Spectrum Computing

Now this looks like it's going be something rather special:

http://www.indieretronews.com/2018/09/a ... .html#more

And its going to be free

Not brand new Speccy software, but, somewhat Speccy related.

Yes! I'm following this project and the idea is a stroke of genius , but I really like the early mockups, more similar to Knight Lore.

https://twitter.com/EricRetro/status/10 ... 6659082242

The latest snap is visually nice, but...

https://twitter.com/EricRetro/status/10 ... 3997527040

They need to stop pugging the Ultimate and Atic Atac names before someone steps in to shut them down...

Looks lovely.
I particularly like the frantic movement speed. Very Aticky-Atacky.

Joefish wrote: ↑Mon Sep 03, 2018 1:16 pm They need to stop pugging the Ultimate and Atic Atac names before someone steps in to shut them down...

Yes, that would be a shame.
... especially since the same author was working on a Fairlight remake many years ago which was eventually shut down by The Edge. A damn shame as it looked and played really well, but unfortunately I was never finished. Hopefully he'll be able to finish this one though.

Ohh, it's the same dude? Awesome.
He's a glutton for the shutton...down. Or something.

Those sweet graphics have got to come from somewhere!

Absolutely stunning re-imagining of a wonderful game!

Annoyingly though, its running at a resolution of 320 x 240 (I think!?) and looks as if its based upon 9x9 tile rooms? If it were 8x8 then conversion would be a lot simpler.

The graphics do convert well though, and some colour is even possible here and there. If it were to run as the original, with no moveable objects (not like Filmation etc), then a reasonable speed might be possible on the Speccy.

Unless of course we scroll the room by a few characters left or right as and when needed during play.

This has got me thinking if there were many fast moving iso games on the Speccy.

Would there be any chance of getting anything like close to the speed of the gameplay in the vid? I'd be quite amazed if I saw it.

I think possibly not quite up to the speed of the remake, however, I think if the routines were all optimised well and the sprite routines unrolled, then a decent speed can be achieved. There are no nasties in the video yet, just the sparkly throwy thing that bounces around. No objects in the rooms can be physically moved, and theres no food items either, so all that would have to be considered.

Perhaps if we ask Craig nicely he'll redesign everything to suit 256 pixel width

Well, you have Bobby Bearing (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=606), smaller graphics, but pretty fast, and wonderful physics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWG6utK3KCI

Bobby Bearing is my absolute favorite isometric game, EVER!

Unfortunately though it slows down rather a lot with more than just Bobby in the room

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:45 am This has got me thinking if there were many fast moving iso games on the Speccy.

Spindizzy was pretty fast if you errm..went fast.

Head over Heals was pretty fast compared to the likes of Knighlore and I don't remember there being quite as much sloooowww doooowwwwwn when there was a lot happening on the screen.

I'm ripping the graphics at the moment to try a few experimental mock-ups! Hehe

1K 3d Atic Atac ftw!

1k! Thats far too big, aiming for 256 bytes actually!

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:16 pm I'm ripping the graphics at the moment to try a few experimental mock-ups! Hehe

(waits expectantly to see the Atic Atac knight running around a chessboard)

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 4:31 pm

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:16 pm I'm ripping the graphics at the moment to try a few experimental mock-ups! Hehe

(waits expectantly to see the Atic Atac knight running around a chessboard)

Well, actually....Sabreman did have an outing on the chessboard if I recall.

Quazatron was pretty zippy - that was all designed so you could never pass behind scenery. In this case you would just have to order the sprites and overlay the two nearest doors. Just Nightshade without the scrolling. Though you'd want 8-way movement.

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 12:08 pm Perhaps if we ask Craig nicely he'll redesign everything to suit 256 pixel width

Hah, the technical details are all out of my hands, really. I'm just designing and creating all the graphics while Richard refines his game engine. I have stated, though, that if anyone were to attempt a Spectrum conversion (well, a Spectrum Next version), that I'd make all the graphics available, though I suspect some would have to be amended slightly. We're currently trying to sort out some technical gameplay issues regarding the doors and room objects as well as where to place to door frame. Let's just say that the gameplay itself is (and will) continually be tweaked so that you still get that Atic Atac playability experience in an isometric viewpoint. The things is, we're not just throwing this together quickly and chucking it out there. I have long list of graphics to produce, half of them have animation of some sort.

Joefish wrote: ↑Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:39 pm Though you'd want 8-way movement.

The footage revealed so far is using a test character (is it from Nightshade? I can't remember) as a stand in until I create all 4 playable characters. We might leave the demo character in there as wee unlockable. Each character, and enemy, will have 8 frames of animation and 8-way movement.

We've had some nice encouragement from a few ex-Rare staff, as well as from a couple of developers from the Spectrum days and the creator of the recent isometric game "Lumo" (prompting me to get meta and to include "Lumo" easter eggs into my list of graphics).

It's going to a lot of hard work for the 3 man team (yes, we even have a musician and he's produced a lot of cracking Spectrum and other game music over the years).

AWESOME!!!!!

The character you've used in the demo is the guard from Knight Lore, which only has 6 frames of animation (as does Sabreman, but with the optional head-looking-left-or-right frame). The guard sprite is actually quite an efficient sprite, and as with many of Ultimates characters, the top and bottom are separate. basically the guards top half is one frame and his legs 6 frames.

Eight way movement would make each character need 8x6 (48 frames) on the Speccy, and to be as fast as possible, no flipping can happen on the fly really, so it'll be quite a heavy load of maybe 15k per character if you include the masks too.

Thankfully, that’s something I don’t have to worry about and if it was going to be ported to a Spectrum, it’d be someone else’s problem Also just leave out 2 frames of animation...2 of the characters you won’t really see their legs (and I haven’t decided about their arm animation) so 8 frames may not be needed for these on a Spectrum at least. I’ll still be creating 8 frames regardless.
I suppose you could just use 4 directions in a Speccy conversion, it still works as can be seen in the demo.