a few times. It's one of those games that looks incredibly easy but can be deviously tricky.

Thanks for all the great comments. Makes all the hard work worthwhile

MarkRJones1979 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 16, 2019 5:47 pm Thanks for all the great comments. Makes all the hard work worthwhile

Thanks to you and Adrian for the game!

And welcome to these forums, [mention]MarkRJones1979[/mention] !

What an excellent conversion!

Plays just like the arcade game. I can't really imagine a better version being done for the Spectrum.

Aye, I was playing this earlier, managed level 6 so far. It seems easy in theory but hard in practice.

It's not a bug as such, but one of the ricocheting bullets got semi-stuck bouncing between the same opposing corners. Is that a 'feature' of the arcade game too by can't chance?

R-Tape wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2019 9:13 pm It's not a bug as such, but one of the ricocheting bullets got semi-stuck bouncing between the same opposing corners. Is that a 'feature' of the arcade game too by can't chance?

Yes in the aracde game the ball can sometimes end up bouncing back and forth between opposing corners in close proximity, however if the ball does not hit an enemy within a certain number of bounces the ball will self-destruct and be returned to the player.

I must say, this game is bloody hard!!!